Question and answer (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does the Socialist Party of Great Britain recognise that its Declaration of Principles cannot apply to those countries where political democracy does not exist?

Capitalism is a worldwide system which gives rise to both the need for socialism and the possibility of achieving it. It is not the type of government or the mode of election which now stands in the way of socialism; the factor common to all countries from parliamentary democracies to dictatorships — is an extreme shortage of socialists.

While in Britain the development of political democracy took place along with the growth of capitalism, there are very few countries which do not now have at least the machinery associated with democracy and hold elections. All governments need the passive support of their people and elections of some kind are a convenient way of demonstrating it.

Wherever capitalism exists, however administered. workers are not immune from the contradictions which underline the need for socialism. This includes peasants who are increasingly affected by world capitalism. Apart from anything else, modem communications make it extremely unlikely that the socialist movement could grow to any size in a few countries and have absolutely no impact in the rest of the world.

How does the Socialist Party propose that the working class of those countries (without political democracy) are to organise for a socialist revolution?

In those countries where there are severe restrictions on political activity any socialists must, taking all circumstances into account, do the best they can to carry on their work for socialism, as indeed the SPGB did during the two world wars. (Elections were suspended. The Socialist Standard was subject to censorship. In World War 1 because of Defence of the Realm regulations, we suspended all outdoor meetings; platforms had been smashed and members injured, a speaker arrested and imprisoned, others "bound over to keep the peace followed in some cases by the loss of their jobs.) At times it may prove nearly impossible to continue, especially while our numbers are still so few and not only because of state-imposed conditions. We have the example of socialists in Northern Ireland who. after a very difficult time, were ready to resume a full propaganda programme at the earliest opportunity.

The prospects are not quite as bleak as might be imagined; governments are not able permanently to prevent the dissemination of ideas not condoned by the state. A 19th century example is of the German Social Democratic Party which, while the Anti-Socialist Laws were in operation recovered from the initial setback and grew to be the strongest single party, polling 1½ million votes in the 1890 election (the Anti-Socialist Laws then came to an end). Bismarck also introduced reform measures aimed at undermining support for the SPD. More recently the tight control of the media, education and so on in Poland, did not prevent the emergence of Solidarity — 10 million strong. The current situation is unlikely to be the end of the story and it is still true that the actions of the government are tempered by the likely response of the majority. The careful attitude of the authorities to the Catholic Church in Poland reflects the mass support which that organisation has. Underground publications circulate in Russia and other East European countries.

This is not to underestimate the difficulties but to underline the fact that lack of political democracy is not. at this time, the main problem

In those countries where political democracy does not exist, does the Socialist Party advocate and support reforms that could lead to political rights for workers, free trade unions etc. ?

The Socialist Party learned from the experience of the early parties of Social Democracy; having a programme of immediate reforms and the ultimate aim of revolution meant trying to implement the reforms which led to compromise — taking part in running capitalism. It was the reform programme which gained the large following of people not interested in revolution. It is the failure of parties of reform to solve working-class problems that has brought the use of parliament into disrepute. We point out that the choice is not between parliament plus reforms and socialist revolution. Parliament has not failed, it has never been used by a vast majority of socialists as a means to revolution. The vital lesson is that the issue of socialism must be kept clear; the party aiming for socialism must seek support on that basis alone.

Co-operation with other parties, or groups, for any other purpose will always be on the terms of those parties. Democratic freedoms are seldom sought as an abstract ideal. People leading campaigns for democracy are likely to have some other purpose in mind, seeing democracy as a stepping stone to economic or political power in their own sectional interest as the rising capitalist class made use of working-class agitation in securing its own political supremacy in this country. Many widely differing interests came together to overthrow the Shah in Iran; organisations were there despite the Shah s secret police and the exile of some leaders, but though this is an extreme example, it does show that it is not enough to aim to get rid of a tyrant — or for generalised freedoms.

To campaign for constitutional reform as a separate issue will only serve to perpetuate capitalism — in whatever form. All attempts to gain freedom to organise politically must go hand in hand with working for socialism — but this presupposes that there are socialists.

In fact workers do not need any advice from us about the advantages of trade union organisation, and gaining a political voice. Socialists welcome the formation of independent trade unions organised along sound lines. In recent years millions of people who have been compelled to work for the multi-national companies which have taken advantage of cheap, non-unionised labour in "Third World" countries have begun struggling to improve their pay and conditions by organising in unions. Witness also the struggles of black workers in South Africa where, as elsewhere, there are many factors at work, including economic problems and the conflict of interests between different sections of the capitalist class.

While we are considerably cheered by any success achieved by fellow members of our class in the lightening of their particularly heavy loads, we also recognise the likely limitations of that success. Workers also act against their class interest, regularly voting for parties to run capitalism, and will even support anti-democratic parties and accept the use of repressive measures. Our specific and vital contribution is to keep the issue of socialism clear.

Will political democracy have to be established in the majority, if not all. of the world's capitalist states as a necessary precondition for a socialist revolution?

The short answer is yes. We always emphasise that socialism is by definition democratic and can only be established by democratic means. Parliamentary democracy is the means which, when we are in the overwhelming majority, socialists will be able to use to gain control of the machinery of government. It is not the prerequisite to the formation and spread of the idea of socialism. This is not to ignore the difficulties; we have already said that where there are particular problems socialists must do the best they can. Nor do we underestimate the usefulness of political democracy — it makes our task easier — but at this stage it is not the deciding factor, or there would be many more socialists in the more "liberal" democracies. The missing ingredient is still class-conscious socialist understanding, in democracies and dictatorships alike.

The spread of socialist ideas, the expansion of the socialist movement with its democratic aim and organisation, will ensure the fullest appreciation of democracy in every country and the speediest adoption of political democracy and independent trade unions in those countries where they do not yet exist. Workers who have understood their class position and are ready to work for socialism will insist on taking an active part in their unions. They will not rely on leaders, they will not be misled into supporting dictatorships of any kind, and they will certainly not be fobbed off by any calls to nationalist sentiment.

It is inconceivable that the growth of the socialist movement could accelerate and yet those millions of class conscious workers leave the administration of capitalism untouched — by this stage there could already be socialist delegates in some parliaments. Long before the necessary majority is near governments would have to take their views into account. It is unlikely that when most countries have got substantial numbers of socialists, a few countries will still have only a minority of socialists and be without political democracy. If this did happen the worldwide socialist movement would decide, in close cooperation with those minorities, how best they could be helped. We repeat that this event seems unlikely. There would be no question of an increasingly socialist working class in, say. America, allowing the government to prop up dictatorships in other countries.

Letter: Put baldly (1993)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

With regard to Dave Perrin’s letter in the September Socialist Standard, at the risk of engaging in pedantry I am bothered by the use of the phrase “the Socialist Party therefore encourages workers to struggle where necessary to establish political democracy under capitalism". Even allowing for the caveats in the preceding comments which make clear our purpose in utilizing this democratic facility (severely flawed though it be from a socialist point of view), to urge workers to put an end to capitalism, it seems to me that the phrase "encourages workers" put baldly this way would indicate that the Socialist Party has this as a definite plank in its policy whereas, of course, as David Perrin himself points out, we are concerned with capitalist political democracy only as a means that can be used to end capitalist society and this must be our clear caveat always.

