Does the ‘alternative economic strategy’ of the 1970s crisis have any relevance for the 2010s transition to a low carbon society?

Fred StewardProfessor of Innovation & Sustainability, Policy Studies Institute

A political conjuncture

The 1960s rebellion against technocratic modernism

The 1970s/80s emergence of a new ecological paradigm

The 1970s labour movement response to capitalist crisis and exhaustion of statist economic policy

The new politics of technology

Action and knowledge in the 1960s/70s: The critique of technocratic modernism

1. Authority of expertise2. Materialistic consumerism

A more democratic mode for using knowledge in decisions

An interest in alternative technological choices

Critiques of technocratic modernism

The new politics of technology

Global ecological sensibilities

Including from the left

1975 The environmental crisis is

’political’ Not just preserving a pretty bit of

countryside or saving some rare animal or plant from extinction

But Threatens the health and safety

of workers and their communities

Cooley - Integrated road/rail hybrid vehicle, airships (constant loading, wind power (laaaaarge scale– technological solutions

Political realignment?

Need a new alliance of movements active on the politics of technology and the labour movement

AES - lack of attention to politics of technological innovation a major weakness

Socially useful production

Few would seriously propose socialism in one company

Combines practical demands with a general political perspective

Alternative production, democratic planning, anti-nuclear and military, no mention of global environmental issues

The economic crisis and the left

Socially useful work, alternative production, a radical anti-capitalist AES ,democratically planned economy, global context

Trade union control, enterprise board, producing for need, commonsense economy, in the long run cannot preserve the old industries as they are, technology in different ways, not one path

GLC industrial and technology strategy

The fusion of imaginative vision with a non-utopian strategy

A knock out of Keynesian Kinnock by Marxist Murray

Failure to connect the left with emerging

environmentalism Industrial decline, planning, national path

No real engagement with global environmentalism

Marginal attention to energy – renewable resources, environmental needs, effective conservation

Still little realignment

Strong affinity between the new analysis of the left and the practice of the greens

Need to combine greening and modernisation

Collectivism, universalism, social purpose, global identity

Summary The 1970s – Gramscian organic crisis ‘the

old is dying and the new is not yet born’ Positive development was linking politics of

innovation with municipal policy Missed opportunity for serious political

realignment of left with environmentalism Continued rise and influence of the green

agenda outside the left in making climate change a core feature of public policy with some oddly traditional characteristics

The UK strategy 2009