There’s a very thoughtful article on where social democracy needs to go next over at Renewal (h/t to Casper for the link), which is thoroughly worth a read. Here’s a quick sample, including some pretty arresting numbers (emphasis added). What a pleasant surprise, incidentally, to see mainstream centre left thinking integrating scarcity and environmental limits into its analysis without fuss, for once – would that this were more the norm…
Social democracy today is bereft of an economic programme. So is the broader left, which has not yet developed an alternative to an unappealing and discredited state socialism. The slow and steady build-up of democratic wealth-holding institutions provides an obvious avenue for the re-animation and re-radicalisation of both, through the generation of a new set of economic institutions and political power bases. But this will require a long-term commitment to evolutionary change and a willingness to step outside of the false choices and immediate constraints of crisis management.
In doing this, the assumptions behind austerity must be called into question. It is a deep irony that the Great Recession is unfolding among some of the richest societies the world has ever known. While the relations of production remain contested, the forces of production have been reaching new heights. In the United States in 2011, the economy produced almost $200,000 (over £125,000) per family of four. In Britain in the same year, the equivalent number was almost $150,000 (almost £95,000). In Germany, it was nearly $160,000 (£100,000). Even in Greece, going through the agony of austerity, production reached over $100,000 (£63,000) per four-person household (OECD, 2012). This is wealth enough – especially given the resource constraints imposed by climate change and emerging energy, mineral, water and other limits to unending growth. The challenge is not technological but organisational and political. It is a matter of systemic design.