M. Judd,

Keston, Kent

Reply:

Our policy on this question was reaffirmed at our 1990 Annual Conference: "that the Socialist Party of Great Britain wholeheartedly supports the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights against the powers of suppression. Whilst we avoid any association with parties or political groups seeking to administer capitalism we emphasise that freedom of movement and expression, the freedom to organise in trade unions, to organise politically and to participate in elections, are of great importance to all workers and are vital to the success of the socialist movement" - Editors.

What price democracy? (1992)

Cartoon by George Meddemmen.

From the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the collapse of what we were encouraged to believe was communism in eastern Europe, another clutch of nations are undergoing the birth pangs of what passes for freedom in the so-called western democracies.

Unquestionably, it is better to live in a society where there is some degree of democracy than in one where opposition to the regime is not tolerated. The question is, however, how democratic are the democratic countries and how much benign repression is concealed by the illusion of freedom?

We have all heard the boast that America is a classless society and that any man or woman, whatever his or her origins, can become the nation’s chief executive. That no-one is debarred from the office of President on the grounds of being a cheat, a liar or a fool, is demonstrated by the history, past and present, of US Presidents. On the other hand, neither a woman nor a black person have had the distinction of being selected and, while it is possible that the colour and sex prohibition may be overcome in the future, the likelihood of someone who is not immensely rich succeeding to the Presidency of the United States is extremely unlikely.

In the struggle for electoral victory in the US Presidential elections money is a primary factor. It is not expensive, of course, to advise the voting public about the real issues that concern their future; but it does cost the most fantastic amounts of money to obscure the reality of both the present and the future. All the work of programme preparation, the prime media time, the wages and salaries of artisans and specialists in all sorts of hype and media trickery, conning with paper hats, raspberry blowers, millions of posters carrying asinine slogans, telling lies, using private detectives to look for dirt with which to expose an opponent. The disgusting circus that passes for democracy at Presidential level is very, very expensive stuff in which there is no place for ideas or concepts that cannot be backed by multi-millions of dollars.

Of course the election of a President is a two-horse race. We don’t even hear about the other candidates nor, indeed, do most Americans. There is no bar on socialists, or any other grouping, running for office—that’s the basis of the claim that America is a democracy—but without the massive wealth to buy the organisation, media time etc. that the Republicans and Democrats can deploy, that claim is patently fraudulent.

The system is not necessarily fashioned to repress the free expression of ideas but that is what it does. Western capitalism uses the power of money to benignly repress the general dissemination of ideas with even more efficacy than eastern state capitalism repressed ideas with terror. In the latter, the means used to suppress inexorably created their own reaction; in the former, since all are theoretically free to express their ideas and are gagged by lack of money, the public—conditioned to accept the economic logic of people even dying because they do not have the money to buy the food, shelter or medical care they need—can easily accept the financial suppression of ideas as being consistent with the democracy of the market.

Power of money

The same two-horse race as takes place between the Democrats and Republicans in the US takes place in Britain; here the runners are the Conservative Party and the Labour Party—with the so-called Liberal Democrats anxious to supplant one or other of the runners.

In Britain—especially following the revelation that one of the biggest press barons was a despicable crook who even stole from his retired workers—it would be freely admitted that, as in all the other so-called democratic countries, the press is owned and controlled by unscrupulous racketeers who have the power to influence millions of people every day. But it would be argued that at least the more influencial electronic media is largely free of undemocratic practices. Unlike the United States, where politicians and political interest groups can buy radio and TV lime, the electronic media here is allegedly protected against undemocratic abuse by rigorously enforced guidelines.

In fact these guidelines are even more repressive of genuine democratic practice than the American system. While it is true that in the United States those political parties serving the political needs of the capitalist class can buy the most potent means of controlling and conditioning masses of people and that this is the opposite of democratic, it is also true that interests outside the big parties can buy such exposure for their ideas as their necessarily meagre finances allow. In Britain, minority voices are denied access to the mass communication media except, of course, if they can muster amounts of money far greater than would be required for a modest campaign on American TV or radio!

In order to get an insignificant amount of broadcasting time on BBC or ITV in a general election, a political organisation must put up at least £25,000 as deposits for 50 candidates. On top of this a reasonably credible campaign in support these candidates would cost another £125,000. Any crackpot thesis, providing it is legal—and the rubbish that the major parties pul out on TV shows legality is no guide to sense!—can get the maximum amount of time if its sponsors can raise about £300,000 in the form of deposits for candidates in every coastituency. This amount of money buys it the right of access to the public through the medium of television and radio just as surely as it would in the US if it was paid over directly to the TV companies.

It has to be added, lest anyone is surprised that British democracy is so cheap that, after the deposits have been paid, about another £1,500,000 would be required to field a modest campaign—indeed, one press report claimed that the Tories invested in excess of £20,000,000 in buying the opportunity in the 1992 General Election to govern Britain.

So much for living in a democratic society. The cash nexus that controls capitalist democracy means that new ideas and concepts that do have, or may have, merit in solving the terrible and intractable problems of capitalism are frozen out of the pseudo-democratic system by the power of money. That, of course, is why problems like poverty, insecurity, homelessness, crime and wars, are intractable—because mass public examination of new solutions or different approaches to our problems are not permitted by those who gain wealth, power and privilege out of the very system that creates these problems.

Struggle for democracy

The "justification" for this anti-democratic system of closed loop capitalist "democracy" that ensures that the public is comfortably insulated from knowledge of any sane alternative to the present system of social lunacy, is the argument that the financial bar precludes all sorts of nut-cases from getting involved in elections. Of course, the amount of money spent in procuring a percentage of the vote at elections also acts as the means of measuring what access, if any, those outside the mainstream parties have between elections.

It is certainly no accident that, despite the fact that political fare is a sought after and, normally, ongoing part of television and radio programming, it is a rarity for anyone outside the mainstream panics to be seen or heard on British TV. Nor does the absence mean that there is a dearth of minority political opinion or spokespersons prepared to pul such opinion. No, it means that the utterly anti-democratic "percentage of the vote" thesis is working a treat for British capitalism.

But the argument itself, that nut-cases are kept off the air—apart from the fact that it is an essentially anti-democratic argument that makes money the arbiter of political sanity—falls down in practice. Apart from the Monster Raving Looney Party and the mass of candidates who fought the General Election on a policy of conquering problems by thinking they are not there, there are the orthodox inanities of Major, Kinnock and Ashdown.

Real democracy, of course, is impossible to achieve within a system of social inequality; the essence of real, informed and fully participative democracy can only prevail in a truly socialist society. Still, to establish the majority socialist consciousness that must necessarily underpin Socialism, it is important to struggle for our voice to be heard; for the limping democracy of capitalism to become more than a mere numbers game for pollsters and politicians. That is not to say that the struggle for a wider degree of democracy must precede the struggle for Socialism but, rather, that the struggle for democracy is an integral part of the struggle for Socialism.

Richard Montague

How democratic is ‘Democracy’? (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in his 1946 essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell made the following remark about democracy:

‘In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning’.

As Orwell noted 78 years ago, democracy is felt to be a political system that is good, and therefore when people wish to imply that a political system is good, they call it democratic. The question of democracy, however, like all political buzzwords, is in need of detailed and sober scrutiny by socialists, both for its connection with the capitalist society of today, and with the future socialist society to which we aspire.

