The following is an annotated transcript of the event above where Simon Hannah discusses his book and general thinking on economic planning with Laurence Jones-Williams; headings have been introduced to highlight themes and annotations are found in the grey boxes which hold learning resources:

 

Overview of the Event

Laurence Jones-Williams: So I’m Laurence Jones-Williams, I’m the Executive Director of Rethinking Economics International. We are an international membership body for young economists and anyone interested in changing lives. I’m kind of stunned by how beautiful this room is, actually. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed it, but I think quite… yeah, lucky to be sitting in here.

 

 

 

 

Introduction to Simon Hannah and His Work

So we’ve got about an hour, an hour and a half, to talk about Simon Hannah’s book. Simon Hannah is a writer, activist, and trade unionist living in South London. He’s written several books, including ‘A Party with Socialists in It: History of the Labour Left’, which was The Guardian Book of the Day, and today’s book, ‘Reclaiming the Future’.

 

 

 

What Inspired You to Write This Book?

Simon Hannah: Thanks for that amazingly open-ended first question. Allow me to say anything! yeah, thanks everyone for coming tonight. It’s really nice, that you’re interested in this topic and want to take part in a discussion around it. The idea of reclaiming the future. So my other books… so I did a book on the poll tax. I’ve done a book on Lambeth, where I work, which is a bar in South London in the 1980s, which is quite a radical place.

 

So I’ve done lots of social history and history from below books. But for this one, I wanted to write one which is a bit more about trying to imagine a world beyond capitalism. And so it starts from the idea that capitalism is not like some natural, inevitable, eternal way of organizing our society. It’s what we have at the moment. It’s been around for about 200 or so years, you know, give or take. But it is, it’s not something that is permanent and enduring. And indeed, in the context of the climate crisis, it can’t be permanent and enduring.

 

 

The Concept of Late-Stage Capitalism

I like to think about the idea of late-stage capitalism, where capitalism is so productive and so dynamic and so efficient at some aspects of the economy, it’s just absolutely destroying the planet. And we have to question how much longer we think capitalism can survive in the current system in terms of planetary boundaries, in terms of what the planet’s going to look like in 20 years’ time, 50 years’ time, 100 years’ time. Do we really imagine that all this is going to be the way it is now with the current level of productivity and consumption and growth and so on?

 

 

 

 

Imagining a Different Society

So the book is really about imagining a different way of organizing society. It’s not a model of how to organize that different society as such; it’s more about kind of the principles of how we can move beyond market economics, the kind of anarchy of production and waste and constant exploitation and social hierarchies.

 

We’re always competing with each other, and you know, people between different nations, men and women, different ethnic groups, and we’re divided, and like we’re fighting over sort of the means of living whilst billionaires like Elon Musk and so on just live unimaginable wealthy lives. And so, yeah, so the book’s really rooted in that kind of political discussion.

 

 

What is Capitalist Realism?

It’s a challenge to the idea that—there was this writer a few years ago, Mark Fisher, who talked about this idea of capitalist realism. Like it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. And I guess the point of the book is that those two things are now kind of collapsing into a singularity. Like the end of the world is also, you know, sort of tied up with the destruction of capitalism. But can we go beyond that? Can we build a society which has the good life for everyone? So yeah, that’s the basis of the book.

 

 

How Do We Sunset Capitalism?

Laurence Jones-Williams: Great. And as you were speaking, I was noticing how much I like the cover and how it kind of sun… yeah. So on the one hand, if you look at it, it looks like the sun is setting, and then if you look at it the other way, the sun is rising. And I was wondering, maybe if you could give us a little bit of an entry to, how do we sunset capitalism, and how do we allow the sun to rise on post-capitalism?

 

Simon Hannah: Sunset to capitalism is great. That’s a great way of putting it. Yeah, when Pluto were designing the book, I said, “Stay away from lefty… no, I don’t want any sickles or, you know, pictures of Marx or anything like that.” Not that I’m like an iconoclast who says, you know, “Forget the past.” I think it’s really important that we look at previous attempts to get past capitalism and what was good and what was bad and why they didn’t work or, like, lessons. Like, I don’t think we should just completely reject what happened in the 20th century.

 

There were lots of attempts by millions of people to try and build post-capitalist societies that ultimately didn’t work. And obviously, from the capitalist point of view, they’re like, “Haha, prove it; it will never happen.” Obviously, the argument that I make in the book is, you know, there will be constant attempts to get across capitalism all the time. And some of them might be small scale, some of them might be large scale, some of them might be global. You know, it’s not like it’s a one-and-done deal. Like, you had your chance and that’s it. There’s always struggles and things emerging.

 

 

The Role of Social Movements

And so I guess for me, the book is also rooted in the actual struggles that people have, that we are compelled to have in order to exist under the present system. So there’s quite a few books about kind of post-capitalist economics where they just start from the idea that sort of we’ve already won, and then it’s just a question of how do we, you know, we have this planning committee and he’s talking to these, you know, it’s sort of… and I think there’s a lot of use in that.

 

I think it’s important to imagine how things might not just be run through pure market profit-driven economics. But I like—I have a whole chapter in the book about the kind of social movements that, you know, are being built and will continue to be built and the way that we can try and radicalize some of those ideas.

 

 

Housing as a Social Good

So I think housing is a really good example. You know, there’s constant issues with housing in this country and in countries all around the world. They have completely commodified, or nearly completely commodified housing. Okay, like, I obviously, as someone on the left, I start from the idea that housing is an essential part of what it is to be human.

 

You need somewhere to live. You know, and therefore if we see it as a right, something that should be understood—not as something that you buy so that you have more money when you sell it later—but as something that should be socially provided, that should be available to everyone.

And so it’s about all the struggles that are emerging around housing in this country and elsewhere and then the kind of politics that we can think about. It’s not just defensive politics about stopping evictions or stopping rent increases or, you know, stopping predatory behaviors by banks. It’s about trying to establish a clear politics that we can all have about how it could be organized differently, which does start from like an ideal of how it could be organized differently, which might at the moment sound ridiculous, like it just sounds too far-fetched, sort of. But if we can establish that ideal of, say, housing as a social good that we should all have access to, then I think that that’s an important way that we can begin to think about looking at sunsetting capitalism.

 

 

Widening the Political Horizon

Laurence Jones-Williams: And, like, I guess there’s a question there about like how do we establish that vision? And you talk about it in the book about how working people have often had a low political horizon. Staying on the same theme as the book cover, like how do we widen the political horizon or widen what’s possible?

 

Simon Hannah: Well yes, I mean, in the chapter in the book where I talk about this, I talk about how people are often propelled into action around like single-issue campaigns. I don’t mean single-issue campaigns in a negative or narrow way. People are, you know, your local, kind of water area where you like to go and walk on a Sunday, you like to go bird spotting, and it’s nice and calming and relaxing, and suddenly they’re going to build on it, they’re going to develop it. You know, and maybe they have to develop on it because there’s 30,000 people on the local waiting list.

 

 

The Conflicts Created by Capitalism

And so like capitalism constantly creates these things where the thing that you want to protect, like, conflicts directly with other human beings who are struggling. Like, there’s no housing, for instance. So if you want housing, where are you going to build it? You know, like, and there are all these arguments, but we don’t really have any power over any of that.

 

These things are decided either by kind of bureaucrats or sometimes elected politicians who are often… like the consciousness around these things and try and like link up struggles and link up ways of talking about it, which is why I think public forums are so important, where we can cut.

 

 

Local Government Struggles

So, in Lambeth, where I’m based at the moment, there’s 99 million pounds of cuts going through the council. So I work at the council’s work and housing department. It’s the biggest cut the council’s ever had, bigger than any of the cuts we’ve ever had on the tries. Okay? The Labour government is continuing a like an austerity agenda. And so obviously there’s issues the workers have. We’re fighting to defend our jobs. It’s going to be mass redundancies.

 

We’re fighting to defend local services that we provide for people. But rather than just having a kind of defensive struggle, stop this, halt that, you know, we’re organizing a campaign with the local community around the idea of building a better Lambeth. What would it look like to you to live in Lambeth or Manchester or anywhere if it was fully funded, if you had all of the money that you needed, all the resources you needed for your local areas? What would it look like to not have to just constantly be fighting over scarcity and division and, well, you get this, that means you don’t get this, and all the animosity and often hatred that can build up?

