Participatory alternatives to privatisation
Speech given to social movements in Greece, February 2013
Experience worldwide shows that EC-imposed privatisation on crisis countries will not work. The alternative is not reinforcing the status quo, but using citizen power and labour to reinvigorate public services and democratically transform the state.
I’ve seen the privatised future that the ‘troika’ is trying to impose on Greece – and it doesn’t work. But it’s a pleasurably irony to be in a position where I can use the experience of the UK, a laboratory for privatisation, as a resource for resistance for the threats the Greek people face today.
First I will report back from this future, as someone who like millions of others has suffered the reality of privatisation. Second I bring the news that in response to these failures, the trend is now in the opposite direction – to bring some services back into state hands. And third I want to highlight the key lesson of campaigns worldwide that have achieved this successfully: that it is essential to campaign to transform the state, ending corruption and bureaucracy, at the same time as we resist privatisation.
We can learn from experiences across the world how the popular struggle against privatisation can go further and become a force to make public services and companies genuinely public: transparent to the public, valuing the knowledge of the public, sharing power with the public, and genuinely serving the public rather than private interests.
Download the full speech here
Photo by Ghirigori Baumann
About the authors
Hilary Wainwright
Hilary Wainwright is a leading researcher and writer on the emergence of new forms of democratic accountability within parties, movements and the state. She is the driving force and editor behind Red Pepper, a popular British new left magazine, and has documented countless examples of resurgent democratic movements from Brazil to Britain and the lessons they provide for progressive politics.
As well as TNI fellow, she is also Senior Research Associate at the International Centre for Participation Studies at the Department for Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK and Senior Research Associate at International Centre for Participation Studies', Bradford University. She has also been a visiting Professor and Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles; Havens Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison and Todai University, Tokyo. Her books include Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (Verso/TNI, 2003) and Arguments for a New Left: Answering the Free Market Right (Blackwell, 1993).
Wainwright founded the Popular Planning Unit of the Greater London Council during the Thatcher years, and was convenor of the new economics working group of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly from 1989 to 1994.
Recent publications from Public Services & Democracy
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Privatising EuropeThis working paper and infographic provide an overview of a great ‘fire sale’ of public services and national assets across Europe that is providing profits for a few transnational companies but is often fiercely opposed by its citizens. |
Participatory alternatives to privatisationExperience worldwide shows that EC-imposed privatisation on crisis countries will not work. The alternative is not reinforcing the status quo, but using citizen power and labour to reinvigorate public services and democratically transform the state.
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The future of Public Enterprises in Latin America and the WorldAn international seminar in Montevideo, co-organised by TNI and the Uruguayan government, shared the latest learning and innovation by state-owned enterprises across Latin America and affirmed their importance as instruments for economic and social development. |
