Sorting it Out? (2017)

Book Review from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Against Elections: The Case for Democracy', by David Van Reybrouck. (Bodley Head. 2016. £9.99)

Genuinely fascinating and thought-provoking new books seem hard to find, though Van Reybrouck seems to have produced one. In the current climate of political cynicism and apathy, the main title of ‘Against Elections’ could be interpreted as something beyond populism and even a call for fascism, but this is very far from being the case. His main argument is that it is not democracy itself that is the problem, but the way it is practised – almost exclusively through the form of competitive elections that produce self-reinforcing political elites.

Van Reybrouck diagnoses the malaise at the heart of the crisis engulfing representative democracies across many parts of the globe and voter dissatisfaction with elected politicians and parties. He points out that political parties in most Western democracies are now regarded as being the most corrupt organizations legally existing and that contempt for conventional party politicians appears to be at an all-time high too. He also discusses some of the alternatives mentioned to systems of representative democracy, such as direct democracy, which has influenced movements like Occupy and the Indignados. The Five Star movement in Italy, despite its populist flavour, has also grappled with these issues and argued strongly for other forms of democratic consultation and for limits on political terms served by elected representatives.

But few have questioned the usefulness of elections themselves as a ubiquitous part of the democratic process. One of the most fascinating parts of the book is where Van Reybrouck traces the way in which ‘democracy’ and ‘elections’ have now become synonymous. In reality, throughout the history of the last 3,000 years or so, elections have just been one way in which democratic will has been expressed. Another method has largely fallen by the wayside – democracy through sortition, or the drawing of lots. In most countries this is regarded as acceptable for choosing juries making decisions about legal cases, but isn’t typically used otherwise. Van Reybrouck discusses how this situation came about, as the democracy practiced in ancient city states like Athens, or even many of the Renaissance city states such as Venice and Aragon, included very pronounced elements of sortition alongside elements of elections.

Furthermore, it is clear that many of the philosophers of the Enlightenment were strong advocates of sortition too. Montesquieu, one of the most significant influences on modern constitutional theory and nation states claimed that ‘Voting by lot is in the nature of democracy; voting by choice is in the nature of aristocracy . . . the casting of lots is a way of election that distresses no one; it leaves to each citizen a reasonable expectation of serving his country’. Similar views were advanced by Rousseau in his Social Contract.

However, to ruling elites (both aristocratic and in the rising capitalist class) sortition was dangerous and random and could not guarantee that those entrusted with power and responsibility would be suitable for the role. Hence the emphasis on elections, initially with very limited electorates of those who could be ‘trusted’ – most typically men of property. But of course the granting and widening of democratic rights was a protracted process that was not merely something handed down by the ruling elites free and gratis – in most instances it had to be struggled for, eventually by the majority class of wage and salary earners, and it would be interesting research to see how and why sortition (as opposed to election) was relegated in importance by workers’ movements struggling for democracy.

Van Reybrouck contends that the reintroduction of sortition within Western democracies currently in poor health would be a way of reinvigorating the democratic process and, in doing so, also potentially undermine the anti-democratic movements currently coming out of the shadows. He may have a limited point here, but the hierarchical and competitive nature of capitalist society mitigates against this working in all but a few selected areas – recently sortition has been used as part of consultative processes on constitutional issues in Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands, though with mixed success.

As in ancient Athens, sortition works best when combined with forms of elections that can produce a range of competent candidates for given roles, with sortition and fixed terms of office providing the genuinely wide representation (and randomness) that stifles the emergence of elites. The Socialist Party of Great Britain already uses sortition in a limited way as part of its internal democratic practice and it seems likely that socialist society would be the most obvious type of democratic social system that would enable sortition and elections to work hand-in-hand effectively. This is because socialism – as a system of common ownership and democratic control – would be a society without classes and elites, without leaders and the led. More work is no doubt needed on this element of socialist democracy, and that can be developed and refined by the wider socialist movement as it grows over time.

Van Reybrouck has produced an important work, but not one that will necessarily save capitalism’s rather limited and somewhat spurious democracy from itself. It is, however, of clear use and interest to socialists as principled believers in the most scrupulous of democratic practices as the cornerstone of a genuinely egalitarian society.

Dave Perrin

Editorial: Democracy and Understanding: Should We Leave Politics To The “Intelligent Minority”? (1940)

Editorial from the March 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Bernard Shaw, in a criticism of Mr. H. G. Wells, has re-stated his argument against democracy. Mr. Wells had said that “everybody has an inherent right to legislate."

Mr. Shaw answered this in the Daily Herald (February 19th, 1940). Having pointed out that it would be absurd “to tell a man that he is ‘free' because he can be a Shakespeare or a Noel Coward if he knows how, when he doesn't know how, and cannot learn to,” Mr. Shaw continued as follows:—

   . . . . but it is not more absurd than to give him a vote and tell him he is free to choose the rulers and legislators of his country by the exercise of his political wisdom founded on an extensive knowledge of history.
  If he has no political wisdom and knowledge of history (very few people have much) he will take refuge in simple idolatry of Wat Tyler, Jack Cade, Good Queen Bess, Titus Oates, Lord George Gordon, Napoleon, the Tichborne Claimant, Gladstone or Disraeli, Horatio Bottomley. and—not to name living persons—any dictator who knows how to humbug him.
  Now to give idolatrous gulls power to choose our rulers only creates an urgent necessity for their liquidation. We are, in fact, spending six millions a day on an attempt to liquidate the idolators of Adolf Hitler. Caesar can always depend on his plebiscite. Napoleon knew this. So do Adolf and Benito.

There is a good deal of truth in these observations, but does it constitute a case against democratic methods? It is true that fewer mistakes would be made in politics if the voters all had more knowledge and understanding of history (and some other even more important things), but would the mistakes be fewer and less dangerous if politics were left to the selected few? Mr. Shaw would reply that it depends on which few. He would be the last to maintain that the interests of the majority of the population, the workers, were looked after by the infamous few who used to run politics before the introduction of the universal franchise. Indeed, one of the men he mentions, Disraeli, had quite a considerable knowledge of history, but Mr. Shaw pillories him along with the others.

Mr. Shaw gives us a hint when he highly praises Mr. Wells, and adds that he classes himself among "the thousand best qualified people in Europe to take counsel with Mr. Wells.” The other 999 we do not know, so let us examine the claims of Mr. Wells and Mr. Shaw. Are they wise and dependable above the common herd? Are they always far-seeing? Have they understood the way the world is going and the necessity for Socialism? Are they humane and practical? Are they—as the principle requires—infallible? By no means. To put last things first, they have often been unable to agree with each other and have disagreed with more heat than reason. They have often been childishly short-sighted. They have both been able to support wars with the flimsiest of reasons. Mr. Shaw has been able to explain and excuse the Russian invasion of Finland and Mr. Wells—in the intervals between advocating a new world order under the auspices of the National Peace Council— has been advocating the bombing of Berlin. Mr. Wells has often, in his discussions of important questions, shown himself completely carried away by petty personal considerations. Mr. Shaw has sometimes betrayed a most woeful ignorance in his criticisms of Marx and Socialism. What, then, would happen if the world were given over to a thousand Shaws and Wells ?

