A modest proposal 2

Whereas the post below is a sort of starting point for investigation, this is a shorter version, for a Labour Party meeting.

An amendment to resolution 2, in context:
I want to place my proposed amended resolution 2 in the context of a constructive alternative proposal for a viable short- and medium-term policy strategy for the party. Point 8 addresses directly the content of the original resolution. My amended version follows.

1. New Labour applied the social democratic principle of trying to make capitalism fairer by adapting to the dominant political-economic ideology of the day so as to channel more resources to social projects.
2. The global economic and financial crisis of 2007-09 has changed the political, economic and intellectual terrain dramatically and for good, shaking the dominant ideological edifice in place over the past 30 years—namely, the idea that there is no alternative to unrestrained free-market capitalism—as it was in large part the unforeseen by-product of untrammelled deregulation.
3. As a consequence, the raison d'être of New Labour has fallen away.
4. It is unsurprising that the right reacts according to the dictates of its shop-worn worldview. The left must not do the same. It must create a new policy framework to make Labour values relevant anew to the changed national and global situations.
5. May 2010 saw the defeat for social democracy in one of its incarnations. There is now an opportunity for a thoroughgoing rethink. Ed Miliband’s “slow start” as Labour leader shows that he has rightly decided to take time to reforge strategy and policies for the new era.
6. It would be premature to imagine that the discrediting of the unrestrained free-market yet augurs the decline or transcendence of capitalism itself, not least because…
7. Realistic alternative socio-economic mechanisms that will provide dynamic innovation and which are ready to put to in place straight away are at best embryonic.
8. In the short term, Labour’s priority must be to expose the ideological, class character of the government’s cuts agenda, which could yet endanger Britain’s faltering economic recovery. It must also offer a clear, alternative policy approach to the problems of weak growth, a large fiscal deficit and burgeoning of inflation that shows that it grasps the way in which a national capitalist economy currently works in an international context.
9. Over the medium to longer term, more promising prospects arise. It should be possible to sketch a strategy that pursues two broad policy paths at once. The first path would be pro-market and pro-globalisation, to maximise state resources available for pursuing the second, more radical path, using the economic tool-kit at hand. The second path involves a commitment, not just to the redistribution of state funds, but also to substantial and sustained material and practical support, within civil society, for experimental political and economic institution-building, with the goal of addressing the well-known shortcomings of capitalist production, of extending social control over political and economic life, and of developing alternative socio-economic mechanisms that could open up economic opportunity and unleash the creative capabilities of all.
10. Thus, although capitalism might not automatically equip its own gravediggers as fast as some of us might like, we should try to ensure that it supplies sufficient taxes to pay for the gravediggers’ advanced vocational training.

Amended resolution: That the party should continue to expose the ideological, class character of the government’s cuts agenda, which hits the worst-off disproportionately and could yet endanger Britain’s faltering recovery. It should offer voters an economically credible, pro-growth and pro-employment policy, making use of efficiency savings, as the main means of reducing the fiscal deficit and the national debt. Any spending cuts that are necessary because of the mismatch between expectations about government income before and after the crisis—as the economy enters a lower average growth path—will thus be clearly distinguished from those of the Tories in terms of timing, scale and targeting.