Democracy in context

In considering democracy, we must be clear not to confuse fact and fiction. The ideas of the age do not represent reality, but are just that: illusions we tell ourselves (or are told about ourselves by others). As Marx and Engels cautioned in The German Ideology, we must not allow the ‘idea’ to become the ‘active force, which controls and determines [our] practices’. In this sense, socialists do not believe in democracy in the same way we do not believe in god.

In speaking of democracy we are thus talking not about a philosophical ideal, a utopian vision towards which we should be constantly striving, but an actual system existing in reality. It is not the job of socialists to perfect ideas, but to critique ruthlessly all that exists.

Democracy is often said to have originated with the Ancient Greeks. Certainly ideas of voting and the consent of the governed have existed throughout history. However, we must remember that for most of its history, democracy in the form of voting has been merely a method of sharing power between members of the ruling class. Ancient Greece was the democracy of slaveholders, and the English Parliament was the democracy of landlords.

It was not until 1832 that the vote in Britain began to be extended – rising from 1 percent of the population to 7 percent. Universal suffrage was not achieved until 1928, after a political conflict lasting over a century to fully extend the vote to working-class men and women. In America, blacks were excluded from voting until the 1960s under Jim Crow laws. Swiss women did not gain the right to vote in federal elections until 1971.

For most of its history, therefore, democratic forms of government have gone hand in hand with highly repressive and authoritarian political systems, in which the majority of the population have been prevented from voting even under republics and parliamentary governments.

How democratic is democracy?

The current form of democracy – liberal democracy – is based upon an idea of a separation between the private sphere and the public sphere. The public sphere is the realm of politics, civil rights, law-making; the private sphere is that of economic transactions between free individuals. At the risk of oversimplifying, we may say that Enlightenment philosophers such as Thomas Paine and John Locke saw a free society of individuals based on mutual agreement as the natural state of humanity. To them, the public sphere of states and laws was a necessary mechanism where people surrender some of their natural freedom to join forces and protect themselves and their property by mutually submitting to a central authority, namely a government.

This idea lies at the heart of modern democracy: the bills of rights and written constitutions that exist in almost every country on the planet, limiting (at least in principle) the powers of governments, flow directly from this philosophical idea that Private individualism is good and natural whereas Public collectivism is at best a necessary evil.

What liberal democracy fails to address, however, is the power individuals hold over each other. Individuals do not exist freely in relation to each other on a level playing field; even without the presence of a state, inequality and injustice would still exist in any society where ownership and control over resources is limited to a single class. Under a class-divided system, freedom in practice means the freedom of ‘man to exploit man’. The ‘rights’ to own property and make contracts protected by constitutions mean, in practice, the right of the capitalist class to hold us hostage to their economic power. Marx wrote at length on this dichotomy between liberal democracy’s promise of freedom and its reality of class exploitation, for instance in On the Jewish Question:

‘Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society and shows itself […] as soon as civil society gives complete birth out of itself to the political state. The god of practical need and personal self-interest is money’.

Under capitalism, political democracy provides the fig-leaf of economic dictatorship.

Something worth fighting for?

Socialists look to the ballot as providing a secure way forward for the transformation of society and the dissolution of class distinctions. At the same time, however, we must not shy away from the uncomfortable realisation that democracy does not mean freedom. Far from it, the history of democracy shows that it is not only compatible with, but comfortably well-suited to, sustaining class dictatorship.

As the German Social Democrat legal scholar, Hermann Heller wrote in 1928:

‘Through financial domination of party, press, film, and literature, through social influence over schools and universities, [the rulers] are able, without using direct corruption, to influence the bureaucratic and electoral apparatus in such a consummate fashion that they preserve every democratic form while achieving a dictatorship of content.’

Herman Heller died five years later in exile in Madrid. The Weimar Republic in Germany was overthrown by the Nazis, with the backing of Junker landowners and the big industrial bourgeoisie. Before all else, the Nazis ruthlessly suppressed the leftist SPD and the KPD; arresting their politicians, closing down the left-wing press, and ransacking the offices of trade unions.

Since the invention of universal suffrage, every person has one vote, and each vote is counted once. This does not mean that all votes are equal. The capitalist class own the media, the movie studios, the printing presses, and they sponsor the universities and research institutes. They have far easier access to scholastic qualifications and government jobs, and unlimited publicity through advertising, pop culture, and news media to reinforce the sanctity of the capitalist mode of production. As Marx and Engels outlined in The German Ideology:

‘The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it’.

There are no easy answers to how socialists should navigate past these obstacles. However, in grappling with difficult questions of democracy and class conflict, we must remember what is at stake. On the one hand stands a ruling class which history shows to be violent, amoral, and ruthless. On the other stands the mass of the world’s population, robbed of the value they create by this class, and living in or just above destitution, and ultimately, it is to end this that we fight. Not for the democracy of the ruling class, but for a socialist world free of exploitation and the violence its maintenance necessitates.

Uther Naysmith

Do we have democracy? (1991)

From the September 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is hardly necessary to stress the virtues of democracy, when we have the example before us of what goes on around the world in countries with Mafia-type set-ups. An absence of democracy tells us more than just that a particular country is ruled by despots. It indicates the absence of a stable class structure, with all the necessary institutions for running a modern industrial state. The system of democracy, or rather of democratic institutions (the right to form trade unions, of assembly and free speech), is essential to working class politics. It would, however, be wrong to assume that the democracy we have is in any sense complete, that the potential of democracy has been realised.

The question has to be considered within the context of capitalist society which, while it needs a certain level of democracy to function, places limits upon democracy. Within capitalist society there are many conflicting interests and, to arbitrate and regulate these, various democratic decision-making institutions have to be created. But because property has more power than people, and the demands of the economic system more power than either, the effectiveness of any popular or majority will is diluted, so that on balance it is the will or demands of capitalism that prevail, while keeping up a pretence of majority rule.

Pretence of majority rule

In terms of political power, our democratic freedom is limited to deciding who shall constitute the executive bodies of local and central government.These bodies make decisions that affect our lives but, once they are elected, we have little or no control over them.There are occasions when determined action does have an effect, but if we do not like these decisions, in the main the only recourse we have is to vote in another lot the next time we are given permission; who will eventually turn out to be as unsatisfactory as the others. The vital thing to remember, though, is that it is through this system that we may achieve socialism.

Although the means of selecting governing bodies by majority vote is democratic as far as it goes, the way these bodies function is not. This is because they are subject to pressures which have nothing to do with the reasons for their election and which force them into actions contrary to the interests and wishes of the electors.

These pressures which restrict democracy are those that allow commercial and industrial enterprises to compete freely with each other for profits. Because this adversely affects working class interests, workers in turn exert pressure upon the government. The government cannot resolve this conflict. so to absorb the mounting pressure of dissatisfaction the political system has a safety valve of ins and outs which temporarily allays the problem. The governing party goes to the country, as the saying has it. Another party assumes power. Society breathes again. Old men with new faces and old ideas in new suits appear on the scene; only to soon look shabby and familiar.

The inability of limited democracy within the framework of capitalism to solve problems sometimes goads people into taking matters into their own hands. This too has been foreseen. The law is there to counter such action, to protect the institutions of the elected from the depredations of the electorate. It is important, however, to remember that any action that could ultimately weaken or destroy democratic rights is not in the interest of the working class. For the limited democracy we have is not only necessary for us here and now, but essential for the creation of the socialist commonwealth and, with it, true democracy.

