Elections worldwide (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Elections are not just happening in the UK this year: around the world there have been national elections in South Africa, Bangladesh, Mexico, Taiwan, Indonesia and Pakistan already. The United States is due to have an election in November. There have even been elections in Russia and Iran and European Parliamentary elections. There may be more, but what is certain, is that a majority of the human species will vote in national-level elections at some point in this year.

This is something worth taking on board: particularly for ourselves as socialists who maintain that a worldwide revolution is possible. It becomes conceivable that in one particular year, socialist movements could win elections not just in a preponderance of states, but with a majority of the species on the planet.

This is the first time in recorded history that so many people will be engaged in this way, and the likelihood is that such occurrences will become more common. Yet, despite the spread of democracy, we still see the overall rule by a minority. The capitalist class holds sway both within and between states. The evidence is that democracy is a form of government that supports and promotes minority rule.

The first factor to take into account is the very division of the world into nation states. Many electrons have been sacrificed in recent stories about Georgia’s new Foreign Agents law (widely seen as a pro-Russian imposition to cut out western NGOs and other bodies). Yet, the UK has recently passed a similar law which makes it an offence to work as an agent of a foreign government. As it is worded, it’s not entirely inconceivable that were a part of the World Socialist Movement to win an election anywhere in the world, it could lead to our members being proscribed (as we would be acting as part of a single worldwide organisation).

On top of that is the process that can be most easily demonstrated in Russia and Iran. In both countries, great steps are taken to restrict who is able to stand, with candidates being vetted by an electoral commission. Whilst in the abstract, this could lead to protest votes being cast for smaller parties (since there are multiple candidates in the elections) the bombardment of propaganda is one-sided so people feel there is no point to voting against the incumbent (or, in many cases, will be persuaded that he is the best candidate).

In Iran, this results in very low turn-outs, down to 40 percent. In Russia, there are suggestions that the vote is inflated by outright ballot fraud and box stuffing (there are no independent observers in Russia, so it’s hard to say).

This process still happens in the ‘open’ democracies in some ways, where the barriers to standing are financial, time availability and co-ordination. Concentration of wealth gives the capitalist class minority the head start in being able to organise around winning elections.

Counting the ballots is a vulnerable point in electoral politics, hence why Donald Trump has been able to maintain his claims of voter fraud. This technique was pioneered in Kenyan Presidential elections, and works by filling the airwaves with claims of cheating, backed up by having enough energised supporters to mean the claims cannot be easily ignored. Clearly, this approach is backed up by clever psychological studies of group behaviour. All over the world, skilled professionals are paid precisely to game any election rules to try and support one faction over another.

Even where such blatant fixes aren’t in place, the whole structure of representative elections is actually stacked towards minority rule. In practice, parliaments and legislatures only ever have one vote: who is the government? Handing power to an individual executive in practice creates an elected monarch. The so-called division of power much vaunted by liberal doctrine simply frees up the executive branch to behave as it wants, with parliaments being oversight committees on the activity of the executive.

That is not to say they have no influence. Parliaments can threaten to obstruct the executive and rob it of authority. Indeed, this is a way in which minority politics operate, since it is in the interest of parliamentarians to form minority factions which threaten the overall majority, and quietly exact policies from the executive in return for their continued loyalty.

Likewise, the existence of the executive allows for a band of courtiers who jockey for position and patronage: they have privileged access to information (especially timings of announcements) and the ability to co-ordinate easily because their numbers are small and they are personally known to one another. They can offer each other jobs and opportunities to make contacts.

Here again, the inequality of wealth rears its head. The small number of courtiers can themselves be courted, and if not outright bribed, they can be made aware of the revolving door between politics and business: comfortable sinecures await those who prove sufficiently pliant to business interests. If they all move in the same circles, they form a common way of looking at the world which means they do what is needed without even having to be asked.

Informal networks and factionalising are almost inherent to human society and cannot be eliminated, but the more open and diffuse the decision structures are, the less these traits can have an effect on the outcomes of decisions. The fact that the billions who vote are in effect insulated from the day to day decisions by the election of intermediaries in parliament simply exacerbates the opportunities for scheming and domination.

Election and delegation of defined functions would continue to be an essential part of running a society based on common ownership, as would (indeed) some representative bodies. The abolition of concentrated private wealth and the active participation of the billions in ensuring that as many decisions are taken as closely as possible to the public gaze means that we can look to transforming the current means of deception and fraud into a means of liberation and effective administration for us all.