Mr. Shaw has given us another weapon with which to attack him. He now ridicules the ignorant masses who fell for Hitler and Mussolini, but has he forgotten that he has named himself among their great admirers? Who was it who said only 18 months ago that he thought them ”two highly capable revolutionary and proletarian leaders”? In saying that Mr. Shaw placed himself among the self-deluding masses who, he says, are not capable of engaging in politics.

In actual fact the working class, with all their costly errors, have not shown themselves worse than the intellectual thousand. In many respects they have shown themselves superior. It is Hitler’s highly-educated university professors and others who swallowed whole the Nazi nonsense about superior and inferior races, and it is their British counterparts who gave support to a class doctrine equally nonsensical. When Dr. Ley, one of Hitler’s key-men, says that "an inferior race needs less space, less food. and less culture than a superior race," few people in this country would defend it as a proposition (though some are willing to apply in the Empire), but how many of the intellectual thousand will be prepared to repudiate the corresponding class doctrine? Mr. Shaw may pass the test, but will even Mr. Wells? And even if he does how many other comfortably placed intellectuals will reject and oppose the capitalist practice which divides the population into a "superior ” class which gets more space, better housing, more food and better quality food, and more culture than the “inferior" class?

The hard and unpleasant truth is that in the main the men Mr. Shaw so admires are invariably to be found selling their brains to the Hitlers and Mussolinis and helping the latter to keep the workers where the capitalist wants them, in a state of confused and pathetic resignation.

Mr. Shaw has not found a better way than democracy.

May we add that Shaw was one of the founders of the Fabian Society, which aimed at reforming “capitalism" and spreading education among the people. Mr. Shaw has frequently held up for admiration the personality and work of various members of the Fabian Society—MacDonald, the Webbs, etc.—and yet the net result of the educational activities of the society is that the mass of people "take refuge in simple idolatry"! If this is not an illustration of the bankruptcy of Mr. Shaw’s intelligentsia, we would like to know what is!

Whose Party Is It? (2017)

From the August 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the recent general election I heard several enthusiastic Labour Party supporters, when confronted with the war crimes of the last Labour government, state that Blair and ‘New Labour’ were never a part of the ‘real’ Labour movement. It struck me as a very weak defence of the Labour Party’s actions when in government as opposed to the promises they make whilst out of power. If one is to regard this statement as anything other than hypocritical then what does it say about the identity of any social organisation? Can we ever conveniently disregard the recent activities of a group that we support, or belong to, in the name of a desperate optimism that it ‘will be different next time’?

Despite the prediction that the ‘cyber age’ we live in will increasingly alienate us from each other socially we see a continuing need for people to join social groups of almost infinite variety: Sports clubs, support groups, literary societies, orchestras, bands, churches, pressure groups, historical re-enactment societies, etc. Then there are so-called ‘secret societies’ like the Freemasons, Illuminati, Knights of Pythias, Mafia etc. Somewhere between these two variants we find the political parties. What they all have in common is something we might call ‘factionalism’. This occurs when individuals within the group find themselves in disagreement with an element of the majority consensus and so gravitate toward each other, thus forming a faction within the movement. Despite being a minority within the group they can use certain justifications for opposing ‘from within’ the policies or even objectives of the majority in terms of a departure from authenticity or betrayed values. Some years ago I joined a literary society and found myself almost immediately in a minority when I attempted to defend the literary merits of science fiction. I was joined by another member and we found ourselves evangelising the genre at every opportunity (and not just because it was fun to bait the ‘high-brows’).

The question arises concerning the inevitability of dissension within any social grouping. Disentangling what might be thought of as justifiable ideological dissent from an egotistical power play is sometimes extremely difficult. Occasionally it may be purely a matter of individuals disliking each other, as happened in a philosophical group I occasionally attended when one ‘queen bee’ was displaced by another via a ‘coup d’état’. Many organisations have what might be described as authoritarian social structures where individuals or groups acquire, legitimately in terms of their rules, more power than other members which, also inevitably, leads to conflict. Given all of these internal pressures it is surprising that such groups survive at all (and, of course, many don’t) but if they do they acquire a history which becomes a definitive element in terms of the group’s identity.

Political parties are ‘nothing but the expression of class interests’ according to Marx. We might modify this statement by adding that they are also the expression of perceived class interests which, in the case of the Labour Party, results in them acting directly against the interests of the class that they claim to represent. Once the reformist route to the establishment of socialism is taken class consciousness becomes blurred and eventually disappears entirely in the fruitless and endless struggle to control capitalism and make it beneficial for all within the community. But this anti-revolutionary (and so therefore anti-socialist) dogma and its persistent failures seem immune to a logical critique especially when the working class are confronted by the realities of the morally and socially degenerate Tory Party.

Of course the Conservative Party is also divided by factionalism which, together with the other elements already mentioned, is driven by the same misconceptions that are present in Labour; ignorance of how capitalism, stripped of its ideological mythology, actually operates in reality. It is a great irony that only its great enemy (Marxism) has a clear understanding of capitalism. Given all of these pressures and divisions it has become a necessity that the Labour Party, in particular, must deny its own history; a clear example of this is the attempt to disassociate itself from New Labour and the warmonger Tony Blair. That this can be done is testament to the power of ideology (the need to believe) which has enabled such Leftist idiocies as the support of Bolshevism and even for the likes of Stalin in the past. How then, one might ask, does any political party avoid the consequences of the internal social dynamics outlined above?

The Socialist Party has built-in structures specifically designed to counteract the tendencies we have defined. We are the only political party to insist on an ‘entrance test’ so we can be certain that any prospective member has a sound understanding of our political analysis and the actions that this implies. That we do this also emphasises our rejection of elitism because our case relies on the belief that fundamental political consciousness is available to all and not just a minority. We have no leaders or group of mandarins to ‘guide us’. Every important action is subject to democratic debate and vote. Above all we demand of ourselves and each other that we constantly critically review what is believed to be true, so avoiding the intellectual dead-end of ideological dogma. These are the building blocks of a revolutionary socialist organisation which contrasts starkly with the idealism and elitism continually expressed by the Left and the so-called ‘labour movement’ with their ‘behind closed doors’ deals and compromises.

Has the Socialist Party ever experienced serious internal dissent in its over one hundred year existence? There have been the same sort of factionalist pressures as in other organisations but the very fact of our continued existence together with the consistency of our analysis and values illustrates the strength of a thoroughly democratic organisation that restricts membership to those who share its revolutionary perspective; our political structure and the coherence of our case has meant that the attempted subversion or hijacking of our revolutionary identity has always failed. The possibility that we would ever have to deny our own history (which, after all, is an essential element in any group’s identity) is as ludicrous as an individual denying responsibility for his actions on the basis that he promises to do better next time.

Wez.

Editorial: The Importance of Elections (1968)

Editorial from the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month, a lot of the Socialist Standard is devoted to the question of elections. One article deals with the American Presidential election, another with the campaign which led up to the Reform Act of 1867. There are two contributions about Votes for Women.

