Phillip Blond in Madrid

While in Madrid this month for the Encuentro, I attended the excellent opening lecture about the Big Society by Phillip Blond of ResPublica. At the risk of caricaturing by oversimplification, and distorting by paraphrase, he made among others the following points.

The Big Society is about creating ownership, and opening up markets. Ownership implies taking responsibility, and taking responsibility implies a need to educate for wisdom and virtue.

To mutualise by creating public-sector cooperatives is a way of avoiding the main problem with privatisation, which is that it merely transfers monopolies from the State to small numbers of private individuals. It is important to devolve power and wealth, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity -- to devolve them where possible not to individuals but to groups. As individuals we are virtually powerless, but as groups we can create new schools, hospitals, guilds...

Individualism is "left-wing". Rousseau's extreme individualism easily flips into collectivism via the notion of the "general will" (made up of many individual wills). Anarchy and totalitarianism are two sides of the coin of individualism. If we are merely individuals with competing rights, we will require a surveillance or police State to ensure order. How do we escape from this dilemma? By realising who we are: that is, not just individuals, but individuals in relationship. To abstract ourselves from these relationships is to fail to understand the nature of the human being.

Europe is "locked in a conspiracy of decline". Bureaucracies proliferate due to suspicion and fear. We can reverse that decline by reviving civil society and creating a culture of trust (cf. trust networks like eBay). But the only way to do that, just as the only way out of the poverty trap, is through education -- education for virtue. Morality is not oppressive or repressive but essentially liberating.

This then connects with the themes of my other blog, Beauty for Truth's Sake. But I wonder if the Big Society, and mutualism and localism generally, can succeed without a profound spiritual impulse. The role of the Spirit in all this cannot be underestimated, and that is the subject of work by Michael Black that I intend to discuss in future posts.

Logic of Gift and the Meaning of Business

A very worthwhile set of conference papers from the University of St Thomas, published by the Vatican, has been made available online here. I haven't had a chance to read through these yet myself, but as I do I hope to expand this entry with comments.

"It is important for the Church to speak meaningfully to all people of good will within the business community especially during this current economic and financial crisis. While business ethics can move us forward in this reflection and practice, what is taking place in businesses today is not just the loss of will to do good, but the loss of meaning, and especially theological meaning, which ultimately demands more than what traditional business ethics and corporate social responsibility can offer."

The Big Society

David Cameron says it is his mission in politics to make the Big Society succeed – see his recent speech on the subject – although opponents claim it is being wrecked by spending cuts, or even that the whole idea was motivated by the need to reduce government spending in the first place. But there seems little doubt that, from well before the election, the Big Society was the Big Idea in Cameron’s mind. The BBC recently reported that the PM had told social entrepreneurs that the initiative would get “all his passion" over the five-year Parliament. The government has also set out details of a Big Society bank to fund voluntary projects. But it isn’t just about volunteering. A “Localism Bill” has already defined numerous ways in which the Coalition aims to encourage local and regional initiative, as part of an intended reduction in bureaucratic red tape and centralized management.

In my booklet Catholic Social Teaching: A Way In, some years ago, I quoted the English expert on Catholic social teaching, Roger Charles SJ: “civil society is… founded on respect for person and family, a morally responsible citizenry knowing its rights and fulfilling its duties, built up though a network of voluntary organisations, social, political and economic, and based on respect for morally responsible freedom.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it!  The question is, can the government get a Big Society to flourish at a time of massive cuts in social services, widespread unemployment, a rising cost of living, and a decline in religious adherence? Have the real roots of the recent financial crisis been addressed? Has the government taken on board other important elements of Catholic social teaching, such as the critique of consumerism, the concern for social justice, the understanding of marriage as the bedrock of society, and the sanctity of the unborn? These and other elements of the teaching make up a coherent whole, and one part of the teaching won’t work if the others are not integrated with it.


This blog entry is based on one I wrote for the new CTS blog Catholic Compass.

People Power

The present wave of revolt across the Middle East -- Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc. -- seems to show the power of a rising generation that will no longer stand for rule by dictatorship. The degree to which Islamic belief plays a part in fuelling this revolt is open to question. Nor is it clear what will emerge to replace the regimes and ruling families that are falling. Western newspapers assume the call is for "democracy", but what does that mean, exactly, and what might it mean in a confessional Muslim state? The word itself literally means "people power". But how are the people to exercise their power,

Recovery of the Guilds

Is it possible that the guilds, those great symbols of medieval culture and enterprise, might be restored to life in our own time? The guilds were an association of freemen, of craftsmen working together to sustain each other, and through apprenticeship and training, to ensure the quality of what they produced. In the UK, the 2010 election installed a government committed to the rebuilding of the “Big Society” and reviving localism. A revival of the guilds would be a keystone in the political process of rebuilding mediatory agencies along with church and school. It is up to us who believe in the necessity of as many members of our society as possible being the economic masters of their fate to create a demand for the recovery of the guilds in our time.

So argues Russell Sparkes, in a "Tract for Our Time" just published in the Articles section of Second Spring Economy. Russell is one of the UK's leading authorities on the practical interface of ethics and economics. He is a Senior Fund Manager for the British Methodist Church working in the field of ethical investment, and Secretary on the Ethics of Investment for the same organization.