Towards ‘no alternative’: the rejection of proposals for the socialisation of investment in the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden, 1972-1991

Warner, Neil (2024) Towards ‘no alternative’: the rejection of proposals for the socialisation of investment in the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden, 1972-1991. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis casts a new light on the economic crises of the 1970s and early 1980s, which are widely seen as an international moment of transition from ‘embedded liberal’ to ‘neoliberal’ policy regimes. Most literature on this transition emphasises the dysfunctions and breakdown of embedded liberalism, and the emergence and implementation of neoliberal policies. These emphases neglect alternative proposals that were put forward in this period. The alternative proposals shared with neoliberalism many of the same diagnoses of the existing system’s dysfunctions , but proposed very different solutions. Both identified a tension between policies that went against the interests of privately-controlled capital and dependence on this capital for investment. But whereas neoliberal policies answered this dilemma by accommodating the interests of capital, these alternatives proposed the socialisation of investment. A complete account of this moment requires an understanding of why these policies for the socialisation of investment were so widely rejected, and particularly why they were rejected even by Socialist parties that instead turned to neoliberal policies. The thesis examines three cases of the rejection of proposals for the socialisation of investment in European Socialist parties in this period: the National Enterprise Board and associated socialisation measures in the United Kingdom, the nationalisation of credit in France, and wage-earner funds in Sweden. It argues that these policies were rejected due to asymmetries in engagement and mobilisation, between different groups, on investment questions. Owners of capital and finance ministries were heavily engaged in mobilising against these proposals. Conversely, most left politicians, left voters, and trade union members treated them as a low priority, regarding them as too abstract and detached from more immediate priorities. These asymmetries in engagement and mobilisation were connected to asymmetries in the resonance that investment questions had with the everyday experiences of these different groups, which were in turn connected to their different structural positions. In addition to pointing to neglected aspects of the crises of the 1970s and early 1980s, the thesis therefore also emphasises the importance of asymmetries in mobilisation and resonance with everyday experience in the outcomes of economic policy contests, and the relationship between economic structures and these asymmetries. This has broader implications, in particular, for the study of Socialist parties and labour movements, and the question of how labour and governments deal with their structural dependence on capital.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2024 Neil Warner
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HM Sociology J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) > JN101 Great Britain
Sets:	Departments > Sociology
Supervisor:	Archer, Robin and Hancké, Robert
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4650

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