Building the good society A new form of progressive politics

Building
the
good
society
A new form of progressive politics
robin wilson and Jon Bloomfield

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Building the
good society
A neW foRm of
pRogRessive
politics
Robin Wilson
and Jon Bloomfield
1 | www.compassonline.org.uk

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About the authors
Robin Wilson is a former magazine editor and
think tank director and currently independent
researcher based in Belfast. He has been involved
in the debate in the UK and the wider Europe on
the `good society' since the outset.
Jon Bloomfield has worked in the public sector
in the West Midlands for over 25 years. He
is currently an honorary research fel ow at
Birmingham University specializing in European
issues.
Published by Compass - Direction for the Democratic Left Ltd
Southbank House, Black Prince Road, London SE1 7SJ
t: +44 (0) 207 463 0632
e: info@compassonline.org.uk
www.compassonline.org.uk
Designed by soapbox, www.soapbox.co.uk

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contents


foreword, by neal lawson
5
1 preface
6
2 introduction: cohering the narrative
7
2.1 Philosophy matters: framing public debate
7
2.2 Addressing public opinion: `common' and `good' sense
8
2.3 Thatcherism's success: the `property-owning democracy'
8
2.4 The `good society' as the progressive alternative
9
3 the `third way'
10
3.1 The triumph of neo-liberalism
10
3.2 Globalisation, capital and labour
10
3.3 `Market fundamentalism' and precariousness
11
3.4 `Free' market, authoritarian state
11
3.5 Populism versus the public sphere
11
3.6 The US embrace
12
3.7 The collapse of the progressive constituency
12
4 liberalism and socialism
13
4.1 The individualistic concept of society
13
4.2 Freedom and equality
13
4.3 Progressive division and the Conservative twentieth century
14
4.4 `New' Labour and `middle England'
14
4.5 The knowledge economy and the new world of work
15
4.6 Constructing a new `historical bloc'
15
5 the european context
17
5.1 The limits of `Labourism'
17
5.2 After the crisis: social democracy in one country?
18
5.3 The Second World War and the European progressive mainstream
18
5.4 The Nordic social model and its challenges
19
5.5 The European debate on `what's left'
19
6 the `good society'
21
6.1 State, market and civil society
21
6.2 What's wrong with the `big society'
21
6.3 Why equality is central
22
6.4 Equality of life chances and social mobility
22
6.5 Delegitimising `rent-seeking' in the capitalist casino
23
6.6 Women and the incomplete revolution
23
6.7 Equality, diversity and `multiculturalism'
24
6.8 The citizen as bearer of the good society
25
7 the `good society' manifested
26
7.1 Addressing `aspiration': from employees to citizens
26
Building the good society | 3

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7.2 Rebuilding trust in welfare: springboards for every citizen
27
7.3 Redefining education: a public good for citizenship
27
7.4 Health and `choice': how citizens can `co-produce' well-being
28
7.5 Preventing crime: from marginalised individuals to resilient citizens
28
7.6 Devolution, `Britain' and Europe: multi-level citizenship
29
7.7 Managing diversity and `immigration': making citizens our fellows
30
7.8 Ecological rescue: contributing to global citizenship
31
8 conclusion: being the change
33
8.1 From the hierarchical to the networked party
33
8.2 Beyond the Labourist monopoly: rethinking coalition politics
33
8.3 NGOs, users and citizen-centred governance
34
8.4 `Community organisers?': activism and the renewal of progressive politics
34
8.5 Making the change
35
References
37
endnotes
42
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foreword
the crash the certainties of neo-liberalism were
shattered but its confidence and audacity meant
that, incredibly, it shifted the blame onto the
state just as the state had broken its back bailing
In 2006, before the Big Society was even a glint
out the banks. So a crisis of capitalism was easily
in the future prime minister's eye, Compass
translated into a crisis of public spending.
published the first part of its Programme for
But that was the perilous position in which
Renewal trilogy, The Good Society.1 The point
Blairism and Brownism had left us: the purpose
was to plant a flag in the sand and say another
of the state was to create the conditions in which
world is both desirable and feasible. Everything
the market could become even freer and more
Compass has done since has been an attempt to
profitable. Impossibly, they tried to clean up
demonstrate exactly that - the desirability and
the ensuing and inevitable social mess through
feasibility of a good society.
public spending and tax credits to which they
Of course there cannot and must not be just
would never admit and therefore for which they
`'the' good society. There cannot be one size that
never built public support. So when the market
fits all. History is littered with the dire fall-out
crashed, the whole `third way' project crashed
from any rigid blueprint. But neither can we stop
too.
dreaming because when we do it is the dreams of
This publication tells us what needs to happen
others that shape our world. As we always say, we
next if the left is to have a future. It provides
live in a utopia - it's just not our utopia. Instead
the analysis, the philosophy, the ideas and the
it is the utopia of the free-market fundamentalists
methods to build a good society. As the left
who dared to dream of a dry, utilitarian world in
stands in crisis across Europe, Building the Good
which everything becomes commodified and the
Society forges once again the progressive belief
market stretches into every corner of our public
that the feasible and the desirable must go hand
world and private lives.
in hand.
In this crucial and timely publication Robin
Wilson and Jon Bloomfield replant that flag of
Neal Lawson
progressive hope but on changed terrain. After
Chair Compass, June 2011
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Building the good society | 5

