Duncan Thorp on possibilities for creating a better, more democratic economy
Community Wealth Building is a local, community-led approach to the economy, that aims to lock power and wealth within our neighbourhoods.
It’s a practical roadmap to build a better, wellbeing economy, where human needs and the natural environment come first.
A new, long-awaited bill has now been published in parliament and there’s a consultation to gather your own views and practical experiences too.
Firstly, it’s important to understand what Community Wealth Building (and indeed the economy in general) actually means in the real world.
The economy is about the things that matter to us in our daily lives.
The economic system, poverty and household finance issues are a direct cause of poor mental and physical health and inequalities.
This is about our jobs, the income taxes we pay, childcare, foodbanks, the cost of household energy prices and rent and mortgages.
It’s these human, real-world issues that we need to urgently fix and community wealth building could be part of the solution.
The economic system we have just now is highly dysfunctional and undemocratic. This system means huge wealth inequalities, planet-killing consumerism and wealth extraction from our local communities.
Unfortunately, we currently live in a very narrow, low ambition political world, where mild tweaks to a broken economic model are seen as the only options.
Serious challenges to the capitalist system are no longer seen as possible in the mainstream.
Could Community Wealth Building be an antidote to all this?
Of course, simply passing a bill into law won’t mean genuine change in itself. Full integration with other policy areas, like the Land Reform Bill, Democracy Matters reforms and the Inclusive Democratic Business Models (IDBM) report and their implementation, is essential.
More importantly Community Wealth Building has to be genuinely led by the expertise of social enterprises and other community organisations, accompanied by significant funding. These innovators must be empowered.
Local social enterprises, cooperatives, charities and community groups are the very definition of Community Wealth Building. They’ve been building community wealth for decades and they epitomise what our whole economy should look like.
National and local government and big community anchor organisations need to recognise, support and invest in the many existing grassroots examples of Community Wealth Building initiatives.
We must guarantee that Community Wealth Building is not just another policy trend or temporary fix that will be forgotten about in a couple of years.
Countless policy initiatives come and go but approaches like Community Wealth Building could be transformative on the road to a better, democratic economy – if it’s done right.
There’s still work to do to raise the profile of Community Wealth Building to a wider audience and increase understanding – and crucially direct involvement – by the public.
Perhaps Community Wealth Building could even be a catalyst, uniting people with very different political views, to build better local economies?
Duncan Thorp is policy and public affairs manager at Social Enterprise Scotland.
