Wealth for a nation: Advancing Community Wealth Building

Exciting developments are happening globally in Community Wealth Building. From its origins in Cleveland, and then Preston, UK, the Community Wealth Building(CWB) movement continues to grow in USA and globally. There is a new era for Community Wealth Building in USA, and there is now a moment of international significance over the Atlantic, in Scotland, with the Scottish Government launching a consultation on proposed CWB legislation. As mentioned in a previous blog, this proposed legislation is a first for the world, and represents the legislative icing on the Scottish CWB cake which has been a few years in the making.

This speaks back to the USA policy and legislation. We now have greater reference to ‘Community wealth’ within the US Economic Development Administration (EDA) and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We have also seen CWB incorporated into U.S. federal legislation (the CHIPS Act), and at TDC, we are now in conversations to advance a comprehensive CWB Bill on Capitol Hill that will look to draw upon this proposed Scottish legislation.

The growth of Community Wealth Building in the USA and Scotland, is happening because it offers a fundamental corrective to an economy that fails to adequately serve people, place and planet. CWB is about building an effervescent economy in which everyone can participate and benefit from the wealth it creates. Indeed, by giving more people a stake in the economy; as well-paid workers, owners, entrepreneurs or business owners we are maxing out on the creativity and labor of all people and in so doing we are making our economy more just, resilient and productive. Furthermore, CWB is a corrective to wider effects of an economic system that sees over use of resources, degradation of social and community life, weakening of democracy and erosion of the fundamental basic right that we all live as equal human social beings within the limits of the environment. 

In this, CWB is not a palliative - a same old short term fix - but rather a solution to the climate crisis and a cure for enduring racial, social and economic injustices. In this, CWB makes an important policy step change, moving from traditional wealth redistribution policies such as revitalisation and social policy - that merely lessen poverty and inequality - to one where we focus more on the whole economic and social system and the causes.

It is said that we live in an era of polycrises, in which multiple global crises of climate, democracy, social, and economic are all causally entangled.  In this the challenge is huge, but CWB offers us a practical way forward. In this we draw on the work of TDC co founder Gar Alperovitz and the idea of evolutionary reconstruction, in which we seek transformational change through a mosaic of actions, confronting elements of these crises and supplanting the old economic and social system -  bit by bit. As such CWB looks to shift from business as usual by using real life experimentation and innovation and thus foreshadowing bigger change which tackles the crises at scale and builds justice for all. 

Over the last 3 years, Scotland has evolved CWB in three main ways.  Firstly, through real practice, with a place based roll out of CWB across many local government areas. Scotland has adopted a five pillar model for community wealth building, developed by myself and now variant of the model developed by myself and Sarah McKinley here at TDC for application in the USA. Actions and outcomes are now being delivered in Scotland by dozens of locations and organizations who are delivering community wealth building and aspects of it. Supported by an implementation guide.

Secondly, through networks of interested folks: there is now a movement of institutions, communities, localities and organisations who understand what CWB entails and how to do it. This includes some key national and local anchor institutions including health institutions and universities who have started to explore what CWB offers them and how they can help to advance the agenda.  

Thirdly, there has been work on policy and legislation looking at how Scotland needs to change policy to reduce existing inertia and barriers that hinder the speed at which CWB can be delivered at a local, regional and national scales. Central to the proposed legislation in Scotland are outline plans for a legal requirement placed upon all public bodies and  anchor institutions to ‘embed the CWB model of economic development into their corporate plans and wider strategies’. Led by a Government Minister for public finance, Planning and Community Wealth, CWB fits within Scotland’s national strategy for economic Transformation (NSET) and its wider aim to build a Wellbeing Economy.

In this there could be legislation that requires all public sector suppliers to deliver more social, environmental and local economic benefit in public procurement; expand requirements of employers to pay the real living wage; advance community ownership of land and ownership of renewable energy schemes including wind; deepen employee rights in advancing cooperatives and employee ownership, and unify public investment criteria under CWB principles. However, for those who question additional legislative load onto organisations, the Scottish legislation could allow for greater simplification and allow Scotland to declutter the policy and practice landscape by making economic policy and development simpler and easier through a duty on all public institutions to pivot economic development and policy toward community wealth building.

In Scotland as in the USA, there is a growing recognition that the economy is not something devised in the interests of the wealthy and powerful, but rather something that we must all have an active and meaningful stake in, with greater economic democracy and direct ownership. CWB is the meaningful way forward.   

As the CWB movement grows across the world, we need to share and learn. TDC sits at the heart of this movement and in the coming months, we will continue to develop and catalyses action across the USA and beyond, including a practitioner and policy networks. We can and must build wealth and justice for all.

Neil McInroy is Global Lead for CWB at the Democracy Collaborative and a CWB adviser with the Scottish Government. 

The Scottish consultation closes on 25th of April 2023, and TDC will be making its own formal submission.