Hilary Wainwright

Millions passionately desire a viable alternative to austerity and neoliberalism, but they are sceptical of traditional leftist top-down state solutions. In this urgent polemic, Hilary Wainwright argues that this requires a new politics for the left that comes from the bottom up, based on participatory democracy and the everyday knowledge and creativity of each individual. Political leadership should be about facilitation and partnership, not expert domination or paternalistic rule. Wainwright uses lessons from recent movements and experiments to build a radical future vision that will be an inspiration for activists and radicals everywhere.

Millions passionately desire a viable alternative to austerity and neoliberalism, but they are sceptical of traditional leftist top-down state solutions. In this urgent polemic, Hilary Wainwright argues that this requires a new politics for the left that comes from the bottom up, based on participatory democracy and the everyday knowledge and creativity of each individual. Political leadership should be about facilitation and partnership, not expert domination or paternalistic rule. Wainwright uses lessons from recent movements and experiments to build a radical future vision that will be an inspiration for activists and radicals everywhere.

The protest movement hounding capitalist elites from Seattle to Cancun and the global outrage at the military aggression of George Bush and Tony Blair are saying more than just 'no'. They are insisting that another world is possible. But if the momentum of these international movements is to grow, they must be rooted in local action to create greater democratic and economic justice in everyday life. Hilary Wainwright sets out on a quest to discover how people are creating new, stronger forms of democracy. Her journey starts in the deep south of Brazil, in Porto Alegre, where she explores the wider potential of the 'participatory budget', the Workers Party's radical model for public investment decisions. With the confidence this gives that participatory democracy can work, she goes home and joins residents in East Manchester - the origins of Britain's industrial revolution - as they test out the British government's promise of 'community-led' regeneration and use public money to try to rebuild shattered neighbourhoods. She hangs out on a young, 'dream' estate on the outskirts of the commuter town of Luton where ex-squatters and ravers join with established residents' groups and local vicars to take control of public resources and forge a new social economy. Finally, in the northern city of Newcastle, she is a fly on the wall as council workers see off an attempt by British Telecom to take over local services and win the battle for a democratic public alternative. Wainwright concludes with a set of proposals for turning resistance into lasting institutions of participatory democracy - an embedded bargaining power against corporate and military elites. This, she argues, will require very different kinds of political parties from the ones currently alienating voters. Reclaim the State shows that the foundations for new political directions already exist, and provides imaginative and practical tools for building on them.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula) became Latin America's first democratically elected socialist leaders since Salvador Allende on October 27, 2002. He achieved nearly 62 per cent of the vote, to become the first left-wing politician to win his country's presidency. But behind this victory for Lula and his Workers' party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT) is a long and difficult struggle for ascendancy which began in the early 1980s. Written by a Brazilian academic and a British journalist who have long associations with the PT, this book tells the story of the PT's origins and electoral history, outlining the key politicians behind it, as well as their four subsequent tries for power.

As disillusion sets in with the free market right- the legacy of Thatcher, Reagan and Geoffrey Sachs-Hiliary Wainwright retrieves and develops what was best in the thinking and practice of the new left. Challenged by the appeal of neo-liberalism to young organizers in the civic movements of Central Europe, she tackles Hayek's critique of the all-knowing state, and his regonition of 'practical knowledge' that no state or party can secind guess. Drawing an alternative view of knowledge from the practice of social movements (from the 1968 student revolt, through militant shop stewards organizations and the women's movement, to green activism of the 1980's) as well as from new philosophical currents, Wainwright counters Hayek's individualism and denial of the legitimacy of the collective action, with a conception of knowledge as fundamentally social. On this foundation she establishes a new understanding of transformative political agengy as well as self-consciously experimental and involving a combination of representative and participatory forms of democracy. Arguments for a new Left is sure to provokr wide discussion.