One hundred years ago this month, the first British general election in which most of the voters were workers was held; fifty years ago there was the first general election with women voters.

Elections are important because the party—and the class—that wins them thereby controls political power. It is a sad fact that ever since workers have had the vote the vast majority of them have chosen to support capitalist political parties and so helped to keep in being the system which exploits them and deprives them of liberty, abundance and security.

This has led some to question the usefulness of elections and to turn to so-called “direct action” as an alternative. “Direct action” usually means marches and demonstrations — sometimes violent and provocative-sit-ins, takeovers of colleges, factories and so on. The organisers of these activities hope that in some way they will lead to the overthrow of capitalism.

The one fact which this hope leaves out of account is that “direct action” is necessarily the tactic of a minority; a majority has no need to demonstrate for its demands because it can use its power as a majority to get them.

At the moment the majority are expressing their demand —or preference—for capitalism. They vote for representatives of capitalism who go to the various legislative bodies throughout the world to run society in the interests of the capitalist class, to protect the property rights of capitalism, to administer the state machine and to maintain the “law and order” with its basis in the privileges and exploitation which are part of property society.

There can be no opting out of this. Any threat to “law and order” will be met by the capitalist state, but that state does not act in isolation. The majority of the electorate—which means the majority of the working class—support with their votes the police cordons, the flailing truncheons, the bayonets of the National Guard, the water cannons of Belfast. The experiences of the demonstrators, far from proving the futility of political action, show its power—and (he need to control that power.

Does “direct action”, then, achieve nothing? In practical terms, these are some of its recent results. In France, after the May riots, the Gaullist government came back with an increased majority and so with a clear mandate from the French workers to deal firmly with the insurgents. In America there is a similar story; George Wallace won a lot of votes in unexpected areas from workers who wanted to see the ugliest measures taken against anyone they saw as a threat to the stability of capitalism.

British politics have also been affected; is probably true to say that every demonstration provokes the same sort of reaction among workers here as in America and France and so increases the support for politicians like Enoch Powell with his own particular appeal to working class ignorance and frustration.

Are the demonstrators, then, to stay silent and docile? Must we never protest against the bestialities and degradations of capitalism? No socialist would accept that proposition. But we want our protest to be effective, as no protest can be unless it strikes at the roots of the system— at the political power which keeps the capitalist class in their position of privilege and from which all else flows.

At the moment, in many capitalist countries, the workers have one of the essential tools for this—they have the vote. The capitalists fully recognise the importance of elections; that is why they at first opposed universal suffrage and why they now spend vast sums of money in hoodwinking the voters.

The other essential tool — socialist understanding — is at present lacking. And the way to stimulate it is not by spreading confusion, nor by opportunism, nor by provoking ignorance. There is only one way—the establishment and propagation of the case for the alternative society of Socialism.

Letter to the Editors (1980)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

I have read a few of your Socialist Standards in the library and I must say I am impressed with the truth of what you say. I am almost totally in agreement with all you say. But one of the main things that is troubling me is when you say that socialism can only come about when the majority of the people understand and want it. 1 can see that. But what I can’t grasp is how people in say Russia, where there is no democracy as such, can ever get to hear about socialism let alone vote for it democratically. Another thing troubling me is your stance against all other parties on the grounds that they aren't socialists. I can see that too. But supposing there was a chance that a limited democracy (as we have in our country) could be brought about in Russia, through pressures from other non-socialist groups—whether they be humanist, civil rights, left wing, religious or whatever—what would be your position? Support or not. If so, how far would you be willing to go to achieve it. I’d be very pleased if you could print a reply in your paper because I’m sure they’re giving a lot of people trouble like me.

Samuel Thomas

Reply:

You rightly say that socialism can only be brought about by a majority of workers understanding and wanting it. Socialists, therefore, must work solely for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a society where the means of wealth production and distribution are commonly owned and democratically controlled by all the people—a socialist society.

Non-socialist parties, pressure groups and reformist movements, however sincere and well-meaning they may appear to be, direct people away from the job of establishing socialism. They aim for reforms within the capitalist system and do nothing to remove the causes of the problems they hope to solve. CND is a good example — its re-emergence merely demonstrates its total failure in the 1960s to abolish or even to simply slow down the spread of nuclear weapons.

However, the CNDers and other reformists, and the SPGB too, do have the opportunity in Britain to make their views known. In many parts of the world repressive regimes make sure that workers do not enjoy even the most limited democratic rights. But no totalitarian regime can permanently suppress working class consciousness — the class struggle causes people to look at the issues raised by capitalism and will eventually lead to their wanting nothing less than its replacement by the classless society. What is happening in Poland, for example, will happen sooner or later in other state capitalist countries. We must support such efforts by workers because they are a first step towards securing democratic rights. However, the socialist also realises the limitations of these efforts and must continually point to the necessity of working for the abolition of capitalism.

The job of the Socialist Party is clear—to put the case for socialism, to encourage workers to reject capitalism and start organising for the conquest of political power. Workers, such as those in Poland, Russia and other totalitarian countries, must start to think in terms of joining with their fellow workers everywhere to fight for a world-wide socialist society.

Editors.

The forgotten tradition of British anti-monarchism (2002)

From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The old Plantagenets brought us chains; 

the Tudors frowns and Scars, 

The Stuarts brought us lives of shame; 

the Hanoverians wars; 

But his brave man, with his strong arm, 

brought freedom to our Lives 

-The best of Princes England had, 

was the Farmer of St. Ives” 

(Lines on Oliver Cromwell in Ramsay Churchyard, Huntingdonshire,1848)

Such sentiment praising Cromwell and the Civil War dismissal of royal tyranny was commonplace amongst the political radicals of the early 19th century. In fact, the popular memory of the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which toppled James II remained strong from the late-17th century. In large part this was due to the continued threat of royal power exercised within the lauded British “constitution”.

Unacceptable to the more progressive elements of the ruling class (still largely landed however), such remembrance of the “Interregnum” (the euphemism by which the Civil War period has become known) served as an ideological weapon in the struggle between royal and parliamentary authority. From the 1770s such anti-royal (though not literally republican) sentiment became intertwined with a political radicalism associated with John Wilkes and others who sought an extension of the suffrage to secure parliamentary dominance over royal authority. Inevitably the working class began to develop a political platform more independent of such “gentleman leaders”, especially during the period following the French Revolution. Thereafter, a popular working class platform combined the “natural rights” republicanism of Thomas Paine with “popular constitutionalism”, a crafty linguistic trick whereby radicals sought to place their demands for democratisation of the British political structure within a legal claim to their “right” to representation within the ancient constitution. Demands for such a constitution and rights, of course, were merely rhetorical flourish, using the prevalent language of the ruling class's defence of its challenge to royal authority from the 17th century.

Within this challenge to the British state by the working class in the early 19th century was a crude threat to privilege and expenditure on the throne and the vast sums spent on aristocratic pensions, palace building and the civil list. The crown, however, as an institution remained outside of this criticism.

