Progress reading grouphow to organise a book groupan easy 1, 2, 3

Get a group of friends, members of your CLP and/ or branch to agree to read and review a monthly Progress feature. Read pages 10-11 The Purple Book: Should we leave the big state behind? Meet together and consider the piece and the questions below. This could be part of your CLP/branch meeting, or take place just before.

Should we leave the big state behind?

Fabian general secretary Andrew Harrop warns Labour to mind the pitfalls of decentralising power, while the chair of Demos Philip Collins argues it is time for the party to choose pluralism. Questions to discuss: See pages 10-11, Progress, November 2011 Harrop argues that our politics of the state must first be about the big, long-term challenges which only collective action on a national scale can resolve. In light of this, discuss the following: Must collective action always take place through the state? Can it take place through decentralised institutions? Should Labour adopt a presumption of decentralisation? Can Labour disperse power in this way while narrowing other inequalities, such as income, asset and health inequalities? Collins writes that the Labour party is on the threshold between two different conceptions of what it might do next. Is the choice facing Labour between vintage social democracy and Labour becoming an active sponsor of power, as suggested in the Purple Book? Can inequality ever really be chosen, as Collins says the pluralist might argue, and can we organise our public services around such an assumption? What is the role of the Labour party in an era of no money?

Contact Progress to get copies of The Purple Book for your reading group. For 9.99 you can get the book, free P&P and a 2 donation to your CLP

Collins believes that tackling income inequality means you spend a lot of time, like it or not, arranging income transfers through the central state. Harrop suggests we index state credits to earnings in future. Should tackling income inequality remain Labours central goal, and can this only be done through the central state? Can Labour forge a new identity for itself which does not have its heart the idea of spending easy money, as Collins implies?

Tell us what your reading group thought:

office@progressoline.org.uk

For more information on The Purple Book see: www.progressonline.org.uk/purplebook