 

 

Thinking Critically about the Scarcity Mindset

And I think reform is growing because, you know, they’re winning the argument saying, “Well, asylum seekers and refugees are getting hotel rooms, and you can’t even get on the waiting list for the NHS.” You know, people have a very, you know, like scarcity mindset around it. So we’re trying to have a positive discussion as workers from the council, but also through our trade unions with local residents.

 

It’s not just about the cuts to the local services. What would it look like for you? Civil planning, the environment, like anti-racist politics? Obviously, Lambeth is a black borough, you know, with Brixton in it. And so it’s about trying to kind of develop that imagination around things so we’re not just stuck in these almost siloed-off struggles. I guess that’s… I don’t have a magic answer to that, but that’s what I think that we can try and look at a bit more.

 

 

The Debate Between Reform and Revolution

Laurence Jones-Williams: And I guess that also kind of speaks to that, like, the sort of old-age debate between reform and revolution, which you do touch on. And I just wonder, like, in what you discuss there or what’s in the book, how would the book help us navigate the challenge of when you’re trying to change society, make systemic change, but falling maybe into the trap of just, you know, tinkering around the edges, making small few changes?

 

Like, some of these single-issue campaigns sometimes can be really transformative and mobilize lots of people, but then other times they can be, you know, the small wins, and actually the sort of horizon for a better future kind of seems… how does this book help us navigate that debate between, like, yeah, reform and revolution?

 

Simon Hannah: Yeah, well, I guess, keep an eye on the sunset as you, or like an eye on the horizon as you said. Like, I feel that the way capitalism society is going at the moment is downhill. I don’t know if anyone’s seen the news today, but, you know, the people that are increasingly taking charge in governments around the world are very happy to tear everything down.

 

They’re very happy to absolutely gut everything that lots of people rely on. Obviously, welfare is a good example, but there’s a whole range of things. Like, they are—because they have a view that the more they can destroy, then the more that sort of the billionaire oligarch class can then kind of, you know, buy what remains and enrich themselves. And like, it’s about concentrating power and economics and wealth into a smaller and smaller group of people.

 

 

Struggles and Social Movements

And I like—and I think that is a direction of travel in the United States, which obviously has huge benefits from the rest of the world because the United States economy is the United States economy. But it’s happening in other ways in other countries as well. And obviously that is what reform would try and do if they won an election in this country. It’s what Tories have been doing anyway. It’s not just a fringe right thing.

 

This is kind of the direction of travel for increasingly mainstream politics—even some center-left politics I think you could argue. And so within that, I think, you know, there’s going to be so many struggles. There’s already so many struggles emerging with so many, you know, protests and campaigns. Obviously, we’ve had lots at the moment around solidarity with the Palestinians, but there’s going to be an increasing number of things around issues where they will, I think, become explosive.

 

 

The Poll Tax and Collective Action

I mean, the book that I did on the poll tax a few years ago, I don’t know if anyone remembers the poll tax, something mass non-payment campaign. People, you know, were just fed up. It led to a massive riot. It felt square. It helped bring down Thatcher. I just think that we’ll see more and more things like that happening.

 

 

I guess within that, there’s always a possibility for the capitalist class and their politicians to kind of try and shrink it and, like, buy it off, i.e., to give massive concessions as a temporary way of trying to stop it radicalizing. That is something that’s happened historically. There’s been quite a few movements which demanded quite radical things, and they ended up getting some of what they wanted, but in a way that we kind of controlled and contained.

 

 

The Climate Crisis and Capitalism

And I guess the point of the book is that with the climate crisis, in particular, unless we can move beyond capitalism as a profit-driven system, which requires growth and therefore is incompatible with life on a finite planet, then there is no future in that sense, or like there’s a very, like, bad future.

 

And so I guess it’s about trying to politicize and radicalize all those conversations that are happening and trying to find ways to link them up to consider how they can begin to move beyond, you know, so they’re not just kind of campaigns that are fighting for, you know, sort of almost defensive struggles, although those are very important campaigns, but campaigns that can go on the offensive.

 

Like we should be demanding more from life. Like you only get one life on this planet—sorry, unless you believe in reincarnation, that’s fine. But, you know, you only get one life on this planet; you get, you know, 80-odd years or something like that. And, but like all we’re used to at the moment is just things getting worse.

 

 

 

 

The Concept of “Shitification”

Like, there’s this phrase, in “shitification,” which has become quite popular. I don’t know if people have heard of it. It’s kind of this new kind of way of thinking about things which, which I really like, the idea that if you had a post-scarcity, post-capitalist society—and you can fight for it now, by the way—but obviously it would be much better in a society not dominated by profit, you could have a radical abundance.

 

 

Radical Abundance Defined

And a radical abundance is not stuff. It’s not just consumable goods and things that get thrown away in the ocean. It’s an abundance of time, an abundance of human connection, an abundance of playful, kind of erotic, ludic activity, like culture. You know, it’s not like having to work 45 hours a week just to try and make ends meet at the end of the month.

 

No, if we reduced the working week, if we spread out the work, if we improved transport access to culture, if we improved our city centers, if we, you know, like there’s so many things that we could do, which would make life worth living and good for everyone. And I guess that’s, yeah, that’s what I’m kind of thinking about, and that’s what I’m interested in trying to make people like think that life could be better, and it’s not just like—it’s not just constantly resisting things getting worse.

 

 

What is Your Pathway to a New World?

Laurence Jones-Williams: And I’ll ask one more question, and then we’ll open up to the audience. And I guess it’s interesting—it’s interesting sitting here because I spend so much of my time asking questions of mainstream economists, and it’s much less about the imagination of what could be. But if I was to try to take the position of a mainstream economist, I guess some of my questions about this radical abundance of this world that you’re articulating is, what does that mean for local businesses, trade, restaurants—which I think you’ve got a section

 

Simon Hannah: I’ve got a whole section on restaurants in the book, but you weren’t expecting that, were you?

 

Laurence Jones-Williams: Yeah, and maybe like some of the anxieties or maybe some of the lack of imagination comes from not being able to see what your working life, most of your life ultimately, would look like in this new world.

Simon Hannah: Yeah. So, like, I think there’s two things. One is, the left has to do a lot of work to convince people that it won’t be like the Soviet Union in the 1970s again. That is still, like, even if you were born in, you know, the ’90s or the naughties or something, and you know after it collapsed, I still think, you know, it’s kind of there—the idea that life is just like drudgery under like a policeman and, you know, everything’s being recorded and, you know, like if someone overhears you say something like critical of the government, you get whisked away—which, by the way, is kind of happening now under capitalism, so let’s not, you know sort of, just imagine it happened under that society.

 

Like, I think the left has a lot of work to do to, con—like, well, to say why that happened, what was bad about it, how it should be different next time, how, like, everything is based not just on someone coming up with an ideal plan that is then just implemented. Everything is based on economic conditions, political conditions, global things, like what you can try and make happen or not.

 

 

The Role of Creativity and Innovation

And so I think that’s an important challenge to people kind of feeling a bit sort of like nervous about those things. The reason why a whole section in the book on, will there be restaurants under socialism—and I put that in because there was a big route on, Twitter—I refused to call it X—a couple of years ago where, you know, it was like left Twitter, and someone was like, “Will there be restaurants under socialism?”

 

And some people said yes, and these people said, “No, of course there won’t be; there will be state-mandated canteens.” And, you know, and I just thought, “God, that sounds really bad.” Like, well, I mean, I state, you know, run canteens? Oh, see, sorry, the idea of the state is a much more democratic, egalitarian state than existed previously. I have to make that point. But the idea of, like, community collective run canteens to go and get cheap food is a great idea.