Pik Smeet

Caught In The Act: A Matter of Timing (1991)

The Caught In The Act Column from the May 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Matter of Timing

As if he has not got enough on his mind already, with all those unkind press comments about him being a vacillating nonentity, John Major has the additional pressing worry of when to call the next general election. From all sides he will be advised that the timing can be crucial in deciding who wins; a month or two either way can mean defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

Warning stories are told about Harold Wilson's mistake in 1970 and Jim Callaghan in 1979. Wilson assumed that Labour's position was impregnable and treated the election as a blip on the unruffled business of running British capitalism. If he had waited we might never have had Ted Heath as prime minister. Callaghan, on the other hand, should not have waited; he gambled that things were getting better for his government and would continue to do so. Instead they went on getting worse and the winter of discontent sealed Labour's fate. If Callaghan had not waited we would not have had Thatcher and life would have been a lot less interesting for the people who produce programmes like Spitting Image.

After Thatcher's victory the timing was, apparently, a lot simpler. According to Cecil Parkinson, who was Conservative Party chairman at the time, in 1983 it was so simple as to be a matter of common sense. All the opinion samples indicated that a sweeping Tory victory was in prospect. They had ridden over their crisis of unpopularity and had picked up a lot of support from the more seriously deluded workers over the Falklands War. To help them on their way the Labour Party had elected Michael Foot as their leader and then ran a campaign notable for the ineptitude of their attempts to mislead workers into voting for them. In 1987 the Labour Party ran a much craftier campaign but they had too much ground to make up. The local election results that year persuaded Thatcher that the Tory vote was holding so the time was ripe to allow the great British people to make their democratic choice — which actually means to have Saatchi and Saatchi unleashed upon them.

Mr Nice Guy

For John Major it is not so simple. He is in trouble. One Tory supporter recently wrote to the Daily Telegraph to complain about the prime minister abusing the sartorial standards of all British gentlemen by buttoning up his jacket as he steps out of the official limousine — and you can't get much deeper into trouble than that: Major's image as Mr Nice Guy, unbuttoned jacket and all, is all very well except when your party is hungry for a parliamentary Rambo. It is all very well except when it seems to paralyse your decision-making and reduces your party to a rabble of squabbling back benchers and rivals for your job. It is all very well except when it encourages your supporters to question whether they did the right thing when they got rid of your predecessor.

These things must weigh heavily with Major as he toys with his calendar, his slide rule and his crystal ball. If he decides on an election this summer — which probably means June — and the Tories do badly their conference in October is likely to be historic for the ferocity of the fighting behind the desperately played down smoke screens. It will be the Conservative Party in its element — scheming and intriguing about how to win, or hold onto, power. All gentlemen in attendance are advised to keep their jackets buttoned firmly into place.

One thing which is never mentioned is the presumption at the base of all the calculations about the best date for the election, that workers are particularly susceptible to political deception. In the ease of Callaghan, for example, it is argued that he should have gone to the poll in late 1978 because at that time the voters thought, in spite of all they had experienced, that Labour could control capitalism into a docile, caring and progressive system. After the strikes and disruptions of that winter they were not so sure — and the Labour leadership were not able to offer any bribes attractive enough to cover up their woeful failure. Callaghan is criticised, not because he deceived the working class but because he miscalculated about the best time to exploit their political naiveté.

Gruesome Reality 

Workers swing from one discredited party to another, under the unblinking observation of the opinion pollsters, because they lack a sound understanding of how this social system works and why. So they are deceived into giving a major importance to issues which are in fact trivial or irrelevant and it is on that basis that votes change from one side to another. Issues such as the poll tax or the level of state benefits or whether John Major is an irresolute wimp have no real effect on how capitalism operates or what the system does to its people. Subtle advertising campaigns — which is what elections really are — persuade millions of voters that such matters are history-forming and they go to the polls arguing about them, to emerge convinced that with their cross on the ballot paper they have changed things. It takes a little time for the truth — that nothing has changed — to sink in and so set the votes swinging again, to the excitement of the political experts.

In gruesome reality what the workers have done is to surrender their power to make a real change in society. They have made themselves vulnerable to the schemes and calculations of the politicians and they have encouraged the tricksters of the advertising world in the belief that the workers are pliable to the point of ignorance. If this is degrading and insulting to millions of people — well that is a fair description of capitalism and its cynical propaganda.

