radical realities issue 2

7/27/2019 Radical Realities Issue 2

1/13

Dave BoyleOPen

societies

ProfessorPrem Sikka

Tax

Justice

R AD ICALR e a l i t i e s

i f you wan t objecti vi ty get CCTV

NickDearden

OPen

economies


2/13

INTRODUCTION

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3/13

Radical Realities | Issue

p

age 4

What do you see as being the main issues whichdidnt really get the headlines? For us was the US-EUrade agreement and the role within trade and tax.

Actually that was one of the big things we agged upo. Because the EU-US trade agreement was promot-

ed on all of the mainstream media as just an unmi-gated posive for the world in that it will create jobs,t will create growth and this is the same narravewe have been hearing about trade for some menow. That this open economy will be good for peoplen countries that it applies to and that is so far fromhe truth in so many instances we thought it was ourole to make sure people understood that simply

opening your economies to goods and services andoreign capital does not necessarily have a posivempact on people. It gives an enormous amount ofreedom to capital and to global corporaons but

ordinary people oen suer as a consequence of thisbecause they have, without any sort of regulaon,what good is that capital, what good are those cor-poraons and that so called investment to peoples

ves, to the environment and so on.

We have seen an example over the last thirty yearsn whats called the globalizaon project, which isessenally a project for corporate power, for theirpower and freedom. So thats why I really like thetle of this session, Open Economies, because openeconomies you assume that it sounds really quitegood because of open discourse and open account-

bility that where there is a wealth of public goodshat are open for all, actuality it simply refers to an

economy open to corporaons and open to capital

and that can have an absolutely disastrous eect onpeoples lifes and we see that manifest in some ofthe inial ideas in the US-EU free trade treaty. Wedont know what the full context is going to be , soits even more extraordinary that its hailed as thisgreat saviour to get us out of this economic crisisthat we nd ourselves in. But we suspect, from therumours and so on that we have heard, that verybig on the agenda is going to be the liberalizaon ofnancial services, the liberalizaon of educaon andhealth and that kind of thing, that they will all beopen to foreign capital. If they are already open theywill be locked in so the public no longer has the op-on of removing those things from foreign capital.

We have heard from corporaons in the US thatare really excited about this, nancial corporaons;essenally because they think it will water downthe regulaons, that have been brought in post thenancial crisis, to control their acvity to make protfrom whatever it is that fancy. So we thought wewould try and ag that up and say it is something

which is important for the agenda of the G8 and notin the way thats been reported by the mainstreammedia.

There is an agenda, it seems to us, that Japan andAmerica their tax take which is 25%, whilst the Euro-pean tax take is 40% on average, so that the aim is toget the European tax take to reduce to the 25% level.I dont know if youve come across that?

Yes, I think that is a really important element of it.George Osborne was recently quoted in the Guard-

Nick DeardenOpen

Economies


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p

age 6

basis of globa lizaon; privaze stu, austerity, liber-alize your trading system, allow money in and out ofyour economy without restricons.

So we said actually this form of economic medicinewas debt, and the debt this imposed was one of thegreatest injusces of our me. Really economic tor-ture on whole secons of the world, on millions andmillions of people who either died or lost their liveli-hoods as a result of these condions. And this debtsimply needs to be cancelled, it has been a source ofgreat injusce and it connues to be.

Today we see that as clearly as we did then on ourown connent in Europe, it is actually the samething happening in Greece. Public money being usedto create a bank bailout, protecng the rich andordinary people who didnt benet from the debtthat was being created the rst me over having topay down those debts on behalf of the banks. The

elements of the state, water, the health system arebeing sold o, all manner of things being sold o,chiey to the very same people that caused thecrisis.

Its not just about a country thing either, its nowabout personal debt to. One of the ways that capital -ism kept going in this period, whereby most peoplehave seen their real wages decreasing and peoplekept buying stu to keep a quality of life, keeping theeconomic system going, was through debt. Throughcredit liberalizaon the banks told you could havemassive debt, and the debt became more risky andthey lied about it, they covered it up. Eventually thatbecame unsustainable too.

