Reclaim The State: experiments in popular democracy - Mixed Media - Book Review

New Internationalist, Nov, 2003 by Erin Gill, Louise Gray, Malcolm Lewis, Peter Whittaker

Reclaim The State

Experiments in Popular Democracy by Hilary Wainwright

(Verso, ISBN 185984 689 0)

Hilary Wainwright has been a stalwart of the alternative movement since she emerged as one of the leading figures in 'Beyond the Fragments', an attempt in the 1970s to unite the disparate elements of Left, feminist and ecological thinking. This ecumenical approach has always been one Wainwright has favoured and Red Pepper, the magazine she edits, is a loud voice in favour of internationalism and the global justice movement. In Reclaim The State she has set out to discover how the widespread protests against globalization have translated into positive action and how community empowerment is working at a grassroots level. Her search takes her from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Doha and Luzon to Seattle where she finds numerous ambitious attempts to resist centralization and privatization and set up genuinely functioning local democracy. In the keynote section of the book Wainwright investigates the 'participatory budgeting' schemes set up in Brazil by the Workers Party, to give local people control over the decisions which affect their lives.

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There are starrier names and flashier writers in the anti-globalization camp than Hilary Wainwright, but there are few with her track record of commitment to original and innovative thinking. Reclaim The State challenges the lie that neoliberalism, privatization and deregulation are the only options. Those who say that protesters against capitalism can only say 'no' should read this book. It provides solid and practical evidence of the incremental ways in which ordinary people are taking back the levers of power from corrupt elites bankrupt of both ideas and trust.

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