True democracy

Democracy under capitalism is not there to enable us to decide how our lives should be run. but to enable our rulers to escape responsibility for their actions and to put the blame on us for their inevitable failure to run capitalism in our interests. This, as will now be realised, is not the fault of democracy as a sound principle for running affairs, but the fraudulent way it is organised and the nefarious purposes to which it is put under capitalism.

Governments frequently claim to be omnipotent, to be able to do what they want to do. and as frequently are forced to find excuses for why they are not and can not. How often have we been given phrases to explain why the elected have reneged on the electors: “necessary unpopular measures", "in the national interest”? The commonly accepted definition of democracy as the will of the majority is used to limit its scope to what is convenient to the ruling class, to what is required to maintain workable executive powers on a stable political foundation in its interests.

Democracy today is certainly not there to enable us to decide how our lives should be run, but it could be if we used its present institutions to vote out capitalism. With the abolition of the institution of property and of class power, with its overriding commercial and financial interests, all the potential of democracy would be realised.

Socialism is a society in which the interests of people as such are the only criteria. Not people divided by irreconcilable class interests, with workers always coming off worst; not people driven by what is called “economic necessity", the obligation to make profits rather than to satisfy needs; but people who would make real democratic decisions and partake in those decisions from a position of equality, secure in the knowledge that they were their own masters, in control of their own destiny.

Ian Jones

Robber Democrats (1985)

From the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

What hypocrisy! The capitalists are chastising the wage-slave "citizens" of United Kingdom (Ltd.) because the wretched proles are losing respect for Democracy. One word and a thousand deceptions: democracy — the catch-phrase of the economic dictators who monopolise the means of life.

Democracy, to make sense, means that the majority are able to make and put into effect decisions. Yes. they must act with respect for the minority who might disagree with a decision, but when all is said and done, democracy means that the majority is in a position to suit itself. (Of course, there may be different majorities on different issues, so that nobody need ever be always in the minority or always in the majority within a democratic set-up.) Democratic decisions will not always be the best ones, but they are the only alternative to various forms of dictatorship — unless, of course, we were to achieve the rather boring state of affairs where everyone agreed about everything.

Most people say they are in favour of democracy. We were brought up to be in favour of it. Ask the average worker in the office, factory or pub and he or she will tell you that we are living in a democracy. They were taught to believe that. We learnt at school about how "our" armies fought for democracy and we read in the press about how Britain's "democratic way of life" is best, just as Russian workers are indoctrinated to believe that their "People's Democracy" is best. When the nuclear bomb destroys millions of human lives (as it will if the human targets don't move) it is likely that there will be some political pervert left to climb from the rubble and proclaim that it was all in the cause of democracy.

What do the politicians and the editors and the millionaires and the titled layabouts and the bishops and the constitutional geniuses mean by democracy? Look around at their much cherished "democratic nation" and it is plain to see. For them, democracy means that a mere one per cent of the population owns more of the marketable wealth than the poorer 80 per cent added together. Three quarters of the daily newspapers are owned by just three millionaire-owned companies. And the carefully picked people who edit the press are soon given their marching orders if they fail to print what the media-owners want. Nobody elects the judges or the generals or the top dvil servants with their immense governmental power. You never see a Lord or a Duke or a Baroness standing for election on a parasites' manifesto and nor is the unelected Head of State (the Queen) appointed by a majority. The boards of the multinational companies, made up of the smallest minority of the population, exercise terrific power over workers’ lives, but they are not elected. And neither are the boards of the state-run nationalised industries. In short, the power of the few over the many is their idea of democracy. But, as we have seen, if democracy is to make sense it must mean that the majority is able to make and put into effect decisions. The majority cannot at present make or put into effect decisions about the productive and distributive machinery such as factories, farms, offices, mines and other places where wealth is created because the majority does not own or control them. Can the majority decide what the media shall do? No, the majority does not own, control or have much access to the mass media. Can the majority determine our own lives? Again, no, because the lives of the majority are at the disposal of those who buy our mental and physical energies for a wage or salary in order to make a profit out of them, and our lives must be tailored to their need for profit.

In fact the present social system (capitalism) is not and never can be properly democratic. The majority is in no position to exercise power within the system because the majority is deprived of the ownership and control of the means of life. What can be achieved, however, is the illusion of democracy. The intense concentration of wealth in the hands of the few can be called "a property-owning democracy" and the right of the richest to communicate furthest can be called "free speech". Such descriptions are as fraudulent as the Russian Empire's claim to be socialist.

The capitalist minority, whose power to legally rob the propertyless majority is dependent on the subservience of the latter, first used democratic rhetoric when it was fighting the feudal aristocracy for power. In the days before the capitalists were the ruling class they needed to make democratic noises. Many workers were taken in by the democratic posing of the would-be rulers and campaigned to allow the capitalists a say in the running of the government. Little did they realise that when the capitalists attacked aristocratic privilege because it was unrepresentative of the people they meant by "the people" only themselves. After 1832, when a large number of British capitalists obtained the vote, they were as committed as their aristocratic predecessors to keeping the wage slaves away from state power.

In the last century workers in Britain organised in order to win the vote, particularly in the great Chartist movement supported by Marx and Engels. The granting of votes to workers was resisted for years by the bosses, who hoped that they could rule forever without the wealth producers having to be involved. Modern Tories and Liberals who speak eloquently of the fine democratic traditions of Great Britain should read their history and find out that leaders of their own parties opposed votes for workers with the determination of dictators. Eventually votes were given to workers, partly out of fear of what the workers might do if they were excluded forever and partly because the shrewder of the bosses realised that bringing the exploited into the process of governing might lead workers into believing that we are in control.

Of course, it is better to have the right to vote than not (for reasons we shall explain), but workers should not regard the right to vote as proving that Britain is a democratic country. Many workers know that however they vote, whichever government is elected will end up doing essentially the same things. In short, capitalism cannot be voted into a controlled system — it is out of control and politicians, bosses and workers alike cannot do much to change its destructive course. The decisions made in the House of Commons are concerned with obeying the economic laws of capitalism, not making them. So voting and parliamentary activities are used by the robber class as a way of pretending that democratic control of society exists.

When combined with an understanding of socialist ideas the pretensions attached to the vote can be turned into a reality. When the vote is used not to elect tweedledum or tweedledee to sit in parliament and follow the dictates of the market, but to abolish the market system itself, then it can be of great value to workers. Unlike parties and sects of the Left which tell workers to ignore democracy as a capitalist con-trick, socialists say that workers can use the democratic machinery for our own ends, but that only majority class consciousness will transform voting from a process of trickery into one of liberation. It is on such a basis that the Socialist Party puts up candidates in local and national elections. And where workers have not yet achieved the right to vote it is in their interest to win it.

We are often told that the capitalists will not just sit back and allow a majority of workers to vote for socialism: to make and put into effect the revolutionary decision. No doubt there are many capitalists who share that view and think that when the time comes, as it surely will, they will be able to prevent the majority from having our way. But a conscious majority will not sit back and be dictated to by an arrogant and undemocratic minority — and if any of the dispossessed robbers are foolish enough to attempt to smash the new social order which the majority has consciously voted for it would not take very long to defeat them one way or another. So the bogus democracy of capitalism can be used by genuine democrats in order to establish a truly democratic state of affairs. Socialism and democracy are linked together, and there are no undemocratic socialists or anti-socialist advocates of social democracy.