So yes a debt jubilee is very much in order today.There needs to be massive debt cancellaon theresno way we can address jusce without it, theres noway connue and its not sustainable, its unstable,so we need massive debt cancellaon. But it needsto be debt cancellaon, not of the type of old Meso-potamia brought in when a new king came to power,to free peasant labour up and the nanciers. It needsto be a jubilee from below, a debt cancellaon from

below, so we can restore some level of equality toour global economy and our sociees, which hasbeen taken away from us over the last thirty years,as our sociees have become more and more andmore indebted and controlled by nancial interests,by a global elite, by the 1%, as Occupy famously said.

ian, a couple of months ago now, and he saidwe are absolutely in favour of tax jusce, peopleshould not be able to avoid paying the tax that theyare supposed to pay, but he said, in the same sen-tence, he also believed in aggressive tax compe -on where he wanted to have the lowest corporatetax rate of any country in the Western world to at-tract corporaons to come to our part of the world.That is a contradicon; you cant have aggressivetax compeon and also have tax jusce, becausetax jusce is actuallyabout progressive formsof taxaon, about wealthbeing taken from thosewho have done extremelywell from the globalcorporazaon projectand invested in parts ofsociety that have sueredas a result of it. Trying to

have those two things,trying to have your cakeand eat it is just rubbishand is one of the thingswe should be really callingthem out on.

It isnt enough just tosay corporaons shouldactually pay tax rates that they are supposed topay, if you also say that the tax rate should be 5%or something, they are at absolutely historical lowsand one of the key reasons that our society is sounbelievably unbalanced, so incredibly unstable.Most people over the last thirty years in the UnitedStates, and this probably applies to the UnitedKingdom as well, have seen their real share of theeconomy decline, their real wage rate decline. Theyhave either stayed the same or they have got worseo, thats for 80%. The top 20% have done verywell out of it and as you get further and furtheralong the curve to 1% and a fracon of 1% theyhave done extremely well out of this. Part of thestory behind that is of course tax, part of the storyis about the liberalizaon of trade, so you have got

to see both of those things as part of a big pictureof jusce. The decisions the G8 make in thosedirecons will in some sense make things worseand in another sense go no where near far enoughin terms of restoring liberty, equality and jusce toour economy.

Could you explain why the Jubilee Debt Campaignis required? Its the decision we came to as wellduring our me in Occupy Birmingham. It is a reallypowerful idea which has not really been aired suf-ciently.

The name jubilee comes from an ancient conceptwhich is actually dates back to ancient Mesopo-tamia, its in the Bible for example and refers toa period, a regular period, where debts would becancelled for the society. And the reason being,even three thousand years ago people realisedthat if you allow debts to go on simply accumulat -ing in society, geng bigger and bigger and bigger,you get to the stage where you have an incrediblyunequal and unhealthy society.

So for example in ancientMesopotamia what used tohappen was the farmer wouldget into debt because therewould be a drought, theircrops would fail, they wouldhave to sell parts of their land,things they used to work theirland, and animals and eventu-

ally their family themselvesinto slavery. Youd end up witha society that was absolutelycontrolled by a primive formof nance essenally, moneylenders. It would create ahighly unproducve, unequaland unstable society and debtwould be a way that power

could be exerted and greater exploitaon imposedon the majority of society. So the idea was thatperiodically debts should simply be cancelled, theywerent payable, it was very unjust to allow them toaccumulate.

So this was the concept we applied to the thirdworld debt crisis in the 1980s and 1990s and fora period in the 1970s aer massive bank lendingby our own high street banks, the United Statesbanks and Japanese banks lending money to Africaand Lan America over a decade and at the end ofthat decade as Regan came to power in the US andThatcher came to power in Britain, pung up inter-est rates massively and sparking a crisis. This is allabout protecng Western prots, ess enally, from

being eroded.

The by-product was sparking this crisis in the thirdworld. Mexico threatened to default in 1982 andthe banks went into panic and said what are we go -ing to do about this as the whole of Lan Americacould go bankrupt. The Internaonal MonetaryFund was told to step in by the Western powersthat created it and say, dont worry Mexico we cangive you loans so you can repay these banks butthe loans arent free they come with economiccondions. The economic condions became theeconomic doctrine of our me, they became the

We have seenan example overthe last thirtyyears in what'scalled the

globalizationproject, whichis essentiallya project

for corporatepower


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tax


p

age 8

One of the things that was really good about

this was the aenon on o-shore tax havens,

and seeing that the corporates where reallytrying to deny it, and using the idea that they

have to pay to distribute IP rights, that theyare paying all of their tax and so there is no

real problem at all, is this just an accountancy

sleight of hand?