What has been noted by many observers has been the absence of republicanism in British history. This is of course not strictly true. The regicide of the Civil War may be regarded as republicanism of sorts, despite being pursued within contemporary religious concerns. The historian Christopher Hill has established the Civil War as the British “bourgeois revolution”, a struggle from which the interests of the rising British commercial and financial interests emerged dominant, i.e. capitalist interests, although the clash of interests between land and capital is not always clear cut and mutually exclusive – a good book on this into the nineteenth century is John Saville, The Consolidation of the Capitalist State (1994).

It is true though that a republican movement did not grow up in Britain as it did in other European states in the nineteenth century but then, as seems fairly obvious, it didn't need to after the defeat of royal authority in the 17th century. Indeed, the early nature of Britain's bourgeois revolution meant that capitalist growth and secular control of its perceived interests went hand in hand with a “constitutional monarchy”, i.e. a monarchy that was increasingly impotent as political force but emerging as a convenient “impartial” figurehead.

Concocted pageantry

With this month's royal jubilee we are being subjected to no end of absurd and expensive pageantry with the usual round of royal documentaries, all giving the line that our glorious monarch is the centre of our “identity” and political stability. Such criticism as emerges will be directed at whether the Queen should step aside for Charles (a debate on the radio as I write) or some such trivia. The crucial impression that is supposed to emerge is that this pageantry has been around for centuries and is bound up with our “national identity”. However, as we have just seen, from the 17th to the mid-19th century, a critique of royalty operated in the political mainstream that attacked the morality of some members of the royal house and the expense of royalty. Although not approaching anything like an ideological commitment to republicanism, let alone a socialist analysis, its existence nonetheless challenges the myth of British politics as shrouded in a deferential and stable past. Such pageantry as we see today is no more than the creation of late 19th century efforts to establish an imperial and domestic symbolic loyalty around a “regal” figurehead external to “politics”.

David Cannadine and Eric Hobsbawm, amongst others, have described this “invention of tradition”. More recent research has gone further and suggested that a strand of “anti-monarchism” has persisted from the late-18th century through to the present day. Anthony Taylor in Down with the Crown (1999) has pointed to the presence of a minority republican radical grouping that surfaced into something like a popular movement, around the liberal Sir Charles Dilke, at the time of Victoria's retreat from public duties in the early 1870s (here it reveals its weakness, ironically being dependent on royal retreat rather than presence). He also points to a radical opposition in the jubilees of 1887 and 1897, which have been seen overwhelmingly as examples of popular frenzy for the crown and empire (seeing it as either a sign of strength or weakness of the late 19th century British empire). A 'Jubilee Version of “God Save the Queen”' from the 1880s, for example, runs:

Lord help our precious Queen, / Noble, but rather mean, / Lord help the Queen. / Keep Queen VicToryous, / From work laborious / Let snobs uproarious, / Slaver the Queen.

A critique of privilege passed from mid-19th century radicalism into the Liberal-Labour politics of the early 20th century. It is from this period that the image of the modern monarch as the impartial figurehead we know today emerged. The attack on privilege increasingly centred on the House of Lords as the practicalities of reformism and the need for patronage impacted on the nascent republican sentiment in the Labour Party. Opposition to the crown was thereafter the territory of the extreme left of capitalism, largely restricted to the “Communist” Party (see, for example, T.A. Jackson's The Jubilee –  and How from 1837 and continuing the old radical attack on expense).

Closer to 2002, the popularity of the monarchy has seriously flagged from its post-war heights in 1952 (although the response to the queen mother's death might signal something of a recovery in time for this year's potential squib of a jubilee). Press voyeurism has undermined its previously cultivated image of a wholesome family example. But such criticism rarely gets beyond the banal chat on the relevance of the crown to devolution and the European Union (Tom Nairn's project), although Tony Benn, the Christian radical capitalist of the Labour left, continues to plug a Paineite project to make us “citizens” and not “subjects”.

Socialists, of course, are unconcern as to whether we live in a republic or a constitutional monarchy – capitalism is capitalism whatever its political label. We must, however, point out the worst lies told about the history of our class. Constitutional monarchy has not always been a comfortable political framework for British capitalism and has always had its critics, including a minority of republicans. Socialists desire a good deal more than a mere capitalist republic. Unlike the left of capitalism, we openly advocate common ownership and democratic control which, for the privileged royal parasites, would mean the end of their vast ownership of resources and their place as sources of political deference and patronage. Like the lines daubed during the 1977 farce: “Stuff the Jubilee”.

Colin Skelly

Democracy (1992)

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of us were not taken in by talk of "defending democracy" when the Great and the Good went to war with Iraq over the invasion of Kuwait. We had the strongest suspicion that it had more to do with the supply and control of oil, especially as “our” side declared common cause with such great democracies as Saudi Arabia and Iran. Then it emerged that, far from being a democracy, Kuwait's political system was one of the most autocratic, elitist dictatorships with no democratic pretensions whatsoever. Kuwait's rulers—in comfortable exile—promised that, when restored to power, they would introduce democratic reforms; granting civil and political rights not only to the incomers who keep the whole system going, but also to their own women.

The first anniversary of the “liberation" has passed and. as one Palestinian worker put it: “The intolerance towards non-Kuwaitis has become worse than it was before” (Independent on Sunday, 23 February). In the elections which are due in October only “First Class” men (those descended from men who were resident in 1920) will be allowed to take part. The promise that all citizens of the emirate, including women, would be given the vote will be ignored. A demonstration by women trying to register was given no support.

On this first anniversary too, the horrendous damage done to the civilian infrastructure in Iraq as well as the much greater number of civilian casualties—vehemently denied at the time—are being admitted. During the war we saw repeatedly on TV the “smart” bombs which made it impossible to cause indiscriminate damage; now it is admitted that only one in ten was smart and the other nine were as subject to human error as any other weapon. Still with us, too, are the civil unrest fomented in the north of Iraq in attempts to topple Hussein and Saddam's vengeance which is meted out to Kurdish and Shi’ite minorities.

The lesson which must be learnt is that the dogfight for markets and economic advantage under capitalism will always be cloaked with grand phrases such as the “Fight for Democracy". Wars are never for the sake of democracy but are all about shares on the world market and profitability.

Eva Goodman

Reformist dead – end (1) (2002)

Book Review from the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sovereign States or Political Communities? Civil Society and Contemporary Politics. By Darrow Schecter. Manchester University Press. 224 pages.

German philosophy is still alive and, judging by this book, is just as impenetrable as it ever was. Schecter's basic argument is that while Marx was right to see that capitalism is based on the exploitation of wage-labour and right to say that a real democracy – what Schecter calls “a self-governing civil society” – is only possible on the basis of the abolition of both capitalism and the state, Marx was wrong to say that socialism would involve the end of politics.

This is largely a question of definition. Marx thought that socialism would mean the end of politics because he associated politics with the state and of course there would be no state – as a public institution having a monopoly of the means of legitimate violence within a given part of the globe – in socialism. Schecter, basing himself on various 20th century German political philosophers, comes to exactly the opposite conclusion. Defining politics as the disinterested pursuit of the common good, he argues that it cannot co-exist with the state as states are bodies which, besides being influenced by the most powerful interest groups, seek to contain and manage the various conflicts of material interest and competition for money that go on within capitalist society.