Until workers are conscious of their real needs and their real power the bosses will continue to dictate. Periodically it is possible to see just how much contempt these democratic fakers have for majority decision-making. For example, at this year's conference of the National Union of Students, which is a fairly democratic event, the Federation of Conservative Students issued a booklet to its delegates showing them how to smash up the proceedings if the results are not going the Tory way. According to the Guardian.

  It describes how to cause chaos and confusion and how to exploit disruption by shouting, heckling, throwing things and rushing the microphone. It says ‘Always be provocative. Remember, you are not here to persuade the closed-minded leftists. You are here to wind them up so much they lose control . . . ‘ (10 December 1984).

Well, that's one way to act when the majority is not on your side. And these semi-fascists dare to give trade unions advice about how to conduct strikes democratically! The fact is that these privileged defenders of exploitation and oppression have total contempt for democracy and think that they can go on pushing workers about forever. Only a class-conscious majority of democratic revolutionaries can remove the grins from their smug faces.

Steve Coleman

Democracy and Delegates (2019)

From the April 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

When eight MPs resigned from the Labour Party to form a new political group, the so-called ‘Independent Group’, the call naturally went up for them to resign and contest a by-election under their new political colours. Equally naturally (since they all expected to lose any by-election) they refused. They were supported in this by most of the media on ‘constitutional’ grounds – that MPs are not the delegates of those who voted for them. As the Times (22 February) put it in an editorial entitled ‘Democracy and Conscience’:

  In a deliberative democracy, the role of elected representatives is not to implement instructions. Rather, they owe it to their constituents to act on, as Edmund Burke put it to the electors of Bristol in 1774, their unbiased opinion, mature judgement and enlightened conscience.

That’s clear, except that the term ‘deliberative democracy’ is tendentious as why can’t democratically-elected delegates deliberate?

Another opponent of ‘the delegate theory of representation,’ as he called it, was John Stuart Mill (in chapter 12 of his 1861 Representative Government, still taught in universities). He was against this because he thought that, with universal suffrage (to which he was opposed), it would mean ‘the exclusive rule of the operating classes’. He openly advocated ‘leaving an unfettered discretion to the representative’ as a way to prevent the working class imposing ‘class legislation’ in its interest.

So, the theory that elected representatives should have a free hand to vote as they chose, even if this choice was not what those who elected wanted, and that they cannot be removed if they went against their electors’ wishes, originated as an anti-democratic, anti-working-class constitutional practice.

The opposite view – that elected representatives should be subject to control by those who elected them – was the democratic view and, in the nineteenth century, was implemented in some cantons in Switzerland and some of the states of the USA, through provisions for electors to recall those they had elected. Recall votes still take place regularly in the US. The re-election of the US House of Representatives every two years is also a way of making elected representatives responsible to those who elected them (and why ‘annual parliaments’ was one of the Chartists’ six demands, the only one not to have been implemented). It means that electors there can change their representatives if they want after a relatively short period, whereas in Britain they can only do this every five years. Ironically then, had the eight Labour and three Tory defectors been members of the US House of Representatives they would not have been able to hang on for a further three years as they now are.

The Times, however, smeared the democratic position by associating it with Lenin:

  The alternative notion that officials are mere delegates does have a philosophical lineage. It is to be found in Lenin’s The State and Revolution. This revolutionary blueprint was a guarantee that Russia under the Bolsheviks would become a totalitarian state.

This is wrong on two counts. First, as just pointed out, this view goes back a long way before Lenin and, second, Lenin’s endorsement of it was not sincere or followed by any attempt to implement it.

Mill gave an example from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:

  In the Dutch United Provinces, the members of the States General were mere delegates; and to such a length was the doctrine carried, that when any important question arose which had not been provided for in their instructions, they had to refer back to their constituents, exactly as an ambassador does to the government from which he is accredited.

Another example is the arrangement proposed for France by the Paris Commune, a democratic popular uprising that took over Paris at the end of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1. As described by Marx:

  The rural communes of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat impératif (formal instructions) of his constituents (The Civil War in France).

This is what anarchists advocate to this day. It was never implemented as the Paris Commune was ruthlessly suppressed in blood by the French government after less than two month’s existence. While it existed, as Marx noted with approval:

  The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms.

Lenin, who considered himself a Marxist, had to pay lip-service to this and duly quoted in his The State and Revolution, written in July 1917, this endorsement by Marx of a body elected by universal suffrage whose members were subject to recall ‘at short terms’ as the model political form. But he later switched the emphasis from elected councillors to public servants and wrote of these being reduced to the role of ‘simply carrying out our instructions as responsible, revocable, modestly paid “foremen and bookkeepers”’. By ‘our’ he meant the working class, but represented not by elected delegates but by a vanguard party that had appointed itself to represent them. This was quite different from what the Paris Commune practised and what Marx envisaged; it was a blueprint for a one-party dictatorship where any public servant considered to be not carrying out the instructions of the leaders of the vanguard party could be instantly ‘revoked’, i.e., sacked. After the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917 one of their first acts was to dissolve the Constituent Assembly that had been elected by universal suffrage and the ‘revocation’ (and worse, imprisonment and exile) of their opponents began. Lenin wasn’t any kind of democrat, let alone a supporter of delegate democracy.

Some form of delegate democracy has to be the basis of the administrative structure in socialism as this will necessarily be a democratic society. Those elected cannot be left ‘an unfettered discretion’ to decide according to ‘their unbiased [oh, yes?] opinion, mature judgement and enlightened conscience’ as proposed by the anti-democrats Burke and Mill. That would be a recipe for class rule, as it was intended to be.

Adam Buick

Is Democracy Worth While? (1937)

From the April 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is democracy desirable or not? This is a question that is being heatedly debated of late years, and many people are asking themselves the question very anxiously. Of those who put it some are filled with doubts, others are filled with apprehension. There are a number of people who fear that democracy has become a broken reed that will have to be thrown away, and this view is being strongly urged by some who feel that their economic interests are jeopardised by its continuance.

A good deal of the doubt about the value of democracy arises from a misunderstanding, a confusion as to what democracy really is, and the varying and contradictory definitions given by professional writers on the subject is one of the principal sources of this confusion. Some define democracy as a system of society, others as a form of government. Some define it as a method of procedure, others as an end in itself. There have been writers who have endowed it with mystic powers, giving the impression that if only we had real democracy our troubles will be over. Then there are the people who give a group character to democracy, and speak of bourgeois or proletarian democracy, as if there were different brands of this particular form. What these latter have done is borrowed phrases from Marx and Engels, and given them a quite unintended meaning.

Before there can be any reasonable discussion of the subject it is necessary to be clear about the meaning of the terms used. In the present instance the meaning can be got at by taking the generally recognised way of using the term “democracy," before professors and others commenced giving their exasperating definitions of it.

When the expression is applied to society those who use it frequently intend to signify the poorer section of the people as opposed to the aristocracy. When, however, the general statement is made that during the last century government became more democratic, the invariable meaning is that the governed had more say in the making of the laws by which they were governed. In other words, the basis of government was widened. The franchise was extended so that more and more of those who compose society took part in electing representatives to the places from which political power was exercised. To-day the capitalists rule by the consent of the majority of the people, though this is only so because the workers (who make up the majority) cannot conceive of an alternative social arrangement.