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1. preface
for and guarantee the security and therefore the
freedom of each and every citizen.
Second, such a `good society' can only be
achieved if there is an acceptance of the need
These are painful times. The huge financial crisis
to tame capitalism and strictly regulate it. The
of 2008 shook the world economy but it is
financial crisis has exposed the fatal flaws of
ordinary people who are paying the price. Across
`New' Labour's love affair with globalisation and
Europe working people's living standards are
the City of London. Social democracy has to give
stagnant. Unemployment is rising. In Greece,
voice to people's anger with City recklessness and
Ireland and Portugal huge cuts in public-sector
show that there are alternatives.
pay and services are imposed by the European
Third, citizenship is not just about voting once
Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.
every few years but also involves a sustained
Yet, the architects of the crisis - the banks, hedge
engagement in all walks of life. This paper argues
funds, credit rating agencies - emerge scot-free,
strongly for the importance of citizen participation
able to carry on their activities and pick up their
but emphasises that a strong civil society emerges
bonuses regardless.
and goes hand in hand with a strong state.
Politically, it has been the right which has
Fourth, the whole spirit of this paper is
benefited from the insecurity that the crisis has
avowedly pluralist. `Ourselves alone', the old
generated. Following recent victories in the UK,
politics of monolithic parties, has had its day.
Sweden, Hungary and Portugal, today the left
A good society will be constructed from many
remains in office in just five European Union
alliances and interests as well as the continuing
(EU) countries. Even more alarmingly, it is not
importance of class.
just orthodox Christian-democratic parties which
Flowing from these key themes there are
are gaining ground but new racist, nationalistic
individual policy suggestions in a number of
and xenophobic parties, as in Finland, Sweden,
areas. They are symbolic of the transformational
Holland and Hungary. These parties are now
policies we need to build a good society.
making inroads into government or shifting the
The world need not be like this. There is
mainstream right on to their ground.
an alternative to the 1930s-style deflation on
This is a dangerous moment for the left and
offer from George Osborne and the European
all concerned with the principles of justice,
Central Bank, and to the nasty, narrow-minded
democracy and racial equality. This paper
nationalism of the racist and xenophobic right.
analyses how we reached where we are and how
A progressive alliance can galvanise public anger
to break out of the impasse. The argument is
and tap into human optimism about the potential
based on several overarching themes.
for a better future. This paper sets out a route
First, it is guided by a belief in the goal of a `good
map for that progressive alliance to engender a
society', where each individual can aspire to fulfil
`good society'.
their potential. This is a philosophy guided by
We have benefited from comments on an
the marriage of the ideals of liberty, equality and
earlier draft by Jude Bloomfield, Francesca Klug,
solidarity but fused with a twenty-first-century
Ruth Lister, Martin McIvor and Mike Rustin,
concern for the environment and the legacy we
whose assistance we acknowledge. This final
leave to future generations. Furthermore, it is a
version is not a `Compass position' but the
philosophy which sees politics as the way to fight
responsibility of the authors alone.
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2. introduction:
spurned in favour of chauvinistic assaults on the
cohering the narrative
European Court of Human Rights.
How had it come to this? To understand, we
need to recognise that in politics philosophy
matters.
The great twentieth-century European political
In November 2010, and in the aftermath of
thinker Antonio Gramsci, who modernised Karl
Labour's crushing electoral defeat, the new party
Marx for the democratic age from the travails of
leader, Ed Miliband, launched 22 policy inquiries.
a fascist jail, recognised that every individual is,
This renewal and fresh thinking is necessary and
in a sense, a `philosopher'. That is to say, each
welcome. But there is concern about the lack of
of us lives and works with a tacit conception
overall direction: progressives desperately need
of the world - even if only certain individuals
a new paradigm to link their ideas together and
play the professional role of developing such
connect to a wider audience. We begin this paper
philosophies.4 Political parties, then, articulate
by explaining why the idea of the `good society'
democratic solutions to individual problems by
provides that paradigm.
operating effectively as a collective intellectual.5
If Marx had anticipated a bifurcation of society
with an increasingly homogeneous working class
2.1 philosophy matters: framing public
eventually prevailing as a social and political
debate
actor in a revolutionary moment and ushering
in a socialist world, Gramsci realised that the
In May 2010, the hubris of `New' Labour met
emergence in the late nineteenth century of the
its nemesis in old Toryism, as a patrician party
institutions of `civil society', such as trade unions