Thus, what is called “politics” today is merely competition between rival parties of professional politicians seeking state power on the basis of promising to improve the material position of those who vote for them. This reduces so-called democratic choice to giving electors the chance of saying yes or no every few years to whether an outgoing government should continue in office. Most people realise this and is what they consciously do when they vote, if they bother to vote at all. It also explains why they see politics as marginal to their lives.

Real democracy, says Schecter and we would agree, involves people actively participating in decision-making about general issues; which assumes that meeting their material needs is no longer an issue since these are adequately met by other means – which can only be on the basis of socialism. Which is why a real democracy can only exist in socialism.

Schecter also investigates how such a desirable situation could be brought about. At one time the working class movement – the trade unions, a mass party calling itself socialist – was seen as the instrument of this but now, says Schecter, this movement has accommodated itself to capitalism seeking only better conditions within the system and even being integrated into the state administration of labour and welfare matters. He sees a potential replacement in what have been called the “New Social Movements” – “feminist, peace, ecological, gay rights, indigenous peoples' rights” groups – though only insofar as these pursue politics (in his sense) by seeking to represent, not the sectional interests of their constituencies within the state, but the whole of “civil society” against the state.

Although he realises that these NSMs (as, apparently, we have to call them) are just as liable to accommodate themselves to capitalism and to be co-opted and integrated into the state as the Labour Movement was, he vastly underestimates this. In fact he seems to ignore the extent to which this was essentially all these movements ever wanted and indeed the extent to which it has already happened (women can now become trained killers in the armed forces, open gays can sit as Tory MPs, and in America they've got a black Secretary of State).

What is disappointing (if only because Schecter was for a short while a member of the Socialist Party and so should know better) is that he calls the regimes such as used to exist in Russia “state socialism” rather than state capitalism. He also (p. 52) misquotes Marx. Marx did not write in connection with the 1871 Paris Commune that “the working class cannot lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes”. What he actually wrote was “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machine and wield it for its own purposes” (Address of the General Council of the IWMA on the Civil War in France, 1871, beginning of section 3, in Marx The First International and After, Penguin Books, 1974, p. 206, emphasis added).

In other words, the working class can lay hold of the existing state machine but not “simply”, i. e. it must first change it by, in the occurrence, lopping off its militaristic, bureaucratic and other undemocratic features before wielding it to abolish capitalism thereby making itself redundant.

Adam Buick

Who Decides What and How? (2016)

From the January 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does complexity rule out meaningful democracy?

When socialists speak of democracy we mean something very different from the concept the mainstream media provides. Instead of giving you permission to vote for some toff or careerist to serve and define your political interests (improbably) for five years we insist that any meaning democracy must entail the involvement of the community at every level in political/economic decision making.

When confronted by this definition of democracy our rulers and their media are incredulous and produce a torrent of reasons why this is impractical at best and political madness at worst. Most of the objections are ideological and do not deserve any serious consideration but there is one that has to be discussed: Does our technological culture depend almost entirely on the expertise of a minority of specialists whose knowledge cannot be easily understood by the ‘layman’ and is therefore inaccessible to democratic debate and decision? Are these ‘technocrats’ the only ones with the talent and ability to make decisions concerning, for instance, scientific research and technological application?

What happens today

Before we attempt to answer this let us consider how such decisions are made in the present economic system. Science and technology are usually financed in two ways within capitalism – either via the state (universities and the military) or through so called ‘private’ investment by big business. These two approaches are motivated essentially by the same desired end – to enhance the wealth and power of the capitalist class. Any benefit enjoyed by the wider community is merely a by-product of this economic dynamic. Over the years within many industries scandals have been exposed as a result of the contradiction between the economic imperatives of profit and the integrity of scientific research. Scientists are human and as such are subjected to the same cultural and political pressures as the rest of us. When science is subverted by economic and political interests then disaster is always a possibility.

Although the owners of the capital that is invested in these industries do take some notice of their tame ‘technocrats’ they listen much more attentively to their accountants. When couched in such phrases as ‘cost benefit’ in terms of the expected return on investment it sounds almost rational – if we are prepared to tolerate the obfuscation and inevitable dangers this entails. The point being, in terms of this debate, that it’s not primarily the ‘experts’ who make decisions about research and technological application but investment advisors (motivated solely by the need to enhance their clients’ investment portfolios).

Politicians share this perspective when deciding how their masters’ tax dollars are to be spent in terms of state investment in science and technology. In other words, in this respect, the technological experts have no political power at all. It would seem that this particular criticism of socialist democracy is specious since whenever the experts’ advice conflicts with economic expectations they are side-lined or ignored completely.

How it could be

Would socialism represent an improvement in the rational application of science and technology to production for need instead of profit?

The decision of the allocation of resources within socialism would have three stages: Dissemination of information, debate and vote.

The first part would rely on the expertise and talent of those involved within the relevant industries, in this case scientists and technologists. Because of the absence of political pressures they would be free to articulate candidly about the benefits and risks of developing certain productive technologies. There would have to be an element of trust in taking this advice but as in criminal trials this will be balanced by experts who take a different perspective.

A debate by the wider community would then take place using this information and evaluating possible contrasting opinions. Again, as in present day trials, the community will be asked which course to take based on their assessment of which evidence they find the most compelling. As is the case now mistakes will be made but at least they will be the result of honest error rather than Machiavellian political intrigue and corruption which is so ubiquitous today. Within this political culture scientists (and their spokesmen/women) will not exhibit the sometimes arrogant and elitist attitudes they do today – after all their future and that of their children will depend on the decisions made. Being a scientist will mean incorporating the ability to communicate about their work with others (as indeed some of the greatest scientists do presently).

Undoubtedly the level of education, both political and general, would be much higher within socialism – we do not concur with the elitist position that only a minority of the community will ever have the intelligence to make these important decisions. Again, if we live in some kind of elitist meritocracy (as the propaganda would have us believe) then the obvious political and scientific disasters that decorate capitalism’s history would imply the failure of this illusory bourgeois approach to ‘democracy’.

We maintain that no meaningful democracy is possible until the decisions concerning the production of the means of life are taken under the democratic control of the whole community. That this is a possibility will make the motivation for democratic activity so much more exciting – in contrast to the obvious impotent and cynical gatherings which parish, county, regional and national councils/governments now represent. Production for profit is the antithesis to democracy because it can only ever work in the interests of the parasitic minority. Democracy is still a concept that waits patiently in the wings of history’s theatre, ready for the consciousness that will finally bring it to centre stage.

Wez.

The blank ballot (2015)

Book Review from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'How Voters Feel', by Stephen Coleman. Cambridge University Press. Paperback at £18.99

Like every other social process within the current alienated form of society, voting has become thoroughly fetishised into a hollow shell, compared to its potential. By examining the subjective feelings around voting Stephen Coleman opens up the question of how valuable that process could once again become, were it to be returned from its current status of begrudged duty into the realm of exciting, engaging action.