I think it is a much much deeper issue. Whenyou look at the polical scene it doesnt take

governments really long, for example, to clamp

down on unemployment benets, disabilitybenets, all sorts of social security rights, but

the UK government says By God! But we cant

do anything about the secrecy of the UK tax

havens, which we call crown dependencies

and overseas territories, such places like Jersey,

Tax was one of the three Ts that David

Cameron made a priority at the G8 along withtrade and transparency, how did you see it

then?

I think there was more rhetoric than substance

when you look at the communiqu it doesntreally commit any of the G8 countries to

anything concrete. But the good thing is at

least aer a lot of public pressure that tax

has appeared on the agenda, on the polical

agenda so it is a people driven campaign

it is not something that has been led by

government or corporaons or the accountancyrms it is a people driven topic. But they have

not commied themselves to anything they

are all sorts of ways, promises, words, but notreally anything denite at all, and that is really

disappoinng.

Professor Prem Sikk

Prem lectures on Accounting inthe Essex Business School. Hisresearch specialisms includeglobalisation, governance,regulation, tax havens,insolvency and business ethics.

This mafia does not shootpeople, but its activities are

just as deadly. They deprivemillions of jobs, education,savings, pensions, security,food, healthcare, clean waterand social infrastructurenecessary for living fulfillinglives - Pinstripe Mafia


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p

age 10

Cayman are just some examples. So it is hard

to believe that they cant do anything, but

underneath it is a certain kind of, some peoplewould say its polical impedance, Id say there

has been a quiet revoluon.

The quiet revoluon has been that

corporaons have penetrated the statevery very deeply and corporate agendas

now masquerade as naonal interest, andcorporate agendas are basically considered to

be central to all polical party issues. There is

absolutely no reason this government shouldnot be listening to people; for example they

could argue that all corporate tax returnsbe made publicly available so we can all see

what tax they pay and how they manage their

indulgences; whether they entered into any

Goldman Sachs type of sweetheart deals withthe tax authories, but they wont let us see

that.

We would like to see each mulnaonalcorporaon produce an annual document

showing the sales they have in each country,the prots they have, the employees they

have, the taxes they pay. That would enable

us to see at a glance for somebody like

Microso its high revenues in Northern

Ireland, with relavely few sta that

could not be undertaking the technical

developments and doing many other

things. But again the UK government

in parcular has been opposed to

these things and in many ways it is

interesng that the agenda of thisthing Ive just described which is called

country-by-country reporng is now

driven by the European Union.

But we need much, much biggerreforms. The UK could start, for

example, by invesgang the tax

avoidance industry. So MargaretHodges Public Accounts Commiee

has set the scene by taking on some

of the mulnaonals and also the bigaccounng rms, but that has not

been followed by any invesgaonby the Treasury, any invesgaon

by the Department of Jusce and in

contrast when we look at the US we see that

there is some concern and we see recently the

Department of Jusce ne Ernst & Young $123

million for wrong doing and the issues of tax

avoidance and tax evasion. KPMG paid $456million ne UBS, Deutsch Bank have paid nes,

which is a beginning but we dont even have

that in the UK. A much bigger problem is thecorporate capture of the state.

It is noceable that the Big 4 accountancy

rms, and the revolving door policy that they

seem to have with HMRC, being their advisersand then going back and then advising their

clients about ways to avoid the taxes they havebeen advising on. Is this common across other

countries or is this something unique to the

UK?

The global tax avoidance industry is madeup of three professions which is lawyers,

accountants and bankers. Depending on the

histories of each place one of those arms isdominant, but accountancy rms are generally

dominant throughout the world. I was recentlyin France where they argued that perhaps

banks are more dominant than accountancy

rms, and that accountancy rms are working

with the banks there, but nevertheless

accountancy rms are key players, and thereal problem is that they are related and

interrelated.

