What is the left for?: The case for a politics of reciprocism
About the authors
Harry Quilter-Pinner Executive director, IPPR
Nick Garland
Senior research fellow, IPPR
Will Davies
Professor of political economy, Goldsmiths, director of the Political Economy Research Centre, and associate fellow, IPPR
Chris Bick
Senior research fellow, IPPR
Sofia Ropek Hewson
Senior research fellow, IPPR, and interim head of the Decade of National Renewal programme
Jane Gingrich Professor of social policy, University of Oxford, and associate fellow, IPPR
Gary Gerstle
Paul Mellon professor of American history emeritus at the University of Cambridge, and associate fellow, IPPR
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Advisory group
IPPR's Decade of National Renewal advisory group draws together rich expertise from across the progressive spectrum – from culture, business and media, as well as politics and academia
David Miliband
President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee
Helen MacNamara
Chair of Shelter and the Future Governance Forum
Paul Nowak
General secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC)
Paul Erickson
National secretary of the Australian Labor party
Juergen Maier
Chair of Great British Energy and former CEO of Siemens UK
Polly Mackenzie
Policy entrepreneur and former head of policy to Nick Clegg as deputy prime minister
Sarah Mulley
Consultant, former director of politics and policy at IPPR
Beadie Finzi
Founding director, Doc Society
Heather Boushey
Professor of practice at the Kleinman Centre for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and former member of President Biden's council of economic advisers
Diego Rubio Chief of staff to Pedro Sanchez, prime minister of Spain
Danielle Allen James Bryant Conant university professor at Harvard University
Dani Rodrik Ford Foundation professor of international political economy at Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government
Sir Geoff Mulgan
Professor of collective intelligence, public policy and social innovation at UCL, and former head of policy at No 10
Marc Stears
Director of the UCL Policy Lab, academic and political strategist
Summary
Liberal democratic capitalism has failed to give many people good lives, and the future looks less promising than the past. Our economy is failing to deliver better jobs, higher wages and access to the essentials for too many people. Politics feels like something done to people, not with them, or for them, and most people deeply distrust politicians, the government, and the capacity of the state to make meaningful change.
A new global alliance of right-wing authoritarians and oligarchs is exploiting this crisis. The authoritarian right, backed by tech oligarchs, are using wealth as a political weapon and tearing apart progressive achievements and democratic norms. These oligarchs are fuelling far-right ethnonationalism and trying to reshape what it means to belong in the UK. The left must fight back – but it also needs to put forward a compelling alternative.
Progressive politicians have, for the past 30 years, leaned too far into an agenda of individualism over collectivism. The left’s historic successes, from the creation of the NHS to the minimum wage, were driven by cross-class coalitions. But the left has increasingly backed away from collectivism. This is seen in the embrace of neoliberalism and the privatisation of public assets and services, in the adoption of a shallow form of identity politics over building bridges between groups, and the transformation of citizens into consumers when they encounter the state.
Now we need to reach back to our roots and build a new, collectivist progressive project. We should build a new politics of democratic citizenship which brings people together by emphasising their shared interests and values. This project will need to tackle oligarchs and concentrated wealth and power. It should offer people more rights and more duties in a deeper, mutual form of progressive citizenship. It must build new social and economic institutions to provide people with what they need – and involve them in developing and managing them, so they have more of a stake in their own lives.
Decline is not inevitable – the future can look better than the past if we develop a new collective, reciprocal politics. We call for reciprocism, where the state should do more for us, and ask more in return.