 

 

The Importance of Human Creativity

They used to have that in France. They have the old model in France of different kind of, canteens, you know, or like the milk bars in kind of Eastern Europe and things. I think those are good things, but I think there should also be space for human creativity. If you’re a great chef and you’ve got a great idea for a great sort of cuisine restaurant or something like that, there will be space in any planned, democratically planned economy for you to be able to explore that vision. There will be a chance for you to, you know, if you’re really like—if you have talents in any way, like there will be spaces that can be provided in order to, like, to make sure that you get a chance to do those things.

 

 

The Challenges of Capitalism

It’s capitalism that doesn’t allow most people to do those things. I think that’s to be the challenge. We have to challenge this view put about by the billionaire class that capitalism is great because, you know, any old entrepreneur in their garage soldering away with a motherboard to make or, you know, whatever they want to make can sort of get you become a billionaire.

 

Some of them did, but most people, you have amazing ideas, but there’s no money. Like, you can’t afford it, you know? Like, can you get me startup capital? You know, like, will the bank give you a loan for your small business based on your race? You know what I mean? Like, most people can’t even navigate that process, let alone, you know, like become successful in it.

 

 

Challenging the Status Quo

So I really, again, want to challenge this kind of common sense view that capitalism is this amazing thing because it’s so fluid and dynamic. And like for most people, it’s not. It’s, you know, it is for some people, but for most people, it’s not at all. It’s kind of drudgery. It’s failure. Nine out of ten small businesses collapse in the first two years of being set up in Britain, even though they get loads of, like, grants and, like, tax rebates from the government. Like setting up a small business in Britain is a bad idea.

 

Whereas I think under a democratic economy, you can have more flexibility. But you know, these will also be, you know, collectives. They won’t be like things that privately enrich people, you know, beyond sort of obviously if we’ve abolished money or not. But yeah, like it won’t be a thing where you can become a super-rich, you know, sort of like Jamie Oliver type chef, for instance. But, it will be a place where your creativity can flourish, and you can serve nice food to lovely people, and I think we need to kind of like defend that vision as part of the good life.

 

 

Audience Questions and Engagement

Audience Question 1: I suppose the obvious question is what is your pathway to this new economy? You say you dont want to start from saying ‘it has all been done’ but how do we get from where we are now to

 

Audience Question 2: We talked a little bit about the sun setting on capitalism, but it sort of seems to me that broadly speaking, whenever capitalism is in crisis, generally the right are always much better at kind of capitalizing on that opportunity than the left. So I suppose my question is, if this isn’t too difficult a question, how do we stop that from happening this time? And why is it that the right is usually so much better at kind of seizing that opportunity?

 

Audience Question 3: I was quite struck by the themes you had around sort of silos, and I’m a policy academic by background. I’ve also worked in the public sector. So where you were talking about almost this fighting line by line in a budget, sort of taking… and then also I think from an academic perspective, it feels like there’s still a real divide between what I would consider to be the number-crunchy economists and then sort of your qual [qualitative] social scientists. That’s what I am; I’m like the fluffy qual-person. And I work in a supposedly multi-disciplinary research team at one of the biggest universities in the country that’s supposed to be sharing those ideas but still feels like there’s a silo between the number-crunching side and the social side. And I just be interested in your reflection, sort of overcoming that silo work, I guess, to do some of that bigger picture imagination ideas that’s backed up with evidence and the numbers to support it.

 

 

 

 

Simon Hannah: Okay. so, what I love about doing a book like this is because I’ve done several book talks on it, and very quickly you get to sort of people saying, like, “all very well and good, but, what’s the strategy to make it happen?” I’ll be honest, I mean, I’ve got ideas in there, but yeah, like if I knew an absolute concrete failsafe strategy to make it happen, I probably would start making money out of it. Does that sound bad or wrong? I don’t know. Should I make money anyway? Whatever.

 

So yes, like, all I can say is that, and I say this in the book, you know, we live in a society which is riddled with antagonisms and contradictions, and the way things are going now, especially with the climate crisis, I think there’s going to be more and more social explosions. There’s going to be more and more polarization. And I think, like, so there’s a big debate on the left now.

 

Like, if you’re on the more kind of radical socialist left, I think the last US election is a really good example. Sort of Trump’s probably going to win. There is a really left candidate. Do you back the Democrats? Do you back, like, Kamala Harris? And within that, there’s a very meaningful debate. I mean, it’s obviously Kamala Harris in large part lost because millions of people didn’t vote for her; they voted for Biden before, not for her.

 

 

The Role of the Left in Political Strategy

A large part of that, that’s probably to do with, with Gaza and what was going on there, just saying. Obviously, they hate Trump, but they wanted to draw a line somewhere. And other people are saying, like, “What are you doing? You know, sort of you’re going to let Trump in?” You know, sort of. So, like, there’s very real live debates about if the liberal center is collapsing, but it’s being replaced by the far right. Is the socialist left’s job to kind of prop up the liberal center? And, you know, I’ve got, like, some views on that, but like we are in a polarizing society.

 

And I think one of the things the left needs to do, even if you do tactically vote for a really horrible right-winger just to stop an even more horrible right-winger from getting elected, the left has to maintain a vision of a different world. You have to maintain a vision that we’re not just here to defend liberal capitalism, how it’s emerged over the last, like, so many decades.

 

We, you know, like we have to be clear that even if we’re defending the limited gains of the post-war era, and there have been significant gains for women, for ethnic minorities, for sexual, you know, for LGBTQ people, absolutely. And all those are under threat now, but is our job to like defend them or are we arguing for a better society in which these things aren’t even challenged or, like, under threat anymore?

 

 

Struggles and Movements

So I guess the argument within the book is that there will be these struggles. These struggles are already happening now. And yeah, the left has to be a bit more brave, a bit more courageous, has to be a bit more, has to be much better organized. I think some people on the left have to get off of social media and get out into the real world and actually try and organize in their communities a bit more. And I’m, you know, I’m not having a go. Like some people, like, can only do that, which is fine, but, you know, Malcolm X had that great quote where he said, like, “We’re not outnumbered, we’re just out-organized.” And I think I still kind of really believe that.

 

So yeah, like I think that’s the thing. Like I don’t really have a, you know, a magic strategic answer to these things. But there, you know, all of the struggles that are going to emerge over the next few years, it’s just about being involved in them. Not trying to hijack them, but being supportive, being part of those struggles, and being clear about an alternative vision, which is one of a better society. And yeah, how we can get there, how we can try and create more participatory democracy in local areas.

 

How can we try and overcome sort of some of the limitations of democracy at the moment? One of the proposals we can have, I’m quite interested this year is, like, COP30 is happening this year. It’s the 30th COP. More—which is the compressor parties about trying to stop climate change. More carbon has been released into the atmosphere since COP started than, than, you know, before. COP has failed on its own terms instead of trying to even slow down climate change, let alone stop it.

 

 

 

 

So this COP30 process is a big one. The theme of this year’s COP is just transitions, you know, kind of, and I’m as an ecosystem, “Oh, just transition? Now you’re talking my language.” How can we sort of begin to, like, maybe I’ll send them a copy of my book, maybe they’ll read it, I don’t know. Yeah, like, so there’s opportunities there. So one of the things that I’m involved in discussing about is, say, climate assemblies.

 

Climate assemblies up and down the country—every town, every city, every village has a climate assembly. You know, book a meeting hall, put out leaflets and posters, get people together and talk about the climate issue and talk about possible solutions to the climate issue. Try and link up some of these concerns that we have around a number of other issues—low wages, bad housing, you know, problems around racism. Can we try and, like, amalgamate those things and try and bring them into, like, greater kind of conversation with each other? So yeah, again, it’s not a perfect strategy, but like, like I guess those are the kind of things that we can try and think about.

 

 

Encountering Divisions in Policy

Maybe that is to your thing about trying to overcome some of the policy divisions. Just very final thing on the gains of the right—I mean, I guess the problem is, is that the right always cuts with the grain of society in terms of the common ideas. Like they take it to this much further conclusion. But I mean, reform does well because reform effectively has like six daily newspapers.

 

I mean, everything, and like, you know, the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Star—like all those newspapers, you know, and then obviously Farage just gets up and says, “Well, you know about the asylum seeker crisis, don’t we?” And people are like, “Yes, I do because I read it in the tabloids,” you know, or they’ve seen it on social media. And so they have this huge ideological apparatus that kind of really backs them and supports them. Obviously, the left doesn’t really have that.