How Voters Feel does not seek to address the question of economic democracy or the unbridled power of transnational corporations, though Coleman does make in passing the point that:

‘Having no votes in the election of officials running the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, let alone private transnational corporations that are increasingly allowed free reign, voters understandably feel estranged from many of the most important sources of power over their lives.’

Nor does it set out to posit what function ‘representative democracy’ may or may not have in undoing the effective economic dictatorship over resources and power which currently excludes the majority of the population from any real control, and therefore engenders our demoralisation. Clearly, the parties which currently stand before the bulk of the electorate every few years are resoundingly united in seeking to manage that same economic dictatorship, as a cardinal matter of policy.

The book’s aim is to explore the experience of voting and to consider how it might be resuscitated as a potential force for change, through the cultivation of a more democratic sensibility. Such a project is especially timely given the continuing disaffection during recent years, particularly of younger people, from the parliamentary system and voting in elections (other than those in the field of entertainment, with telephone voting buoyant and enthusiastic, despite being charged for, in television shows such as The X Factor or Celebrity Big Brother).

Modern capitalism has long loved to sing of its own democratic credentials as supposedly evidenced by that magical moment of secrecy inside a wooden booth once every few years. Important as the idea of voting remains to any idea of democracy, it is nevertheless instructive to recognise how feeble a claim that is. True social democracy would take much more account of far more views, ideas, inputs and wishes than this tokenistic selection of one or other management team a couple of times per decade.

The early chapters of Coleman’s book recount the history of modern representative democracy in Britain, the USA and elsewhere, from the viewpoint of the gradually enfranchised electorate. He explains, fascinatingly, how universal suffrage was initially perceived on all sides as a possible or even likely harbinger of major social change, and specifically of state intervention to try to ameliorate conditions for the impoverished majority. The century-long journey from aspiration to grim resignation on the part of the newly enfranchised majority, from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, is excellently set out here.

The middle chapters (4-7) present a wealth of empirical evidence from original research consisting of sixty interviews with both voters and non-voters. A number of themes emerge from this. Voting has, in the modern period, become a private, secret and almost intimate activity, in contrast to the more public processes of previous periods. It is no coincidence that the cover of the book shows a photograph of American voters in Idaho, with their backs to us, in a neat row of cubicles looking amusingly as if they are engaging in that other universal yet ‘private’ activity of using a urinal or, in the case of the women, entering a toilet cubicle.

Amongst those interviewed, Coleman identifies the ‘dutiful voters’ who feel obliged to cast votes without any genuine expectations of a positive outcome, and the ‘committed abstainers’ who decline to vote and yet say they would resist bitterly any move to deprive them of their right to vote. He describes both of these groups as having given up on cultivating a vibrant relationship with their representatives. By his then also adding the observation how important it is for representatives to embody the feelings of those they represent, we seem to be invited to ponder how best to bolster and repair this system of specifically representative democracy.

Might it be even more useful to interpret these failings as signifying the need to reappraise that concept of democracy? Both the ‘dutiful voters’ and the ‘committed abstainers’ have indeed a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with representative democracy, in that the former place excessive weight on that relationship, despite its failure, whilst the latter are incontrovertibly suspicious of the representational process, whilst holding out for its ideal. However, one might equally interpret this, especially in the latter case, as a healthy disregard for the idea of representation itself as compared with the hope of  voting becoming less vicarious and part of something more participative, such as delegation and the idea of voting for ideas, or at least for delegates as cyphers for specific policies or actions.

There were also some respondents who on principle would go to vote but then either ‘spoil’ their ballot paper or leave it blank. This is in fact a long, noble and meaningful practice by those who simply wish to reject ‘what’s on offer’ whilst registering the importance on principle of the vote itself, and in that regard this practice makes perfect sense. It is an option which was written about in the national press at the time of the 2015 general election in Britain, and may well be increasing. It is somewhat frustrating therefore that this practice is not given more attention in  these pages than just one paragraph, which comments wryly that ‘To speak of casting a blank ballot paper as a ‘useful’ act is intriguing. It signifies absence by presence; that the voter counts and yet cannot be counted ...’

Perhaps the most fascinating – and significant – section of the book is in chapter 8 which deals, amongst other areas, with the ways in which working-class children are socially conditioned into humility, and sets the challenge of how this might be reversed, to recreate a democratic sensibility comprising confidence both in self and in the prospect of change. Coleman explores many of the complex mechanisms through which ‘children internalise the range of possibilities open to them in life.’ There is, however, more inspection of the ‘how’ than the ‘why’ of this socialisation for subservience, and as a result the proscriptive parts of the chapter may be seen as somewhat optimistic:

‘If schools are to perform a useful role in preparing young people to play their part in democracy, this must entail conferring resources of hope upon those who have been routinely and systematically persuaded to think of themselves as naturally or inevitably lacking voice or efficacy.’

Having worked in many schools and been made painfully aware of their specific raison d’être, I am less than sanguine about their potential role in spearheading this necessary surge in democratic sensibility. On the other hand, the enormity of the task of overcoming vast socially and psychologically conditioned subservience is even less plausibly seen as depending on the efforts of activism at the fringes of the current systems of universal education.

In all this as in so much else, it is the class division of present-day society which most strikingly both explains why meaningful and confident civic engagement by the economically weak majority is not encouraged by the education system, and offers a practical motivational form through which this might start to be redressed.

Does the book succeed at what it sets out to do? Absolutely. It is a challenging and at times specialised and complex, yet rewarding read. There are some key questions which it would have been clearly outside the remit of this book to probe. For example, from the point of view of those working to encourage speedy social revolution, is it desirable or an impedance to work to encourage engagement with the specifically parliamentarian and representative model of democracy?

Clifford Slapper

Marxism and Democracy (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not possible to explain in an understandable way what the attitude of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is to Marxism and democracy without first dismissing the mass of representations and half-truths surrounding the term Marxism, and distinguishing between widely differing concepts of democracy.

For us Marxism means essentially the mature, stated, view of Marx and Engels on the materialist conception of history, the economic analysis of capitalism and the way in which the working class must use the "parliamentary system" to achieve power as the necessary preliminary to the establishment of Socialism. This is the legitimate way in which the term should be used but it is not the way in which it is commonly used by the media or by numerous organisations all over the world that have chosen to label themselves Marxist. Leading politicians and commentators habitually use it as a term of abuse to blacken the Labour Party; like the description of that Party as "Marxist". Neither in that Party's aim, nor its economics (they are Keynesians) nor in its political propaganda can this usage be justified. Tackled about this, well-known columnists have taken refuge in a defence that amounts to no more than that "nowadays everybody does it", a complete abdication from their proclaimed role of providing genuine information for their readers.

As regards the organisations that style themselves Marxist, some do this in total ignorance of the writings of Marx and Engels while others make use of statements made before a lifetime of experience had brought maturity.

There is as much confusion about democracy as about Marxism. Hardly any organisation now admits to being anti-democratic; the National Front pays lip-service to democracy as does also the Russian dictatorship.

