Denmark's Independent Greens lay out a postcapitalist manifesto (with anarchist tinges) that will bridge the country to a better future

We retain our links with the Danish political scene which inspired the Alternative UK. But like any party political culture, there can be turmoil. Uffe Elbaek, the original founder of Alternativet, has led a breakaway party (comprising a few existing Danish MPs) titled Frie Grønne (or in English, Independent Greens). We take an ecumenical stance towards each party, wishing them well as green operators in the Danish Parliament.

But what attracted us - and attracts us still - is the dynamism, energy and intelligence of progressive Danish politics in general. And under Uffe’s influence, the Frie Grønne/Independent Greens are excitingly laying out their plans for a green, feminist and postcapitalist Denmark. They’ve shared with us one of their latest policy papers, titled “A green, democratic and post-capitalist Denmark” (PDF download).

We’re underway with translating it from the Danish. However we’ve used Microsoft Translator software to make some selections. We’ve also added our own knowledge of FG’s thinking on these issues, and have additionally run it past some voices from the FG - thumbs up.

So from its introduction and conclusion, here’s what we hope is a reasonable rendition of this exciting position paper.

Independent Greens/Frie Grønne: A green, democratic and post-capitalist Denmark

...If we as a society are to solve the challenges we face – be it climate, economic, social, cultural or democratic – one of the most obvious tasks must be to put an end to our current economic model, neoliberal capitalism, and instead to develop a new green and democratic economy that respects the limits of growth which the planet sets.

We call this new economic thinking postcapitalism.

It seems to us that our key question is how we arrive at a holistic understanding of the relations and dynamics between humans and nature. Where humanity no longer sees itself as something separate and exalted, but on the contrary as part of a natural whole.

A post-capitalist economy is for the Independent Greens both green, democratic and feminist. Green, because we have to respect planetary boundaries. Democratic, because it is about solidarity and fairness. And feminist, because it esteems all kinds of value-adding work – unpaid as well as  paid – but also has a understanding of cyclical growth and development.

In the Independent Greens, we rely firmly on the entrepreneurial power of the community. This is what sparked the first wave of social innovation in Denmark from the beginning of the 19th century. At that time we saw a large number of societal innovations and experiments within culture, education, politics and business.

Together, these political, cultural, educational and economic initiatives created a real wave of social innovation - one that brought Denmark to a position as one of the world's most well-functioning countries.

And the reason for this was not a major macro-level business policy and economic strategy, devised in the Ministry of State and Finance. Instead, it was something as simple and fundamental as people all over Denmark joining forces, in meaningful, cohesive communities, to solve the urgent problems and demands of that time.

It is this community-creating power that we must rediscover, if we are to emulate the achievements of our great-grandparents and grandparents. With their small and large-scale collective actions, they created the first version of the welfare society. Now it is up to us to take it to the next level - to kick-start the next wave of social innovation.

If they could, of course, we can too. Even given that the challenges we face today are often so complex, deep and globally integrated into each other, that the task can seem exaggerated and unmanageable. For example, take the climate and biodiversity crisis, global economic disparity, or flows of refugees.

These are all issues that you might call "problems without passports". They are not the problems of a single country, but a challenge to all humanity.  And not only do the problems require the involvement of many countries, but also of several sectors, often in brand new and hybrid solutions. So it's not an easy task. But who said it was going to be?

Independent Greens are by no means alone in their desire to kick-start the next wave of social innovation. Around the globe, there is a lively discussion about how we re-examine society, sustainability, justice, growth, development and quality of life

Just take think tanks like Compass and the New Economic Foundation in London or Democracy Collaborative in Washington DC. Specifically, in relation to the fourth social arena – all the activities that take place in the middle between the three old sectors (private, public and voluntary) – it is not least the Fourth Sector Network in the United States that has inspired us along the way in the making of this document.

It was the FSN which, originally back in the mid-1990s, named that gap between the private, public and voluntary sectors as the fourth sector, which we have translated into the fourth social arena in this paper.

Independent Greens see the fourth social arena as both a development space and an experimental zone, providing the sustainable social solutions the future calls for. We must therefore understand the fourth arena as both a new social mindset, a new cultural and social point of identity, and even a new legal structure.

It should be an answer to those companies, organizations and institutions who do not fit into the framework and legislation, currently defining the three old sectors.

We have a clear reason for our particular concern with the fourth arena. It’s because the entrepreneurs, businesses, organisations and institutions that immediately identify with the idea of a fourth social arena represents many of the values, attitudes, solutions and sensibilities needed to have a much more free, democratic, creative, meaningful and inclusive society.

Thus we believe a vigorous fourth arena can become a decisive stepping stone, catalyst and focal point, getting us to a green and democratic postcapitalist society. The fourth arena can be a bridge between our current neoliberal social fabric and a green, democratic post-capitalism.

A postcapitalist Denmark will put industrial thinking into the past, replacing it with a much more organic, holistic, solidarity-based, and anarchic understanding of what drives, develops and motivates people. FG will show how businesses, organizations and communities can flourish, within free democratic spaces which they should have already occupied.

From the Conclusion:

…The fourth social arena is the necessary bridge from our current neoliberal society to a green, democratic post-capitalist society.

But we also think that if this new green and democratic fourth arena of society becomes dominant, it can be an answer to the calls of a modern anarchism. Particularly when it asks: what do we put in place when we do not want either a larger state or a larger commercial market?

Looking at Danish history, we can identify some crucial social building blocks in the first wave of social innovation. It’s an interesting combination of community-based business models (the cooperative movement), a new sense of social justice (the labour movement), and democratic and cultural mobilization (the folk high school movement, bringing a new kind of popular enlightenment). These can be coupled with the special role of major cities as innovation factories.

But we also looked at the situation here and now. We could only see that this century's progressive movements have not yet managed to build significantly solid and counter-power platforms. Hardly at all, in fact, by comparison with what characterized the first social wave of innovation.

This is a time when the world has never been so unequal, conflicted and overcrowded; where economic and political power is concentrated in fewer and fewer people and businesses. It’s also a time when we have never faced more challenges than we do today: primarily the climate crisis and the bio-diversity crisis (referred to by the UN Secretary-General as our own “murderous war on nature”), which threatens civilization as we know it.

The last thing we explored in the paper was to outline the contours of a new understanding of democracy. The ambition is to strike the right balance between the inviolable freedom of the individual and their necessary commitments to community. 

What appeared were some very clear systemic differences between communities under neoliberalism and postcapitalism. These clarified the kind of paradigm shift we want to see when it comes to understanding people, organisations and good leadership. Essentially, it’s a move from machine-thinking to gardener-thinking.

At the end of all this, we don’t doubt for a second that the 21st century is the century of freedom, experimentation and communities defined by solidarity and anarchism.

We hope you feel the same way.

For more on Denmark’s Independent Greens, visit here (in Danish)

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