In the UK recently the HMRC has challenged

the tax avoidance schemes and ruled that

some of these schemes to be unlawful but you

know aer that you cant nd a single instance

where the Treasury has said, OK now we willinvesgate this, where this rm has a scheme

which is unlawful, where it has been operangillegally they have never sought to recover

any costs, or ghng the ligaon, there have

been no nes, so there is very lile comebackon accountancy rms in this country. What

you nd is that they provide jobs for potenal

ministers, jobs for former ministers, jobs forformer civil servants, for example who they

have partnered, recently a member of HMRCjoined Deloie, a big accountancy rm that

advisedVodaphone,

they had

about yodd meengs

with the head

of Deloies to

agree to their

tax liabilies,

which turned

out to be

considerably

lower than

what many

people had

thought.

These accountancy rms also fund the polical

pares so there is a very close and that really

needs looking at, but at the moment thereisnt any sign that even the Public Accounts

Commiee will even look at it.

Since the last General Elecon, so far, the last

me I looked at The Electoral Commissionwebsite I think they had provided about

3.5 million to the Conservave Party alone,they provide not only money but also what

they call free advice, which means it is not

free because they are obviously pushing a

parcular agenda, so nothing comes free. Thave lubricated, Labour and Conservaves

they hedge their bets and whoever the

think is going to win they back. In the US, ithe last presidenal elecon they contribu

equal amounts to the Republicans and theDemocrats because there was some doubt

their minds as to whether Obama would w

So they hedged their bets.

How much money are we actually talking

about here? How much does the Tax Jusc

Network think is missing from the global

economy?

The global economy is dicult because som

countries dont actually, or or not in a posito produce such data, especially poorer

countries, but the ocial press release frothe European Union is that about one trillio

Euros, that is about

billion is lost each yea

due to tax avoidance

tax evasion. In the UKhave something calle

Tax Gap which has tcomponents: that is

tax avoided which is

shady area, tax evade which is denitely

unlawful, and arrearsup anything from 35

billion a year to a 15

billion, depending on

economic models you

use.

Some years ago the Sunday Times got hold

some cabinet papers and they suggested thanything up to a 150 billion per year was

through tax avoidance and evasion. So we looking at extremely large amounts capabl

very big dierence to quality of life, qualityeconomy for the life that future generaon

can have.

They havelubricated, Labourand Conservatives they hedge theirbets and whoeverthey think is goingto win, they back.


7/13

is a network and the G8 is kind of the AGM of the

network. The idea that they are going to basically

recognise that theres some fundamental problems,you know if we look at the way they responded to the

economic sort of cock-up of the last ve years, they

will do what ever it takes to preserve the status quo,however stupid, however much you are storing up

problems for the future.

So one thats not the place to do it. The point where

the G8 ceases to become a meaningful funcon

is where if its on the agenda that if we dont do

something they are going to storm the gates. It feels a

long way from that to me.

The other aspect to me, as much as Im obviouslycompletely in favour of as much polical and social

democracy as is

possible, I just

dont think

its enough.

Im a massive

believer in

economic

democracy.

Its why Ilove the

cooperavemovement,

its why I

want as many

people to

work in and

shop with

and consume

through and

conduct their economic life through coopera

enterprises because its so limited to say that wcan only have a slightly; lets put it another wa

completely cool with the idea that my actual ininto the decision making structure of the soci

live in or the world I live in might be quite sma

just a small part in a massive decision making thats absolutely cool, thats a problem of scale

nobody has got round to solving yet. What I wosay though is that it only becomes an urgent p

if thats the sum total of what your engagemen

democracy actually is.

Its not as much of a problem if its supplemenby more parcipave and vital parcipaon in

democrac lives in the way you spend twenty

hours, seven days a week, not just in the big st

Im a writer, researcher and co-operave

business consultant. From 2000-2011,

I worked for Supporters Direct helpingfootball fans take over football clubs herein the UK and beyond. Im now advising a

variety of co-operaves on raising capital

and being beer at being democrac. Ilove co-operaves because they get past

the ludicrous noon that democracy is forrepresentave polics and nowhere else,

and is constantly looking for ways which

allow as many people as want to play as

great a role in their democracy as pos

without needing to give up swathes o

life, me or energy. I previously wantlearn German in order to be understa

beer how great German football wa

but now the main reasons is to be abl

to hang out in pirate party forums to whats happening in liquid democracy

I tweet as @theboyler) and blog less

frequently than Id like at daveboyle.n

Dave Boy


p

age 12

With the G8 theme of Open Democracy

being high on the agenda what do you

consider is either missing from the

debate or what do you think could be

added to the debate making it more

about opening up democracy?