The formula used to justify the Russian system goes like this. "Democracy is majority rule. If the majority can be persuaded, pressurised or forced into placing the Communist Party leadership in power, that is democracy." It is of course a mockery. There is only one, officially endorsed, candidate in each constituency; through the censorship all information is government-controlled; and all political parties except the Communist Party are prohibited so that there is no legal way in which opponents' views can be put to the electorate. Bukharin once put it in a sentence: 'There is room in Russia for any number of political parties as long as one is in power and the others are in prison." In Russia it is possible for people to be arrested for openly refusing to vote (The Times 30 July 1978). Yet notwithstanding the risk involved, the official account of the last elections to the Supreme Soviet disclosed that some 330,000 people did vote against the official candidates.

All of this is far removed from the concept of democracy in socialist society. In socialism, objective information will be freely and fully available — no vested interests to give slanted versions. All will be able to hear and discuss different policy proposals. Decisions will be by majority vote; and will be accepted and operated by the minority, unless and until they can persuade the majority to change its views. Above all, because there will be no coercive state and all members of society will have free access to the means of life there can be no question of the minority being penalised in any way.

What about democracy in "parliamentary" countries like Great Britain? Objective information is not fully and freely available here but under normal conditions a socialist political party can operate legally and can answer capitalist propaganda. It can state the socialist case and contest elections, and as the overwhelming majority of the electors are working class it is open to the workers, through Parliament, to gain control of the machinery of government, including the armed forces, for the purpose of establishing Socialism when they so decide. Marx and Engels have always appreciated the value of the vote. In 1848, in the Communist Manifesto they wrote:

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy. 

Looking back, half a century later, Frederick Engels said:

The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the struggle for the general franchise, for democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat . . . (Introduction to Class Struggles in France 1895)

Only four years after the Communist Manifesto Marx emphasised the point in an article in the New York Tribune (25 August 1852):

The carrying of universal suffrage in England would . . . be a far more socialistic measure than anything which has been honoured with that name on the Continent.
It's inevitable result, here, is the political supremacy of the working class.

In their early years of political activity Marx and Engels had been optimistic about the speed with which developments would take place. With greater experience they had to recognise that the obstacles — the resourcefulness of the ruling class, the adaptability of capitalism, and the slowness with which socialist ideas were accepted by the workers — were much greater than they had supposed.

Engels, in the work already mentioned summarised this:

"The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act. That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us. But so that the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is required  . . . Even in France the Socialists realise more and more that no durable success is possible unless they win over in advance the great mass of the people, which, in this case, means the peasants. The slow work of propaganda and parliamentary activity are here also recognised as the next task of the party".

Engels, however, still underestimated the difficulties of the situation, this time through his misjudgment of the quality of membership of the social democratic parties. They were more and more being recruited, not for the socialist objective, but by the attraction of the "immediate demands" attached to the social-democratic programmes. They were still dependent on "leadership" and it remained for the Socialist Party of Great Britain to show that the whole leadership idea is alien to democracy and the socialist movement.

Edgar Hardcastle 

Democracy, ancient and modern (2013)

Book Review from the May 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The History of Democracy: A Marxist Interpretation, by Brian S. Roper. Pluto Press, 2013

It is ironic that, just at a time when the undemocratic nature of the SWP’s internal structure is being exposed to the public glare, an SWP sympathiser should bring out a book on democracy.

Roper’s basic thesis is that the Ancient World produced two different models of democracy – Athenian direct democracy and Roman representative democracy – and that bourgeois democracy conforms to the latter. Rome, even in its republican days, was always ruled by an oligarchy of patricians; the plebs only had a say through representatives, magistrates who were either rich plebs or patricians starting their political career.

To make his point, Roper examines the English, American and French revolutions and has no difficulty in demonstrating that their leaders rejected the concept of universal manhood suffrage; where they did accept a fairly wide franchise they imposed property qualifications on those who could be elected. Some of the New England towns practised direct democracy but the US constitution and that of its states practised what Thomas Hamilton called ‘representative democracy’, where the people were represented by those who had more property. The French republic had a similar constitution before it was overthrown by Napoleon.

The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw popular struggles in all capitalist countries to remove property qualifications and extend the franchise. It is a pity that Roper hardly goes into these, but those in Germany, Belgium and Russia gave rise to interesting discussions within the Marxist-oriented Social Democratic movement as to the tactics of the struggle and why it was important. He mentions Rosa Luxemburg’s pamphlet on the Mass Strike but omits to mention that she was advocating this as a tactic in both Russia and Germany to obtain the vote and political democracy.

Marx himself supported the Chartist demand for a parliament elected by universal suffrage and with paid MPs and later campaigns to extend the vote to more workers. Roper does not discuss the extent to which this – where workers could in theory represent themselves – could still be called a ‘representative democracy’ in the sense Hamilton meant it but continues to use the term as if it was.

In the eulogy which Marx drafted for the First International on the Paris Commune of 1871 after its suppression, he offered a different model: a federation of municipalities elected by universal suffrage where these would send mandated delegates to a central assembly; in other words, a parliament which would only be indirectly elected. Whether this would be more democratic than a directly elected one remains a matter for debate.

Roper completely ignores Marx’s view that, under certain circumstances, the workers might be able to win control of political power via the ballot box, so turning universal suffrage from an instrument for duping people into an agent of emancipation.

According to Roper, ‘the experience of the Commune highlighted the need for a centralised revolutionary party to exercise leadership within the working class during the course of the revolution in order to ensure that capitalism and parliamentary democracy are successfully overthrown and replaced by socialist democracy.’

By ‘socialist democracy’ he means the system that was supposedly established in Russia after the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917, based on ‘soviets’ (workers’ councils), in which the direct democracy of a workplace assembly would be the basic unit and which would elect delegates to wider decision-making bodies. Whilst it is true that directly elected parliaments have been hi-jacked by leadership-run parties dominated by MPs who refuse to consider themselves delegates, it is also true that the Russian soviets were taken over and manipulated by the vanguard party that the Bolsheviks were. They never did function as they were supposed to. What happened could even be used to reach the opposite conclusion to Roper’s on the Paris Commune: the dangers of the existence of a centralised party seeking to exercise leadership over the working class.

This is not a work of original research but to a large extent a rehash of the writings of SWP theorists such as Alex Callinicos and the late Chris Harman.

Adam Buick

The capitalist state (1999)

From the June 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The state is based on minority rule. It was set up and exists in opposition to the majority and so can never be truly democratic.

The current state is owned and run by the kleptocratic class of capitalists, a tiny proportion of the population. Thus their state is predicated upon an opposition between the desire of the masses and the will of their clique. Their state is set up against the majority, because they can never be a majority. Their ideas, thinking, and tactics, are all those of a tiny minority. Could you ever imagine a counter-demonstration by capitalists: men in sharp pin-stripe suits converging on Trafalgar Square, chanting through loud-hailers "They say fight back, we say cut back! Tax the poor and make them pay!" It would never happen. It is not, and cannot ever be their way of making politics.

