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Education for Economic Justice

Ellie Keen — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:57:50 +0000

Introduction

Education is the starting point for all progressive movements. All activism has to be guided by ideas and all organising has to be built upon a foundation of popular knowledge and shared understanding. This said, what should be the educational priorities for the trade union movement struggling to revitalise itself?

I will attempt to answer this question from the perspective of a UK based trade union activist with broader concerns for social justice on an international scale. To begin with I will try to illustrate the nature and extent of the current trade union crisis by drawing on several well informed sources. Drawing further on these sources I will argue that our current situation is the result of a crisis of identity brought on by a loss of vision and perspective. We will then briefly look at some signs of dissatisfaction within the trade union movement. Using this understanding of the current crisis, and hopefully building on this dissatisfaction, I propose the need for education for revitalisation – an education program run by and for trade union activists in which we collectively learn to conceptualise economic justice as a means of recovering a common identity based on an alternative vision of society and thus overcoming our crisis.

The Nature and Extent of the Current Trade Union Crisis

“There is no question today that the labor movement is in crisis” said Dan Gallin at a Global Unions, Global Justice Conference in 2006¹. He then went on to describe the nature and extent of the current crisis as follows:

What we are facing is: ...

serious loss of membership in most countries of the world, especially in the unions’ industrial heartland in Western Europe and North America;

an inability to organise the huge and growing mass of unorganised workers, not least in the informal economy;

the lack of political and industrial power to resist and defeat repression, either in the form of a systematic campaign of murders, as in Colombia, or of State policy, as in China and many other authoritarian States, or of anti-labor legislation backed by a hostile government, as in the United States or in Australia;

lack of capacity to resist the dismantling of social protection, of social services and of public property, an agenda carried out by conservative and social-democratic governments alike (as in most of Europe, North America, Australia and Japan, and, under pressure from the IMF, in Africa, Asia and Latin America).

More specific examples of the crisis are found in an article by George Monbiot discussing the relationship between the (UK) Labour party and the affiliated trade unions². Monbiot writes that Gordon Brown’s government “has room for no professional trade unionists.” However, he continues referring to Digby Jones (previous head of the Confederation of British Industry and current minister for trade and investment) “it does contain their sworn enemy.” It was Digby Jones – who Monbiot informs us “refuses to join the Labour party” but has “been permitted to enter the government on his own terms” – who “campaigned to freeze the minimum wage, neuter the EU’s working time directive, block corporate killing laws, promote privatisation, cripple environmental rules, and curtail maternity leave.” He has also said of trade unions that they are an “irrelevance”, “backward looking” and “not on today’s agenda”.

Despite this disgraceful situation Monbiot points out that “some important victories have been won since 1997”. For example we now have “a minimum wage, better pension protection, improvements in parental leave, and better conditions for part-time workers.” But he also points out that “the list of defeats is much longer”:

There is the private finance initiative, doggedly promoted by Gordon Brown, which now dominates the provision of most public services. There is the creeping marketisation of health and education … And the government has refused to repeal Thatcher’s draconian union laws … we still don’t have a corporate killing act. Inequality has reached scarcely imaginable levels, tax evasion is rampant, the railways are still in private hands, council housing remains moribund, companies don’t have to publish operating and financial reviews, and the minimum wage is far from being a living wage. And there is still the small matter of an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died.

Incredibly, Monbiot reports, “The cash-for-honours scandal has frightened off almost all the major private donors, leaving the party largely dependent on union funds.” So, Monbiot asks, “what do they intend to do with all this power?”, He concludes “To judge by their recent statements, nothing”. “Desperate to believe, union leaders cling to broken promises. They refuse to utter the only threat that Brown will heed: disaffiliation”.
In an attempt to try and gauge trade union desperation Monbiot phoned the TGWU and asked a spokesman “what might prompt disaffiliation”? “Nothing,” he told me.” Monbiot pushed the point asking – “So if Labour adopted the swastika as its logo and started holding torch-lit rallies in Parliament Square, it could still count on the TGWU’s support? “That’s an extreme example,” he replied. But he did not deny it.”