There are two things which are missing.

The me in my life where I had a

degree of hope that the soluons tohe worlds problems could be found by

hose that are currently in power hasong since passed. Whilst some may call

hat a certain degree of cynicism I call

t not wasng your me in the wrongplace in trying to achieve change. So

he very idea that a bunch of peoplewhose posion enrely depends upon a

malfunconing democracy would have

ome kind of Damascus conversion andecognise that theyve got it all wrong

all these years and they have to make

ome kind of amends isnt really born

out in human history. Certainly not in

he human history of how power isexercised, and Im not talking about the

ndividuals concerned Im talking abouthe power structure.

As Enoch Powell said, its not oenone quotes Enoch Powell but he made

a good point of how you have to looknot where the plugs were but where

he electricity was. That is to say what

are the circuits of power, and so there

oPEN Socie ties


8/13


p

age 14

e very top of society, but in your work place, in

e way in which you meet your economic, cultural

nd social needs. If you are doing democracyverywhere you look then the fact that we

ight not think its the most engaging way to be

emocrac in terms of representave polics,

dont think its as much of an issue. Its sll a

oblem but its a systemic problem when thats weve got. What weve got is a bit crap. If its a

t crap and its nowhere near as good as a vibrantemocracy in which I engage my fellow workers

om Monday to Friday, then its a lile bit more

anageable and a lile less of a problem andso if people ex their democrac muscles in a

uch more important and a closer to home focusen I think thats the building blocks for a beer

emocracy at the top.

ather than saying how can we reform this thing

the top, to do it without reforming this thing ate boom, which we spend 85 to 95% conscious

es thinking about or worrying about is completely

issing the point.

noce one of the things that David Cameron isying to do is re conceptualise what mutualism

and that includes mutual sociees only have

have 25% worker ownership and the rest cane private sector, and this is parcularly seen in

e NHS contracng. Real cooperaves of healthrvice provision would make a startling dierence

nd take away some of the layers of bureaucracy to

arket the services.

would agree, though my slight caveat to that isat a genuine cooperave as shown by recent

story, by recent I mean as a good cooperatorwo hundred years, it suggests that the crical

ing is about economic power. There has to be a

laonship between the user or worker and thewnership of the enty.

he thing that worries me about mutuality in public

rvices is that it fundamentally transforms the

ature of the Welfare State weve had, certainlythe UK, for the last sixty years. Im not saying

ats a thing we should never do. I can imagineany many dierent ways in which we could

ovide a social safety net for the poorest, weakest

nd most vulnerable in our sociees, which dont

involve a Fabian style bureaucracy manage

of Whitehall. But when thats the Welfare S

youve got and when people advocang sochange where the very people who never w

that thing in the rst place, alarm bells starring. That reform is possible and the last pe

I would trust are the current government,

second lot of people I would not trust are tprevious government. So it presents us wit

small problem.

There are great misgivings within the mutu

and cooperave sectors about how we appto be the uy end of the privazaon age

Certainly thats one of the big reputaonalits taken us thirty years to shrug o the pr

of the Benn era cooperaves of the 1970s

Meridien Motorcycles and so on. Which kincemented in the public mind that coopera

meant crap business about to fail and go band weve just managed to get through tha

think and to have another mistaken percep

about what cooperaves are would be as g

as it would be f undamentally damaging to

wider polical and economic project that w

engaged in.

Just because the way the government aresupporng cooperaves or invoking them

problemac I do think there are people in around the current government who have

thorough going appreciaon of their virtue

just they are no where near where the achappening within the departments that ar

pushing the agenda on this. Id like to beliesomebody like a Jesse Norman for example

in the cabinet oce instead of Francis Mau

I think there would be subtly dierent waywhich this agenda would be playing out.

