What is the left for?: The case for a politics of reciprocism

Our economy is failing to deliver better jobs, higher wages and access to the essentials for too many people. Politics feels like something done to people, not with them, or for them, and most people deeply distrust politicians, the government, and the capacity of the state to make meaningful change. 

A new global alliance of right-wing authoritarians and oligarchs is exploiting this crisis. The authoritarian right, backed by tech oligarchs, are using wealth as a political weapon and tearing apart progressive achievements and democratic norms. These oligarchs are fuelling far-right ethnonationalism and trying to reshape what it means to belong in the UK. The left must fight back – but it also needs to put forward a compelling alternative.

Progressive politicians have, for the past 30 years, leaned too far into an agenda of individualism over collectivism. The left’s historic successes, from the creation of the NHS to the minimum wage, were driven by cross-class coalitions. But the left has increasingly backed away from collectivism. This is seen in the embrace of neoliberalism and the privatisation of public assets and services, in the adoption of a shallow form of identity politics over building bridges between groups, and the transformation of citizens into consumers when they encounter the state.

Now we need to reach back to our roots and build a new, collectivist progressive project. We should build a new politics of democratic citizenship which brings people together by emphasising their shared interests and values. This project will need to tackle oligarchs and concentrated wealth and power. It should offer people more rights and more duties in a deeper, mutual form of progressive citizenship. It must build new social and economic institutions to provide people with what they need – and involve them in developing and managing them, so they have more of a stake in their own lives.

Decline is not inevitable – the future can look better than the past if we develop a new collective, reciprocal politics. We call for reciprocism, where the state should do more for us, and ask more in return.