The Root Causes of the Current Trade Union Crisis

Returning to the “Global Unions,Global Justice Conference” speech Gallin then asked “Why has this happened?” He states that this “crisis is generally attributed to the economic, social and, ultimately, political effects of globalisation, unfolding in the 1980’s and 1990’s”. However, for Gallin these are “true insights, but they are partial truths and partial insights”. For Gallin the “crisis of the trade union movement today is in fact the outcome of a larger crisis of the broader labor movement, which began much earlier, much before the onset of globalisation.” According to Gallin –

To understand what has happened, we need to do a flash back, about seventy years ago or more… Fascism in Europe, whatever else it may have been, was a gigantic union busting exercise. Its consequences, and the consequences of WW2 , are too often forgotten. A whole generation of labour activists, the best people, disappeared in concentration camps, in the war, or did not come back from exile…

At the end of the war … the labor movement re-emerged, superficially strong, because it was part of the Allied cause, and had won the war, whereas capital was on the defensive, having largely collaborated with fascism in the Axis countries and in occupied Europe.

However, Gallin adds –

In reality, the labour movement had been greatly weakened, with a decimated leadership and its capacity to act as an independent social force severely undermined. All democratic governments in post-war Europe were initially supportive of the labour agenda and consequently the trade unions, in their weakened condition, developed an over-reliance on the State. No longer was there any aspiration to represent an alternative society. Amidst the new found peace and prosperity, the labour movement had disarmed ideologically and politically.

As a result of these historic events Gallin argues that the “real crisis of the labour movement is a crisis of identity and perspective”. Continuing this theme Gallin adds that “a serious challenge to the domination of global transnational capital cannot be mounted unless the labor movement recovers a common identity based on an alternative vision of society: the vision of freedom, justice and equality that inspired it at its origins and made it the greatest mass movement in history.” Gallin states that “We do have an international trade union movement, such as it is. It has no vision, and it does not inspire anyone.” Adding that “What we have here is an ideology of global “social partnership.”“ and for Gallin “the ideology of “social partnership”, which became dominant in the labour movement in the three decades following WW2, has now become the main obstacle to the necessary renewal of the movement.”

In a similar vein to Monbiot’s earlier comment regarding “union leaders cling to broken promises” Gallin observes –

Large parts of the trade union movement are still unable to come to terms with the loss of their presumed “social partners”, even while transnational capital has obviously abandoned any “partnership” perspective and is using its vastly increased power to unilaterally impose its interests on society.

Some Signs of Dissatisfaction

There are however those who seem willing to face up to the reality of the situation. In his article Monbiot also quotes Bob Crow, the leader of the Rail Maritime and Transport Union (RMT), who recently told the other unions that “any hope of the Labour party working for workers is dead, finished, over. I think all you who are staying in the Labour party are just giving credibility to it.” In 2006 the RMT sponsored a conference at which over 300 trade union activists called for “the establishment of a National Shop Stewards’ Network”. At the conference Bob Crow stated that “If we are to roll back the tide of privatisation and war, rebuilding the grassroots of our movement is essential.” The conference collectively declared that “ ... enough is enough; we can and must turn the tide. It is time we got together to organise the fight-back against the whole range of attacks and the laws that aid and abet them.”[3]

Similarly Elaine Bernard of the Harvard Trade Union Program has argued that revitalisation of the trade union movement requires a return to what she refers to as their “social movement heritage”[4]. What Bernard is referring to here is Labour movement campaigns that resulted in the National Labour Relations act (US) of 1935, the purpose of which was “ ... not simply to provide a procedural mechanism to end industrial strife in the workplace [as with social partnership]. Rather, this monumental piece of New Deal legislation had a far more ambitious mission: to promote industrial democracy.”

Bernard points out that “ ... workers are schooled every day at work to believe that democracy stops at the factory or office door. But democracy is not an extracurricular activity that can be regulated to evenings and weekends.” She argues that “labor today needs to tap this source of wider appeal for unions by placing the extension of democracy into the workplace front and center.”

