Democracy and Decentralization: UK Labour Leaders Reframe Socialism for the 21st Century

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Democracy and Decentralization: UK Labour Leaders Reframe Socialism for the 21st Century

Thursday, 25 February 2016 00:00
By Gar Alperovitz and Joe Guinan, Truthout | Op-Ed


Bernie Sanders has made an unprecedented and extraordinary contribution to the US political landscape this election cycle. Whatever the outcome of the primaries, a whole generation has learned that talking about socialism, explicitly and proudly, is no longer as politically radioactive as once supposed. But can we not expect more from our economic populism than just knitting back together a frayed social safety net, kick-starting the engines of Keynesian demand with ecologically appropriate infrastructure and imposing some long overdue reforms on our largest financial institutions? Might the United States not be ready for a socialism that actually takes the question of "who owns the economy" seriously?

Though perhaps tactically understandable, given his own previous efforts, it's a little surprising that Sanders has not made ownership (and new forms of ownership) more of a theme in his campaign. "I don't believe the government should own the means of production," he emphasized in his major speech on democratic socialism in November 2015, even though elsewhere he has given vociferous support for expanding the scope of the US Postal Service into retail banking. Community development advocates are scratching their heads, wondering why Sanders' longtime support at the municipal and state level for transformative ownership strategies - employee ownership, community land trusts, cooperative low-income housing - haven't shown up on the stump. Hillary Clinton's tepid profit-sharing plan, where businesses could claim a tax credit for 15 percent of the amount of profit they share with their workers, and which grows out of Larry Summers' "inclusive capitalism" framework, at least opens the door to a (very) weak form of ownership.

A look at what's brewing on the other side of the Atlantic gives us some reason to dream a little bigger about what might be possible and also politically viable here, especially given the new direction socialist thought is taking all around the world.

Jeremy Corbyn's insurgent, grassroots-powered win that took the British Labour Party back from neoliberal centrists shares a lot with Sanders' presidential primary campaign. However, Corbyn has tackled the ownership question head-on, coming out strong for a modern approach to public ownership as a basic principle to defend and fight for: "After a generation of forced privatisation and outsourcing of public services, the evidence has built up that handing services over to private companies routinely delivers poorer quality, higher cost, worse terms and conditions for the workforce, less transparency and less say for the public." ..........(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34977-democracy-and-decentralization-uk-labour-leaders-reframe-socialism-for-the-21st-century

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1. "... not just a strong pushback against the corporate economy, but the outlines of "a new, positive

economic alternative for Labour ... the new economics." Part of this involves revitalizing the long cooperative tradition in the UK, which stretches back to the original Rochdale Pioneers, who inaugurated the modern consumer cooperatives in 1844. "In an uncertain world where a laissez faire market approach continues to fail, co-operation is an idea whose time has come again," McDonnell said.

Crucially though, for McDonnell, the task is bigger than just creating a few more worker cooperatives; the project for Labour in the 21st century is to articulate "how we can change our economy to suit our society, rather than changing society to suit our economy ... We need to go much further than simply offering a defence of what we already have." And such a vision should not just fall back on old models of centralized, technocratic state ownership, with all their well-documented flaws:

Ultimately, what is at stake for McDonnell is nothing less than a real, rigorous conversation about a next system, one that rises above the rhetoric common on both the left and right, and that rigorously explores the kind of economic institutions and infrastructure we want to build, beyond both corporate capitalism and state socialism:

If Jeremy Corbyn and his team - which now includes Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty and Mariana Mazzucato as economic advisers - continue to bring this kind of thinking into the national political conversation in the UK, it's possible that such ideas will start to gain more widespread voter support and implementation. Democratic socialists in the US should pay close attention.

Corbyn seems to have a fantastic team of economic advisers. We must wish him the best in transforming the UK economy and society.