One of the ways in which the capitalists have managed to control the vast network of offices and bureaucracies that is the modern state has been through ensuring that most of the jobs are not up for democratic election. This has been managed through the power of appointment, and through the Public Appointments Unit (formerly Bureau), which was in fact secret until 1975. Before then, it had vetted and selected those "eligible" to serve as appointees of the state. This effectively meant that office-holders could be moulded to suit the requirements of the state and its masters. Cold War ideology strengthened this selection process, through using the threat of enemy "agents" as an internal control device (just as, on the other side, Stalin used "petit-bourgeois" and "Trotskyite" "traitors".) 

Unelected appointees

Nowadays, as a result of the Nolan Committee, the Public Appointments Unit publishes lists of appointees and selected details about them. A quick glance at the statistics suffices to show the scale of the operation. The Department of Social Security has 3,689 appointees listed by the PAU, the Department of Trade and Industry has 632, all of them placed upon committees or planning groups with significant powers over many people. Whether the appointments are paid or unpaid, they still carry a deal of responsibility, power and status with them, such that many wish to find themselves in such positions; thus not only can a government select the people that run the country. They can use this capacity to buy servility and toadying from such as want those posts.

The ultimate expression of this power of patronage and status, is the entire honours system, with the House of Lords at its apex, as was recently pointed out by those few MPs in parliament with a genuine commitment to democracy, when they proposed an Amendment to the Lord's Bill to have an elected second chamber. This debate is sure to show the real intents of the vast majority of power-seekers, when they vote to allow the government to retain the power of patronage to appoint people to the Lords. Tony Blair has already shown his zeal in using such powers of patronage, elevating Simon and Sainsbury so that he could have them in his government, and employing Lord Jenkins to conduct the commission into Proportional Representation. The existence of a non-elected second chamber means that only a minority of Parliament are elected; the ending of hereditary peerage appears to be more about ensuring that future governments can exercise power and patronage over the second chamber, rather than any genuine concern for democracy.

The way in which power is exercised through the executive's patronage, rather than through the democratic control of either parliament or the electorate, was brought out in an article in a recent issue of Private Eye (22 January), entitled "Return of the Whigs—or How the SDP (defunct) and Lib Dems (17 percent of the vote) got into Government". It featured a diagram, showing the relationships between several past and present members of the Lib Dems/SDP, (including Lord Jenkins) and how they all had privileged access to Whitehall, via Peter Mandelson, and a particularly powerful lobbying firm. This illustrates the direction of "the Blair Project", of using his Prime Minister's power of patronage to elevate people of like political opinions into positions of power, and side-line his reliance upon the elected party in Parliament. This tendency alone keeps power concentrated into the hands of a tiny few.

Elite selection

The campaigning leftwing journalist John Pilger has written about another feature of undemocratic practice in the existing state in his New Statesman column (16 October, 13 November, 27 November, 8 January). He discussed "The Successor Generation", a social networking group established by (among others) Rupert Murdoch, Sir James Goldsmith, Howard J. Pew (a right wing oil millionaire) and the Institute for Policy Research (founded by William Casey, a former head of the CIA). The aim of the group being (according to Ronald Reagan who presided over the 1983 launch at the Oval Office) "to have [Britain and America] work together on defence and security issues". Its foundation was due to the rising distrust of NATO in Britain among Labourite members, and its aim was to include the up and coming stars, the leaders of the future, among its "alumni".

Five members of Blair's original cabinet were alumni of the Successor Generation: George Robertson (now Defence Secretary, toadyingly supporting the Atlanticist line on attacks in Iraq and anywhere else that displeases America); Mo Mowlam (Northern Ireland Secretary, and Blair's Campaign manager for the Labour leadership contest); Peter Mandelson (formerly Blair's right hand man, and Minister for everything); Baroness Symons (Foreign Office Minister, up to her neck in the Sandline affair); Chris Smith (Culture Secretary) together with Jonathon Powell (Blair's Chief of Staff). All of these now powerful people were wined and dined by the Successor Generation, and made contacts there. It is not just politicians that are alumni, a number of BBC journalists, including Newsnight's Evan Davis, attend Successor Generation functions.

To highlight the Successor Generation is not to cry conspiracy theory, or allege corruption. Indeed, those that attend scoff at any idea that they may be being influenced by these little soirées. The point is, however, that it provides a framework, deliberately constructed, so that people who are going to be "the leaders of the future" (a highly undemocratic concept from the start) can network, form bonds and an identity, and get to know each other on a personal level, be friends. Evan Davies, to reject that any notion it is a sinister organisation, pointed out that British Airways back it and that this was a "respectable company". This is precisely the mind-set the organisation wishes to promote: that this is all just the harmless socialising provided by the rich and powerful, whose intent is benign. What once was accomplished solely through Eton and Oxbridge and other institutions of class privilege now has to be remade through private funding of millionaires—elite creation.

The involvement of William Casey with the Successor Generation hints at another form of elite control in the capitalist state, the secret agencies. The CIA currently has a budget of some $28 billion, a small fraction of which was able to be diverted to help the Successor Generation and like organisations in US client states. Likewise, the British secret services have long been a means of watching and controlling the political scene. MI5 agents have been implicated in the funding of fascist groups and Loyalist terrorists. Being secret, beyond accountability, and being powerful, they can form a state within a state, to unsubtly correct things when the usual systems of power run out of the elite's control.

Will of the majority

All of this goes to show how desperately the kleptocratic masters in this country try to keep mass involvement and democracy out, so that only the fig-leaf of parliamentary democracy exists to cover it over and give the state a semblance of democracy. It has been thus ever since the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, and the institution of the Bank of England and the National Debt, which combined to exercise control over the state (a role now performed by the IMF). Where once in a feudal state the warrior class kept power through warlike duties, the capitalist class exercises power in their state through ownership of money. The working class, likewise, must exercise its power through its sole asset—its work, and its collectivity. The tiny elite collectively own the state through money, the working class must take control of the state through democracy.

The form of the capitalist state is inherently predicated upon minority rule, and to re-create such a state as part of the workers' revolution would be to re-create minority rule. The one-man rule and dictatorship of the Soviet Union was not what Marx understood by the phrase "dictatorship of the proletariat". For him this simply meant the dominance of the working class, the unequivocal, absoluteness of telling the capitalists "NO! that is no longer your factory!", "NO! Your money is now worthless!", an action that must be carried out by the will of the vast majority.

Since workers are only workers by dint of their positioned opposition to capital, and the masses only masses by dint of their opposition to an elite, the instant the working class performs that revolution, abolishes the minority state, abolishes capital, it abolishes itself as a class, and all classes along with it. Creating a new state upon the same lines as the capitalist state would only result in re-creating a ruling elite; which is precisely what happened in Russia. The working class is the agent of socialism not because of some objective superiority, or because of economic power, but because it is the class that undoes class—the negation of class and so of the state.

In a socialist world the whole population would be the state—so the state as such would cease to exist, replaced with the free, co-operative, democratic association of human beings. Hence the battle cry of socialists is "to convert the ballot box from a means of fraud into a means of liberation", and not to perpetuate the fraud of the democratic state in the name of a so-called "workers' state" ruling over the real individual lives of real members of the working class.

Pik Smeet