The de-globalisation of capital? The political economy of community wealth building

Community wealth building (CWB) is a strategy for local economic development that aims to (re-)circulate wealth within the places that produce it – a kind of de-globalisation of capital. CWB has come to prominence in the UK due to its implementation in Preston and endorsements from the Corbyn-led Labour Party. However, CWB has come under criticism for promoting protectionism. As a way into the political economy of CWB, this article analyses this criticism. We do so by bringing the policy debate in the UK into dialogue with political economy literature on protectionism and nationalism. We show that protectionism is as much a political weapon or slur used to discredit interventionist development strategies as it is an analytical concept at home in technical economic discourse. On this basis, we argue that CWB is not protectionist neither in its policy proposal nor in its wider worldview. However, CWB does limit itself to the local without a clear redistributive mechanism between municipalities and so risks siloing local areas from one another.