@emmadavidson @timhollo Ah okay, my bad, I misread.
Scrolling down to near the end:
"Can you use government effectively to devolve power into the streets and suburbs? How does it work, to use a system designed to centralise and control both physical spaces and decision-making spaces, to decentralise and give up control?"
I've got a few ideas on this one.
I've noticed that often what happens is a progressive governments successfully implement a reform to improve social equity. Then a future regressive government will reverse it.
A progressive government will provide ongoing funding arts or legal aid organisations, and the next right wing government will cut it.
Or a progressive government will build public housing, and the next right wing government will sell it off.
So that's a challenge.
And a potential way around it might be to provide more large once-off lump sum grants to non-profits. Or establishing trusts and foundations that are jointly owned by a number of community groups that can provide ongoing funding.
So instead of building a billion dollars of public housing, a progressive government provides a billion dollars of funding to tenant-owned housing co-ops to build or buy more housing.
Or a progressive government might grant $1 billion to a fund made up of 40 legal aid non-profits. That money is invested, and each year 4% of the funds (that's $40 million, or $1 million each for 40 non-profits) get distributed as community grants.
A progressive government might buy or build buildings (think office space, theatres, Gallery space) and then grant that out to non-profits.
Or buy large farms and grant them out to Aboriginal Land Councils.
Getting a bit more radical, with the right legislation, there's nothing to prevent a government setting up an organisation and then spinning it out as a member-owned nonprofit.
And there's nothing to prevent a government from buying or starting a for-profit business, and then spinning it out as a worker-owned cooperative. Or a member-owned social enterprise.
Imagine a grantmaking trust spin-out with a billion dollar investment fund that grants $1 million to 40 new worker co-ops or social enterprises each year.
The end result, after a couple of terms of progressive government, would be a far stronger and financially self-sustaining community sector. Far more workers in member-owned or worker-owned organisations.
It would be a lot more challenging for a future regressive government to put the genie back into the bottle.
A few other ideas I have would be to use the time in government to break up regressive centres of power.
Perhaps it's time to break up Coles and Woolies?
Or to do a Royal Commission into things like foreign interference in politics through business lobby groups?
Or take the artificial restraints off the trade union movement and allow strikes between bargaining periods?
Discussion
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You'll have to change your name to Zemma 🙂
Interesting read, I hope break throughs overseas will help here as well
@emmadavidson @timhollo the problem with the "devolve power to the community" approach is what happens to those of us who are queer, trans, and/or disabled when the empowered community decides they don't want queer, trans, or disabled in it? Or the community decides that everyone has to be a member of one particular church/mosque in order be treated as a neighbor?
The anarchists response to this one is, "just move to a different community," but that handwaves so many things.
I think we need a state as a guarantor of rights and as a defense against concentration of wealth.
@timhollo @emmadavidson Thought-provoking article from Tim as usual, thanks for sharing.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the mainstream left in the US and the Commonwealth countries has been really reluctant to talk about class.
And I think that's a huge mistake.
If most of your living is earned by working for a wage, you are inherently disadvantaged when compared with someone who lives off the return on their investments.
I think we need to talk more about the working class.
I think we need to be better at articulate that our big issue isn't with people saying bad things. That's a symptom, not the disease.
Our big issue is that the game is rigged.
It's rigged in favour of the few that control a disproportionate share of the world's wealth.
I think also that we need to be clearer that divide and rule is the favourite game of the billionaires and their pet politicians.
Call it solidarity. Call it intersectionality.
If you're only an environmentalist, or only a feminist, or only whatever, then the bosses will pit you against other working people.
We need solidarity.
A lot of the above is very old school.
And it worked.
One point I disagree with Tim on is this:
"But I think there's another key difference between left and right populism - one that presents a huge problem to the left and goes to the core of my question. Right wing populism is internally consistent, while left wing has a contradiction at its heart.
"The right needs the chaos. They want to prove the failure of the system and build (willing or cynical) acceptance of authoritarian rule.
"Left wing populism, on the other hand, needs to deliver on its promises. While saying the system is broken, it needs the system to be made to work for us."
Left-wing reformism does.
Left-wing radicalism doesn't.
So let's be radical. Let's talk about alternatives. Let's build new institutions and movements.
Let's stop trying to repair the bosses' rigged game.
Let's build cooperatives and member-owned organisations and trade unions and collectives.
You want to reform the system?
A militant, organised, unionised working class on the verge of seizing the means of production will bring the bosses to the bargaining table.
You want to stop the 1% from causing chaos and disrupting the status quo to implement radical right wing changes?
Create the risk that the left will use the confusion and chaos to seize power and radically change the status quo in ways they won't like.
If a potential outcome of chaos is that the big four banks become the big four member-owned credit unions, we'll see how much they still like disruption.
