Writing as I have in the middle and at the end of an election campaign, I found the advice of Italo Calvino useful: ‘I reject the role of the person chasing events. I prefer the person who continues his discourse, waiting for it to become topical again, like all things that have a sound basis.’¹

It’s not for me but for the reader to judge whether my discourse has a sound basis. And I will not chase the events leading up to election day, or the extraordinary surge of support for Jeremy Corbyn against Theresa May, or the details of the repercussions for the Labour Party and Momentum. I hope, though, that my arguments will be a resource for the diverse movement that helped to produce this surge, as it experiments with ways to maintain its energy, creativity and stubborn determination to create an open, participatory, green and feminist form of socialism – leaving the question of whether the Labour Party can become the vehicle of such a socialism as one that I cannot answer with any certainty, but to which I would, if pressed, reply with a cautious and conditional ‘yes’. Certainly, it is an objective worth working for, while remaining alert to the fact that such a change will face determined and vicious opposition.

A new politics from the left is in the making and its fully formed character cannot usefully be predicted at this point – or prescribed. Hence, I envisage this book as but one contribution to a widely collaborative and participatory political work in progress. It is not a manifesto for a new politics from the left but, rather, a limited contribution based on exploring one line of argument, concerning the fundamental importance of a new politics of knowledge – of whose knowledge matters, and what counts as knowledge anyway; and also exploring how understandings of knowledge underpin understandings of power, in practice as much as in theory. For it is in practice that innovations are first created.

The ideas of this book have been long in incubation. First, I must thank Fiona Dove and Daniel Chavez, at the Transnational Institute (TNI). Together we founded the TNI’s New Politics Project, to work with social movements as they engaged with political parties and the state. I am very grateful for the support – financial, political and intellectual – of the TNI as a whole, over many years, and especially to Phyllis Bennis, the late Praful Bidwai, Brid Brennan, Nick Buxton, Susan George, Satoko Kishimoto, Edgardo Lander, Susan Medeiros, Achin Vanaik and Pietje Vervest.

A vital part of the incubation took place through the Networked Politics seminars that I organized with my dear compañeros Marco Berlinguer and Mayo Fuster Morell. Many of the ideas in this book were first expressed in these seminars and in later work together.

I also want to thank my co-editors and comrades at Red Pepper magazine, both on the editorial collective and on the board. They have been a rich source of inspiration and challenge, both in person and in the magazine itself, which I think readers of this book would also find an invaluable resource.

Next, I must thank my editor at Polity, George Owers, for commissioning the book and for being such an exemplary editor: encouraging, firm and ruthless at appropriate moments. Instead of being fazed by a manuscript 20,000 words over-length, he calmly improved the book by suggesting careful cuts, with the help of anonymous reviewers to whom I am also very grateful. Others helped to whip the sprawling manuscript into shape, most notably Red Pepper’s editorial alchemist Steve Platt; the TNI’s doyenne of sub-editors, Deborah Eade; and finally, Polity’s ever-patient, ever-intelligent copy-editor Leigh Mueller.

In the writing, I drew on a number of formal and informal interviews and collaborations with those who are creating and reporting on the emerging new politics. I only have space to list them; it will be clear in the text how much I owe to them: Christophe Aguiton, Michel Bauwens, Matt Brown, Michael Calderbank, Andrew Dolan, Theano Fotiou, Ashish Ghadiali, Jeremy Gilbert, Christos Giovanopoulos, Mike Hales, Paul Hilder, Vedran Horvat, Ewa Jasiewicz, Andreas Karitzis, Adam Klug, Christos Korolis, Jon Lansman, Neal Lawson, Nick Mahoney, Robin McAlpine, John McDonnell MP, Ioannis Margaris, Alex Nunns, Ben Sellers, Jonathan Shafi, Joan Subirats, Euclid Tsakalotos, Tom Walker, and my friends and comrades in Hackney Momentum, especially Charlie Clarke, Liz Davies and Heather Mendick, who read and commented on early drafts. Finally, Margie Mendell, Cilla Ross and Stephen Yeo were immensely helpful on the many-sided experience of the co-operative movement. I must thank Ed Dingwall, too, who accurately transcribed the formal interviews.

I’d also like to mention my critically and radically minded nephews and nieces, Tom, Jessie, Olly, Annie and Rosie, who provided insights and challenges that kept me on my toes. My great-nieces, Emily, Olive and Frankie, and nephew Theo, have been a great diversion and source of hope for the future.

Writing requires concentration, and several people provided ideal places to focus single-mindedly, away from the hurly-burly of Hackney: the welcoming team at the Quaker retreat of Swarthmoor Hall; the redoubtable Jenny Hollis at Castaway Cottages, Anglesey; Martin and Penny Wainwright with their library, intriguing conversation and necessary opportunities for exercise in Thrupp, Oxfordshire; Tessa Wainwright and Hugh Scott, who understood when I worked over most of their convivial Christmas; and Helen Winslow, who lent me her Saltaire bolthole in which to write in peace.

Finally, writing this book over the past year needed sustained morale, intellectual stimulus, challenge and occasional advice – as well as considerable patience – and for this I must thank my dear friends: Anthony Arblaster, Anthony Barnett, Huw Beynon, Sue Bowen, Luciana Castelina, Derek Clarke, Bob Colenutt, Anna Coote, Lawrence Cox, Evelina Dagnino, Barbara Epstein, Barbara Gunnell, Sue Himmelweit, Lioba Hirsch, Glenn Jenkins, Mary Kaldor, Marion Kozak, Richard Kuper, Maureen Mackintosh, Su Maddock, Bridget Maguire, Simon Mohun, Chantal Mouffe, Beth Murray, Frances Murray, William Outhwaite, Leo Panitch, Jenny Pearce, George Pope, Angie Raffle, Oscar Reyes, Mike Richardson, Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, Jane Shallice, Anne Slater, Sissy Vouvou, Mike Ward, Jo Warin and Pippa Warin.

All these people contributed to anything of merit in this book. I, however, take full responsibility for the whole.