‘What
we are for is equally important as what we are against’, declared Dexter Whitfield in his
presentation ‘Capitalist dynamics reconfiguring the state: alternatives to
privatising public services’ to a packed audience at Nottingham University on
Wednesday, 16 September. Hence, when contesting privatisation of public
services, it is not enough simply to resist these processes. It is also
necessary to put forward concrete alternatives of how to organise and deliver
these services differently from within the public sector. In this post, I will
summarise some of the key points of the presentation, which was jointly
organised by the Bertrand Russel
Peace Foundation,
the local University and College Union association and
the Centre for the
Study of Social and Global Justice.
The
first European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human
Right’ was an enormous success. Between May 2012 and September 2013, an
alliance of trade unions, social movements and NGOs succeeded in collecting
close to 1.9 million signatures across the European Union (EU), thereby
reaching the required quota in 13 EU member states (see Against the
grain: The European Citizens’ Initiative on ‘Water is a Human Right’). In this post,
I want to evaluate the outcomes, the concrete impact this campaign has had on
EU policy-making drawing on interviews with key activists as well as documentary research from
November 2014 to July 2015.
Between
May 2012 and September 2013, close to 1.9 million signatures were collected throughout
the European Union (EU) and formally submitted to the Commission for the
European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’. While impressive
in itself, it is not only the large number of signatures, which is a sign of
success. The ECI, based on a broad alliance of trade unions and social
movements, was successful at a time, when austerity policies were enforced
across the EU. It, therefore, went completely against the grain and in
opposition to dominant forces pushing for further neo-liberal restructuring. In
this blog post, I will discuss the main factors underlying this success: (1)
the long history of water struggles; (2) the unique quality of water; and (3)
the broad alliance of participating actors.
The
recently published collection of essays by Hugo Radice on Global Capitalism (Routledge, 2015) represents impressive global political
economy scholarship across three decades from the 1980s to 2011. Radice makes
two key contributions. First, he successfully re-asserts the importance of
focusing on class and class struggle in analysing the global political economy.
Second, he provides insightful criticism of ‘progressive nationalism’, which is
highly relevant for the upcoming debate over UK membership in the European
Union (EU).