That said as you talk on in your queson m

I think theres a awful lot to be said for mawhatever service the public receive more

responsive to both the public who receive

and helping them shape it and also gengrid of layers of management who have bee

imported into the public sector; whose joblife appears to be to e up as much resourc

away from the front-line delivery as huma

possible and make it a demovated


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p

age 16

decisions could be a killer, in any organisaon, be it

a voluntary campaigning organisaon or a business

which peoples livelihoods depend upon. Even theweaknesses, such as they are ascribed, are strengths.

Whats really interesng is that in terms of how they

are governed there really is a thousand owers ofbloom. Youve got very at structures, for example

they are not a cooperave but Valve Design, thesoware company in the US, are an incredibly at

structure where the boss has found a way to be less

exploitave directly in order to reap more surplusvalue from the workers. There are four hundred

people there that are essenally a self managedcollecve.

Youve got companies like Suma Whole-foods here in

the UK who are radical and democrac and people

are employed, they are elected into membershipand voted out of membership because they consider

that it is axiomac that the fundamental right of any

worker is to choose who they spend eight hours aday with and thats not the job of the manager, its

the job of the person working on the shop oor. Theydont have managers, they have rotang funcons

so that everybody gets to drive the fork-li truck andeverybody gets to clean the loos as well as geng

some me thinking about the wider nancial picture

of the business.

People said Suma couldnt work when it started with

nd dis-empowering workplace. I get the sense

at you are touching on things like the Sandwell

ommunity Care and Sunderland Care homes, as

xamples where you give people control over theirorking lives they tend to come to work on me,

e absenteeism goes down, so the user gets greatre by the people who understand the job and are

ovated and the business doesnt spend an awful

mount on basic supply care, its a win win all round.hat kind of mutualisaon I would love to see so much

ore of. But we are not driving the bus on this one

nfortunately.

or those people who havent been fortunate enough

actually work in a cooperave, could you say

mething about the dierences you have seen duethe governance; once you have opened up the

overnance directly to workers, my own experiencethat not only does it transform the individual but it

so transforms the way that the company relates to

s customers or client base and wider society.

bsolutely. There is a calumny against cooperaves

hich is the same calumny against democracy which

we are basically too stupid to be able to make

ese things work and so we shouldnt trouble our

ey lile heads with the ner details of strategy

nd bookkeeping and so on. What you nd withvery worker-cooperator Ive ever met is that it is

fundamentally transformave experience and it

anges their world view.

ou never go back. It is like the red pill in the Matrix,nce youve gone into a worker-cooperave the idea

going to work for somebody who doesnt respect

ou and for whom you have no say over the direcon

your working life just feels a bit like saying should

e go back to autocrac Monarchy then because thispresentave shit is not working out.

is something which is liberang. It liberates humanotenal, thats why worker-cooperaves have a

uch stronger resilience. 98% of cooperaves arell trading three years aer they started as opposed

60% of non-cooperave businesses. Again one of

e calumnys is if you work for a company thats runy the workers it will just take all of the prots, and

hat actually happens is that they tend to leave morethe prots in the business because they are much

ore risk adverse about their own lives.

I used to work, for example, with football fans andhelp them take over their football clubs and it was

always said in a libellous calumny that if fans took

over clubs theyd want to spend all the money onsigning the best players. Actually they want the club

to exist in ve years me for their children and iny years me for their grandchildren, and will be far

more conservave in their strategising in what the

business should do.

The same thing is true in worker-cooperaves, so theyare not un-innovave its just they tend to take more

views in. One of the best examples Ive seen recently

where you really deploy that advantage to the benetof the business. Now the magazine Ethical Consumer

which Im sure a lot of people who will be watchingthis are familiar with is a worker-cooperave. When

they were considering how should they respond to

the challenge of interwebs as a print-based magazine.Instead of being one of those alternaves where the

people who had the right to make that decision wherepeople who had spent thirty years being very good

in a completely dierent world before the Internet,

they were able to bring to the table digital naveswho had been using the Internet since they rst went

to primary school, and those people were round theboard room table aged twenty four helping shape

what that business should do. Whereas those people

would sll be making tea if they were in a non worker-cooperave environment.

