Back to the Future:
Collectivism in the twenty-first century

By John Mills and Austin Mitchell MP.

A Catalyst working paper.
Published: March 2002
ISBN: 0 9533224 8 3
Paperback: 24 pages

Are we at the beginning of a new sea-change in popular attitudes and policy orientations away from free-market individualism and towards a renewed confidence in public values and collective endeavour? John Mills and Austin Mitchell assess the prospects for getting 'back on track' with social and economic progress after the failed neo-liberal detour of the past three decades.

The authors trace the transformations in the climate of opinion that following the collapse of the Keynesian consensus in the 1970s, the intellectual ascendancy of monetarism, and an underlying exhaustion of the post-war drive to social and economic reform. The social costs of the attendant policy shifts - slower economic growth, wasteful levels of unemployment, strains on the tax and benefit system caused by a higher dependency ratio, and erosion of the economy's manufacturing base - have, they argue, been largely hidden from opinion-formers by a huge redistribution of wealth and income towards the better off.

Today, however, issues are coming to the fore which highlight the interdependence of all groups in society and by their very nature recommend co-operative solutions. Among these are the manifest degradation of public services upon which the majority rely, sustainability issues arising from pressure on the world's ecology, and an increasingly obvious connection between economic inequalities and rising violence and insecurity, whether that be domestic crime or international conflict.This is an exciting prospect for left of centre politics. The challenge will be to set out a new agenda that, instead of passively reflecting the trends in popular opinion of the last thirty years, takes the lead in building a new consensus for the decades ahead.

John Mills has published widely on economic issues and has years of practical experience in international business. He has also long been actively involved in local government and is currently responsible for the budget of the London Borough of Camden. Austin Mitchell is Labour MP for Great Grimsby and a former front bench spokesman on trade and industry. Prior to entering politics he was an academic in New Zealand and at Nuffield College, Oxford, and he has written numerous books including Labour Last Time: Labour's Lessons from the Sixties, 1997, and Election 45: Reflections on the Revolution in Britain, 1995.

NEW! Read John Mills and Austin Mitchell's article based on this paper

NEW! Read response to this paper from Bill McCarthy, House of Lords

Pamphlets cost £5 each and are available from Central Books. They can be ordered by credit card on 020 8986 4854 or by cheque from: Central Books, 99 Wallis Road, London, E9 5LN (plus 75p p&p). They are also available by subscription.




To read PDF documents you will need Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you do not have a copy you can download it free from Adobe.


Publications list