Jonny Gordon-Farleigh

We see the potential for a national support programme – but this will require major funders – and our own sector – to see the value in the recovery and renewal of social clubs as a unique opportunity to expand the democratic economy in our everyday lives.

What takes place in the 1980s and 1990s is a concerted class offensive that attempts to execute a controlled demolition of civil society.

Ethex’s recently launched 10 years of Impact report demonstrates that the direct impact investing model works and has the potential to provide the vital funding needed by hundreds more impactful organisations that are taking action against climate change, social inequality and the break-down of communities.

What is the “rational kernel” of the romantic world-view? It is a social and cultural protest against the modern industrial capitalist civilisation, in the name of past, pre-capitalist, pre-modern values.

In future gatherings we need to look more directly at how we can stimulate a new structural transformation of civil society. It will be a broad process that explores how we can rebuild democratic power to facilitate mass involvement in civil society and, by extension, our political system.

I think we now need utopian thinking more than ever. The mistake people often make with utopia is to see it as a destination, a fixed end point. Instead, utopia is the process of first imagining, and then believing that we can organise the world differently, which empowers us to take steps towards it