Heres a reminder of the LRC's Left Economicas Advisory Panel that I have blogged about previously
http://unionfutures.blogspot.com/2008/02/press-release-on-nationalisation-rock.html LEFT ECONOMICS ADVISORY PANEL
CO-SPONSORED BY
New Left Unions, Socialist Campaign Group & Labour Representation Committee
For a bit more info here is Andrew Fisher's article from last months Briefing
Making that LEAP
Andrew Fisher, LEAP co-ordinator looks ahead to the 'Beyond the Market Economy' conference on Saturday 24th May.
It was Thatcher who said "There is No Alternative", but it was New Labour that made that statement a reality. In the UK all the major parties are ideologically committed to neoliberal economic dogma: privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation.
It is against this backdrop that the LRC established the Left Economics Advisory Panel (LEAP) to challenge the economic hegemony of our age. LEAP is about promoting the economics of co-operation over competition, of democracy over markets, and of the many over the few. Over the past few years, we have published regular publications on economic issues (all free to download from the LRC website www.l-r-c.org.uk) and held a fringe meeting at the November 2007 LRC annual conference.
On Saturday 24th May, LEAP will be hosting its first conference 'Beyond the Market Economy – socialist solutions to the economic crisis'. The event is open to everyone and features platform speeches from LEAP Chair John McDonnell MP (former Chair of Finance at the GLC) and Tony Benn (former Industry Minister). But this is more than just a conference with speeches from the great and the good: this is a participatory conference with four sub-plenaries on housing, global finance, social ownership and workers' rights.
In the last year, the contradictions of the market economy have been exposed, and is high time the Left got its act together and fought for economic policies to benefit the many not the few. In the late 70s and early 80s, the left opposition in the Labour Party developed the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES), which for all its flaws was a broadly debated, coherent, and a programme for socialist change – and was a far better course than that which Callaghan and Healey took: prostration before the IMF, which resulted in eighteen years of Thatcherism.
As Gordon Brown looks increasingly keen to emulate this precedent, the left must not only construct a programme that is coherent, but must also find ways of mobilising for and winning its programme in an era that is politically even less favourable than at the time of AES.
The LEAP conference 'Beyond the Market Economy' will therefore not just be about debating the policies we want on our wishlist, but it will be about a creative debate about how we engage new people in debates on social ownership, industrial democracy, trade union rights, build confidence, build campaigns and, ultimately, achieve our goals.
I believe there is an appetite for change: people know their being screwed on their pensions; they don't trust the banks; they fed up with the state of private sector inefficiency from their rail services to their utilities; they're insecure about rising debt and housing costs; they know they're paying more tax, yet the rich and the corporations evade and avoid it at will; and many know they're not getting fair pay and rights at work.
Marx said the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to changeit. Philosopher or activist, come along to Birkbeck College in London on 24th May and join the debate.
· To find out more and to register for Beyond the Market Economy, go to www.l-r-c.org.uk
