Social capital is varied: it is politics, the unions, philanthropy, youth clubs, volunteering, religious organisations and so much more. Labour MPs and councillors interact with social capital in every community across the country. It is about connection and transfer, generosity and kindness, and most of all about building resilience and improving our communities.
Labour-leaning sociologists have tried to pin down the idea, and Ed Miliband has talked about standing up for social capital against financial capital. But social capital isn’t about stopping the clock and turning everyone into curtain-twitching nosy neighbours.
Social capital has been used and abused throughout the 20th century by different authors and in different forms and there is still some justifiable confusion around exactly what constitutes social capital. This is part of the attraction for some Labour thinkers who are keen to foster a more mainstream and centrist approach for the party. Social capital is the trust and knowledge of each other that allows us to work more effectively together and to pursue shared objectives, whether it’s to help raise money for a school trip or combat antisocial behaviour in our streets. It is the norms and patterns that puncture our day to day interactions within our communities, such as helping an elderly neighbour with their shopping.
Importantly for Labour, and those with a statist tendency, social capital is not just the sum of the institutions which underpin a society, it is the glue that holds them together. It is about resilience and moral resources, not just financial.
Social capital has a lot to do with the family unit. In Britain, our family structures have experienced pretty big changes since 1945, yet no political party has been able to say conclusively what their vision for family life is without either offending some people, or reverting to crude stereotypes. The big changes in education provision, the class structure, and the growth of the public realm are often the result of policies Labour governments have pursued, and from which either directly or indirectly social capital has flowed. Changes in education in particular have led to a substantial increase in the number of young people who are in full time secondary education, as well as those who move on to higher education. This is important because evidence suggests that with each additional year of education, a person is more likely to volunteer and to become involved in community affairs.
The leading academic who is now being talked of as the next Maurice Glasman is Peter Hall. His studies show that predictably it is the centre-ground middle classes who are more likely to be involved with their community, to know their neighbours and to socialise with a diverse group of people throughout their lives. In essence that they generate a large amount of social capital through their networks.
This is the big opportunity for Labour within the social capital theory, as the majority of people (60 per cent) now identify themselves as middle class in Britain. Miliband has an opportunity in particular during the recession to highlight the dangers of declining social capital in Britain.
The ‘big society’ might not be seen as a totally credible idea by the Labour front-bench, but it has certainly caught the imagination of the media and to a lesser extent the general public. Labour can’t keep banging on about how the ‘big society’ is a cover for cuts. We should have an equally compelling vision for the way people should interact with each other, and for Labour, the message here should be clear: a drop in social capital is both a cause and a consequence of an increasingly divided society, with growing gaps between the haves and the have nots.
So part of the challenge for Labour is to turn the social capital theories of Peter Hall into a new and positive vision for the state. As an exciting side effect, understanding the role of the state in developing social capital may help some in the Labour party get over their fear that reform of our public services puts the public service ethos at risk.
Social capital is no different to the cooperative movement which has been around since 1844. There’s nothing new to this in my view. Ed is better off consolidating the left by encouraging the trade union/labour and cooperative movements to pool their membership into one giant social movement for change (and a huge personalised member owned database that can be leveraged via collective bargaining). Need to fight big business at their own game. @mikeriddell62