The Labour Party and post-neoliberalism

In recent months the UK Labour Party has been reviewing its policy approach and putting some flesh on the bones of what a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn and current shadow chancellor John McDonnell might hope to achieve. Central to their approach has been a renewed interest on the perils of market failure and what can be done about it. An alternative vision has emerged that focuses on prospects for a more cooperative and democratic economy constructed around a limited programme of (re)nationalisation and a National Investment Bank. In the process, two major reports have been produced as discussion documents. The first, Alternative Models of Ownership (herein referred to as AMO) discusses market failures and proposes a new type of economy based on co-ops, and a high-tech networked society encapsulating what McDonnell has referred to as “socialism with an iPad”.1 The second report, Financing Investment (FI), examines the nature of the UK economy, with an array of policy proposals designed to boost the economy through investment in order to encourage productivity growth.2 Both reports are contextualised by academic contributions to the debate and discourse in which concepts such as “post-neoliberalism” or “alternative economic models” have emerged as political projects coveted by sections of the left. These theoretical contributions construct an alternative vision of society based on cooperative sharing, benevolent capital and state-facilitated investment as a successor to the neoliberal phase of capitalism. The purpose of this article is to explore this brand of socialist ideal and to offer a critique in the classical Marxist, revolutionary tradition.

The published article is included in the Middlesex University Research Repository with permission of International Socialism.