This is not to say that trade unions should abandon the bread and butter issues of the day to day support of its members. Bernard rightly points out that “there has always been a tension within unions between servicing members and fulfilling the wider social mission of labor to serve the needs of all working people, whether they are organised or not.” But for Bernard “it is becoming increasingly clear in today’s political environment that unions need to do both” –

Unions, like any organisation, will not survive if they do not serve the needs of their members. But unions will not survive and grow, if they only serve the needs of their members.

Education for Revitalisation

However, as radical-progressive economist Robin Hahnel has commented⁵ –

As important as it is for union members and elected officials to move their unions beyond bread and butter , or “business” unionism, Bernard’s proposals would only return the [ ... ] labour movement to its pre-Cold War agenda.

This observation is also true (but in different ways) of the National Shop Stewards Network which as it stands would only return the UK trade union movement back to its pre-Thatcher position. Although Bernard’s proposals are welcomed as a “necessary first step”, for Hahnel “If [ ... ] unions are going to promote the economics of equitable co-operation more successfully in the twenty-first century than they did in the twentieth, they are going to have to change in other ways as well.” Drawing attention to a central weakness in the trade union movement Hahnel states that –

... few union leaders today could tell you if they thought the workers they represent are exploited because they are not paid their marginal revenue product, or exploited precisely because they are paid their marginal revenue product … As passionate as union leaders are about economic justice, they have a remarkably difficult time saying clearly what it is.”[6]

“No wonder” Hahnel concludes “the most powerful progressive movement of the twentieth century, the union movement, became confused and hypocritical on the subject most central to its own mission.” Picking up on Gallin’s earlier point regarding a lack of alternative vision within the labour movement, Hahnel points out that –

Unfortunately most unions have fallen into the ideological trap of justifying wage demands on the basis of the market value of their member’s contribution, their marginal-revenue product”[7]

Again echoing Gallin’s earlier point Hahnel argues that “Unions must return to their mission of being the hammer for economic justice in capitalism” adding that –

There is no good reason unions can’t do a better job of educating their members about economic justice.

According to Hahnel “Unions don’t have to wait on new organising successes to teach present members what economic justice is and is not. This is not ground that should be difficult to conquer.” He continues -“The first step is to clear our own heads of cobwebs and relearn how to preach to the choir.”

Learning to Conceptualise Economic Justice

Of course trade union education should never be dogmatic. Rather, its primary function should be to encourage a rich and lively intellectual working class culture. The only guiding principles for a course on economic justice would probably be that it takes as its starting point the values of solidarity, democracy, freedom, equality and justice that historically have underpinned the labour movement. From there we can clarify these values and use them as a kind of criteria for assessing and evaluating how good or bad any economic system is by our standards. We can also explore means of organising our economy so that these values become real. In other words, we collectively design institutional features for an economy that would actually deliver traditional labour values.

Such courses already exist both online and in book form. For example Michael Albert’s “Thinking Forward” which is a book based on an online course on economic vision⁸. Part one of this interactive book sets the scene by asking “What is an Economy?” Participants are encouraged to identify the basic functions – Production, Allocation and Consumption – of any economy.

Following from this basic introductory understanding there are sections exploring different values for production, allocation and consumption. This is followed by a further exploration of possible institutional features for production, allocation and consumption. Naturally enough, from this exploration a number of questions emerge that are central to economic justice. For example –

Ownership – who should own economic institutions?

Internal structure – how should the workplace / economy be organised?

Decision-making – how and by who should decisions be made?

Remuneration – what criteria should we use to work out how much people get paid?

Planning – by what overall means should we manage the production and consumption of goods and services?

Impact – we may also want to consider the effect that any given economic system has on other social spheres – such as the political, kinship, community spheres – as well as the natural environment.

There are also sections on “Existing Visionary Options” and “Evaluating Economic Vision”. In these section we identify already existing economic models – for example variants of capitalist economics, socialist economics, community economics and participatory economics. We then clarify the institutional features of these economic models and consider means of evaluating them. Perhaps most importantly this process equips participants with the intellectual tools to go beyond evaluating existing models and empowers them to consider alternatives and potentially invent entirely novel economic systems.

