The Future Is Public is an international campaign to oppose economic privatization and support extensive government-provided goods and services. In 2021, it released a 36-point ““Global Manifesto for Public Services,” which has been signed by 214 groups (and counting) as of September 2022.
Exploring the work of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) can illuminate the ideological priorities of certain U.S.-based groups and funders, as illustrated by The Future Is Public campaign. Founded in 1963, IPS quickly developed a reputation as one of the furthest-left think tanks in the United States. It continues to receive support from American foundations and collaborate with American nonprofits on projects.
The thrust of the manifesto is that the state—in furtherance of its proper “redistributive function”—should take control of large swaths of the economy, providing (at minimum) “education, energy, food, health and care services, housing, social security, telecommunications, transportation, waste collection and disposal, and water and sanitation” to everyone.
Numerous purported benefits of cordoning off these economic sectors from market forces are touted. The astronomical costs involved would (theoretically) be borne by “progressive taxation of capital, profit companies, wealth, assets, property and labour”—in other words, much of what creates or stores value in a society. The ultimate idea is to construct “a collective public system for redistribution,” which “can neither be left to the market nor subject to austerity.”
The manifesto thus proposes to implement a socialist economy, even if it does not explicitly use that term. It frames government-provided goods and services as fulfilling the ideal of everyone “contributing fairly according to their capacities and ability to pay, in order to meet everyone’s needs and fulfil their rights”—a modestly reworded rendition of Karl Marx’s well-known maxim “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” Faith in the accountability of government officials and in their capacity for prudent long-term planning is professed repeatedly throughout the manifesto.
Supporters and Their Funders
The 200+ organizational signatories of The Future Is Public manifesto may therefore be understood to have lent their support to at least some form of socialist economic system. Most are foreign groups, but a number of notable ones are either based in the United States or funded by American foundations. The Transnational Institute appears to be one of the primary groups behind the campaign—it runs the website that hosts the manifesto and helped publish a related book in 2020.
A number of U.S.-based nonprofits signed The Future Is Public manifesto, including Food and Water Watch, the Center for Economic and Social Rights, the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and others. As of September 2022, IPS is not among them. One American signatory that has been involved in multiple aspects of the campaign is the Democracy Collaborative, which seeks to replace “today’s corporate capitalist system” with some form of socialist economic structure.
A Broader Anti-Capitalist Trend
It is impossible to predict what, if anything, might one day come of The Future Is Public campaign. It is, however, always important to pay attention to where activist groups are staking out positions on issues—even if they seem unrealistic—if only to understand just how radical some of them really are.
The fact that key participants in The Future Is Public campaign, such as the Transnational Institute and the Democracy Collaborative, are being funded by some of the most prominent foundations in the United States could also be taken as further evidence of a trend against free-market capitalism that is underway within American philanthropy, something that has been remarked upon by the Wall Street Journal and others.
Source: For Anti-Capitalists, “The Future Is Public” by Robert Stilson / Oct 11, 2022
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Forced by the Government
“Where private action has not yet forced compliance with woke ideology, our adversaries bring the power of the state to bear. Unencumbered by notions of constitutional propriety, federalism, or local-state balance of power, the Left employs whatever level of government it controls to impose its ideology on unwilling citizens and sovereigns alike. Since the Biden administration took office in January 2021, it has brutally—and openly extraconstitutionally—used its power against citizens and states that stand against its diktats.”
—by Michael Watson DEC 21, 2021 Courage Is Not Enough to Overcome Woke-Progressivism