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Democratic Wealth: Building a Citizens’ Economy Democratic Wealth: Building a Citizens’ Economy Edited by: Stuart White, Niki Seth-Smith Published by openDemocracy at Smashwords Copyright 2014 openDemocracy All texts published under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial License. This book brings together a selection of essays first published as an online series under the same name, Democratic Wealth: building a citizens’ economy, between November 2012 and February 2014. The series and this book are the result of a partnership between openDemocracy and Politics in Spires, a blog run by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. You can find the complete series at both openDemocracy and Politics in Spires. Cover designer: Kadie Armstrong Cover image: David Shankbone Table of Contents ~ Introduction , by Stuart White and Niki Seth-Smith ~ Taking Back the Economy 1. The Market as a Res Publica , Philip Pettit 2. The Commercial Republic: a Contradiction in Terms? Jessica Kimpell 3. Social Democracy must Radicalise to Survive, Joe Guinan 4. A Democratic Case for the Free Market? Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson ~ Republican Economy in Practice 5. ‘An iron chain of bondage’: Lessons from the Knights of Labor , Alex Gourevitch 6. Civic Italy: a model for Britain? Kaveh Pourvand, 7. Revolutionary France and the Social Republic that Never Was , Vincent Bourdeau 8. Democratising Capital at Scale , Joe Guinan and Thomas M. Hanna 9. Sovereign Wealth Funds: Can They Be Community Funds? Angela Cummine 10. ‘Ownership for all’: The Lost Radicalism of the Centre , Stuart White 11. A Republican Call for a Basic Income , Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark 12. The Alaska Model: a Citizen's Income in Practice , Karl Widerquist 13. Republicanism and Tax Justice , David Owen 14. Toward a Generative Economy , Marjorie Kelly ~ Republican Politics 15. Radical Virtues , Alex Gourevitch 16. Britain, Become a Republic! Dan Hind 17. Liberty, Liberalism and Surveillance: An Interview with Quentin Skinner, Richard Marshall and Quentin Skinner 18. Democrats Today can Learn from Machiavelli, John P. McCormick 19. Republicanism and Revolutions , Karma Nabulsi ~ Afterword, by James Meadway Acknowledgments: Many people have contributed to making this e-book possible. In addition to all those who contributed to the original debate series and the e-book itself, the editors would like to thank Blake Ewing, Liz Greenhalgh, and Olly Huitson for their work in creating and managing the project. Democratic Wealth: an Introduction ~ Stuart White, Niki Seth-Smith In 2008, as the severity of our current economic crisis started to become clear, many expected the rapid demise of ‘neo-liberalism’ as the reigning economic philosophy. This has not happened. Over time the dominant policy responses to the crisis have increasingly looked to free-market ideas or served to reinforce them. David Cameron’s call in 2012 for the UK to wage an ‘economic war’ based on a new wave of deregulation is one example of this. New citizen movements, such as the indignados in Spain, and Occupy in other countries, have articulated a sense that there must be an alternative. They are, in part, protests at a poverty of political imagination in the face of the crisis. We need urgently, therefore, to explore in an open-minded and creative fashion what resources we have for a renewal of economic thinking – ‘resources of hope’, to use Raymond Williams’s helpful phrase. This book, Democratic Wealth, on republicanism and political economy, is one contribution to this. The articles were first published as part of an online series hosted in 2012-2014 by openDemocracy and Politics in Spires, a website run by the Departments of Politics and International Relations/International Studies at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. You can read the complete series at openDemocracy or Politics in Spires . What’s republicanism? The past two decades or so have seen a renewal of interest within academic political theory in something, or some things, called ‘republicanism’. As a tradition (or set of traditions) within political theory, republicanism is not going to give us a direct handle on, say, the details of monetary and fiscal policy. But it can perhaps provide a constructive basis for thinking about what we fundamentally want from an economic order and about some of the institutions or approaches that will promote these goals. It can help us think about the relationships between society, economy and politics. By republicanism we don’t mean (just) opposition to monarchy, or the US Republican party. It’s a highly contested term, but a working definition would probably include the following four things: (1)Popular sovereignty. A legitimate political order must make law and policy through processes that are appropriately inclusive of all citizens. Classical republicans understood this idea in terms of a ‘mixed constitution’ that balances popular and elite forces. Modern republicans understand it as requiring popular sovereignty in the process by which laws and policies are made. This excludes oligarchy: rule by wealthy elites. (2)Common good. A legitimate political order