Conclusion

The result of this process is that trade union activists would be able to think for themselves in a non-dogmatic fashion about economic justice. They would be able to participate in a lively debate about an issue that is of central importance and interest to all labour movement activists. Of course, when thinking about economic justice not everyone will agree on every detail. But with clarity and consistency of thought we can expect that some broad agreement on the basic institutional features that go to constitute a model of economic justice can be achieved.
The generation of such an intellectual culture within the trade union movement is what is necessary if we are to address the crisis we find ourselves in today. By teaching such courses we address the root cause of the crisis – which, as we have seen, is a crisis of identity brought on by a loss of vision and perspective. Furthermore such courses are the only means by which we can genuinely recover a common identity based on an alternative vision of society. Education for economic justice is therefore a crucial first step towards trade union revitalisation.

Notes:

[1] Organising: Means and Ends – Dan Gallin
http://www.globallabour.inf/en/2007/09/organizing_means_and_ends_by_d.ht…
[2] They still rage about the class war, but keep funding their class enemies – George Monbiot
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/07/10/union-with-the-devil/
[3] For an introduction to the NSSN see “Rebuilding the shop stewards movement” at – http://www.shopstewards.net/pamphlet.html
[4] Why Unions Matter – Elaine Bernard’s
www.htup.harvard.edu/ed/whyunions.pdf
[5] Economic Justice and Democracy – from competition to co-operation – Robin Hahnel
[6] The ABC’s of Political Economy – a modern approach – Robin Hahnel
[7] Economic Justice and Democracy – from competition to co-operation – Robin Hahnel
[8] Thinking Forward – Learning to conceptualise economic vision – Michael Albert
http://zcommunications.org/zparecon/tfintr.htm
Developing Economic Vision Instructional
http://zcommunications.org/zmi/zinstruc6.htm

Power to Which People?

Ellie Keen — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:51:17 +0000

Nearly 170 years ago, more than a quarter of a million people marched to Kersal Moor, in Salford, demanding democracy. One of the biggest of the many demonstrations organised by the Chartist movement in the mid-19th century, this huge rally was the Live Aid of its day, with more than 30 bands playing. But instead of Bob Geldof demanding ‘Give us yer fuckin’ money’, there was Feargus O’Connor demanding ‘Give us the fuckin’ vote’.

After much campaigning and demonstrating, five of the six points of the People’s Charter, adopted on Kersal Moor that day, were eventually won. As well as the right to vote itself, these were: secret ballots, equal electoral districts, no property qualification to stand as an MP and payment for MPs. The exception to this successful record was the demand for annual parliaments, which was seen by the Chartists as crucial to stop the corruption of MPs.

Fast-forward to 2007 and the eyes of the democracy movement are on Salford again – in the person of Salford MP Hazel Blears, secretary of state for communities and local government. Blears – backed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s new-found emphasis on devolving ‘power to the people’ – isn’t offering annual parliaments, but she is using a radical democratic rhetoric. ‘Democracy should be about more than casting a vote every few years,’ she has said. ‘It should be a daily activity, not an abstract theory.’
Hazelocracy

Blears’ comments were, in part a reaction to the Joseph Rowntree Trust’s independent Power Inquiry in 2006, which basically said that local representative democracy was knackered – that fewer people are voting and thus elected councillors have lost credibility and legitimacy. The new ‘Hazelocracy’ promises ‘devolution right to the doorstep’, where ‘people come together, set priorities and vote on what is going to happen’ and ‘have a direct say’ in how their taxes are spent. The idea, taken from the practice of popular budget making in Latin America, was adapted in 2002 by Church Action on Poverty and Community Pride working with the council to make Salford a pilot project. So is it time for the modern heirs of Chartism to bathe in the warm glow of democracy and declare ‘battle won’?

The answer, of course, is no. For a start, there’s a major difference between the UK and Latin America, where they know a thing or two about dictatorship, death squads, absolute poverty and the imposition of western ‘democracy’. In the Brazilian town of Porto Alegre, inspiration for the original Salford experiment, the right to decide how local public money is spent was demanded by the people and the popular Workers’ Party, which swept to power shortly after the junta was sacked in 1985. The popular budget making there was radical, political and community led. At its height, around 20,000 people participated in deciding where 18 per cent of planned municipal investment was to be spent. And it has had real results in alleviating poverty.