Behind all the confusion over the meaning of democracy there is one general idea, although it is often very little appreciated. When a club, a political party, or a society is spoken of as being democratically organised, the idea intended to be conveyed is that in all of them each member has an equal power in the control. The fact that sometimes this power is not sensibly exercised has led many to lay the blame on democracy instead of placing it where it really belongs. At bottom, then, democracy simply means majority rule—that the expressed wishes of the majority shall always prevail, but that also minorities will have freedom of expression, and will not be penalised for their views.

In order that the will of the majority may prevail certain conditions must exist which will make it possible to know at any time what views the majority really hold. For this purpose it is necessary that there should be (1) freedom of discussion and means existing for this purpose; (2). freedom and equality of voting; (3) freedom to select those who are to carry out the wishes of the majority, and (4) equality of electoral divisions or districts.

Immediately before the Great War these conditions obtained near enough in most of the advanced countries of the world. Since the War, on the pretext that democracy is a failure or obsolete, these conditions have been modified or nullified in certain European countries.

The first thing that strikes one, in relation to democracy, when taking a sweeping glance over past history, is that the question of the rule of the few or the rule of the many has been a burning one from very early days, and has been productive of considerable internal strife. The source of the strife has, however, been something of far greater importance that lay behind the question of ruling —the economic interests of classes.

The attitude of Socialists towards democracy is determined by the conditions that are bound up with Socialism.

Socialism is a system of society based upon the common ownership of the means of production and distribution. It is a system in which the wealth produced, and the work of. producing it, will be spread, as far as required, equally over the whole of society. Each will contribute to society to the best of his ability, and each will receive from society the best that can reasonably be done towards fulfilling his needs. In order to carry on such a system democratic control is essential. Each member must understand the possibilities and limitations of society so that each can help in the orderly arrangement of affairs and also so that no one will make unreasonable demands upon society.

Consequently, Socialism needs democracy— the participation of all members of society in the control of social arrangements.

Society at present is based on the private ownership of the means of production, and all laws are made and administered with the object of keeping this system in force. Those who own the means of production, the capitalists, as a class, are directly interested in the continuance of the present system and, consequently, they and their supporters do what they can to prevent a change. The capitalists have no objection to democracy providing the votes leave them in their privileged position. The doubts about democracy have developed when and where the capitalists feared that their privileges might be questioned. Hence, as long as the workers voted for the masters or their henchmen, democracy was all right, but when the workers begin to show a disposition to vote for their own nominees then the question is raised by the capitalists as to whether the workers are intelligent enough to know whom and what to vote for.

The present system is defended and the laws are enforced by.the armed forces, which are set in motion in this country at the behest of the group which has behind it a, majority in Parliament. Before any social change can be brought about it is necessary to get control of political power, and this can be done by obtaining a majority of Socialists in Parliament—the centre of political power—supported by the votes of a class-conscious majority in the country. This is another important reason why Socialists are in favour of democracy.

Gilmac.

Editorial: For A Democratic World (1985)

Editorial from the Spring 1985 issue of the World Socialist

The world today is divided into 140 or so states, each with its own flag, its own Head of State, its own government, its own nationalism and above all, since institutionalised violence is the essence of the state, its own armed forces. Only a minority of these states even pretend to be democratic. The rest are dictatorships of one kind or another in which the ruling minority uses the most vile means, including torture and murder (as documented by organisations such as Amnesty International), to preserve its power and privileges. We refer here not only to the host of military dictatorships in Asia, Africa and Latin America but also to the state capitalist countries like Russia and China where the privileged ruling classes have reached the depths of cynicism with their claim to have established a classless socialist society.

Even the “democratic” states are only democratic in the limited sense of allowing their subjects a say from time to time in the choice of the personnel to fill certain important posts on the administrative side of the state. This is not to say that universal suffrage, the right to express and propagate dissenting views from the ruling ideology, the right to organise and to go on strike are not of vital importance. They are and nobody needs to tell us that they had to be achieved by years of struggle against the direct ancestors of the present ruling class, but in themselves they do not amount to anything like democracy in its full sense of a society run by and in the interest of the whole people.

Freedom to cry ''exploitation” from the roof tops does not in itself abolish exploitation; indeed it can be used to give the impression that exploitation no longer exists, as is done by defenders of capitalism in countries like the United States, Britain and Canada. According to them the populations of these and other countries with the same kind of political regime form national communities with a common interest and elections there are about choosing the men and women to administer the common affairs of these communities in the interest of the whole population. This claim is as false as that of the ruling class in Russia to be the mere servants of the community in a classless society of equals. It ignores the fact that society, even in the so-called democratic countries, is divided into antagonistic classes.

Throughout the world, in all countries irrespective of their political regime, the means for producing and distributing wealth are monopolised, either privately as individuals and companies or collectively through the state, by a minority class. As a result the rest of the population of any country are economically dependent on the monopolising minority, being obliged to sell their mental and physical energies to them for a wage or salary far below the value of the wealth they produce and which the minority appropriate. Wherever a class is deprived of the fruits of its labour exploitation exists, and it exists just as much in the United States, Britain and Canada as it does in Chile, Russia or South Africa.

As they take place in class-divided societies, elections in the 'democratic countries” are not about choosing delegates to run social affairs in the common interest; they are about choosing the men and women who are to run affairs in the interest of the minority class which monopolises the means of life. The task of those elected is to use the powers of the state machine to further the interests at home and abroad of the capitalist class of the country concerned. At home this involves maintaining "law and order”, upholding the established social order where the law grants the members of the minority capitalist class property rights in the means of production; the interests of the capitalist minority must be protected against the "enemy within", i.e. against the majority class of wage and salary earners wherever they take action to defend their living standards, by strikes and other forms of industrial action, against the ever present downward pressures exerted by capital. Abroad it involves protecting and furthering the commercial interests of the capitalist minority over markets, sources of raw materials, trade routes and investment outlets by the threatened and if need be the actual use of armed force. To this end each state has to arm its forces with the most destructive and most devastating weapons it can afford. Hence the arms race, continual local wars and the ever present threat of another world war.

Elections, such as those which took place last year in the United States, Canada and Australia, are thus about who shall fill the top posts in the state and run affairs in the interest of the established capitalist class. The choice that is offered is not really a choice at all since the main parties involved all stand for the same system. This is obvious in the case of America where the Republican and Democratic parties are openly mere rival gangs of political place-hunters, but is also the case in countries like Britain, Australia and New Zealand where one of the contending parties claims to represent the interests of the working class. Experience over the years of “Labour" governments shows that in practice they are just as anti-working class as any government formed by openly pro-capitalist parties. This is inevitable since the capitalist system can only function in one way: as a profit-making system in the interest of the profit-taking class. No government could change this economic law of present-day class society. On the contrary, all governments are obliged to abide by it and apply it whatever their original intentions might have been.

Politics in these countries is a game of ins and outs remote from the lives of ordinary people who, even though they participate in this game by exercising a “choice” when given the opportunity, generally do so without illusions since they know by experience that it makes very little difference to their everyday lives which party—which particular gang of place-hunters—wins. Politics is seen, and presented, as a sort of never-ending TV serial in which various media-puffed personalities vie with each other for power and place. No wonder most people don’t want too much to do with “politics". This is how it is today, but it need not always be so. When socialist understanding has spread sufficiently amongst the majority wage and salary earning class in these countries elections can be turned against the minority capitalist class. But until this happens the spectacle will go on and the use to which democratic forms are put will remain a farce that is an insult to the intelligence of thinking men and women.