reminiscent of the age of Alec Douglas-Home
and mass parties, meant such a decisive `war of
surfed effortlessly into control of the UK state.
manoeuvre' would be replaced by the political
David Cameron was accompanied in this restora-
equivalent of trench warfare.6 In this context,
tion by Nick Clegg, who had abandoned the great
politics should not be conceived as a naked battle
British liberal tradition of John Maynard Keynes
for state power but as a protracted prior struggle
and William Beveridge in favour of the `market-
for `hegemony' - for which conception of the
fundamentalist'2 religion of The Orange Book.3 If
world would predominate.7
Keynes had not been long dead, he would have
In 2008, globalised capitalism entered a crisis
accused Clegg of being in thrall to the much
on a scale unseen since the chaos of Gramsci's
longer-dead economist Adam Smith.
time. If Keynesianism had been the civilised
Cameron's government embarked on
response in the advanced capitalist world to
an historic rolling back of the public realm
that morass of mass unemployment, aggres-
beyond anything Margaret Thatcher would
sive nationalism and totalitarianism that led
have imagined: returning higher education to
to renewed war, for some on the left the new
a pre-1960s privilege for the wealthy, rather
depression heralded the death-knell for the neo-
than a right for the qualified; eviscerating the
liberal era that had succeeded the political defeat
great post-war legacy of the National Health
of Keynesianism in the 1970s. But as Gramsci
Service by subjecting it fully to market competi-
appreciated from bitter experience in inter-war
tion; punishing the BBC for its historic Reithian
Italy, politics never follows economics in such a
impartiality while cossetting Rupert Murdoch's
mechanistic fashion. Rather, an economic crisis
partisan media empire; and even redefining
may translate into a crisis of political representa-
welfare beneficiaries as `undeserving' poor, to be
tion in which `morbid symptoms' emerge.8 What
patronised by voluntary `big society' successors to
matters is whether, in that context, the forces of
the Charitable Organisation Society of Victorian
progress or those of reaction offer a more persua-
times. Internationally, harking back to delusions
sive case for `intellectual and moral reform'.9
of imperial grandeur, the Europe associated with
Labour, it is true, has recovered in the polls
decades of post-war peace and prosperity was
from its electoral mauling at the conclusion of
the incoherent Gordon Brown premiership. But
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this is no case for a complacent economistic
it represents what Keynes called the `capitalism
belief that political victory will fall into the party's
of the casino' - making money out of other
electoral lap. For the evidence of public attitudes
people's money. Its dominance over industrial
is that there is a mountain to climb if Labour is to
capitalism in the UK has chronically held it back,
be installed in power - as in 1945 and, to a lesser
as Churchill famously recognised in his claim
extent, 1964 - rather than merely office, as in
that finance had become too `proud'.
1974 and 1997. In the aftermath of the devolved
`Good sense', by contrast, may emerge from
and English local elections, and the referendum
practical experience in the here and now. For
drubbing for the alternative vote in May 2011,
many workers in the `real economy', the destruc-
Polly Toynbee warned: `Today a frightening
tive effect of reckless banking behaviour was all
question confronts Labour: is this the start of a
too evident when the crisis broke, with unem-
long Conservative hegemony?... Haunted by its
ployment and job insecurity soaring, and real
painful recent past, Labour has yet to tell us what
wages slipping as a result. Yet `New' Labour
it's for.'10
was unable to tap the popular resentment of
Public attitudes to welfare hardened during
those who worked producing goods and services
the `New' Labour era11 and a popular majority
towards the parasitic behaviour of bankers and
still believes that the coalition programme of cuts
the City, because it had decided - as Peter
is necessary. Sloganising against the cuts, brutal
Mandelson put it - to be `intensely relaxed' about
and inhuman though they are, will therefore
people becoming `filthy rich'.12
not be enough to stem them. The debate has
Progressive politics, then, sets out to challenge
effectively been framed by representing the state
common sense by offering an alternative philos-
as like a household, which must `tighten its belt'
ophy - a new conception of the world, but one
when ordinary people are being asked to do
that goes with the grain of the `good sense' asso-
likewise - in contradiction of Keynes' `paradox
ciated with emergent social relations.13 This is far
of thrift', which demonstrated that to avoid a
from the instrumentalist use of focus groups to
deflationary spiral, like that now in train, falling
reflect back the prejudices of `Middle England'.
private demand had to be offset by enhancing
On the contrary, it offers a route to restoring
that commanded by the public purse.
integrity to, and so trust in, political discourse,
Those who want to erode further the notion of
beyond the discredited practice of `spin'.
the common good in favour of private privilege
thus still have much wind in their sails. This
is even more evident at the international level,
2.3 thatcherism's success: the