Contrast this with the UK, where the ‘participant friendly’ budgets are puny, and the numbers of people involved are tiny. In Salford, 47 people got involved in the Claremont and Weaste sample project – and that was seen as a major breakthrough. Although popular budget making (PB for short) is being greeted with cautious optimism by community organisations, no one I spoke to in Blears’ Salford constituency was under any illusions that real power was arriving on their ‘doorstep’.

‘I’d like to see it in practice,’ says Graham Cooper, who’s just been elected chair of the East Salford Community Committee. ‘But I think it’s a token gesture – like feeding a dog and patting it on the head just to keep it right.’

His thoughts are echoed by Beryl Patten of the Claremont Community Association, who welcomes the potential of PB but greets it with a massive dose of Salfordian cynicism. ‘One always comes away from the meetings questioning the real importance of our decisions,’ she says. ‘Major issues in the neighbourhood, like Media City [a 200 acre dockland development at Salford Quays], have never been aired in any significant way. We are scratching at the surface. It’s not real empowerment and sooner or later the community will become disaffected.’

Both Patten and Cooper point to the relatively tiny budget that the community actually controls. Salford leads the country in putting money from the mainstream council budget into a PB process but it’s still only around £100,000 per area from the highways kitty and £100,000 to support community and voluntary groups. Each area covers around 30,000 households, so that’s the equivalent of less than £7 apiece.

‘A hundred thousand pounds might seem a lot of money but when you realise it might just resurface a short road or put in a couple of pedestrian crossings it brings it home how minor your involvement and impact can be,’ Patten argues, ‘Cynics would say it’s a way of getting communities to slug it out between themselves and take the heat off the planners.’

‘It’s a very limited amount of money, a drop in the ocean,’ says Graham Cooper. To put it into some sort of perspective, the council agreed to spend £500,000 on a jolly at Salford Quays for the Manchester International Festival, which is five times as much as we get in devolved budget for every voluntary and community group in this area. And I’ve seen public sector departments like schools, leisure and the police apply for money from both these pots for activities that, to me, are mainstream services. At the end of the day the council makes the big decisions.’
Council Control

And that’s the big problem with PB – that the council, rather than the community, is controlling the whole process locally, while government targets and policies are controlling the council on a national level. The government calls it ‘double devolution’, where, in theory, the power bounces down to the council and then bounces off the council to the community. The trouble in Salford is that the community can only make decisions while caged in complicated structures and tamed by procedures.

Before Hazel Blears announced her ‘devolution to the doorstep’, Salford Council was busily reorganising its community committee structure based on a consultation that gave prominence to developers like Countryside Properties and involved more unelected officers and organisations than actual community groups. The resulting new constitution sets out rules whereby the community can decide on the use of delegated budgets only ‘within criteria set by the council’, other funders and the Community Action Plan’. And only councillors and one representative from each ‘properly constituted’ recognised community group’ can vote at meetings. Meanwhile the terms of the constitution are all about ‘conduct’ and ‘behaviour’. Anything that is ‘inconsistent with council policy’ will be refused.

Spending decisions on devolved budgets will also only be valid if ‘supported by the majority of councillors present at the meeting’ because ‘expenditure of public money requires the endorsement of democratically elected members’. These will be the same councillors, however, who are at the centre of the Power Inquiry’s ‘crisis of democracy’, who have little credibility or legitimacy within the community. Wasn’t that supposed to be why PB was set up in the first place?
Star rating

At the Salford Star (www.salfordstar.com), a community-centred magazine that has been not just criticising the council but slating it over affordable housing, demolitions and dodgy dealings, we thought we’d put ‘people power’ to the test. We applied to all of the city’s eight community committees for devolved budget funding. Would the council allow the community to fund a community magazine, run by a local community group, that’s critical of the council? Our application never got anywhere near a community committee.

