Today’s topic is an article by Geoff Mulgan in the 16-22 October 2015 edition of the New Statesman, “Trotsky, Blair and the new politics“. (You may find it helpful to read the article first; it will open in a new tab.) Mulgan does not dwell on either Trotsky or Blair; he tells his own story and raises a number of issues.
Sadly, the article is another dig at Jeremy Corbyn. The New Statesman does not support his leadership and has found it difficult to find a constructive response. This article might be their most positive approach so far. It begins by arguing Corbyn’s leadership “could help the Labour Party rediscover its purpose”. At the end Mulgan suggests the party may have turned down a cul-de-sac.
To a degree, I share this ambivalence. As a Green, I depart from Corbyn’s approach to the environment, the economy and democracy (voting systems). Nevertheless, I welcome his promotion to leadership because politicians have become too complacent. It is possible his leadership will open up new possibilities. It’s a pity the New Statesman can’t offer constructive ideas about how the Labour Party could develop in the future. Instead it laments the loss of the election in 2020.
Mulgan’s career took him from the hard left to working closely with Tony Blair. He learned to see the difference between the divisive and largely theoretical leftism of the various Trotskyist groups and the need for good management and administration. He understood the implications of digital technology in the late twentieth century and argued for “networks and different ways of organising the state”. This contrasts with the top-down arguments for nationalisation and planning from the hard left.
He contrasts political protest movements with the use of political power to cut poverty and rebuild public services. A significant problem on the left, is a tendency to overemphasise the former at the expense of the latter. Is it better to emphasise management? The ideal is perhaps credible politicians energised by a strong movement. Without such a movement the party is solely concerned about winning elections and not about what to do once they have power.
The problem for many on the left is they do not recognise entrepreneurship and innovation. This does not derive from committees but from people experimenting on the ground. I have written about the innovation that accompanied the growth of the retail co-operative movement.
Minimalist and Maximalist Social Innovation
Mulgan cites the work of a Brazilian thinker, Roberto Mangabeira Unger, who in a new book, New Frontiers in Social Innovation Research (Palgrave MacMillan) distinguishes minimalist and maximalist social innovation. Mulgan writes
“The minimalist view puts social innovations squarely within the third sector and: ‘Its resonance is with solidarity and communitarianism … within the tradition within classical liberalism that prizes voluntary associations as well as with the strand within socialist thinking that proposes a non-statist socialism.’
“By contrast, the maximalist view, Unger writes, is concerned with ‘the whole of society, of its institutional arrangements and of its dominant forms of consciousness … At its maximalist best, the social innovation movement [undertakes] the small initiatives that have the greatest potential to foreshadow, by persuasive example, the transformation of those arrangements and of that consciousness.'” (All ellipses and additions are Mulgan’s.)
I have argued, for example in my ebook “Community Development is Dead!” (see below) that community development is weak when tied into the third sector. Local businesses are at best ignored. Even social enterprises, whilst often similar to small and medium businesses, are designed over and against mainstream local businesses.
Innovation and the Third Sector
Mulgan and Unger are not arguing against social enterprises, so much as underlining the fact that social innovation can happen anywhere through the work and the risks taken by just about anybody. It is not right to restrict social innovation to the third sector. There are two reasons for that.
Third sector organisations can be just as moribund as public sector and large private sector organisations. The third sector draws many people with alternative values and so if you’re looking for the entrepreneurial spirit, for social innovation, it is one place to look. But large voluntary sector organisations can become just as ossified as other organisations of comparable size and age and even smaller groups just as readily opt for bureaucratic solutions.
The second reason is that a lot of social innovation does happen in the private sector, particularly in the local economy. For many, their starting place may be different but their destination closely parallels that of social entrepreneurs.
The fact is neither of the main political parties has ever favoured local business or social innovation. Both favour top-down, corporate planning solutions. Their policies always seem to be about concentrating wealth and power in fewer hands.
This is the political change we need. Neither main party embodies this approach, although Mulgan suggests, bizarrely, David Cameron’s Big Society is closest. Corbyn has broken the mould but I do not as yet see any evidence his economic policies are close to understanding social innovation.
Still, whilst things are chaotic, we cannot be sure how things will pan out. It will be interesting to see how the debate develops over the coming months, now that Labour has jettisoned the ridiculous idea it needs to win the next election.