 

I mean, the socialist left doesn’t, you know, ‘The Guardian’—I’m not sure, sort of. So, so like in that sense, people are much more primed to accept right-wing ideas. I don’t think that’s automatic, though. I don’t think it always happens. It doesn’t always have to be like that. I think people are sort of a bit more susceptible to that because that’s kind of what you’re used to. And I think, yeah, like they obviously have easy solutions, you know. As I said about the asylum seeker thing, I think that’s because, like, I see it all the time, and they say, so just very quick, I went to this thing up in, North, two years ago. It was a celebration of, Elizabeth Cromwell—Oliver Cromwell’s wife. She’s buried there in this local church. Anyway, I went up there, and it was like a sealed knot thing. There were people dressed up as Civil War, like soldiers. It was very geeky; I loved it.

 

And I was there with a friend, and we were—and like it was the women that kind of in the local church, the local primary school, and they were like, “You come up from London?” and we were like, “You come from London?!” It was kind of—we weren’t treated like quite royalty, but they were quite intrigued we come up from London for this little village thing, and we were chatting to them. They were very friendly. Then we overheard two of the women who worked in the local primary school just talking to themselves.

 

And it was around the time when all that stuff about RAAC concrete was going on. You know, the aerated concrete, and it was like, “The school’s going to fall down! Hospitals are going to fall down!” And the two women, they were nice women. They were like, “You know, problem, isn’t it? But like, we spend 9 million pounds a week on hotels for asylum seekers, don’t we? And if we didn’t do that, if we just got rid of them, then we’d have 9 million pounds a week to spend on our primary schools and like on our hospitals.” You know, and in a very simple way, that’s like, “Well, yeah, like if you literally see it in those resource-driven, scarcity who-gets-what terms, yeah, that makes complete sense.”

 

 

The Need for Clear Messaging

But obviously the left are talking about a radical reorganization of society for the benefit of everyone. The right have a very simple message. While these people are getting these hotel rooms, and you know, so I think the left needs to do more work around trying to get those good, easy kind of arguments as well that also connect with people’s concerns, their doubts, their fears, but doesn’t throw all the blame on, you know, a very marginalized, persecuted group of people, which I guess is probably like where the wealth tax—I think, is a good one.

 

I mean, obviously the post in this book could go far beyond the wealth tax, but yeah, I mean, there’s agitation going on from like Gary Stevenson and people like that around wealth tax. That’s great. I mean, because it puts the ball in their court. Like, why aren’t you paying more tax? You know, you’re billionaires. You should be paying more tax. You know, it’s all—they might leave the country. So that’s not a bit patriotic, is it? I thought they were meant to be, you know, great, whatever. And then they’re going to go off and be, you know, tax you.

 

 

 

 

So, like, I think—and that was what I was saying before about kind of, offensive slogans and demands. It’s not just stop the cuts, halt this, like, yeah, like there should be a wealth tax. You know, there should be a mass campaign. We should go have a demonstration now about wealth tax. You know, sort of like, and I think that’s the kind of begins to shift the conversation a little bit, which is what I think we need to try and do more of.

 

 

Exploring the Concept of Democracy

Audience Question 4: It is such an interesting topic; it is about life in its many dimensions.  Im just trying to pick on an aspect of things you’ve touched upon in democracy, for example. Do people really know what democracy is? I find this word around, you know, very liberally. I don’t think people do. What is it? People think, “Oh, it’s the House of Commons,” or something like that, or something to do with it. I mean, the idea of democracy is that, you know, we involve and engage, engage and consult. You’ve touched upon it in what you’ve said.

 

We have a huge lack of engagement, consultation. I mean, if we want to change things, then we’ve got to engage with people. We got to bring them into the debate, bring them into the movement, get them motivated to want to change things for the better. But how do you do that? Well, you’ve got to engage. You’ve got to consult. And we have a political system that calls itself democratic that really most of the time fails to consult, fails to engage.

 

And truth be told, I mean, I think really looking—I mean, I’ve lived a while, and I take a keen interest in our political life, but what I see is that we only have what we might think about as a democracy on one day every few years—that’s election day. Outside of that, forget it. And if we want to—it’s about the distribution of power. You know, most people, most of us have, because of the lack of engagement, lack of consultation, lack of being brought into the political life of the country, it’s the failure of the distribution of power to be an even one. You know, it’s grossly uneven.

 

So in fact, I mean, I just go so far as to say controversial we can just end here too, but you know, my developing views have gone on is that more and more we actually live in a dictatorship. We—we always have for a long, long time. You know, it’s a dictatorship of the cabinet command. Even the people who we elect, you know, we elect through the democratic process, election day when we create politicians, people who do our politics, who carry out, who we invest with the power to affect and influence and change for better or for worse our lives. Disenfranchised.

 

Yeah. And, you know, we, we’ve got to do something about that because, you know, even the people we elect, our MPs, you know, ultimately come to bush powers too by parliamentary whips to doing what the cabinet cabal—the dictating cabal wants to happen, that goes for all parties. How do we mean more democratic now considering the major democratic—this is a pretty state I think you know this—this theme is such a, an important one, you know, it’s about creating a better life, better life for the people who, you know, have a pretty awful life. Yeah, you know, a moral compass.

 

Audience Question 5:  My question is actually similar to democracy, but I was thinking slightly different, and I was kind of thinking, obviously you mentioned democracy throughout, grassroots organization and things like that, but what happens if the grassroots go against what the kind of vision that’s been mentioned in the book? I agree with what you’re saying. What do you think about…

 

Audience Question 6: I just wanted to say quickly, I was just looking when you first started talking it made me think of something I studied many years ago— Voltaire’s Candid. and I say it now—you mentioned some, and he was mocking philosophers of the time, you know, who were saying it’s the best of all possible worlds. Yeah, believe in God, you get it. It’s the utopia. And I’m thinking, have we come very far from this, you know, 17th century days? Has much changed? I’m not sure it has intrinsically regarding happiness and damage to the planet or inequality. So has it? How far have we come?

 

 

 

 

Laurence Jones-Williams: Great. So there are three really great questions: one on democracy, democratic deficit, another on working web communities. And yeah, and then how far have we come?

 

Simon Hannah: So, I’ve got a great Oscar Wilde quote at the beginning of the book which I’m going to use to try and furnish my own intellectual projections. So, Oscar Wilde said, “A map of the world that does not include utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country which humanity is always landing.” And in that quote—in that wider conversation, he’s talking about, yes, the human striving to try and kind of create things better.

 

Like generally speaking, not everyone, obviously. Most of us, most of the time, just going to work and living our lives and whatever. But there’s a general push to try and improve things. But obviously, under capitalism, the problem is that is always frustrated and blocked because you only get so far because the class interest under capitalism will always prevent it from being properly, you know, the value, the goods, the, you know, the things that we make from being properly distributed, because of all the reasons I go to in the book.

 

 

Challenges to Human Nature and Empathy

So, I think it’s important. I mean, obviously, I don’t like using the word utopia because it’s associated with like fiction that will never happen. Like that’s, that’s utopian. But I do like the idea of like maybe a small-scale utopia. Like, yeah, like, like why can’t we imagine a better world? Like why don’t we like kill that thing inside of our head that’s like, not any better, you know, sort of?

 

You know, and I think that also links in the book, which I think links with your question. There is no perfect society. There’s no perfect model. And in this book, I make the point that, again, it’s not like it’s not a model or so. But like even if you implemented a lot of the principles that I outlined in this book, it would not create a perfect society. There would still be disagreements. There would still be debates over resources. There would still be, you know, different advocacy, different groups wanting to do things.

 

 

Democratic Mechanisms for Conflict Resolution

But it’s about can we create mechanisms where we can resolve these disagreements in ways which are democratic, which are plausible, which are sovereign, where we feel like self-actualization as human beings? Because at the moment, if we have disagreements between things, the only way to resolve them, you know, well, there’s not many. I mean, you know, sort of there’s, you know, there’s market economics like maybe a business will fail or, or, or people will just be, I guess a really good example obviously is the pipeline in, the United States where, you know, the local, indigenous community was fighting against it.

