Winston Churchill famously quipped that "democracy is
the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried
from time to time". An analogous statement can be made regarding capitalism,
which, for all its faults, basically works - at least, better than any other
system that has yet been tried.
But what really has been tried? With the end of the Cold War
and the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was widely proclaimed that the 'End of
History' had been reached; capitalism had won a categorical victory against its
arch-rival system of communism, which had proven to be unviable. It should not
be forgotten, however, that the centrally-planned, authoritarian system of the
Soviet Union was a far cry from the communist utopia envisaged by Marx, just as
the corporatist, oligopolistic version of capitalism that predominates today is
a far cry from the free-market utopia envisaged by neoliberals.
Indeed, just as the Left has struggled to find a concrete
alternative on which to ground its identity since that momentous day 1989, the
traumatic events of 2008 and their enduring aftermath have led many on the
Right to grapple for their own alternative to the present system. In reality –
and despite what many a sensationalist airport-book author would have you
believe – modern capitalism continues to stagger on virtually unchallenged,
with no definitive indication that it will collapse any time soon; but it is
nevertheless clear that its problems are mounting, and that the solutions
offered so far have been inadequate to avert further catastrophe.
There is, then, a growing a sense that neither corporate
capitalism nor state socialism are fit for purpose, and that some alternative
system is called for. Neither Left nor Right have managed to substantively
imagine (or at least compellingly describe) what this alternative might be, and
to the extent that they have, their formulations are in some ways diametrically
opposed. There are, nevertheless, some common threads.
I would particularly draw the reader’s attention to the cross-cutting
agreement that, in some way, shape, or form, society needs to be more
democratic. One of the peculiar traits of neoliberalism – and indeed, one of
its most impressive victories – has been its ability to convince the masses
that democratic participation need only inhere in the political sphere, with labour-market
choice sufficing to ensure equivalent freedoms in the economic sphere. Although
many discontented right-wingers (especially of the libertarian ilk) buy into the
false premise that ‘free markets’ are inherently democratic, and would thus
have market forces permeate even more of our social relations, it is has become
increasingly apparent that the economy is constituted by more than just the
market. Indeed, most economic activity occurs within organisations like firms,
which must therefore be explicitly democratised if the economy is to even
remotely approximate the hallowed value of freedom supposedly intrinsic to
markets.
Meanwhile on the Left, the rubric of ‘community
participation’ has acted as a backstop for hopes of a fairer, more decent, and
generally better socio-economy. Although this vision is often vaguely and incoherently
articulated through a disparate range of permutations – unlike their
libertarian counterparts, socialist dissidents lack a unitary idol like the
market around which to centre their ideology – real-world examples have
proliferated in recent times, or at least grown in prominence. The late Nobel
prize-winner Elinor Ostrom, for example, compellingly demonstrated that
communities are, directly contrary to the predictions of mainstream economic
theory, often the best stewards of common resources, which may otherwise be depleted
through overuse if managed by either private owners or public administrators.
Solidarity/social economies, cooperatives of various sorts, transitional towns
and more have all added to the repertoire of evidence that some kind of ‘communism’,
defined loosely and without the authoritarian connotations, may be possible
after all.
Opposite extremes of the political spectrum therefore
converge, or at least overlap, in their aspirations for a democratic economy.
In this vein, it is interesting to note that cooperatives often transcend
traditional ideologies, appealing to thinkers and activists of all stripes and
none but also repulsing mainstream party politics. Perhaps the only global
ideology that has historically embraced cooperatives without reservations (for
example relating to trade unions or 'private property') has been anarchism, which,
as a political philosophy that can be formulated from both left- and right-wing
perspectives (or from neither perspective), is itself located in the ‘no man’s
land’ of political economy.
The allusion to anarchism is not coincidental, for so far
the institution of the state has been conspicuously absent from our discussion;
and it is here that the promise of a democratic economy becomes a danger. While
freedom from government interference is a familiar mantra of reactionaries, it
should not be forgotten that the dissolution of the state was an explicit
objective of many communists, not least Vladimir Lenin. Of course, Lenin’s
famous avowal was not borne out by the actual experience of the Soviet Union –
quite the opposite, in fact. However, that same experience demonstrates the perils
of mindlessly retrenching the state. The overnight liberalisation recommended by neoliberal economists ('shock therapy') led not the emergence of a
free-market utopia propelled by citizen-entrepreneurs, but rather to a coup-d’économie
by a select group of oligarchs, leaving the post-Soviet countries in a
situation not far removed from the runaway inequality of Western capitalism.
Cooperatives again provide a microcosm of this danger.
Despite their progressive potential, cooperatives have been increasingly co-opted by
conservative politicians as a means of privatising social services through a
more palatable back door – particularly in the UK, where their not-so-hidden
agenda of dismantling the welfare state has taken root under the pretext of
austerity.
The ambition to create a democratic economy is noble, and, given
its cross-cutting allure, may just about be attainable. The road to reform,
however, is fraught with peril.