So throughout the world, state power is exercised for the benefit of minorities, even if this power is sometimes exercised by people who have been chosen by the exploited majority class living in the country concerned. It could not be otherwise since state power and minority rule are inextricably linked: states exist precisely to uphold and protect minority rule and privilege, To create a truly democratic world the people of the world must take democratic political action to abolish all the states into which the world is currently divided, along with all the privileged classes whose interests they serve, and establish in their place a global classless community with a democratic unarmed world administration. Only then will we be able to talk of democracy. Only then will have been created the framework within which can be solved once and for all manifestly world problems such as disarmament and the threat of war, pollution and the plundering of non-renewable resources, and mass hunger, disease and ignorance,

Who is for Freedom? (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Democracy is perhaps one of the most distorted concepts in modern political language. The ruling elite of almost every country will claim that the political system which they preside over is a democracy. Certainly the fact that countries such as the USA and Russia, who claim to have totally different systems of government, both also claim to be democracies does seem to make the concept somewhat difficult to define. Such difficulties are multiplied when a brief look at these two countries reveals that the democracy in the USA is limited to the opportunity to vote once every few years and furthermore the choice they have is between two parties which can hardly claim to be basically opposed to each other. In Russia the people are not even given this pretence of political choice, there being only one party to vote for.

The liberal individualist interpretation of democracy stemmed from the liberal tradition based on the “rights of the individual”. According to this theory political authority stems from individuals in society pursuing their own interests. The individual, it is argued, should be released from as many constraints as possible, the role of the state should be that of a referee guiding the competition of individuals in society. This concept of democracy developed in line with the economic theory of laissez-faire as it calls for a minimum of government interference in private and social life and individual enterprise and responsibility. Thus the whole theory is very much connected with, and places very strong emphasis on, private property rights.

This view of democracy, which in theory places much emphasis on individual rights and on liberty and equality, is in reality all about the liberty of the minority at the expense of the majority. Individual rights, or the lack of them and the influence people have over political decisions, stem from how society is organised at its economic base; how wealth is produced and distributed and at this level there is tremendous inequality. This point was emphasised over thirty years ago by Robert Lynd who stated:

Liberal democracy has never dared face the fact that industrial capitalism is an intensely coercive form of organisation of society that cumulatively constrains men and all of their institutions to work for the will of the minority who hold and wield economic power . . . (Robert Lynd, quoted in R. Miliband - The State In Capitalist Society).

The class in society who hold power, (those who own and control the means of production), have ultimate control over the lives of those who have to work for them in order to gain access to the necessities of life. Between these two classes there exists an unequal distribution of wealth and it is through their dominant position in the economic sphere that the owners of wealth production control political power. For supporters of liberal democracy to talk of individual rights and liberty and equality when in reality these can only be enjoyed by a small minority, is to degrade the very concept of democracy.

The pluralist conception of democracy is in many ways an updated version of liberal democracy, replacing the individual with the group. The pluralist theory argues that by organising themselves into groups people have more chance of influencing government decisions. Government policy is thus seen to develop out of a process of bargaining and compromise between different interest groups and the government is seen, in the main, as a referee to ensure that the participants play to the rules of the game. Supporters of pluralism believe that any form of direct democracy is an impossibility in modern industrial society due to its size and complexity; in modern society, they argue, it is not possible to involve large numbers of people in the decision making process and still achieve a consistent, coherent and stable policy making process.

But a group’s ability to turn a desire to act into reality must in the end depend on their access to economic resources. Influence is needed to be able to gain entry to government agencies, political parties and the media. Groups with these kinds of resources can be mobilised for political action but they are likely to be the ones who already wield economic power and who would therefore be already favoured by the existing set up. The only way such a system could operate on a democratic basis would be through the equal allocation of resources to all groups irrespective of their position in society. Within the confines of an economic system where the need to accumulate capital must override all other interests such an idea is completely utopian. Furthermore a fairly recent example of a conflict of interest between labour and capital shows that the state cannot be viewed as a neutral body. The 1984-5 miners’ strike from the point of view of capital was all about making that industry profitable. The fact that people needed coal to keep themselves warm is completely immaterial to a system dominated by the need to accumulate capital. The idea of keeping unprofitable coal mines open to provide employment is quite unthinkable. What in this dispute was the role of the state? Did it act as a referee between the two sides to ensure fair play, rather like a tennis umpire keeping his eye on John McEnroe? To the misguided supporters of pluralism we must point out that far from allocating the NUM equal financial resources, the same state which spent millions of pounds putting forward the interests of capital, in this case represented by the state controlled National Coal Board, through the courts relieved the NUM of hundreds of thousands of pounds of their funds and imprisoned many of their members.

In opposition to the pluralist theory of democracy, elite theorists put forward the view that all important decisions should be taken by a single ruling elite rather than through a process of competing interest groups.

Elite theorists argue that in advanced industrial society direct democracy is impossible; they have therefore replaced it with what they see as a form of representative democracy. However in the elite model, representative democracy itself has been substituted, as an elected elite appoint a second elite which becomes even more powerful. An example of this is the British parliamentary system where the leader of the party elected to form a government appoints the cabinet, which makes all the major decisions. In fact, in this example, this elite is appointed by one individual. Whether an elite is open or closed makes no difference in terms of democracy. For even if it is open it will only recruit from a section of society which has gone through an educational and socialisation process which will have conformed them to attitudes that are acceptable to the existing elite.

One point stands out above all others; until a society has been achieved where all men and women have free access, on the basis of self determined need, to the products and services to live a decent life free from want and thus stand in equal relation with each other, then democracy in its true sense is an impossibility. Therefore the basis of establishing a free and democratic society is a majority political and social revolution where people organise worldwide to convert the means of production and distribution from private or state ownership to common ownership, thus abolishing the class relations of capitalist production. Once democracy is an inherent feature of the material base of society, the level at which the means of life are produced and distributed, then a host of possibilities are revealed. We do not know what conditions a socialist society will inherit from capitalism or have any idea as to the level of technology at the time when a socialist majority has been established. In addition, at the present time, when socialists are in a tiny minority, it would be quite undemocratic to lay down in detail what a socialist society will look like. Rather we should consider the possibilities which flow from the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution.

Common ownership and production for use would mean that all members of society would have free access to all goods and services on the basis of self determined need. Co-operation would replace competition and coercion, people themselves would decide how best they could serve society. Alongside common ownership would run a system of democratic control, which would require that all information be freely available to all members of society.

To opponents of socialism, it is utopian, not allowing for “human nature”. However capitalism has made such a society practical by developing the means of production to the point where the potential exists to produce the necessary requirements of life in abundance. Socialism could use such potential, while production for the market acts as a brake on improving the society we live in. It has yet to be proven that humans are naturally greedy, selfish, and act out of only self interest. Indeed the evidence is that previous societies were based on communal ownership, where production, albeit primitive, was organised for the common good. The problem in forming a democratic society is not one of “human nature” but of human conditioning.

Ray Carr

Democracy and 'democracy' (2004)

From the November 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

The nature and meaning of democracy in society has recently become a topic of major interest in the media. Not only are we repeatedly reminded that the ‘war on terror’ is being waged to defend ‘our’ democratic rights and freedoms, but more recently the issue acquired unexpected notoriety when supporters of the ‘Countryside Alliance’ tricked their way into the debating chamber of the House of Commons. Although a great embarrassment to the ‘security forces’ and the government and a mild source of amusement to the rest of us, it did trigger a debate, however brief, on the role of parliament and what constitutes a working democracy.