 

They didn’t want this horrible polluting pipeline to go through. And obviously the old company did. And there was the US government sent in National Guard and police to beat up, you know, all the, you know, and now Greenpeace is being sued for, hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue, you know, like, like all of that is just capitalism, isn’t it? Like all of that is just, you know, and like the only thing you can use to stop it is just literal protest and putting your bodies in front of bulldozers and getting whacked by policeman’s batons or, you know, going to prison for, like, five years, you know, sort of.

 

 

The Need for Better Democratic Frameworks

And so, like, there must be a better way. There must be a better way of organizing, like, kind of if you do have disagreements over how resources are being used or, whatever. So, and that does link in with the idea of more democracy. So Pat Devine wrote a book in 1988 called ‘Democracy and Economic Planning: The Political Economy of a Self-Governing Society‘. He has a model he calls negotiated coordination, and he says any post-capitalist society will not be, you know, a one-party dictatorship, or rather it shouldn’t be a one-party dictatorship.

 

 

 

 

But there will be, you know, there will be a central planning authority that should be democratically elected. There will be, still be trade unions. Workers will still have interests, even under like an eco-socialist-society. Different groups of workers might have different interests over where work is or not, for instance. There will be local campaign and interest groups. There will be environmental campaigners still under eco-socialism because you’ll need to be able to advocate for things.

 

Like, it’s not—there will be a perfect plan of everything. There will still be potential contradictions, but it’s about trying to work those way out in a much more democratic way rather than, you know, the way that it’s currently not worked out. So yeah, like I guess that’s, yeah, so read the book for more on that.

 

 

Continuing Debate on a Democratic Deficit

And just your point on democracy, I think it’s really important. Again, it’s one of the things we need to challenge. We don’t live in a democracy really. I mean, it has some democratic elements, but, you know, Elon Musk bought the last year’s presidential election.

 

I mean, he pumped money into the, the richest man in the world pumped as much money into the Trump campaign as was needed. Trump won the election, and now he’s, you know, tearing apart the federal kind of government, the welfare programs, the Department of Education’s gone. You know, sort of like that’s—and, and there’s nothing you can do until there’s another election in four years’ time. Obviously, that’s not true. There’s loads of things you can do, but you know, like the Democrats are like, “Well, you know, we lost the election, so I guess, you know, that’s it now.”

 

 

The Limitations of Current Political Systems

Obviously, there are loads of things you can do, but yes, like I think we live under a dictation of capital, as capitalism and the choices that we have from politicians. Like even the Labour party, you can read more in the book on the Labour party, but like even the Labour party, yeah, I mean obviously I’d much rather a Labour government generally speaking than a Tory government, absolutely.

 

But Labour’s social welfare program, it mixed economy, like in the post-war period under Attlee, that was just to keep capitalism going, really. I mean, it was to—there was, like, collapsing industries that were very important like railway and coal and, and things like that, and British businesses still needed it, so they nationalized them, ran them under government kind of bureaucratic control, set up the NHS. Healthcare is important; you got to get your workers patched up, get them back into work the next day, you know?

 

 

Revisiting Historical Models

And you know, like, so it’s not like these were fundamental challenges to capitalism. These things helped sustain capitalism, you know, for like decades afterwards. So like I think there’s a radical—again, I’m not saying, “Oh, therefore, I don’t care about the NHS.” The NHS is great. You know, I’m glad we have these reforms, but, the idea that these are alternatives to capitalism, I think we need to be a bit more critical around because ultimately they’re there to ensure the fundamental exploitation of humans carries on.

 

That’s also true in local government where I work. What does local government do? It does children’s social care. It does adult social care. It collects your bins. It fixes potholes in the road. It maintains the park so you can go there and have a nice clear your head if you’re having a stressful day at work. You know local government is there to ensure the social reproduction of the population. And good. I’d much rather it did that than didn’t do it. But it’s not like an island of socialism in a kind of capitalist world in that sense. It is integrated into, like, into the needs of capital to make sure that people are socially produced.

 

 

The Decline of Democratic Engagement

So, again, I think we can have quite radical, quite exciting arguments around those things can make people maybe think, “Well, actually, yeah, I mean maybe, you know, maybe actually you could do more than this. Maybe we could go beyond not just defending the post-war social democratic order. Maybe there’s more radical things that we can do.” But just a funny thing on democracy. I mean, I think lots of people actually are turning away from democracy and supporting strong man authoritarians.

 

I think in large part because of neoliberalism and austerity. I think for years it didn’t really matter really if you voted for the right or the left in terms of like, you know, conservatives or so or social democrats, they would both implement austerity. They both carry out privatizations that, you know, sort of. I’m not saying there’s no policy differences, but the policy differences were so narrow in the world of neoliberalism, it just turned people off of politics. And what’s the point in voting? Like, you know, and you hear that all the time.

 

Millions of people don’t vote; they can’t be bothered. And then you get a strong man like Trump emerge, who literally says, “Vote for me, and you’ll never have to vote again.” Do you remember that? He said that for the election: “Vote for me, and you’ll never have to vote again.” What does that mean? People are like, “Yeah, sure, that sounds great. I don’t want to waste, you know.” So again, and I think like your contribution was useful in that sense because, yeah, like I think genuine democracy is where people are engaged because they know, like they know that there’s a difference.

 

 

The Draining of Political Interest and Authoritarianism

If you look at voting patterns in the ’50s and ’60s when there was a difference between Labour and the Tories, you know, there was like, like, you know, like quite significant difference over the way the welfare state was going to be maintained or whatever. People did vote. Like voting was much higher, but then as soon as kind of that, and the ’90s and then Blair…

 

…and now Starmer, you know, sort of, like you can see interest draining out of the political kind of discourse, and that does create space for strong man authoritarian and even in some cases strong women authoritarian figures like Le Pen in France and Meloni in Italy and so on, who kind of rise above the political morass and sort of promise like national renaissance and salvation. And people are like, “Yeah, sure, that sounds great,” because you know the mainstream parties sound awful. So again, we have to challenge all of these things, I think.

 

 

The Future Beyond Neoliberalism: Crisis or Evolution of Capitalism?

Laurence Jones-Williams: Great. I have another question actually which is kind of connected to, this shift that you’re talking about. So, you know, we had the kind of Keynesian model to maintain, capitalism post-war. We’ve then had the neoliberal turn to, you know, basically undo all that, free up capital, sell off land. And I guess there’s an argument now that we are seeing the sunset of neoliberalism.

 

You kind of maybe spoke to a bit of that. But I guess what does this book—or what do you—what are your thoughts on this kind of emerging world that we’re moving into? So, you know, a multipolar, political system, whether, you know, we’re not just under complete American dominance, or maybe that’s being challenged at the moment. But also anti-globalization with the growth of, trade taxes, the trade war that that’s ongoing

 

And I guess maybe, from my position, I’m asking this because I spent a lot of time in mainstream economics, and I think… I guess the most telling moment I think in that time was when inflation happened, and no one could really explain it. And now, when no one really knows actually how the trade war is going to end—like whether that’s going to lead to more inflation, less inflation, growth, or low growth—there seems to be a split across mainstream economics, not just the left. So I guess, what can we… you know, like, is this a crisis? Can we act on it, or is this a different part of capitalism? And therefore, what should we be thinking about?

 

 

The State of Chaos in the Post-War Era

Gosh. Okay. I mean, yeah, that’s I guess a bit outside of the remit of the book in the sense of, you know, the arguments the book is making about moving past kind of capitalist society and, you know, trying to imagine how things could be different. But I mean, yeah, I guess in the most general sense, we’re in a period of chaos. The whole post-war era is being upended. It’s incredibly unpredictable. The tariffs—I mean, I don’t know what impact they’re going to have, you know, but they might cause inflation. That’s what people are saying. But obviously, I think it’s a return to, like, sort of, you know, the 1800s in a sense.