The council pulled the application without explanation two days before it was due to be looked at by the first community budget panel. Six weeks later we got a letter outlining the council’s agreed new criteria ‘in relation to the spending of devolved budgets on publications’, and informing us that the ‘council directorate’ now decided whether an application ‘complies’. The Salford Star didn’t.

A letter later arrived from the council explaining that the magazine contained language ‘which could be considered to be offensive’ (we had called the council ’dickheads’ – in context of course) but the main reason for the rejection of its funding application was that ’we have not found the Salford Star to meet the criteria of taking a balanced approach’. As such, the letter continued, ’the council is not able to offer funding’. The point is that under the principles of participatory budget making we didn’t apply to the council, we applied to the community. But the community was not allowed to decide. Which makes the whole notion of ‘people power’ look more than a little hollow.

Valerie Ivison is chair of the Claremont and Weaste community committee, which led the Salford PB pilot. She acknowledges that the scheme is a ‘quantum leap’ in consultation and that it’s popular but argues that in order to work properly the biggest problem is effective communication with the uninvolved majority of people. Currently every publication that the council puts out or sponsors is totally uncritical and unquestioning of policy. How can the community make informed, independent choices, even within the limits set, if it hasn’t got its own information and resources?

‘Neighbourhood managers and community workers tread a very difficult path, but to whom are they accountable?’ asks Beryl Patten. ‘It seems to me that they can never be truly independent when they are tied so securely to the Council’s apron strings.’
Missing minutes

In order to empower the community you also need accountability and transparency. But while the council and its regeneration partners are signing up to an array of agreements promising this, the reality is very different. For example, in May the minutes of council leader John Merry’s weekly meetings with his chief executive and various other officers and councillors were removed from the council’s website. These minutes relate to discussions about the most important things going on in the town hall. They have been regularly posted on the web for the past five years and were beginning to be reported in the Salford Star. Just before the minutes were removed, John Merry endorsed six ‘principles in good governance’, which were about ‘transparent decisions’ and ‘making accountability real’.

You could certainly argue that despite Hazel Blears’ assertion that ‘the best local government is good at empowering local people … and they’re not threatened by it’, the very opposite is happening. Real community empowerment in Salford, particularly, could threaten the council’s (and government’s) vision for a new city, where ‘the heart of “Old Salford” adjoining Manchester city centre is an area of huge regeneration potential offering economic, value-for-money investment opportunities’ (Branding for a brighter future in Salford council booklet).

These plans to ‘actively shift perceptions of Salford’ through iconic buildings and ‘wow! factor’ developments are usually at odds with the wishes of the old, the vulnerable, the sick, the poor and the excluded. Why on earth would any council want to give this lot the power to stop such exciting plans? The truth is that no one is giving them anything like the power that their PB counterparts have in Brazil.

While community committees are pontificating over things like zebra crossings and which scout group to support with their £200,000-maximum budgets, £340 million of public money is tied to the Salford Agreement. This is a huge contract running until 2010 between the government and the Salford Strategic Partnership (SSP), a body that draws together almost 30 organisations with all sorts of aims and objectives to make the city better.

The SSP is ‘directed’ by the council and, together with seven councillors, is crammed full of unelected bodies such as the Lowry, the university, the North West Development Agency, Central Salford URC and Salford Council officers. The ‘people power’ input comes from around half a dozen elected representatives from community committees and a couple of representatives from faith and ethnic minority groups. They amount to fewer than a quarter of those who take part in the ‘partnership’. Add to this the new neighbourhood partnership boards, on which two community committee representatives are swamped by ‘senior members of key partner agencies’, councillors and full time officers, and a picture emerges that is the very opposite of ‘devolution to the doorstep’.
Communities of interest

There was one giveaway phrase in the council’s Development of Neighbourhood Management report, which dealt with all this: ‘Our aim is to increase community engagement and to broaden it to include communities of interest in the city.’

‘Communities of interest’ include the developers and other agencies that are busy dividing up the city among themselves for maximum profit. The language is all about ‘service delivery’, ‘co-operation’ and ‘partnership’. Yet hard working volunteers from the community who don’t even get their phone bills paid are being swamped, sidelined and exploited by full time careerists and profit mongers on big salaries, most of whom don’t even live in the area.

