I recently read an advertisement seeking an ‘exceptional individual’ to ‘strategically steer’ a ‘newly established social enterprise’ with ‘creativity and innovation’. Sounds exciting doesn’t it? All the right words as well. And the social enterprise also has ‘ambitious growth plans’.

The purpose of the ‘social enterprise’ is ‘to identify public services that have the potential to be delivered by the community’, or as the advert goes on to say ‘more cost effectively by the community, rather than by statutory public service organisations’.

So a social enterprise has been established for the purpose of delivering what were once called ‘public services’ in a more cost effective way to the community by the community. Perhaps I need to write that sentence again. A community is going to save someone or something money by delivering public or community services to itself. So what happens with the money saved by this exceptional individual and who benefits from the savings?

Apparently there is a social innovation going on in affluent countries like Britain and Australia where saving money on the delivery of services to the community (in old fashioned language ‘public’ services) is urgently required. Governments, even of the most conservative persuasion, are all lauding the innovative social enterprise sector because it is doing really good things for the community by taking over from tax payer funded community services and getting community services into the hands of the community and saving money at the same time!

But who saves the money? And who benefits from the money saved?  We have been committed to all things social for many decades, with a long history of engagement with community services and social enterprises. We fully support the development of the ‘social economy’, and the development of all things ‘social’ when they benefit the community – or more specifically when social innovations and enterprises provide new approaches to social challenges that have the intent and effect of equality, justice and empowerment.

It appears odd however that this version of ‘social enterprise’ is to provide more cost effective community services that once were provided by government or tax-payer funds. But hang on – that’s the point isn’t it?

I think I get the math and who benefits from the savings . . . this political social innovation is actually neo-liberalism with another name.

Small government = less spending = less and less public/community services provided by the government = lower taxes = (a little) more take-home money for workers = more money in the market place = more money for individuals to buy the public/community services that their taxes once provided for free = privatisation of public/community services = more savings to the government = an ideological victory!

But it is even better than that! This delivery of community services by communities to themselves will save money for neo-liberal governments through innovative and creative ‘non-government’ social enterprises that solve a problem the government has created (less and less public services) by passing the costs of delivery onto the recipients in the community (who may have once received these services for free as an outcome of paying taxes).

Perhaps I need to write that sentence again.

It seems a bit fuzzy, but this cost effective approach to statutory public service provision looks to me more like a ‘political innovation’ than a ‘social innovation’ that the social sector has swallowed without a hick-up.

We noticed the advert referred to more cost effective public services without any mention of more effective public services for the community. We still wonder where all the money saved goes and who benefits from the savings?

I also recently read a headline that said: ‘Healthcare is not a product, no matter what neoliberalism has taught us’ and added ‘even the staunchest opponents of neoliberalism have been infected by it s presumptions’ (The Guardian, Friday 23 May).

Perhaps this can be rewritten as: public services/community services are not a product, no matter what neoliberalism has taught us. Even the ‘social economy’ has in some places been infected by its assumptions.