 

 

Reflections on the Post-War Era

And I think a lot of what we’re seeing now… okay, sorry, let me collect my thoughts. Right, the post-war era as we understand it, the 1940s to the 1970s or whatever, that was the aberration. That was the blip. Okay? Now, I think the problem is lots of people look at that and they think that’s what capitalism is: a nice mixed economy, welfare state. We need to go back to that. Okay?

 

That was the abberation that came about because of a particular arrangement of class forces after World War II, the atomic age. There’s this MP, Quintin Hogg, who was a Tory MP in Britain in the 1940s, and he said he was very worried, you know, armed conscripted army after World War I. There was the Russian Revolution; there was a massive revolution in Germany and other places. They were genuinely concerned.

 

 

Historical Perspectives on Class and Reform

There was a mutiny in the British army in Egypt and other places. And so they were genuinely concerned. All these people are going to be coming back with guns. What are we going to do? Quintin Hogg said, if we don’t give them reforms, then they’ll take revolution. And I think that really set in motion, like, you know, the implementation of the Beveridge Report around the ills of society, the welfare state, and so on. Now, they’re not scared about that anymore. You know, they’re not scared about people rising up, you know, protests and whatever. But they’re not really—like people aren’t really scared anymore about losing everything.

 

 

 

 

The Counter-Revolution Phases

And so now I think they’re just tearing all that up. Like, they don’t care about it anymore. Like, I think we’ve had two kinds of counter-revolution phases. The first one was the kind of Thatcher-Reagan one that began the process of undoing the economic gains of the post-war period; that was largely successful, privatization and so on.

 

Now we’re in the second phase where, you know, the next generation of authoritarian right-wing politicians are undoing the social gains for women. You know, like unheard of things. Like JD Vance, the vice president before the election, was literally calling into question, you know, women’s right to vote based on whether they had children or not.

 

 

Retrograde Discourse on Women’s Rights

That was mainstream discourse in the United States. That was in the newspapers. That was literally a legitimate thing you could talk about now. Like, women with no children maybe shouldn’t have any votes because they have no investment in the future. And if you have more children, maybe you should get more votes. “You get five children,” or you can’t get five.

 

It’s because, you know, there was literally a weird transactional thing around whether you had children or not. That was a mainstream conversation. Now, you know, like, they are really pushing everything. Like, they are tearing up everything that was even good about the 20th century and kind of going back to, you know, “might makes right,” powerful nations with powerful armies fighting off against each other.

 

 

The Role of Wealth in Politics

You know, obviously in Trump’s mind, you know, the world only really exists in terms of the United States, Russia, and China. And therefore, small countries like Ukraine or whatever—who cares? They’re just like the things that you trade or the things you use on the negotiating table. No interest in people. No interest in what’s actually going on. And I think that’s the world that they’re creating. And you can see this unholy alliance of the richest people in the world with some of the most right-wing people in the world forming these incredibly powerful authoritarian voting electoral machines.

 

And Elon Musk wants to use his money to fund the far right in Britain, fund the far right in Germany. You know, sort of like you can see this kind of, you know, force growing around the world where, you know, like, they want to undo all of these, as I said before, gains, but, you know, in some senses, limited gains. And I guess limited in the sense, like, now they’re being called into question. I mean, we probably—well, a lot of us probably had, like, it’s called the Whig view of history where you kind of think things just kind of get better. Sort of, you know, there’s some setbacks, but things are generally getting better for people now, you know, we’re going to still have gay marriage.

 

 

Challenges to Social Progress Through Tariff Bullying

We—sort of, you know, transgender rights are under attack everywhere. I mean, you know, yeah, like, I just think everything is now being called into question. And I guess that, like, that’s really what’s at stake. So, I don’t really know that much about the economics in terms of how the tariffs are going to play out. I mean, there’s economists who earn five times my local government wage who also don’t know how it’s going to work, I guess.

 

But I guess we’re just in an age now where—sorry, I’ll just finish on this. I mean, Trump is apparently using the tariffs and the threat of tariffs to force policy changes in countries. So what he’s saying is, “I will not impose tariffs on your country as long as you allow free speech.” By “allow free speech,” he means get rid of hate crimes around racism, you know, whatever.

Like, he is, you know, bullying, forcing kind of weaker, smaller countries—which is nearly everyone—to change their laws to allow the far right to grow, to extend their arguments, in return for having tariffs on steel removed or something like that or, like, reduced. I mean, it’s a real—but yeah, the whole post-war order of states working together is, you know, like, it’s collapsing. So yeah, I guess we’ll do something about it.

 

 

Questioning the Role of Business in Change

Audience Question 7: I kind of want to get back to the economy and business, because I’m thinking whether you see a chance of business and trading itself contributing to change. So the way I’m thinking is, or something that I’m seeing, is that there’s lots of little experiments going on where people are trying to generate new ways of production, kind of localized, decentralized, aligned with nature—taking on all these experiments that are going on in relations and growing a really localized, decentralized textile industry back here in the UK. And, yeah, kind of seeing trading and business as an area of practice and reproduction of life, and whether there’s a chance that these kind of attempts also contribute to larger, you know, changes.

 

Audience Question 8: What are your thoughts on the organizational structure of the stock market?

Simon Hannah: My word! Could you add some more context to that question for everyone in the room?

 

Audience Question 8: Right, so there’s this huge financial apparatus that has vast amounts of influence over everything. And there’s often a problem of whose fault or whose responsibility the outcomes or externalities of given enterprises are. So I’m sort of trying to understand the stock market myself—not to invest in it, but more to understand whether it can have positive externalities. Can our public goods coexist with the stock market as it stands?

Because, for example, since the 1950s, the Conservative Party has been advocating for ‘shareholder democracy‘, as they euphemistically call it. So if I buy a share in any company, the idea is that I have agency over said company because I can go along to a stockholders meeting and, you know, put in my thoughts. But I’m not really convinced that that’s agency, nor that if I own, part own enterprise somewhere far away, that I’ll know the conditions of the workers or the effects on the local where it’s operating. The corporation is quite a very interesting book and film…

 

 

 

The Challenges of Self Employment

Audience Question 10: So in terms of how I would cost my day—if I worked half-day, a full day—it is dependent on the financial year, how many hours, if I’m working more plus one day and then two days or a day and a half. I talk to people, and depending where they are in the country, their rates are vastly different. I work in photography and videography, and there are people that I talk to who work in London.

 

Their rates for a whole day—I would tell them this is how much I charge to work in Manchester. Someone would say, “Well, that’s how much I would charge to work in London, but not in Manchester. I would charge a £100 off that.” And so, to me, if I’m not increasing my rates, I’m falling behind. I’m being either—I’m, you know, potentially being—not losing work because it tends to be now that more people, I guess, more people have access to technology. Now, phones can shoot 4K video as well as DSLR cameras.

So it’s you’re competing with people who are charging less, but then you’re also competing with yourself because you’re thinking, “Should I be charging more? Because if I’m not, I am shooting myself in the foot. Am I going to be able to pay this rent, you know, mortgages or rent that goes up every year or council tax that’s going up?” You know, all these things that you have to think about.

 

I would love if, you know, say a standard day rate in my industry was the same across the board and that businesses and individuals would respect that. But you have people that will often say to me, “Well, we can’t afford that.” So for the standard day, I would say £750, and they say, “Well, can you do that for £300?” That’s an 8-hour working day. And then sometimes that isn’t travel, or stay overnight. So it’s, you know, it’s ethically very difficult to justify, “Well, do I want it to be standard?”

 

Like, I would agree it would be great if, you know, how I have to invest in myself for equipment, you know, equipment that I use. Most brands like Sony, Canon—they update it sometimes less than a year, cameras, everything. And people expect you to come out, you know, have invested into that and to bring that to a client. So if you have kind of some thoughts on that, I’d be interested.

 

 

Thoughts on Cooperative Models

Laurence Jones-Williams: Yeah, so I guess we’re continuing with the theme. So, what can businesses do? What can we do with the stock market? And maybe something around, like, the transitioning to this post-capitalist world. You know, what’s that mean for self-employed people? The morality of, I guess, just trying to survive.

