Andrew Cumbers: A poor return from private ownership

The 20th century was marked by two competing visions. On the one hand there is a vision of socialism as centralised state ownership – or nationalisation – that could deliver equality and happiness to the masses, and, on the other, Margaret Thatcher’s dream of a property-owning democracy.

Both turned out to be unrealisable utopias. Three decades of intensive privatisation across the globe have seen a massive transfer of public wealth into the private sector and with it an unprecedented concentration of economic power and decision-making.

Some might ask whether all this matters. There are two compelling reasons why ownership does matter and why more of our economy should be subject to collective decision making.

The first is that owners of the means of production decide what is produced. With ownership resting in the hands of a few rich individuals, we are unlikely to find lasting solutions to the common problems facing humanity, such as climate change.

The second argument is a democratic one. The decreasing number of people who turn out to vote at elections is often taken as a sign of apathy, but it is more correctly viewed as disenchantment.

What is the point of having a vote every five years if the most important decisions affecting your life on a day-to-day basis are taken without your participation?

In the wake of the financial crisis there has been some creative thinking about how the banking sector might be transformed to more socially useful purposes with discussions of community banks, green banks, regional development banks and so on. Across the North Sea in Denmark, the country’s wind power revolution has been founded upon co-operative and municipal forms of ownership, with one in seven of the population having shares in a wind farm. A questioning of the rationale behind private ownership should not take us back to the monolithic state enterprises of yesteryear, but we should be open to the possibilities that new and diverse forms of public ownership offer.

• Andrew Cumbers is professor in geographical political economy at the University of Glasgow.