If a potential outcome of chaos is that workers seize control of mines, let's see if Gina and Clive still like chaos.
For this all to work, we need to build and strengthen alternative power structures.
The right has done it very successfully. We need to do it too.
#auspol
@emmadavidson @aj as horrible as this era is, it's heart-warming to see anarchist seeds taking root, all over world, in the ruins.
It's just a pity that it's these times to motivate us.
Beautiful writing again @timhollo - is a sequel brewing? I gave all my copies away to young activists in the region. I've been told they're getting passed around 😃
@aj @emmadavidson that left wing radicalism is exactly what im arguing for. My critique is aimed at the left wing populist reformism the article is about, but I get to exactly those proposals you outline at the end.
@emmadavidson @timhollo Ah okay, my bad, I misread.
Scrolling down to near the end:
"Can you use government effectively to devolve power into the streets and suburbs? How does it work, to use a system designed to centralise and control both physical spaces and decision-making spaces, to decentralise and give up control?"
I've got a few ideas on this one.
I've noticed that often what happens is a progressive governments successfully implement a reform to improve social equity. Then a future regressive government will reverse it.
A progressive government will provide ongoing funding arts or legal aid organisations, and the next right wing government will cut it.
Or a progressive government will build public housing, and the next right wing government will sell it off.
So that's a challenge.
And a potential way around it might be to provide more large once-off lump sum grants to non-profits. Or establishing trusts and foundations that are jointly owned by a number of community groups that can provide ongoing funding.
So instead of building a billion dollars of public housing, a progressive government provides a billion dollars of funding to tenant-owned housing co-ops to build or buy more housing.
Or a progressive government might grant $1 billion to a fund made up of 40 legal aid non-profits. That money is invested, and each year 4% of the funds (that's $40 million, or $1 million each for 40 non-profits) get distributed as community grants.
A progressive government might buy or build buildings (think office space, theatres, Gallery space) and then grant that out to non-profits.
Or buy large farms and grant them out to Aboriginal Land Councils.
Getting a bit more radical, with the right legislation, there's nothing to prevent a government setting up an organisation and then spinning it out as a member-owned nonprofit.
And there's nothing to prevent a government from buying or starting a for-profit business, and then spinning it out as a worker-owned cooperative. Or a member-owned social enterprise.
Imagine a grantmaking trust spin-out with a billion dollar investment fund that grants $1 million to 40 new worker co-ops or social enterprises each year.
The end result, after a couple of terms of progressive government, would be a far stronger and financially self-sustaining community sector. Far more workers in member-owned or worker-owned organisations.
It would be a lot more challenging for a future regressive government to put the genie back into the bottle.
A few other ideas I have would be to use the time in government to break up regressive centres of power.
Perhaps it's time to break up Coles and Woolies?
Or to do a Royal Commission into things like foreign interference in politics through business lobby groups?
Or take the artificial restraints off the trade union movement and allow strikes between bargaining periods?
@aj @timhollo some of those are current Greens policies. Others are similar to things Greens Ministers have tried to do, but were blocked by Labor in achieving. But the good news is that we can do some of those things without government, and that’s what I’m working on now. Change doesn’t have to come from a singular leader, it can come from consensus in a collective. It doesn’t have to be backed by hard power, it can be grounded in shared values.
I got asked at #EO2026 about how we continue to make progress when a change in leadership can undo it all. My answer is about making integrity a criteria for leadership, and decentralising decision-making. In this video from 30:30
@timhollo @emmadavidson Admittedly, a lot of my ideas are borrowed either from The Greens or stuff that Friends of the Earth in Melbourne are doing (yay food co-ops and power co-ops) 😁
I completely agree that integrity and openness in leadership is essential.
I especially love your point about non-profits with codes of conduct running open source software. The world would be a much better place if our critical online systems were open source projects run by non-profits, rather than corporate big tech!
And I totally agree concentrated decision-making is generally a really bad idea. The one trait all of my worst bosses have had in common is they're micromanagers who don't consult, and it's not a coincidence.
In almost any organisation, you ask the front line staff what's wrong with the organisation and they'll know. Often more so than the senior managers.
Especially in left political circles (especially on the green or anarchist left) I've noticed there tends to be a lot of discussion around flat versus hierarchical decision-making structures. Or around consensus versus command.
The part that often gets left out is delegation. It's saying that within certain parameters, you as an employee (or a team member) get to own and make decisions about her or his own work.
One really effective model I've seen in practice where there's decentralised, accountable decision-making is where there's parallel top-down and bottom-up structures working in parallel.
And the classic example is a heavily unionised workplace, with an engaged workforce.
You have the top-down board to executive to management to worker structure. In parallel, there's the bottom-up worker to delegate to organiser to union structure.
And I've noticed that often in our society people focus on bad bosses on a personal level. Like it's an individual moral fault. But bad bosses are always enabled by bad structures.