 

 

Reflections on the Self-Employed Experience

Simon Hannah: Yeah, okay. Great questions. Okay, so I’ll be precise. I mean, on your situation, yeah, it sucks because, you know, we—yeah, we are—unless you are independently wealthy, you have to sell your labor on the market. You have to find a buyer, i.e., a boss or a client who’s willing to pay for it. You compete with other people for work. And there’s a constant thing of driving down wages, trying to improve efficiencies, and yeah, that’s capitalism. I mean, like, it’s a brutal system of exploitation.

 

 

The Brutality of Capitalism

And, but I mean also from the perspective of some of your clients who are asking you to work for much less money, I guess maybe they also have less money. I’m not trying to justify them ripping you off, but, you know, everyone’s got a bit less money, so, like, you know, you try and pass it on. And yeah, I mean, it’s just not—it’s just not consistent; like, it’s not a very good way of living. And like, it was kind of things like that when I was writing the book. And, you know, so the first chapter is about how capitalism functions and how, like, all these problems keep on coming up all the time.

 

 

Exploitation and The Problem of Built-In Obsolescence

And so the first chapter really does deal with those kind of, yeah, just how we are exploited as people and like we’re never paid the full value of our work. You know, and like, like, it’s a precarious life that we live. And so, yeah, like, can we kind of start something better from that? The point you made about the Sony updating their cameras is a great example of built-in obsolescence. Capitalism is wasteful; this is the point. It is, you know, like we’ve all got mobile phones. Like, they, you know, like when you get a software update, it downloads kind of programs in the back of the phone which, like, just void those updates if you have an earlier version.

 

 

 

Yeah, exactly. It downloads, like, things in the operating software which burn through your battery more quickly. Like, “Oh, since I got this new thing, my battery runs out.” You have to get a new one. Like, because why? Because, there was this movie that came out a few years ago, in the ’50s. It’s an Ealing Studios movie called “The Man in the White Suit,” I think it’s called. And yeah, like, yeah, he’s this textile guy. He, like, invents this suit that doesn’t break, never gets dirty. And so they try and kill him, like the family, because it’s like, you know, he’s like, “You’re going to ruin our profits.”

 

 

 

 

You know, like, like, clothes have to break; they have to fall apart, or phones have to break or fall apart because, you know, you’ve got to keep the shareholders happy. So yeah, I mean, I don’t have much—I mean, like, I think in terms of your thing, I mean, I very much encourage self-employed people to kind of get with other people and kind of form their own kind of cooperatives. You know, you can try and set wages, you know, rather than competing with each other.

 

 

Rethinking Competition in Business

I gave this talk in a town outside of London a few years ago, and a local council came along. She was like, you know, obviously talking about racism and stuff, and she said, “I hear what you’re saying, son. There’s a very real problem in this town because we have a lot of plumbers, and they’re all being driven out of business by Polish plumbers and Romanian plumbers who are coming in.”

 

And, you know, and I was just like, “Well, sure, but this is the horrible competition, you know, that you have.” You know, like, why don’t all the plumbers form a business together, and rather than competing, they can try and share out? And I know it sounds a bit, you know, utopian, but like you don’t have to compete. You don’t have to compete with each other. You know, you can, like, you can set up things. So, and again, that’s maybe, you know, some of the things we can try and think about rather than the way it calculates at the moment.

 

 

The Role of Sustainable Business Practices

Just very quickly on, kind of the kind of—was it eco-businesses or like alternative businesses or businesses that are doing more sustainable things?Yeah, sure, absolutely. You know, I guess the point I make in the book is that there’s only so far you can go in a sense, I think, even with ethical businesses because the more you scale up—well, like, there’s two problems.

 

One, you are competing in the marketplace with unethical businesses. And there’s been lots of, say, cooperatives, for instance, where they start off very ethical. They pay good wages; they have good working conditions. There’s that company in Spain, Mondragon, which is like the world’s biggest cooperative. It employs thousands of people.

 

 

 

 

But it has to compete—I can’t remember what Mondragon does. Sorry. But like, it does a thing. And but they end up competing with capitalist businesses who are much more vicious with their workers. They drive down their costs, you know, that like their workers don’t enjoy the same level of, you know, benefits, and then they pass it on to the consumer to undercut competitive rivals. That’s the nature of capitalism.

 

So Mondragon now has had to change its constitution where everyone who’s become an employee after a certain day has worse wages. That’s not part of the thing; that’s not what they wanted to do, but they are compelled by the logic of the market to do that. And again, that—like, so I think there’s, yeah, I think it’s great if people want to set up things and try and do like positive things and, sell more ethical goods. I really don’t have a problem with that, but I guess, it’s very hard at the beginning with the competition, and then if you scale up more and more, then that kind of sometimes poses other problems in terms of the scalability, like whether you can maintain that kind of ethical kind of grounding, I guess.

 

 

The Future of Ethical Business Models

So I do talk about, like, in the book a little bit, but I don’t want to like be down on anyone trying to do a good thing. But I guess my point is that as long as we have capitalism, we will always have that profit-driven thing which, I mean, okay, the Body Shop, for example. Yeah, from a few years ago, I remember the Body Shop—like, that started off as an ethical thing about not testing animals, but then she—her workers tried to set up a union. They busted the union; they sacked a bunch of staff because, you know, it wasn’t part of their business model for them to have a union.

 

 

The Limits of Ethical Business Practices

And, you know, so like, I guess there’s all these issues about trying to run any kind of enterprise under capitalism. Which brings me to the final question, which is about shareholders. Yeah, I mean, the problem is in modern—like, I think, Thatcher had the popular, what’s it called? Like, you know, like the shareholder thing. Like, when she nationalized—sorry, denationalized. It’s really funny; in Microsoft Word, like, you can’t say “denationalized.” It automatically auto-corrects to “denationalize.” I don’t like—like, like pure ideology.

 

 

The Evolution of Shareholder Democracy

Anyway, anyway, like, when she privatized British water and then they were selling, you know, shares, it was like £5 each or some can become a shareholder. You know, it was like popular capitalism. That was it—Popular Capitalism. But obviously now, it’s just run by massive private equity firms. And I know people who buy—like, which is the structure of the stock market. Like, these are multi-billion, multi-million-pound companies. Like, they can’t survive on me having five shares, you having ten shares, you having—you know, like, that’s not what they need. They need massive investments of capital to sustain, to grow, to whatever.

And so they look to hedge funds, private equity funds. And so I know people say with, oil companies, they might buy a share. So you can go to the AGM of the company and sort of put your hand up and go, “Shell doing x, y, and z,” you cause trouble, and you get thrown out by the security guards, which is great. I think that’s a good thing to do. But there’s no way that you can buy enough shares to challenge some of these US hedge funds. I mean, they have billions of dollars flowing through them, you know, sort of.

 

 

The Limitations of Shareholder Influence

So, yeah, and I don’t think that there’s a route in that way in terms of, being able to fundamentally change things. There’s also an issue for finance—there was a big push in the ’90s to put workers on the—you know, like to give workers shares. So, General Motors did that. They were like, “Rather than a wage increase, why don’t we just give you shares in the company? They’ll always go up; worth it, you know, and then you were a shareholder.” You know, but then that created a psychology amongst the workers of like, “Well, we got to keep the shares up, haven’t we?”

 

 

The Psychological Impact of Shareholder Programs

I mean, you know, like if you go on strike, shares go down. That’s your money. You’re losing money. So you go from being a worker fighting for your wages to a shareholder worrying about your stock portfolio of the company that you work for. And it creates a bad psychology in your head, I think, where you’re, you know, you’re sort of incorporated, ingrained in the logic of what that private company is trying to do.

 

So I guess, yeah, like I guess I’m very wary about these kind of proposals around that. I think, you know, we should socialize industry. I think it should be run democratically. I don’t think important businesses should be, like, in the private sector. I think supermarkets, everything—like anything where we can point to it and say people need this to live, I don’t think it should be in the private sector making profit. I think there’s a fundamental contradiction between the production of a social need and what humans need to live and making profit out of it.