must direct law and policy to a genuine common good. Economic arrangements are a construction of people in their capacity as sovereign and, when this sovereign power is rightly exercised, economic institutions are designed to serve this common good. (3)Freedom. A central part of the common good of the citizenry is each citizen’s interest in freedom. In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau says that ‘the worst thing that can happen to one in the relations between man and man [sic] is to find oneself at the mercy of another’. According to Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner there is a distinctively republican (or ‘neo-Roman’) conception of freedom that consists precisely in not living ‘at the mercy of another’. We are free when we are able to live without being subject to the arbitrary will of another, when we enjoy what Pettit calls ‘non-domination’. To achieve its common good, therefore, a people must deploy its sovereignty to create political and economic arrangements that secure freedom in this sense for all citizens. It is not only a question of protecting the individual from domination by the state, but of harnessing the state constructively to prevent relations of domination emerging in the economy and wider society. (4)Civic participation. A citizen is not only someone with a specific legal status, but is properly a participant in shared decision-making, with a concern for the common good. Political and economic arrangements must enable and encourage this participation. Can republicanism offer resources for rethinking our political economy? The contributors to this book do not share the same philosophical or political perspectives, and none of them should be understood to endorse contributions other than their own. But they have been willing to share in our exploration of this question. Taking Back the Economy Part 1 of the book begins with republican philosopher, Philip Pettit, making a point that is central to this project. He argues that economic institutions, including markets and private property, are not part of a natural, pre-political order. Rather, they are a product of political construction and properly a matter of political choice (chapter 1). In the following chapter, Jessica Kimpell presents a challenge (chapter 2): Is a republican market economy really possible? Is the market compatible with the civic virtue this apparently requires? With social democracy currently at an impasse, Joe Guinan argues that it is time for a new agenda focused on spreading wealth and assets (chapter 3). Finally, Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson consider the claim that something akin to a ‘free market’ economy is the right (the just) political choice for a democratic citizenry. They dispute this, defending John Rawls’s preference for a market economy based on a ‘property-owning democracy’ (chapter 4). Republican Economy in Practice In Part 2 our contributors dig further into some of the detail of the institutions of a republican economy. Our authors explore co-operatives (chapters 5-7), unconditional basic income (chapters 11-12), collectively-owned sovereign wealth funds (chapters 9-10) and tax fairness (chapter 13). We not only present the ideas in theory but practical examples, from the co-operatives of Emilia Romagna in Northern Italy to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which provides Alaskan citizens with a real-world citizen’s income. Contributors also consider how related ideas can help build a green, sustainable economy (chapter 14) and how to take alternative models, often local or regional, and employ them more generally and at scale (chapter 8). Republican Politics In Part 3 we turn to the politics of republican political economy. We include interviews with three prominent thinkers in this area: Quentin Skinner, whose reflections on ‘liberty before liberalism’ close with an indictment of modern-day surveillance (chapter 17); John McCormick on Machiavelli’s relevance to contemporary democracy (chapter 18); and Dan Hind on his contemporary vision of a British ‘maximum republic’ (chapter 16). Alex Gourevitch explores the ‘radical virtues’ celebrated by 19th century labor republicans in the US (chapter 15). Finally, Karma Nabulsi discusses the connections between republicanism and the revolutionary tradition (chapter 19). We end the book with a responsive Afterword from James Meadway. What next for Britain and the world? Our exploration of republicanism and the economy in this book connects with a range of discussions which have emerged in recent years and which we have only managed to capture partially in our contributions. One important area we did not cover in the book is the Republic of Ireland, where Fintan O’Toole has argued that Ireland needs radical reform of its political and economic institutions to become, at last, a genuine republic. In Spain, where republican theory was explicitly used as a guide to government from 2004 to 2011, republicanism remains highly relevant with contributions from researchers and activists such as Eva Botella-Ordinas, David Cassasas and José Luis Martí, as well as Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark who feature here.
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