Imagining ‘The Good Society’

Deep, structural changes will require “transitional” arrangements and public subsidies to maintain transport infrastructure such as petrol stations as a competitive market simply ceases to be profitable.

The “market” does not always supply a “spontaneous” and “organic” solution to every economic challenge. Such scenarios can warrant more direct public intervention.

A “mixed democratic economy” might provide the right mix between planning and market forces, placing human need ahead of the imperative of share value maximisation.

The “democratic” component, here, ought not to be under played either. Citizens and workers should have due influence over their own productive lives, and over the economic imperatives of the nation.

Strategies for economic democracy and justice could include:

• subsidies, low interest loans, support and tax breaks for co-operative enterprise, mutual societies and similar bodies;
   
• renewed emphasis on the public sector - managed by democratic government: including public infrastructure such as transport services, water, public housing, communications and energy; health, education, community child care services, and aged care; dedicated pure and applied scientific research; competitive GBEs (Government Business Enterprises) - which work to counter collusion and oligopoly - in fields such as banking and insurance;
   
• further GBEs could imaginably be established in critical industries such as mining - under the assumption that such pubic enterprise can perform as well if not better than private enterprise - especially when operating within a competitive global and domestic market (and thus subject to the corrective rigors of market forces). Note: Regardless of this - a public monopoly is preferable to a private monopoly: such enterprise is accountable to the public and is a bulwark against exploitation - profits are returned to “the people” and can, in turn, subsidise public services, welfare and infrastructure.
   
• Provision of democratic channels for collective capital formation and management: “citizens investment” or “community development” funds - provided for through a levy upon the profits of businesses, with revenue flowing to the broader welfare system and social wage … Without the imperative of share value maximisation, such funds would be managed on the basis of real social utility and need.

Importantly, the opportunity of citizens to invest their savings is a genuine liberal right. Regardless, though: even pension funds might technically be in a position of expropriating surplus value from workers.

Exploitation as understood by Marx, thus, is in some ways a “Gordian knot” which cannot be severed - or eliminated entirely.

On the other hand, progressive taxation, redistribution of wealth, economic democracy and collective capital mobilisation, maintenance of a strong and strategic public sector - including a progressive welfare state and social wage - could well displace the traditional bourgeoisie in its position as “ruling class”: perceived and real.

In its place it is to be hoped that ordinary citizens (including pensioners, the unemployed, students - i.e.: not just workers) will organise so as to “win the battle of democracy” and secure sweeping economic, political and social change. The right economic and democratic mix is essential for us all: and is an essential part both of imagining - and achieving - “The Good Society”.