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#Socialeconomy - the best ideas from the left and right

The amalgam of Margaret Thatcher with Che Guevara, is part of a new poster campaign to persuade politicians to support the social economy as we move toward a general election next year. It will certainly start some of them thinking , we hope.

it was something we'd tried to do in a less prominent way when we called on New Labour in 2004, saying:

Traditional capitalism is an insufficient economic model allowing monetary outcomes as the bottom line with little regard to social needs. Bottom line must be taken one step further by at least some companies, past profit, to people. How profits are used is equally as important as creation of profits. Where profits can be brought to bear by willing individuals and companies to social benefit, so much the better. Moreover, this activity must be recognized and supported at government policy level as a badly needed, essential, and entirely legitimate enterprise activity.

By "past profit, to people" what we mean is challenging the assumption of shareholder primacy, that the only responsibility of business was to return a profit to shareholders. It began with the question - What is the purpose of business and economics.

An inclusive economy serving people and their needs was the conclusion

It is only when wealth begins to concentrate in the hands of a relative few at the expense of billions of others who are denied even a small share of finite wealth that trouble starts and physical, human suffering begins. It does not have to be this way. Massive greed and consequent massive human misery and suffering do not have to be accepted as a givens, unavoidable, intractable, irresolvable. Just changing the way business is done, if only by a few companies, can change the flow of wealth, ease and eliminate poverty, and leave us all with something better to worry about. Basic human needs such as food and shelter are fundamental human rights; there are more than enough resources available to go around--if we can just figure out how to share. It cannot be "Me first, mine first"; rather, "Me, too" is more the order of the day.

Ten years on, and there's a thriving conference culture on business with purpose. It wasn't the polticians who took it up.

"Capitalism should exist for the good of the people" says the Green Party to the suggestion from the right that we need a responsible capitalism. 

What about the planet?, I hear them howl. Well that's the point of Economics for Ecology.  

 Possibly this has escaped immediate attention in Ukraine, but, economists in the US as of the end of 2008 openly confessed that they do not know what to do.  So, we invented three trillion dollars, lent it to ourselves, and are trying to salvage a broken system so far by reestablishing the broken system with imaginary money.

Now there are, honestly, no answers.  It is all just guesswork, and not more than that.  What is not guesswork is that the broken – again – capitalist system, be it traditional economics theories in the West or hybrid communism/capitalism in China, is sitting in a world where the existence of human beings is at grave risk, and it's no longer alarmist to say so.

The question at hand is what to do next, and how to do it.  We all get to invent whatever new economics system that comes next, because we must.

The social economy isn't taking ideas from left and right, it's the other way around.

Take the example of Ed Miliband who has become a disciple of something called pre-distribution. Business which embraces living wages and other social benefit in addition to supporting re-distribution through the tax system. This is what was introduced to his party by an activist and practitioner. Ed Milband could support the practitioners , but he won't.

Then there's David Cameron with his advocacy for inpact investment He's telling us it can help place children in loving homes. it came from social business to be "twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools"

Talkin' 'bout a Revolution

While the vast majority of people in poverty suffer quietly and with little protest, it is not safe to assume that everyone will react the same way. When in defence of family and friends, it is completely predictable that it should be only a matter of time until uprisings become sufficient to imperil an entire nation or region of the world. People with nothing have nothing to lose. Poverty was therefore deemed not only a moral catastrophe but also a time bomb waiting to explode.

A few month's after writing that we'd found ourselves in the middle of one. The neoliberal intentions of the US were clear to see and with 'Really Betraying a Revolution', social enterprise called them out on it    

Then we turned our attention on institutionalised children and those exploiting them for profit. The influence on government would lead to an increase in domestic adoptions. Every child deserves a loving family we had argued.

Back at home betraying a revolution was Tony Blair, the man who made social enterprise goverment policy and now very much a part of the neoliberal agenda and the cosy world of 'philanthropic' foundations.

Revolution is an easy word to say for an advertising agency. The real thing in less protected circumstances costs other people's lives.