 

 

Reconceptualizing Basic Needs

Sometimes it works; sometimes you can make a profit out of something and, like, provide it. But most of the time, it causes massive problems. It causes, you know, well, like, go back to the housing at the beginning of the talk. I mean, you know, housing in this country is largely privatized now thanks to Right to Buy and so on. And you know, it’s like unaffordable. You know, but obviously, conversely, people want a house because that might be your pension. You know, it’s also something to pass on to your kids. I mean, that’s not a bad thing to want to do.

 

 

The Housing Crisis and its Implications

I mean, it’s not like people are horrible homeowners, you know, whatever. Like, they’re also worried about the future, and they want some security. But, but yeah, it also means that, you know, people can’t get on the housing ladder. It’s expensive. There’s this weird thing where people are kind of waiting for their parents to die so they can get a house. That’s not nice. That’s not like a nice way of—you know, come on, Dad! Like, you know, whatever. Like, that’s not—there must be a better way of living. I’m not sure. But yeah, I guess that would be my sort of, yeah, thought on most things.

 

 

Final Thoughts and Reflections on Society

Laurence Jones-Williams: Great. So, do we have any last dying questions?

Audience Question 11: It’s always really interesting what you’re saying about, you know, that things that are a social necessity shouldn’t be prioritized. I’m interested in how far you take that. I mean, there’s market culture or capital—particularly, I think there’s this sort of—particularly, for example, current welfare class, if you are disabled or if you’re poor, you should live a fundamentally intellectually, culturally unenriched life.

 

You know, who’s going to go to the cinema? That’s not an essential. I’d be interested to know, you know, you look at councils that are cutting libraries because they go, “Well, it’s libraries or collecting events.” Yeah, I’m just interested in how far you take that in terms of culture and enrichment of life morally.

 

 

 

 

Laurence Jones-Williams: Yeah, okay. And then perhaps, if after that question, if you want to conclude. Yeah, but also maybe if you could tell us where we could get the book and anything that is, you know, maybe some Easter eggs to things.

 

 

Conclusion and Book Availability

Okay, brilliant. Thank you. What a great ending! Okay, I’ll finish on this. Yes, you know, I am a—I mean, I call myself a Marxist in the sense I’m interested in class and how that antagonism works out and an analysis of capitalism in that way. I’m also a humanist, like in the sense—like, I think, like, I don’t get why we’ve accepted this world where we have, like, worthy and unworthy people, where some people, you know, just because they had a business idea or they worked hard—you know, I mean, again, like, sorry, even that language—working hard…

 

 

Challenging the Notion of Worthiness

Like the immigrant cleaner that comes into the office after everyone else has left to tidy up—she or he or whatever works hard, but obviously it’s not a job that’s going to get them, like, very rich. So I think, you know, you have to challenge your own language around these kinds of things. But yeah, I think everyone has—everyone should have a good life. Every human being who is born on this planet should have a good life. It should be culturally enriching, intellectually enriching. It should be, um—I’m not saying it won’t be complicated. I mean, we’ll always have heartbreak. We’ll always have, you know, we’ll always have problems, you know, whatever.

 

 

The Need for Empathy in Society

But, but we have the means to be able to provide for everyone, in a way which is sustainable within planetary boundaries. That’s my fundamental argument. and I think the way that disabled people are being treated under capitalism is an example of, you know, the worst bits of humanity in the way we organize society. The Nazis called disabled people “useless eaters.” That was their phrase for them because they called them that because they, you know, so they couldn’t work, and only work was important. Can you? If you can work, you must work. And you must be productive, and you must, you know, you know, whatever.

I mean, I’m in favor of people working. I think work is important and, you know, whatever, but yeah, it should be 15 hours a week or, you know, it’s like, you know, we should be reducing it. We should be democratizing it. We should be making it egalitarian. We should make sure it’s well-paid until we abolish money, which is also in the book. You know, like, yeah, like that’s, like, that’s what I think we should be doing. And I think if, at the moment, you’re in a situation where you are unable to work, I really hate the idea—and it’s such a Victorian idea—it’s this, like, well, you know, sure, fine, we’ll give you some money so you don’t starve, but that’s it.

 

 

The Victorian Legacy of Welfare

You know, it’s like you see homeless people on the streets; they’ve got like a mobile phone, and someone’s like, “Ha! You got a mobile phone, you’re homeless.” It’s like, “Oh God, you know, like what do you want from people?” Like, you sort of want people that have absolutely nothing and just die in a ditch or something. So yeah, like I think, again, like, it’s part of the human renaissance that we need to have. yeah, we need to be much clearer about what about everyone having a good standard of life.

 

 

The Call for a Human Renaissance

I think Elon Musk should have a good standard of living—not the one he’s got at the moment. I think it should be—he should have all his money taken from him. He probably needs a lot of therapy and help. I don’t need to be a mentally happy man. But, yeah, you know, sort of like everyone should have a good, you know, like a, you know, a way to live. You can get this book anywhere. Here, there are copies here. There are copies online as well in bookshops—bad bookshops like Amazon or good bookshops as well, like more ethical ones that are available online.

 

 

Unsettling the Notion of Inherent Selfishness

…and so if you want some more copies, there are some available here. The Easter egg link came back with the thing I just—thank you for that great final question—set up. empathy. I want to talk about empathy just for the final minute or so because I think, you know, it’s a book on planning your economy. Why are you talking about empathy? I’ve got a whole section here on human nature because I think we have to challenge that because people are just like, “Humans are inherently selfish.” Like, you know, whatever.

 

 

The Role of Empathy in Human Nature

like my point about human nature in the book is human nature is everything humans do. Yeah, okay? Everything we do. war is human nature; so is peace. being suspicious of your neighbor is human nature; so is loving your neighbor. Like, everything we do is human nature. The question is, is what societies do we live in that encourage this behavior versus that behavior? and I think that’s an important thing. I think people can be quite selfish under capitalism because we live in a society which encourages, you know, a dog-eat-dog kind of mentality, and, you know, sort of, I’m like, if I don’t get mine, you know, like if you’re getting yours and I’m, you know, like, then I’m losing out.

 

 

Encouraging Positive Human Behavior

And so I think, yeah, a whole section on human nature, but linked to that is also the argument around empathy. And I kind of raise this only because Elon Musk, who I just mentioned, had a thing a couple of weeks ago where he said the greatest weakness of Western civilization is empathy. Which is what the Nazis said! That is a Nazi—like, concept that the empathy weakens you. Like, you know, you need, like, like your strength must be in being able to see a fellow human annihilated and feeling nothing, or even feeling that it’s a glorious act. Like, that’s the fascistic Nazi kind of mindset.

 

 

 

 

The Dangers of Misunderstanding Empathy

And you can see that embedded in—I mean, you know, if you’re on social media and some refugees drown in the, you know, the Channel, they’re like, “Good! You know, oh, you know, like they should be coming here anyway.” It’s a complete destruction of, like, humanity. I just quote—so this is an Easter egg, so it’s not going to be Easter egg because I’m telling it to you, but anyway, very quickly.

 

At the Nuremberg Trials, when the Nazis were on trial for their, you know, war crimes and so on, the US Army paid a psychologist, Captain G.M. Gilbert, and they sent him along to interview them and speak to them and watch them during the trial and see how they reacted to things, you know.

 

And he concluded in his report, he said, “In my work with the defendants, I was searching for the nature of evil, and I now think I have come close to defining it. It is a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants: a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men.” People—evil, I think, is the absence of empathy. So my point is that lack of empathy runs deep in the modern world. It is fostered by creationists and hate, and it is there to divide us from our common humanity.

 

 

The Importance of Empathy in Society

And so my point in this book is that, you know, yes, we can talk about political strategy, and we can talk about meetings and demonstrations and slogans—that those are all very important—but we need to, particularly in the current context, fight for a really radical concept of humanity where, even if you might, you know, you know, like you might be concerned about various things going on, we have to accept that everyone has a right to a good standard of living—refugees and so on, everyone—disabled people.

 

 

The Fight for a More Just Society

And if we lose that, and I think we already have lost that argument to a degree, but unless we can win back and make gains and challenge that notion, then we will always be stuck in this exploitative kind of oppressive society. So for me, I think the psychological aspect of what we’re trying to do is almost as important as some of the political things we’re trying to do.