A libertarian socialist response to the big society

Purpose

Our aim is to deconstruct the idea of a “Big Society” such the one that has been suggested by Mr. D. Cameron. We want to show how this “BS” is inspired by the usual “right” libertarian philosophy. Instead of this, we suggest to support the idea of a solidarity economy (SE), much more embedded in the tradition of the libertarian socialism.

methodology
Following Boltanski and Thévenot, we selected key philosophical texts to identify the ‘pure’ principles of this libertarian socialism which guide justificatory operations that people perform in their everyday discourse. We analyzed the works written by the libertarian founder of the 19th mutualist movement, Proudhon. His writings luminously articulate the pure formulation of the four main principles which activists of SE continue to allude to in their justifications. Then, we illustrate these key principles by drawing on a larger research project on the SE in France.

Findings

We try to show that an alternative to the capitalism existes beside the communism : the socialist libertarianism. This chapter finds that this left libertarianism is not a new utopie. It is rooted in the long (but marginal) history of the SE, borned in the 19th century.

Originality
Specialists use to think that an economy managed from the left with some libertarian political principles has never been experienced for itself. We seek to illustrate what this may look like in the existing SE. Developing SE implies a reversal of the political programme of the “BS “: redistribute economic power not only from the state, but also from company directors and their shareholders, who, within the right libertarian point of view, can legitimately praise their ‘charitable’ donations to social organizations initiatives to demonstrate their generosity.