---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 16:12:31 -0000
From: David Marquand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: uk-policy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: uk-policy Third Way: Concluding Thoughts
Dear All,
We've been asked for concluding thoughts that try to pull the threads of the
discussion together. Ever-obedient, I hasten to comply. I shall draw on
others' contributions, but usually without attribution. And since it seems
that the object of the exercise is to feed into a paper for the No 10 Policy
Unit I shall try to express what I want to say in an appropriate format.
Here goes:
1. We should begin by saying that many of us doubt the usefulness of the
term 'third way'. It is top-down rather than bottom-up; exclusionary rather
than inclusionary. It also carries overtones of the 'triangulation' strategy
of Bill Clinton - a horrible warning for our Government, not a role model.
We would prefer the term 'new politics'. That is much more inclusionary and
bottom-up, and it implies a wish to tap into the rich store of innovative
left and centre-left thinking which was bubbling up in civil society in the
eighties and early nineties before Tony Blair was heard of.
2. We should say that the central object of this new politics must be to
realise, so far as possible, the core social-democratic values of
solidarity, justice and freedom in the society that now exists. In practice,
that implies that the top priority is to repair - as far as it can be
repaired - the damage that the capitalist renaissance of our time has done
to the social fabric.
3. The damage is threefold. First, a massive increase in inequality,
resulting from the fact that the productivity gains engendered by the new
capitalism have been siphoned off by a new techno-managerial elite. Second,
the progressive casualisation of labour - middle-class as well as
working-class - which has, in turn, engendered spreading alienation and
anomie, reminiscent of that described by Karl Polanyi in 'The Great
Transformation'. Third, the steady erosion of the public domain. By this we
do NOT mean the public sector. We mean the social domain in which
citizenship rights trump market power and an ethic of service trumps
individual utility maximisation. We think the health of a society depends
crucially on the vitality and vibrancy of the public domain in this sense,
and we believe that the erosion of the public domain will, if it continues
unchecked, undermine pluralist democracy.
4. We recognise that a project designed to undo this damage will require
enormous courage, political skill and intellectual creativity. We also
recognise that it will take a very long time to implement. But we don't
think that is a reason for refusing to start. In our view, the real test of
the Government is whether it does so - and whether it recognises that in
order to do so it must reach beyond Westminster and beyond the parties
represented at Westminster to the new social movements in which new thinking
has actually begun.
5. We also think, however, that tangible steps in the right direction can
and should be undertaken in the lifetime of this Government. The following
seem to us crucial:
- We must abandon the illiterate assumption - not held, it should be noted,
by any of the great economists of the past - that GDP per head is to be
equated with well-being. The object of public policy should be to maximise
well-being, not to achieve the highest feasible rate of growth in GDP per
head. A top priority should be to devise a mechanism for social audit, from
which an appropriate set of indicators of well-being should be derived.
Government should make measurable improvements in the well-being
indicator(s) the touchstone of success.
- Reform of the welfare state is badly needed, for all the reasons the
Government gives (and indeed for others). But the substitution of a workfare
state for the welfare state - the logic behind well;fare to work' - would
be to adopt a cure that is worse than the disease. It means a return to the
nineteenth-century distinction between the deserving and the undeserving
poor; involves a nanny state of which Beatrice Webb would have been proud;
and will result, in practice, in even more state harassment of the poor and
defenceless. The right way out of the welfare state morass is a citizen's
income. We know that there are difficulties; and we don't expect them to
solved overnight. But we think this is the best way forward for the medium
term a nd we implore the Government not to dismiss it.
- No single nation-state can tame the renascent capitalism of our time all
by itself. Though we reject the rhetoric of globalisation, with its
deterministic implication that the only remaining role for national
governments is to achieve the maximum possible competitive advantage in the
global market-place, we do recognise that the taming of capitalism must be
pursued on the supra- and inter-national levels as well as on the national.
For this country, a member-stateof the EU with no other supra-national hole
to go to, that must involve doing everything in our power to hasten European
integration and to hammer out, in association with other left forces in the
Union (green, radical, feminist as well as traditionally social-democratic
or socialist), a new politics for a federalising Europe.
- The greatest need of all is to re-invent the public domain - the domain of
citizenship and service. This is a hugely complex task, but three elements
in it seem relatively straightforward - conceptually, at any rate, even if
not politically. The first is simply to recognise that the public domain is
the public domain, not the market domain; and that decision rules
appropriate to the market domain - proxy markets, spot as opposed to
relational contracts, productivity indices etc - are both inappropriate to
the public domain and destructive of it. To put it very crudely,
accountability in the public domain must be through Voice, not Exit.
- Secondly, we must recognise that there is a symbiotic relationship between
the public domain and civil society. Thus, a project aimed at reinventing
the public domain must entail deliberate steps to revive and strengthen the
autonomous intermediate institutions of civil society, the hollowing out of
which was one of the central themes of the Thatcher revolution. Elements in
such a policy should include, inter alia, democratising quangos and making
them accountable to the users of their services; strengthening the voluntary
sector; restoring the autonomy of publicly-funded but non-state institutions
like the universities, the BBC and the arts council; citizens' juries; etc.
etc. But the details are less important than the basic theme. The object is
to replace the top-down statism characteristic of both Old Labour (at least
in the post-war period: the first half of the century was a different
matter) and the Thatcherites with a politics of pluralism, heterogeneity,
diversity and creativity embedded in institutions strong enough to resist
the inevitable depredations of central power.
- Third, we believe that such a politics also involves strengthening local
government, and if possible devolving some of its functions to even lower
tiers. We welcome elected mayors - potentially a huge step in the right
direction. But we don't see how local government can be revitalised in a
really meaningful way without giving it the financial wherewithal.
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