The Case for Community Wealth Building

The Case For

by Joe Guinan, Martin O'Neill

Our broken economic model drives inequality and disempowerment, lining the pockets of corporations while extracting wealth from local communities. How can we reverse this?

Joe Guinan and Martin O'Neill argue for an approach that uses the power of democratic participation to drive equitable development and ensure that wealth is widely shared. They show how this model - Community Wealth Building - can transform our economic system by creating a web of collaborative institutions, from worker cooperatives to community land trusts and public banks, that empower and enrich the many, not the few.

This book is essential reading for everyone interested in building more equal, inclusive, and democratic societies.

Genres: Economics

140 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 31, 2019

About the author

Joe Guinan is Executive Director of the Next System Project and Vice President for Theory, Research & Policy at The Democracy Collaborative, a Washington DC-based think-do tank, and a member of Labour International.

Reviews

[José Pereira · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am very fond of the concept of community wealth building and the associated precepts of political economy, and excited by its growing empirical success, but this book - even if viewed as an introduction - isn't great. It is quite repetitive, and lacks data and/or deep theoretical justification. It ends up being a simple pamphlet - which is not necessarily bad if the goal is simply to get the ideas out there (so I truly advise it to those unfamiliar with the community wealth building movement), but isn't enough to "make the case for"...
Nevertheless, community wealth building - by championing democratic and broad ownership of capital, economic and political decentralisation, place-based institutionalism, local re-circulation of money, extended decomodification and new forms of public ownership, the recuperation of democratic economic planning, etc. - seems to be the best (and maybe the only sound) project for the left today.
Thinking locally and small-scale should not be viewed by the left as a sign of waning ambition, or neglect to the suffering of community-outsiders, but as a reckoning with the fact that politics and actual democracy require proximity: between people, between people and institutions, and between those more politically engaged and the everyday practices of the broad public.

[Linnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing, well-written dive into community wealth building as a brake and perhaps even an antidote for neoliberalism.

[Andrew Dalby · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful and to be avoided.

It contains nothing of any substance and mostly contains repetitive lists of things that already exist and are well known or of rhetorical arguments not backed up by facts or data. They talk about Preston and Cleveland as examples but I still know nothing about what they did in Preston or Cleveland and I have finished the book! I just know that Cleveland lost 1 million in population and that a third of those who remain live below the poverty level - because they told me twice in the first chapter in a book that is only 116 pages. This feels like an undergraduate essay and one that I wouldn't give more than a third class mark to.

[Phil Herbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to participate in a discussion about this book with the authors - it was a great opportunity to get further clarity on the Preston/Cleveland models, and on how to support Community Wealth Building in different places and industries.

The book itself is straightforward and well-argued, and proposes ideas that sometimes feel like good socialist common sense, but which are solidly backed up.

You're left wondering why on Earth public and local ownership, worker cooperatives, and democratic economies aren't more widely-implemented - or, where they are widely-implemented, why on Earth they're not deservedly touted as success stories.

[Matthew McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book lays out a good case for community wealth building. Importantly much of the case laid out is anchored to real life examples especially the Preston model.

Due to the time of writing much of the hopes of the authors is pinned to the Corbyn project and the policy direction of the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Despite the Corbyn project being truly dead and buried now it in no way takes away or undermines the positive case for community wealth building articulated by the authors.

[I Read, Therefore I Blog · Rating 2 out of 5]

Joe Guinan is Vice President at The Democracy Collaborative and Executive Director of the Next System Project. Martin O’Neill is Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy at York University. This disappointing book chooses to sloganise against the evils of neo-liberalism and make sweeping assertions about the potential for Community Wealth Building rather than offer any detail to back those assertions up and thus fails to make the case for it.

[Jake · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitive, and fails to make a case. Does not address the criticisms even though it spends a chapter “addressing them”.

I agree with many of their ideas but they fail to do anything besides saying this is what CWB is and it’s good. Their descriptions of Preston model and Cleveland is very surface level. It’s unfortunate because this could be so much more. 2.5/5 if I could give it that.

[Ellie Radcliffe]

Great introduction to the world of community wealth building, not necessarily comprehensive and the field seems to change all the time so I'd recommend it as a way in but not something that's used as a guide.

[Dee McLadha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly made the case for it - again and again - with fiery rhetoric that inspires. Wishing more time was spent on case studies briefly mentioned e.g. Preston.

[Colin Bruce Anthes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors are extremely knowledgeable, the first 10 pages are a superb account of a tremendously successful development, and the following chapter is a stirring account of why such a development needs to expand--and, fortunately, is expanding.

The book's biggest drawback is, oddly, its staunch good-faith-ness. It spends a significant portion discussing hypothetical concerns neoliberal critics have posed should community wealth building (CWB) become the dominant mode of development. But CWB is so vastly superior to our present trends, and, being a mode of development rather than sudden revolution, has always had time and adjustment in practice, so that this discursion seems moot and removed from the case concretely established early in the going. The debate between neoliberalism and CWB would have been better replaced by a debate over what the best practices for CWB are or how it can best address the next wave of challenges moving forward.

Still, the later chapters return to the hands-on with an important engagement with the economic inefficiency and social cruelty of "throwaway cities." My hometown is one such city, abandoned by General Motors despite massive public subsidies and bailouts to the corporation. Guinan and O'Neill are making important contributions at a crucial time. We're lucky to have them about.