Good article. There is an interesting piece in last week’s Economist on the rise of the middle class in Brazil, which should be read alongside similar pieces about India and China.

You cannot really analyse what is happening in British domestic politics without placing this in the context of overall global economic and political trends and Mike’s point about how “middle class” jobs are now being outsourced is a good one – think of the Indian call centres. I also agree about the rising influence of the “third sector”, Amnesty International and Oxfam now have more members than the Labour party, but this type of activism has not yet developed a political form of expression yet. I think Cameron’s Tories have been smart to identify their potential though.

“There is also non-governmental, not-for-profit activity. This is the crucial area for the re-invention of progressive politics. It is this third sector which offers hope. Against the liberty that the market promises but only partially and inequitably delivers; against the equality that the state pretends to uphold in those few moments when it isn’t attending to its own needs and fears – the not-for-profit sector can offer an expression of social solidarity.”

The idea that the charitable sector could take over the work of the state is a non-starter. The state was sucked into the vacuum left by the failure of the market or any other provider. It wasn’t an objective of nineteenth century Liberals, it was a necessary solution to the failure of the market. That situation hasn’t changed, as we are seeing. Just explain how low paid workers will be provided with healthcare, education, pensions, etc without a redistribution of income through a progressive tax system?

The LibDems seem to have become libertarians just at the moment when the wheels have come off the neoliberal project, and the ameliorating potential of social democracy and the necessity of government intervention comes back into focus. The idea that the ‘not-for-profit’ (sic) activity could fill the breach is a fantasy.

The ‘demographic timebomb’ has been delibrately exaggerated as part of the neoliberal project ot convince that society can ‘no longer afford’ to support pensioners. Yet, we’ve seen a tripling in the numbers of over-65s since 1911, and the costs have been absorbed while the standard of living of pensioners has dramatically improved. The projections of a further 50% increase in the next 50 years can similarly be accommodated with he requisite planning and foresight. It is a demographic hump in the road – the figures will come back into line after the baby-boom generation have died off, it’s just a case of smoothing that hump out (the contention that this couldn’t be achieved quite easily through the allocation of the proceeds of growth stands in stark contrast to the way governments can suddenly ‘find’ £150-£200bn to bail out the city!).. Conversely, the idea that these costs could be met through private provision by individuals is a complete nonsense. Many millions of workers will never earn enough to provide for their own education, health and pension provision. But, more thant this, state provision is not just essential, it is more economically efficient (as can be seen in comparing the costs of the American healthcare with the ’socialised’ system in the UK). This is the argument that the Liberal Democrats should have been making.

Interesting piece, look forward to seeing this develop further.

On a related note I’m very impressed with LC’s development beyond merely being a great blog to almost being an online think tank. Kudos to Sunny and the team!

Anyway, this last bit caught my eye:

It is this third sector which offers hope. Against the liberty that the market promises but only partially and inequitably delivers; against the equality that the state pretends to uphold in those few moments when it isn’t attending to its own needs and fears – the not-for-profit sector can offer an expression of social solidarity.

I think you’re onto something here and so does David Cameron.

The Third Sector is going to be a major battleground between the progressive left and right (assuming Cameron is actually progressive right not just a skilled PR merchant) in the next ten years.

How the progressive left responds will be critical (not least to Labour’s recovery under Tory rule) in achieving it’s longer term aims of social change – and dare I say – and social justice.

It just seems bizarre that this kind of feeling, that the third sector is of huge value to social progression, is something only just making the “mainstream” views in politics. It has always for me seemed very much like common sense, though maybe through exposure to how such bodies can help (and help more if they weren’t hamstrung by funding levels).

But then when people/organisations are identified as doing good in such ways too often politics seems to come in to it, whether the organiser is following Tory or Labour ideals, religiously motivated or otherwise. We seem unable to simply accept good work being done unless the good work is being done only in our name.

The third sector is charities and not-for-profits and companies-limited-by-guarantee/social enterprises. The state is already devolving its services to it and “full cost recovery” isn’t usually occuring. Public sector contracts to the third sector tend to be short-termist, rather than 3-4 year packages of core funding, making charities dependent and not able to plan for the long-term. An example is a social enterprise that I worked with for three years (http://www.watch-hillfields.org.uk). High demand for their services (employment assistance for new migrants to Coventry) but a lack of public funding (DWP focused on getting people off benefit). More responsive and client-oriented than JSA advisors at the Jobcentre (CV workshops, interview training) but non-unionised (not even a German-style works council). Sure, the state needs to be decentralised and more involving/bottom-up. But it will be complicated to involve the third sector in that without making it a creature of the state itself.

But the making it a “creature of the state” is not necessarily a negative. When the only thing that ties the charity to the state is the funding package and pre-arranged objectives there is no reason to try and pin any negativities to that relationship. As you say (or at least I’m assuming you’re saying), Charities tend to be much better focused on the small areas they need to deal with and are more “client” oriented than anything the state could organise.

As long as the state doesn’t get higher involvement from the third sector by implementing red tape and it’s own processes as par for the course then go ahead and let the third sector become a creature of the state, it’s much better than the government wasting shit loads of money on things they *think* they know how to do but find out ultimately that either they don’t, or the private sector organisation they’ve gone with are rinsing them for all the money they can (Like, say the Olympics…though that is a bad comparison since the main bulk of the preparation work would still have to be done by the private sector one way or another).