There is constant pressure to play the regeneration game under rules and regulations not of the community’s making. As Heather Blakey comments in her independent research for the University of Bradford, Radical innovations or technical fix? Participatory budget making in Bradford: ‘The new participatory space is increasingly a depoliticised space, which “privatises” overtly political voices … The process needs to demonstrate its own potential to a mistrustful and disenfranchised public. It is hard, however to see how it will do this without being explicitly political.’

At the sharp end of participatory budget making, East Salford community committee chair Graham Cooper underlines the point: ‘The idea is that we’re going to have lots of say in lots of respects and when that becomes a reality maybe we’ll see some real changes, but I still think it’s a token gesture.’

Project for a Participatory Society - UK

Alex Doherty — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 03:22:48 +0000

Exclusive to ukwatch.net, Alex Doherty talks to Mark Evans – founder of the Project for a Participatory Society – UK

What is the Project for a Participatory Society – UK? How did it come about?

The Project for a Participatory Society is a UK based initiative started in 2006. It was set up to facilitate the coming together of UK based social justice activists who, along with others in different parts of the world, are interested in developing and organising around participatory vision and strategy as discussed on ZNet.

When I say “started in 2006” I mean that this was when a conscious commitment to try to set something up was made. Since the initial conception there was of course a lot of work to be done trying to make the idea real. We have made slow but steady progress over the past year or so putting the basics for the organisation into place.

After making the initial commitment the first thing that needed to be done was to establish “Our Basic Organising Framework”. This document lays out, amongst other things, our purpose, our values, our internal culture and structure without which no serious organisation can take place. This document was then sent out to various people who have been working on participatory vision and strategy for feed back.

We then compiled a list of UK based contacts from ZNets Penpal facility and contacted everyone on that list asking them if they would be interested in this project. Of the initial 500 contacts about half of them “failed” and of the remaining we recieved something like 30 to 50 positive responses asking to be kept informed of any developments.

PPS-UK seems to take its principle inspiration from the writings of Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel in particular the theory of “complementary holism” first put forward in ‘Liberating Theory’ what is it about their approach you find so useful? How has their work informed the founding of PPS-UK?

Like a lot of people out there I feel very unhappy with the way in which society is organised and managed. I wanted to try and do something about this and so over many years I got involved in various campaigns with different organisations. This was a real learning experience – but mostly in the negative sense of how not to do things. I very soon became aware of the shortfalls of single issue campaign work, of the difficulties of working in traditional coalitions and perhaps most of all of the dogmatic culture of the old left which seems to lead to stagnation and factions (interestingly the opposite to what they claim to be about).

This dissatisfaction with existing options led me to search for a conceptual framework for organising that addressed these problems. It seemed to me that a failure to find, develop and implement a new radical-progressive organising framework would condemn the left to a future of continued decline. That framework turned out to be what is sometime refered to as “complimentary holism” which as you say was first put forward in “Liberating Theory”.

This framework is relatively easily to understand, which is important if you are interested in working towards a participatory society – as I am. It is also a framework that developed out of both a practical and theoretical understanding of the history of the left. I should also say that this framework is more than just a framework for organising – it is also proposed as a means of understanding historical continuity and changes as well as contemporary social dynamics.

It identifies four social spheres that go to make up society – kinship, community, economic and political. One of the basic insights presented in ‘Liberating Theory’ is that none of these spheres should be seen as more imortant than the other. Typically the various constituencies that go to make up the left take the opposite position, organising as though one of the spheres is of prime concern. For example anarchists tend to prioritise the political sphere over the other three; feminists tend to prioritise the kinship sphere; Nationalists tend to prioritise the community sphere and Marxists tend to prioritise the economic sphere. This is what is called a monist theory and whilst all four constituents may feel that they have a genuine commitment to solidarity its not hard to see how this approach leads to factions within the movement.

A slightly more sophisticated approach comes with what is called a pluralistic approach where by say an anarcho-syndicalist prioritises both the political and economic spheres or where by a socialist-feminist prioritises the economic and kinship spheres. However this approach still prioritises some spheres over others which again leads to tentions within the movement.