where early ambitions within the G20 to sponsor
`property-owning democracy'
global reflation have been abandoned and the
European Central Bank is relentlessly testing the
Thatcherism fundamentally reframed post-war
ideological logic of deflation - to the destruc-
political discourse in the UK. While some on
tion, one by one, of the peripheral eurozone
the left, like Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill,
economies.
railed from the bunker against the familiar `class
enemy', intellectuals like Stuart Hall and Eric
Hobsbawm recognised that a powerful political
2.2 Addressing public opinion:
narrative of `authoritarian populism'14 had halted
`common' and `good' sense
`the forward march of labour'.15
The success of Thatcherism lay in its capacity
Gramsci drew an important distinction between
to recruit support from sections of the working
received wisdom and emergent ideas of a better
and lower middle classes through a simple and
world. He called the former `common sense'
accessible story, which offered an imaginary exit
and suggested that it contained ideas from an
from their traditional expectations. Encapsulated
amalgam of sources but overall reflected the
in the phrase the `property-owning democracy',
dominance of a particular social class. Take the
Thatcherism subtly recast the meaning of
unquestioned elevation of the `City' of London as
democracy from popular control and equal citi-
the pinnacle of the UK economy, when in reality
zenship to a commons only of the car and
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home owner. Privatisation was dressed up in the
and anomie of a typical game of cards in Italy, as
vernacular of `Sid' - the `man (as it was) in the
the epitome of its backwardness.16
street' who could join the hitherto exclusive club
And the germ of an alternative for today is
of shareholders by participating in the sell-off
contained in the notion of the `good society',
of state assets, with the inducement to buy the
advanced as the project for the democratic left
council house he rented at a discount. This
across Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 crash
connected an abstract neo-classical economic
by the German Social Democratic Party general
ideology to concrete and familiar circumstances
secretary, Andrea Nahles, and the Labour MP for
and a compelling aspiration to `freedom'.
working-class Dagenham, Jon Cruddas.17 Moving
Thatcherism thus appealed much more effec-
on from the `Neue Mitte' centrism of Gerhard
tively than Labour to individualistic society, while
Schroder and the `Third Way' of Tony Blair, the
the old institutions of a collectivism premised on
`good society', said Nahles and Cruddas, was
a homogeneous working class were in decline.
about `solidarity and social justice'.
Privatisation led in the main to private and unac-
Placing the `social' centre stage can restore the
countable monopolies and the hoovering up of
public interest, rather than private interests, to the
individual shares into conventional concentra-
heart of a politics disfigured by such episodes as
tions, while council-house sales in the absence of
the MPs' expenses scandal. Rather than treating
reinvestment left growing housing need unmet.
welfare as a drag on an economy which brings
But it was testimony to the hegemonic capacity
home the bacon, this recognises social policy as a
of Thatcherism that `New' Labour implicitly
productive factor.
accepted its key slogan, `There is no alternative',
It is a phrase whose brevity and simplicity give
with its fundamental premise of a small state and
it the power of all radical transformations - like
its disastrous corollary - yawning social inequality.
Franklin D Roosevelt's `New Deal'. It recognises
that we do have a democratic choice about what
kind of society we want to inhabit - that this
2.4 the `good society' as the
should not be fatalistically consigned to multi-
progressive alternative
national finance houses (or `the markets') to
determine. And it speaks to real concern about
There was, however, a key flaw in the Thatcherite
what Compass has called the `social recession' -
argument, which could have been challenged
that for the first time in living memory we risk
effectively at the time and which remains, despite
handing on to our children a worse society than
Cameron's attempt politically to finesse it, the
the one we have enjoyed.
Achilles heel of its contemporary Conservative
Miliband has recognised the attraction of this
successor. Notoriously, Thatcher denied the very
mobilising phrase. But the difference between
existence of society, claiming there were just indi-
a hegemonic alternative and an ephemeral
viduals and their families.
`soundbite', as the Thatcherite era showed, is
Yet Gramsci coined the term `individualistic
that the former can be translated into a range of
society' to convey the need for the progressive
practical initiatives which make it meaningful in
individual initiative and competition of the capi-
everyday life and to which it, in turn, gives shape
talist age to be tempered by the norms of `fair
and coherence.
play' - he took football as his model - associated
This paper thus aims to elaborate this alterna-
with `freedom of the spirit and tolerance of the
tive as a new political narrative. First, it explains
opposition'. He contrasted this with the egoism
how the `third way' was to lose its way.
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