    

The first moves towards control of parliament by means of elected representation emerged in England in the 17th century, as parliament attempted to expand its authority at the expense of the king. The electorate was limited to the small minority, who regarded it as imperative that they capture exclusive political power to pass laws that would safeguard their land and property interests from the ‘propertyless masses’.

    

Their purpose was to exclude ordinary people who might voice views dangerous to the propertied class or pass laws detrimental to their interests. The control exerted over parliament became a reflection of the property relations in society; a role that parliament has successfully fulfilled, largely unchallenged, to the present day.

    

As capitalism emerged as the dominant social system, competition and the misery of working people intensified, so worker organisations struggled against laws that hampered their ability to defend themselves and improve their conditions. The ‘Anti-Combination Laws’ that made unions illegal were repealed in 1824, although it wasn’t until the depression of the 1870s and the Trade Union Act of 1871 that legal protection was granted to union funds. Later, peaceful picketing was allowed. Likewise, the struggle to achieve universal suffrage was slow, driven by overcrowding, excessive hours, child labour, dangerous working conditions and dire poverty. It took the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 to expand the franchise, but even by 1900 only 27 percent of the male population had the vote and it would take a further 30 years before full adult suffrage would be conceded to working people.

    

By the end of the 19th century the political debate influenced by worker organisations centred on whether the state should become involved to help the poor or whether traditional laissez faire – the notion of individual self-help – should prevail. Collectivism – the view that the state must improve things for the poor – gradually emerged and led to the development of what we know now as the welfare state in the twentieth century.

    

This summary raises two important issues. The first is that whilst parliamentary government still operates to protect property, the concessions and the elbow room that have been won in capitalist democracy are important and of value to working people. Rights to organise politically, express dissension and combine in trade unions, for example, are valuable not only as a defence against capitalism, but from a socialist viewpoint are a platform from which socialist understanding can spread, while the right to vote the means by which socialism will be achieved.

Not enough

At the same time we must recognise that genuine democracy is more than these freedoms and the right to vote. Whilst ‘one person one vote’ is an essential ingredient of democratic society, democracy implies much more than the simple right to choose between representative of political parties every five years. The Chartist movement, in the 19th century, saw that gaining the right to vote was meaningless unless it could be used to effect ‘change’. But today exercising our democratic right to vote for a conventional political party does not effect change. It amounts to little more than making a selection between rival representatives of power and class interest whose overarching function is to protect private property and make profits flow. It is representative government where all the representatives support obedience to the capitalist system.

   

Some exponents of modern democratic theory assert that ordinary working people should only be ‘spectators’ but never ‘participants’. They hold that while we may busy themselves on the fringes of political issues, ordinary working people must be excluded entirely from any involvement in deciding economic matters; for this is where the real decisions that effect our lives are made. This is where the interests of the capitalist class have exclusive decision making authority.

    

Milton Friedman in his Capitalism and Freedom, for instance, tells us that capitalism and democracy are inseparable. He assets that far from being its antithesis, profit creation is actually the very embodiment of democracy and any government that restricts the market is pursuing an anti-democratic policy. He argues that the real issues, including the distribution of resources, social organisation and the economic sphere in general must be excluded from public debate and left to ‘free market forces’ or removed from public scrutiny altogether and made secretly. He predictably concludes that government should limit its involvement to the protection of private property, law enforcement and to a policy of limiting all political debates to minor peripheral issues. Not surprisingly, capitalist democracy is one where the political agenda is dominated by trivial and often insignificant debate between political parties with the same class based convictions.

Manufacturing consent

Other exponents of capitalist democracy go still further, for they assert that to keep democracy ‘healthy’ (by which is usually meant working in the interests of capital), public opinion must be moulded and manipulated to encourage obedience – to “manufacture consent”. Ordinary working people are to be targeted with propaganda and ‘public relations’ exercises to induce acceptance of things that are contrary to our interests. The effectiveness of this propaganda is illustrated by the widening gap between people’s preferences and government policy which often result in the quiet acceptance of, say, unpopular cuts in social spending or policies clearly incompatible with their interests. It is hardly surprising that working people become increasingly disillusioned with ‘democracy’ and politics and register their frustration by declining participation in elections. We start to believe that if our vote is so ineffective in changing things there can be little point in casting it. We become exactly what our master class wants us to be, obedient and silent.

    

Clearly, ‘democracy’ under capitalism is different from the generally accepted meaning of the word as a situation where ordinary people make the decisions that shape their lives, frequently summarised as being the ‘rule of the people.’ But democracy is not simply about ‘who’ makes decisions or ‘how’ the decisions are to be made. It is an expression of the social relations in society. If democracy means that all have equal opportunity to be heard, then this not only implies political equality but also economic equality. It further presupposes that people have individual freedom. A genuine democracy is therefore one where people are free and equal, actively participating, without leaders, in co-operative discussion to reach common agreement on all matters relating to their collective as well as individual requirements.

    

A genuine democracy complements equality and freedom and is therefore incompatible with capitalism. We are told we have ‘equality,’ but how can this be when the majority are compelled to sell their labour power to a minority who have the wealth to purchase it? Likewise, we are told we are ‘free’ but in reality our only freedom is to sell our labour power to someone who is ‘free’ to buy it – or not, as the case may be. If we choose not to exercise this freedom then we are ‘free’ to go without or even starve. It is quickly apparent that in capitalism freedom is an illusion because freedom cannot exist when the conditions for the exercise of free choice do not exist. In capitalist democracy freedom has become a commodity strictly limited to the amount that can be purchased by a given wage or salary. In the workplace our ‘work’ organised under a strict division of labour is often tedious and repetitive; we have become an appendage to a machine or computer in industry organised on a strictly ‘top-down’ chain of authority – more fitting to a tyranny. This is what freedom means under capitalism.

The vote as weapon

The realisation that genuine democracy cannot exist in capitalist society does not alter the fact that the elbow room already secured by struggle can be turned against our masters. The right to vote, for instance, can become a powerful instrument to end our servitude and to achieve genuine democracy and freedom. Working people with an understanding of socialism can utilise their vote to signify that the overwhelming majority demand change and to bring about social revolution. For while democracy cannot exist outside of socialism, socialism cannot be achieved without the overwhelming majority of working people demanding it.

   

A genuine democracy can flourish only in socialist society. Socialism will liberate the productive forces within capitalist society by bringing the means and instruments of producing life’s necessities into common ownership, thereby destroying the economic foundation upon which class distinction and social discrimination rest. It will replace production for profit with production for need, where money, exchange and the market will all become obsolete. The democratic organisation of socialist society will necessarily require the full participation of all free and equal people, without leaders, to vote and decide on the issues that determine how the welfare of all can best be served. It will end forever the degradation of wage slavery, hierarchy and coercion and provide the economic basis for free people to become creative, unfettered to express their diverse and individual talents and be fulfilled as human beings.

    

Today, we must view with suspicion attempts to further restrict or limit our legal rights by carefully considering the motives that lie behind such moves. For we need to use these rights to organise and spread socialist understanding so a socialist majority can capture political power, end capitalism and establish socialism. Only then will we have genuine freedom and a genuine democracy.

                                                                                                                                   Steve Trott