Full house at Bristol University for the Bristol Inclusive Economy Network event with Ted Howard of @DemocracyCollab on Community Wealth Building and the emerging potential for a “Bristol Model”. #democraticeconomy#communitywealthbuilding
Ted highlights the irony of a new movement for a democratic economy in the UK and USA, given the role that our two countries played in the conceptualisation, rollout, and development of the neoliberal order. Calls for fundamental systemic change of our political economy.
Panel discussion following Ted Howard’s remarks with speakers from the University of Bristol and local new economy actors from the West of England on prospects for political-economic system change locally. #communitywealthbuilding#democraticeconomy
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A thread with a few eve-of-poll thoughts about the politics of this British general election and where it is likely to leave those of us committed to transformative political-economic change both ideologically and as a practical necessity. 🧵👇🏼
So ends the most delusional general election campaign in modern British history.
The vote seems largely a foregone conclusion, with a collapsing Conservative Party barely capable of going through the motions, able to summon only enough energy to place a few insider bets on their own impending demise.
The idea that the problem with Starmer is insufficient ‘boldness,’ rather than that he has the wrong policies in the wrong interests, is a failure of analysis and understanding that will become apparent very quickly. His commitments aren’t right but insufficient, they are wrong!
Starmer’s positions are:
-Privatisation
-Financialisation
-Derisking
-Authoritarian policing
-Atlanticist foreign policy
-Austerity
-Trickle-down economics
-Growth
-Constitutional status quo/unionism
-British nationalism
-Purge the left
There is nothing in this programme that most of the Conservative Party of the past 14 years couldn’t agree with. The remarkable thing is selling it (again!) to most of the Labour Party.
We’re in a time of decay and slow-motion system collapse that looks something like crisis-punctuated stagnation. In the in-between times the ‘normal’ rules of neoliberalism apply—or are reapplied—like a force of gravity, a dead weight on the present that prevents new departures.
But periodic crisis interruptions force new interventions—bailouts, QE, furlough payments, etc.—that are outside the bounds of the ‘normal’ operations of the system, sudden lurches or interventions that then have to be closed down and the genie reinterred in the systemic bottle.
Needless to say, this is an unstable and unsustainable state. So while stagnation reigns, and political exits are blocked off as best can be managed by and within the system, a dynamic process of decay and dissolution is also at work.
We are living through a decomposition of the ideological apparatus into its most basic commitments. For liberalism, these turn out not to be justice or democracy or the rule of law but the protection of power and the preservation of capitalism. As for social democracy, it’s dead.
The social democratic method of using mass democracy to wring concessions from capital and the state doesn’t work when social democratic politics has been taken over by fractions who are unprepared to do any wringing of anything from those with power except for their own careers.
Triangulation did for social democracy, a trick that could only work once. The message has traveled all the way down to the base now; the deal is off.
Some possible “iron rules” for an incoming government that took climate action, the cost of living crisis, and inequality seriously rather than just bending the knee to the established order:
The financial economy of money, debt, and interest will be fully subordinated to real needs, be it the imperative to reduce emissions and observe hard biophysical limits or the real economy of production and consumption.
After more than four decades of neoliberalism and exploding economic inequality, the gap between the richest and the poorest will be narrowed rather than extended—as a matter of democracy, equity, and sustainability.
Quite apart from the inadequacy of current policy proposals we also need a conversation in Britain about policy itself, and the limits of policy in driving change. Too much debate hinges on this or that policy, as if there’s a 1:1 correlation between policy intent and outcomes.
Policy is important—and in some cases can be transformative. But only insofar as it alters the underlying structural conditions of our political economy. Policy within the existing structures can tweak or adjust, but it rarely transforms.
The economic problems we face are not just the result of this or that policy by this or that government—although things can certainly be worsened by government policy, as we saw with Truss/Kwarteng.