Summer School, McMaster University June 24–27

Capitalism, Democratic Solidarity and Institutional Design

I will be participating in this summer school organised by Stefan Sciaraffa at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, this summer with Mark Blyth, Bill Edmundson, Robert Hockett, Stephanie Mudge and Stefan. Full program and details of how to apply here:

https://www.solidaritydesign2019.com/

My talk will be:

‘Property Owning Democracy and the Role of the State: Big State, Small State, Smart State Or….?’

Both political liberals, such as John Rawls, and republicans, such as Richard Dagger, think that a fully specified implementation of a just society will take the form of a property-owning democracy. In this presentation I will begin by explaining why both of these traditions converge on this specific form of what Rawls called a “realistically utopian” private property system that is not capitalist. I will then address a fundamental problem for this approach to the specification of a schematic political economy; its failure clearly to demarcate itself from its rivals, and an inherent vagueness about the envisaged role of the state. For both supporters and critics, a property-owning democracy can seem to be nothing more than the familiar welfare state capitalism, supplemented by some ad hoc asset based policies (such as baby bonds, or estate taxes). Alternatively, it is the wholesale rejection of welfare state capitalism to be replaced by a competitive individualism that gives citizens only “starting gate” equality of opportunity (plus a demogrant). Another way of framing the issue here is the role envisaged for the state in a property-owning democracy. Is it the “big state” of traditional redistributive socialism with an extensive sector of public ownership? Is it the “small/smart” state of neo-liberalism, allied to a specific vision of globalization? By examining the role of the state in guaranteeing full employment, democratizing finance, directing public investment, underwriting key markets for essential goods, and the democratic co-opting of all major forms of capitalized institution (the open corporation, charitable trusts, pension funds) I hope to defend the distinctiveness of asset based egalitarianism as a realistic utopia.