The real "Liberal Conspiracy" starts here

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The real "Liberal Conspiracy" starts here

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So, last night saw the first meeting of the "editorial board" of a new project initially being sponsored by Lib Dems ALTER , the party's only affiliated group focussing solely on radical economic issues, to publish a book of essays, in a similar vein to "The Orange Book" or "Re-inventing the State". We will set out the case that the "Liberal Economic Tradition " holds the key to the permanent eradication of poverty and the freedom to chose one's own path through life.

We hope to publish in time for the end of August this year, which will be the 100th anniversary of the passage through parliament of the Liberal Government's Old Age Pensions Act in 1908, a key landmark in the development of the modern welfare state, and a few weeks after the 60th birthday of the NHS, conceived by Liberal economist, William Beveridge.

It will truly take Liberal Democrats "out of their comfort zone", for many at least, by arguing that much of what we now have, a "state of welfare", started as a set essentially temporary fix-its intended to alleviate the worst poverty while the entrenched privilege caused by state protected monopolies was dismantled through such radical change as land reform and tariff reduction leading to truly free trade. It will promote the idea that this "unfinished business" is just as relevant and important for today's world, paving the way for what banker and author Bernard Lietaer has called "sustainable abundance".

Over the next few weeks we will firm up the range of topics and start looking for people who may wish to contribute an article in each area, hopefully mostly, and perhaps exclusively, from within the Liberal Democrats themselves. We would like it to be a truly collaborative effort with contributions not just from the "great and the good" within the party, but from the many grass-roots members who we believe share some of these ideas .

So, if any of you are interested in contributing something, do please get in touch with your ideas, or a subject area you would be interested in writing about. From time to time I'll keep people up to date on here, but we're also likely to create a "Liberal Alternative" website where we can co-ordinate the effort.

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Comments

Submitted by Tristan Mills (not verified) on January 9, 2008 - 11:29.

I'm glad this is going ahead. I don't think I really have the expertise to help write it, but I await it and discussions around it eagerly. I hope it marks a step on the way to recapturing the liberal economic tradition and moving away from using Tory (or right wing) mechanisms to attempt to achieve Liberal ends.

Submitted by Jock on January 9, 2008 - 12:05.

...I'm not sure who does! But we'll wait and see the list of topic headings. We want to give quite a strong steer to potential authors, andd/or find people who can write well whom we know will likely take a similar line to us, though there is also scope for a couple of areas of "alternatives" being discussed.

For example, not all my colleagues are enamoured of Citizen's Income, though I yet hope to persuade them. So there may be "alternative" essays on welfare reform.

We do want it to be as "ground up" as possible, to come from ordinary members rather than be another opportunity for some perceived "faction" n the upper echelons of the party to push their pet areas, though of course where an MP or policy maker wants to support the radical agenda they'll be more than welcome as any other member of the party.

Submitted by Andrew Tate (not verified) on January 10, 2008 - 11:36.

As probably the foremost lib dem blogger espousing classical economic liberalism, I hope you will get involved Tristan. Jock, you link to Bernard Lietaer - will you be including local/community/alternative currency schemes in the topics?

Submitted by Jock on January 10, 2008 - 12:56.

...but it was quite difficult to get some of the other ffolk at the editorial meeting to agree thaht money was one of the big four monopolies. I'm going to have to persuade them. However, if we could get David Boyle to write a piece for it it's probably a no brainer. Personally I'd probably be more interested in a chapter on what's wrong with the money system first with perhaps only a little bit about what one could do about it.

It's probably the area with least agreement - I personally quite like the idea of Hayek style privatisation of the creation of money, others may prefer seignorage reform, others may say all we need is complimentary currencies.

And Open Capital is sort of a way of creating credit backed by (by nature) local assets. SO it's likey to feature somewhere.

Submitted by Jock on January 10, 2008 - 12:58.

I did a piece way back during teh last leadership election on Lietaer and that sort of thinking...

"A Challenge Unmet? "

Submitted by Duncan (not verified) on April 8, 2008 - 08:31.

Excellent news, especially as at present I subscribe to the 'opposite tradition'; that is, I tend to find myself in agreement with Evan Harris. This kind of thing is absolutely essential to healthy debate in the party. I don't know if you have your list of contributors all settled, but if you don't - and you hadn't already - you should consider getting in touch with Martin Tod our PPC for Winchester; he was an economist back in the day and a rather good one as I understand.