Questions

Meanwhile the people at the sharp end of all this — the voters — should ponder a few vital questions. Are they satisfied to have their votes, through which they could fashion a free and humane social system, treated with such cynicism? Are they content to put themselves at the disposal of a bunch of ruthless manipulators whose only object is political power? Are they really impressed by the succession of bribes dangled before them by parties who are desperate for their votes? Are they worried whether John Major got any O levels, treats his family well and does his jacket up properly? Are they happy as the world reels under the disasters of that "successful" war in the Gulf, that this should be the limit of their political involvement? And are they going to do anything to change it?

Ivan

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

Reflections on Elections (2017)

From the October 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whenever there is an election, like last year or currently in Germany, the person in the street — the so-called ordinary voter — suddenly becomes very popular. Any number of political parties are anxious to please them and make them all manner of tempting promises, if they in their turn will agree to vote for their party's candidate. Election time, in other words, is the time when there is an enormous hunt for Votes.

The bait which is used in this hunt is largely made up by promises. All other parties offer this bait, and the generosity of their promises is usually in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their getting power. The Labour and Conservative Parties cannot be too extravagant; the Liberals can be a little more wild; the Greens and the far Left can promise almost anything. And so on.

Most of the promises in an election are about things like modernisation, housing, education, pensions, wages and prices, war and peace. To read the literature of these other parties, it seems that all that has to be done to solve overnight all the problems connected with these issues is to vote for their candidate. They will all, it seems, bring British industry up to date, build affordable housing, give everyone a fair chance of the best education, keep prices stable while wages increase, protect the environment, banish war from the earth.

These promises sound very fine and in one election after another millions of working people vote for them. And presumably, when they do so, they think that they are contributing to the solution of our problems.

But stop and think about it.

Firstly, it is obvious that election promises are not a new thing. Political parties have been making them for as long as anyone can remember – and always about the same sorts of problems.

Now what has been the result of all this?

The housing problem remains with us despite repeated promises to deal with it. The sort of education we get is governed by the financial standing of our parents. There are still millions of old age pensioners living on the tightrope of destitution — and it only needs something like a severe winter for many of them to loosen their precarious hold on life.

Prices are rising. Wages are still stagnating. Whatever the respective level of prices and wages, we always find that our wage packet only just covers our food, clothing, entertainment and whatever else goes to keep us ticking over.

War is just as much a universal problem as ever. There are always minor wars going on somewhere, punctuated by more serious clashes such as North Korea and Syria. Over it all hangs the threat of a war fought out with nuclear weapons.

It is not accidental that the politicians make so many promises and that they have so little effect upon the ailments they are supposed to cure. The world is full of chronic problems, but this is not because political parties have notthought up reforms which are supposed to deal with them nor because their leaders are not clever or knowledgeable enough.

The fact is that the problems persist whichever party is in power — and this suggests that their roots go deep into the very nature of modern society.

We live today in a social system which is called capitalism. The basis of this system is the ownership by a section of the population of the means of producing and distributing wealth — of factories, transport, communications and so on. It follows from this that all the wealth which we produce today is turned out with the intention of realising a profit for the owning class. It is from this basis that the problems of modern society spring.

The class which does not own the means of wealth production – the working class – are condemned to a life of rationed dependence upon their wage or salary. This expresses itself in inferior housing, clothes, education, and the like.

The basis of capitalism throws up the continual battle over wages and working conditions with attendant employment disputes. It gives rise, with its international economic rivalries, to the wars which have disfigured recent history.

Every other party stands for capitalism, whatever they may call themselves. And whatever their protestations, they stand for a world of poverty, hunger, unrest and war. They stand for a world in which no human being is secure.

The way-out is a world in which everything which goes to make and distribute wealth is owned by the people of the world. Because socialism is the direct opposite of capitalism, it follows that when it is established the basic problems of capitalism will disappear. There will be no more war, no more poverty. People will live a full, abundant life; we shall be free.

But socialism cannot be brought about by promises. It needs a knowledgeable working class who understand and desire it. They alone can establish the new world system we need.

When we contest elections our candidates from the Socialist Party do not make any promises; they do not try to convince voters that they will do anything for them. What they offer is the case for a new social system. We are seeking to spread knowledge and understanding of socialism and to give as many people as possible the opportunity of voting for a world of abundance, peace and freedom.

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,

Editorial: It’s Election Time Again (2016)

Editorial from the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Thursday 5 May, elections will be held across the country to elect members for local and district authorities in England, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. In London, there will be elections for the Mayor and for members of the Greater London Assembly.

