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The great regeneration swindle

5yearplanThe leaders of the former Soviet Union placed great store on Five-Year Plans, supported by extraordinarily detailed statistical information on the country’s economic outputs. The only problem was that they bore no resemblance to reality. While the fake economy soared to ever higher levels of productivity, the country faced perennial shortages of basic foodstuffs and consumer goods.

A similar role is being played today by the regeneration industry. The main difference is that, while the Soviet Union figures were generally discredited and dismissed, the regeneration industry still seems to believe its own propaganda.

Sustainable growth, that most cynical of oxymorons, remains the holy grail. But since the ‘golden age’ of high growth and full employment during the 1960s, there have been a series of booms and busts that provide a clear pattern. Every recovery takes longer to achieve and the growth rates are lower than anticipated.

The recession of 2008/09 was the final beachhead for the growth delusionists. The combination of financial meltdown and economic collapse should have precipitated a complete re-evaluation of underlying assumptions about growth, especially given the economic impact of resource depletion and climate change, reflected in ever higher raw material prices and severe weather disruptions. But despite the depth of the crisis, most economic forecasting predicted a fairly short recession and a return to trend growth by 2014-15.

The reality is that every year since 2009, those projections have had to be revised downwards, with the most recent ones suggesting that overall GDP will bump along at a level lower, in real terms, than that of 2007. Yet the regeneration industry still models a future where trend growth is restored. For example, the longer-term economic forecasting used for the Yorkshire regional economy in 2012 showed a remarkable resemblance to that prior to the 2008/09, with some highly optimistic employment projections in sectors like financial services.

Instead of this form of Soviet-style propaganda, we need a return to the idea of contested political economy. Instead of consensus on limited market failure impacting only on the most deprived communities – conveniently legitimising the next raft of ‘regeneration’ initiatives and lucrative, follow-on evaluations – we need a critique of market failure everywhere.

You don’t need to be a Marxist to recognise that we live in a massively unequal society where the gap between the richest and poorest is growing, or that we live in a rigid, almost feudal system, where life-chances are determined by class and privileged access. Talking to ordinary working people – as some of us have been doing in our local campaigning group Bradford People’s Coalition Against the Cuts – the picture emerging is one of terrible anxieties and fears over benefits cuts and loss of disability allowances. Millions of our fellow citizens live with the constant pressure of poverty, even to the extent of not knowing whether they can put food on the table from week to week.

This is unacceptable. An alternative political economy would emphasise that we are a rich country able to chart a different course through sustained public investment. Local authorities could be key economic agencies, embarking on a major social housing programme that ended homelessness and long waiting lists, employed local people, and stimulated a local multiplier of work for suppliers.

Political economy means just that, political choices for the economy, giving back to local authorities real powers and working with local communities on their priorities. Political economy means making choices about the equitable distribution of work, based on a shorter working week. Political economy means being comfortable with zero growth in the context of agreed social and environmental goals including full employment and targets for the elimination of carbon emissions.

Steve Schofield
Steve Schofield is research worker at LessNet, the economic sufficiency and security network

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