In line with the framework proposed in ‘Liberating Theory’ PPS-UK organises around all four social spheres in a conscious effort to overcome these problems and hopefully to contribute to the building of a much healthier culture of solidarity within the left and therefore a much more effective movement.

Can you tell us about the projects PPS-UK is involved in?

Well first of all, projects and other activities are initiated and run by PPS-UK activists – there is no leadership spoon-feeding activists campaign ideas or delegating tasks. Activists who initiate and/or participate in projects and other activities that go under the “banner” of PPS-UK must respect and operate within Our Basic Organising Framework.

At the present we have five projects posted on the site -‘Solidarity Works’ is a simple but important project that provides links to organisations that PPS-UK activists want to express a feeling of solidarity with and to encourage others to work with.

‘Intellectual Self-defence’ is an on line resource that introduces the notion of a “propaganda managed democracy”. This project includes a recommended reading list plus links to appropriate organisations. ‘Project for a Participatory Trade Union Movement’ facilitates the coming together of trade union activists who want to join forces to promote and organise for a participatory economy. ‘Project for a Participatory Credit Union’ has been set up to investigate the possibility of establishing a credit union as a means of creating a financing system to fund ParEcon Businesses. We are also looking at organising a PPS-UK Forum which will include talks and debates on participatory vision and strategy, project development sessions, courses on intellectual self-defence and media production workshops.

PPS-UK advocate the development of relatively detailed blue-prints for models of a future society – for instance the Particpatory Economic model, is there not a danger in developing such definite aims? Are diverse movements likely to be able to agree to such specific aims? Moreover is there not a danger that people living within a debilitating social reality that undermines rationality and compassion will come to advocate goals that will perpetuate the various maladies of contemporary society?

Many people on the left become concerned about the development of vision and some people become very hostile towards any attempts at proposing what the social justice movement might adopt as its long term objectives. Whilst I think that the concern is entirely valid I think that the hostility is unwarranted. The concern is valid for the obvious reason that we might get our vision wrong and therefore in this sense there is a very real danger. But this danger is not specific to the development of vision, it is also true of strategy and every other activity that we get involved in. Recognising this danger should not lead us to abandon our efforts but should instead lead us to be more carefull about what we advocate and how we organise.

Furthermore some people seem to think that developing vision is somehow undemocratic and elitist. I dont understand this at all – what they are basically saying is that if, for example, someone has an idea for an alternative to the corporate divsion of labour or markets, for example, then they are not allowed to discuss it. It is a very strange position. You can’t help but ask who’s being undemocratic?

There are two basic ways forward – one is to organise using broad principles as guildance, the other is to consider possible alternative institutional features. Despite the concerns of developing more detailed alternative institutions (as with ParEcon) the problem with the broad principles approach is that its hard to inspire people with such vague notion such as freedom and justice alone. I think given the history of the left (which hardly inspires confidence) and in todays world of spin (which renders words like freedom and democracy virtually meaningless) people require more than vague notions. They need compelling vision that is discussed and agreed upon – but always open to further refinement.

Whether people can agree on such specific aims only time will tell. But its worth mentioning that we dont really have that much to choose from. Take the economic sphere for instance – what are the actual options for the anti-capitalist movement? What are our options for an alternative to private ownership? To top-down management? To the corporate division of labour? To Markets? To rewarding ownership? As it turns out our basic options are quite limited. I feel quite confident that if we clearly identify our basic options and simply ask which of these options best reflects our values then a lot of agreement can be reached. If we can get this far then I think we are more than half way to building a popular movement. Its a lot of hard work, but pretty straight forward.

As for “people living in debilitating social reality that undermines rationality” in my experience most people aren’t anywhere near as irrational as the left generally seems to think. Most people make perfectly rational choices given their circumstances and based on the information they have. Personally I think that people know that things aren’t right, they know that they are being lied to, they know that they are being exploited. The point is that they dont see an alternative – this is why developing compelling vision is so important. Yes we live in a debilitating social reality – but one that principally undermines hope.