The idea that the charitable sector could take over the work of the state is a non-starter.

The BBC does it reasonably well…

this isnt just about the charitable sector. outside the govt and private profit seeking companies, there are a whole range of organisation types

First, the Information Society means that the state is increasingly facing a nation where vast numbers of the population know what the state is or is not doing and express their views, so that much of public administration has to be addressing matters at national level, something that it has never had to do before – it used to make policy centrally, but delivery was local and the centre did not have to worry about the local details that were moulded to local needs by the people on the ground. The third sector does seem to be understanding the national picture somewhat better.

Second, there are large areas of the state’s activity that have to be co-ordinated and directed nationally, even when delivery (as with electrical power generation) has been privatised. The state has been losing its way here. With such long term projects and organisations as are found in those areas, the whims of 4-year politicians are not good enough to keep us safe, so we have to find out why the civil service isn’t coping with supporting them and us and deal with it. There isn’t a significant military threat any more, but there are many civil threats that we have to be very careful about. It may of course be that infrastructure and other national level provision was in fact run by good men and true in my youth, people who not only controlled strategy but also made the link between strategy and delivery that your average policy civil servant in public administration is never capable of doing.

Thanks for all your comments. I’ll run the second piece (with Aaron’s help, I’m not exactly familiar with the software here yet) on Monday.

I think Sunny makes an excellent point about the BBC – it is able to stand up to government at least some of the time because it has its own credible reputation. (On the other hand, I’m not convinced that the licence fee model will be robust in the longer term.) More local, less established third sector outfits, whose income is wholly dependent on state grant aid, don’t have that advantage. It’s a neat exemplification of my original point: the interest of the State is that they should be servile, dependent creatures. If I were still (as I once was) driving a desk in a Town Hall responsible for grant monitoring, I’d be sorely tempted to include a clause calling on the funded groups to demonstrate how their activities enhanced the reputation of the Council – perhaps such clauses are indeed standard practice these days.

The progressive politics I want would see the third sector equally replacing activities currently in the market sector – independent high street shops being one example (these would presumably be companies limited by guarantee rather than charities). More generally, we need to base our arguments not on what this philosopher or that said about the market or the State but on what our day-to-day experience as citizens tells us about the failures of those sectors.

Good article Mike but in my view you are totally wrong about the state being effectively powerless. Believeing such things maybe be useful for Gordon Brown at this point but you cannot deny that the nation state is still an important force in politics. Of course, global markets have power but their is a complex cause-effect relationship which you are missing out and of course global markets don’t have standing armies etc.

I have posted a more detailed critique on my blog but I think that this false premise leads you to false conclusions. You are in actual fact representative of a general drift away from actual politics to movementalism on the progressive left, something that I dont believe provides us with any new directions at all.

Darrell, I think that you can trace “movementalism” back at least as far as you can anarcho-syndicalism – the Putney Debates, maybe? Of course I am not arguing that the State is powerless: the nub of my case isn’t about the State at all, but about citizenship – hopefully this will become clearer later.

What initially drove me to write at all was my puzzlement at how Labour is going to rebuild its base in opposition. When Labour last lost power its grassroots – whatever else you could say about them – were intellectually vigorous and practically energetic. Now I have the sense that the Party is a hollow shell, and its future recruitment drives will have to cope with “why won’t you let us down next time just as you did last time” – which is why I am sympathetic to the view that the next Labour PM isn’t even in Parliament yet – as the Tories said of themselves in 1997. Labour’s structure certainly gives scope for “movementalism” – all those affiliates, and indeed if there is an argument for Labour as a political machine that’s where it lies. And “movementalism” has the clear ethical advantage that it provides a structural repudiation of careerism, which none of us like, and none of us really know how to deal with.

You have me at the disadvantage that I’ve never quite figured out what leads people to become Liberal Democrat activists – maybe this is because I’ve lived my entire life in areas where they run a poor third, so really I only know them through the blogosphere…

I am not seduced by Cameron’s warm words about co-ops or anything else: there won’t be anything but the vaguest of platitudes in their manifesto (if that) – there’s no energy in his Party for them. Not the least of the reasons for regarding the return of the Tories with dismay (at the least) is that they have clearly signalled that they intend to play the “blame the victim” card with undisguised gusto.

Mike,

Ok but you do say that global markets are ‘more powerful’ thus progressive taxation is in effect a waste of time because it can effect no postive changes which is something I profoundly disagree with; my point is that there is still a role for the state but as you can see from my blog i propose a thrid approach between the traditional ‘overthrow v reform’ discourse that takes place on the left.

You are right about the Labour Party being a ‘hollow shell’. I am actually ex of Labour and finally left over the Iraq war. Movementalism is however anarchic and it’s ability to actually effect lasting change is thus limited; it can act as a pressure for change but rarely is what actually enacts change. Labour’s structure is moribund and has been for some time and it doesn’t allow hardly any scope for creative progressive flair.

I am a Lib Dem activist because ‘Labour left me’ and it is in my eyes now the most progressive party that there is. I merely said you are echoing what Cameron has said which is unquestionably true; you may be cynical about the end result and rightly so in my eyes but that doesnt change the joint thrusts of what you are saying. The fact is that these organisations cannot be relied upon to provide services that the state should be able too and besides are furtile grounds for careerism in and of themselves. If you look at jobs within the charity sector they are very well paid.