Reclaiming Public Ownership: Making Space for Economic Democracy

摘要

Andrew Cumbers, professor at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences (University of Glasgow), engages with questions of changing the current mode of production: (late) capitalism. He agrees with challengers of global capitalism-Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez-'that current global inequalities and injustices are brought about as much by the appropriation of economic decision-making by elite groups as by distributional outcomes' which makes a policy 'beyond social democrat and centre-left concerns' necessary (p. 5). Acknowledging that 'the quest for democracy means nothing if it does not include the ability to participate in the key decisions of economic life', Cumbers' book addresses 'some hard questions about what type and forms of public ownership are relevant in the context of the global economy today' (p. 5). A challenge like that commands admiration. In the course of his book, Cumbers takes issue with several authors. He himself presents public ownership 'in its broadest sense as encapsulating all those attempts, both outside and throug1h the state, to create forms of collective ownership in opposition to, or perhaps more accurately to reclaim economic space from, capitalist social relations' (p. 7). After engaging with anti-capitalist authors who are very sceptical of the state being able to change the capitalist status quo (i.e. Hardt, Negri and Holloway), he stresses the importance of moving 'from the micro cracks-the autonomous spaces-that are emerging in the interstices of capitalism to something that begins to join up these cracks' (p. 135). Cumbers departs from post-war experiences of public ownership and the neoliberal 'onslaught' against them, and describes the current financial crisis, when public ownership came back on the agenda. Chapters on public ownership and an alternative political economy in Latin America and 'alternative globalizations and the discourse of the commons' discuss alternative paths. The final part focuses on 'remaking public ownership' with examples of Norway and Denmark.