Technology is favouring Labour, but only if it can transform itself

Last Saturday Labour wrote the final chapter of a book left without a conclusion for over 20 years.  The crossing of the T’s and the dotting of the I’s of John Smiths party reforms were important unfinished business. But in the ensuing 25 years much, to say the least, has changed, and Labour culturally and structurally has to face up to that change if its wants to govern with effect.

Since 1994 the world has been transformed by a technology revolution that is now hard wired, or more accurately free wired, into our culture.  We can know everything/everywhere and can act, share and collaborate in ways unimaginable that quarter of a century ago. Through a smart phone the world is literally in our hands.

The technology is flattening old vertical corporations in the market and in politics. Today command and control is rendered nigh on impossible by a world that resembles Facebook and not the factory. People don’t take orders and instead are well versed in finding their own voice.

The post war settlement was built in a very different way, on hierarchical institutions because the 20th century was the era of centralism, bureaucracy and Fordism.  But while the ends were meant to be egalitarian and democratic, the means were essentially paternalistic and elitist.  The neo-liberal counter-revolution became inevitable.  Now technology is favouring Labour, but only if it can transform itself.  On flatter planes you have to listen to everyone’s voice, anyone can get organised in a future that will be co-produced.  So means and ends can be unified – democracy and equality is what we fight with and for.

This is the world Uffe Elbaek, a member of the Danish Parliament, and I describe in a new Compass publication the Bridge: how the politics of the future will link the vertical and the horizontal.

We recognise that the terrain is ripe for commercialisation by the likes of Google and that those who already struggle most to survive will find it toughest to participate in this co-produced future. But that is what the state is there for – not to to things to people but build the capacity and resources for people to do things for themselves and redistribute wealth and power to the most disadvantaged in our society.

Labour always succeeds politically when it has a story about modernity. 1945, 1964 and 1997 – on each occasion we owned the story of national renewal.  Today we can do it again – but it going to demand a very different politics – one in which politicians yearn to give power away while still making it accountable, a politics of respect and empathy where the motto is ‘if you want to be a rebel be kind’. The party has to open up and out.  Members have to take a real say in policy and campaigns just like they demand a say in every other aspect of their lives.

There might have to be top down reforms like price caps for the big energy corporations and new competitor banks in finance – but the radical and transformative politics lies in community renewable energy schemes and peer to peer lending in banking.  The future will be based on the capacity of many to many networks on and offline to shape their world collectively.  Its called socialism.

The party of the future is the one that acts as the bridge between the 20^th century vertical world and the horizontalism of the 21^st century.  The world is ours to shape. Thousands of organisations and millions of people are already doing it. Because for the first time maybe ever – technology and the future is our friend.