Barry Winter examines how capitalism went from boom to bust and where it leaves us

Introduction
I begin this introduction with what may seem like a diversion. I want to take us briefly back to the horrors of the First World War in which often enthusiastic, armies of young men across Europe were sent into battle by [...]

“There is a sense of uncertainty and flux, a feeling that we’re coming to the end of an era in politics. It’s one that we’ve never much liked, yet we know what’s coming could be so much worse.”
With those unsettling words David Connolly, chair of Independent Labour Publications, opened the ILP’s weekend seminar in Scarborough [...]

Steve Thompson traces the history of the co-operative movement and argues that this is a decisive moment in its renaissance.
There is an alternative to capitalism, it’s called the co-operative commonwealth. It’s a way of living and trading with business which is run democratically for the benefit of the members and communities who use the services. [...]

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Crunch Times: Politics And The Crisis
 
“You can only be flabbergasted … at how Labour kowtowed to wealth,
glorified the City and put all the nation’s economic eggs into one
dangerous basket.”
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian
 
ILP Round Table Seminar 
Esplanade Hotel, Scarborough 
13th-14th June 2009
Saturday   13th June   2.00 pm start
Sunday     14th June   9.30 am start
 
Session 1: From boom to bust
• How did [...]

 
Crunch Times: Politics And The Crisis
 
ILP Round Table Seminar 
Esplanade Hotel, Scarborough 
13th-14th June 2009
Saturday   13th June   2.00 – 5.00pm
Sunday     14th June   9.30am – 12.30pm
 
Session 1: The economic crisis
• What just happened? 
• What does it tell us about capitalism?
Session 2: The mess we’re in
• What kind of world are we left with?
• What are the social, economic, [...]

SARAH BRACKING unpicks the liberal agenda behind Live8 and the G8 summit.
The majority of the people attending Live8, and the demonstrations surrounding the G8, wanted no more nor less than to reduce poverty. But helping poor people in other countries raises problems, particularly when the language of benevolence doesn’t explain the structural issues involved.
What emerged [...]

JONATHAN TIMBERS appreciates a useful contribution to the left’s developing approach to the pensions debate
Anyone who believes that we can continue to exist as we do now with our current pension system is living in a dream world. In 2002, there were 3.35 working people for every person of pensionable age. By 2050 the ratio [...]

DEXTER WHITFIELD argues that by marketising our public services Labour is eroding democratic accountability
The Labour government has launched a series of ‘reforms’, which place a new emphasis on market-based modernisation of public services. Democratic accountability and transparency will be further eroded. Although there is euphoria for ‘citizen engagement’ this is participation limited to the empowerment [...]

WILLIAM BROWN sifts through the remains of an e-commerce party that never was, and warns that the ill-winds of an economic downturn could soon be blowing across the Atlantic.
Maybe it was the end-of-the-century party mood, or a kind of millennium bug which affected economic forecasters, but the 1990s were awash with optimistic economic pronouncements. ‘New [...]

The New Economics Foundation is influencing the government’s agenda with its ideas for democratising the public sector. MATTHEW BROWN spoke to NEF’s executive director, Ed Mayo.
Last year an “independent think tank”, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), published a small pocket book called The Mutual State: How local communities can run public services, which argued that [...]