Community Energy: Finding an Ideal in the Valleys

And with that one story a swift stream, nay a great flood of realization struck me with regards to the possibilities laid bare. It took me back to Nancy Fraser’s seminal 2019 essay, The Old is Dying and the New Cannot be Born, which uses Gramsci’s idea of the interregnum to describe the political flux of the West, where the validity of neoliberalism has long been rent asunder by the multiple economic, environmental and political crises being endured – but where there has been a singular failure in terms of a credible alternative emerging to forge a new common sense.

The old-style democratic socialism of the likes of Sanders and Corbyn held wide appeal, but was unable to overcome old prejudices, strategic enemies and its own limitations in order to establish a sufficiently hegemonic form of politics. Their electoral failure also exposed a painful truism of state socialism – that it is only socialist insofar as the state is held by socialists, an all too infrequent occurrence over the last half century.

Here, however, in the form of an unassuming but eminently respected individual, appeared the makings of a new political possibility, where the local capture of – for want of a better phrase – the resources for production (i.e. energy) could lay the basis for an alternative order. One where local communities control their own energy production, provide a cheap supply for its members, and make a profit through any excess. Here was the material basis for overcoming the state dependence of welfarism, or rabid exploitation of late capitalism, and retaining wealth in the community in a diametrically opposed manner to the extraction of the coal industry.

Moreover, this could be the material basis for an alternative democratic order, where forms of local energy independence bolstering the foundational economy would require local decision-making of real import and significance, diminishing the significance of a sleepy Senedd and a distant Westminster.

I was reminded of the writings of the excellent Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, a former Marxist who turned his attention to an ethical critique of liberal modernity. His later work challenged the notion that he was some type of counter-enlightenment conservative, bemoaning the undemocratic and regressive nature of the oversized capitalist nation-state, instead extolling the virtues of localism and political community built on a shared ethos that allowed for both solidarity and critique, stability and progress.

This political philosophy is eminently appealing, doubly so because when MacIntyre imagined a possible real-world example of such an ideal community, he referred to the industrial communities of the South Wales coalfield in their pomp. But whilst he always struck me as providing a vision for a truly different kind of politics - and not the Corporatocracy that is coming our way – the economic model appeared flimsy at best.

However, had Alasdair heard Ian speak about capturing the resources of production, he may have been as convinced as me that the Valleys can once again provide us with an ideal to aspire to.

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