Worker-cooperaves, like any democrac structurethat has been genuinely consensus striving, will take

longer to make decisions but will tend to make beer

decisions as a result and will tend to have decisionswhich sck and dont need to be revised. Instead

of having to constantly revise what you are doing,you take more me to make a considered view and

everybodys brought in and everybodys owning that

decision and everybody s commied to implemenngit, because the process has been the right one by

which its been achieved.

So worker-cooperaves and cooperaves in general

are not super-duper reacve but Im not at allconvinced that except for extreme cases, which

happen very rarely, thats actually a problem. Themes where having to make quick d ecisions which

could really damage you tend to be outweighed by a

hundred fold where not taking the me to make good

the last peopleI would trustare the currentgovernment, thesecond lot ofpeople I would

not trust arethe previousgovernment


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When the government fears the people, there is liberty.When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

Radical Realities | Issue #1

20

to do it, you just do it yourself. Its about selfactualisaon, self organisaon, self help. This

is why, to some extent, there is a strand of

conservasm which nds lile to dispute in that.If you are a genuine Conservave who can see

as much of a problem with major corporaonsas with an overbearing state then you have to

think that cooperaves are bloody marvellous.

There are quite a few who do. Its just that theConservaves who genuinely believe their role

in life is to advocate a Conservave viewpointwhich is amicable to the modern instanaon of

nacialized capitalism seem to me to be, either

wilfully ignorant, in terms of what their role in lifeis and what they are being funded to be in oce,

alternavely genuine visionaries who need to besupported. Are they knaves or fools, I cant quite

work out?

One of the challenges the cooperave

movements got, and one of the reasons whyIm pleased to see cooperave ideas discussed

in a forum like you are organising is because the

cooperave movements Achilles heel in all of this

is when you get past a certain scale, especially

in community of consumer cooperaves, ourvision of how you do governance and democracy

is essenally based on the Charst vision of the1830s. A lot of the original cooperators where

Charsts who had given up that they could

ever persuade the state to give them equalitywithin a democrac framework. So they created

a democrac framework in which they hadequality, called the Rochdale Pioneers Society.

To that extent they created what they had been

denied in Westminster but wanted to share in.

The cooperave movement hasnt really movedforward its decision making and governance

processes to take on board the fact that actuallythe Wetminsterised model has an awful lot

of problems with it. You do have the career

cadre class of elected representaves who cansomemes not be the most vibrant members

of the polity. The other aspect is because its

never really thought through anything other thantransplanng a Westminster democracy within

to an economic environment we are completelybehind the curve when it comes to things like

parcipave remote democracy and Open Sou

governance. Im parcularly keen on how, for

example, we can use things like Liquid Democrand Git Hub style of approaches to make powe

visible, and get past the problem of Jo Freema

The Tyranny of Structureless. She makes some

good points in that which have never really be

answered, but I think Open Source technologieoer a way in which we can see their power. T

powers always visible and therefore somebodcan have right now, because they are working

something ans we are all cool with that.

The cooperave movement, I think, needs to

rejuvenate itself to take advantage of the masscale of organisaon and parcipaon which

has been made possible. In so doing It will help

the cooperave movement grow and becomerelevant for a 21st Century and 22nd Century

audience. But also I think that the cooperavemovements knowledge of how to build

sustainable organisaons is something which h

a lot to oer, similarly to people who are lookito build longer term presences which challeng

the status quo in economic and polical life.

Where I think cooperaon helps the peoplewho are acve within the environments you a

dealing in, the crique is well made, laid out an

understood. The end point of where we would

all want to get to has been sketched out enoug

to set the direcon, its the geng there, anddoing so in a way that does not fragment, and

also paying the bills whilst youre also being an

acvist and the beauty of cooperaves is if youlook at things like the Radical Routes coopera

are showing ways in which you can be an acvagent of change, an agent of r adical change

and sll have a roof over your head. Its that

sort of geng past that, to build an alternavesociety without turning you back on the exisn

one we are in and going o to livte in the hillsor the dessert. Which even if it where actually

something which worked is, Ive always though

is a bit of a cop out. I think through cooperaoyou can pay the bills whilst you kill the man.


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radical realities issue 2

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