Through hustings, meetings and TV interviews, the various parties’ candidates will be competing for votes. The Tories will be defending their record in government and claiming that their policies of cutting state expenditure to reduce the government deficit will provide a brighter future for hardworking families. The Labour Party candidates will attempt to convince voters that they have the policies to tackle inequality and the housing crisis. The Liberal Democrats will also claim that they will be working for a fairer society. UKIP will tell us that leaving the EU and curbing immigration will solve our woes. The Green Party will claim to offer a radical alternative with policies that will tackle environmental issues and meet human needs. The Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) will argue that by taxing the rich more heavily, they will be able to invest more in the National Health Service and welfare services. The Women's Equality Party is standing for gender equality in the market place.

The Scottish Nationalist Party and Plaid Cymru will argue that independence for their respective countries from the UK is the way forward. The Unionist and Nationalist parties will be fighting for places in the Northern Irish assembly.

And yet, in practice, the results of these elections will not improve the lives of working class people. It is little wonder that some will prefer to stay at home rather than go out and vote. What the above parties have in common is that they all stand for some form of capitalism. Whether they are merely self-serving careerists or they sincerely wish to change things for the better, the aspiring politicians will come up against the reality of an economic and social system where profits come before anything else. Instead of controlling capitalism, capitalism will control them as can be seen when George Osborne in his recent budget had to downgrade his previous estimates on future economic growth, due to the recent deterioration in the world economy.

There are political groups that recognise this and call on workers to abstain from the electoral process. We reject this approach and argue that for a socialist working class to gain political power they will need to contest elections at all levels of government in order to capture the machinery of the state. Elections also provide an opportunity for the Socialist Party to make the case against capitalism and for socialism – a world of common ownership and free access to all that is produced. For these reasons, the Socialist Party is contesting three constituencies in London and one in Wales. Our election manifestos and details of how to help can be found elsewhere in this issue.

Gashouse or powerhouse? (1985)

Editorial from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every few years, when the working class in most parts of the capitalist world are invited to elect another government, they go to the polls unmindful of the real significance of the occasion. For some time they will have been bombarded by the claims of the competing parties to have the most effective and humane programme for organising capitalism. They will have read many assertions of an ability to eliminate poverty, ill health, war. . . With this information — it would be too kind, and inaccurate, to describe it as knowledge — in their heads the workers can go to the polls and weightily decide between one party and another — which means between one style of capitalism and another. Having elected a government, the workers then expect it to get on with the job, which they assume to be arranging the affairs of society so that they run more happily and efficiently, in the interests of the voters. For that is how they regard the function of the legislative bodies to which they elect the people they call their representatives.

But the truth is rather different, for very little of the work of those bodies has any connection with the interests of the mass of the people. Of course, at times it does have some effect on their lives (although usually not in the manner promised) and for that reason it may be the subject of impassioned debate among the working class. But this effect is rarely, if ever, in any sense permanent or significant. For the rest, the legislatures are concerned with the day-to-day organisation of capitalism which has no relevance to working-class lives.

In some cases this takes the form of organisational, managerial reforms, for example the present policy of the Thatcher government to end state control over some industries such as telecommunications and to open these up to private investment. Workers get very excited about these measures, in some cases because they think that "they" (the Tory government) are thereby taking away some of "our" property. Others get equally worked up because they are allowed to buy a few shares in the newly organised concern and so, in their own estimation, become "investors". They might even think of themselves as tycoons, manipulators of the world's stock markets. But whatever the fantasies, the reality is that the fundamental of the class ownership of the industries remains undisturbed. Any worker who has doubts on that score can test the matter out by trying to get free telephone calls. We should also remember that there was equal excitement when the industries which the Thatcher government are now "privatising" were taken into state control. Nationalisation was regarded then as the public (which meant by all of us) ownership of a concern so that it was to be operated in the interests of everyone. Workers who held that theory could have tested it out by trying to keep for themselves some of the produce of "their" industry. In fact, many of them have been forced to assess the theory, by resisting the efforts of nationalised industries to close down unprofitable plant and to sack "redundant" workers or to try to hold back wage rises and intensify exploitation. As the steel workers and the coal miners have found out, the notion that state control is common ownership is a cruel deception.

Another overriding concern of the legislatures is the juggling with the financial superstructure of capitalism, to create the illusion that in this they are making fundamental social changes. This takes place under the popular assumption that there is no problem of capitalism which can't be solved by an injection of money into the appropriate. sensitive spot. The more extreme expressions of workers' poverty, such as slum housing and malnutrition, are widely supposed to be curable by simply increasing the amount of state benefits and investments applied to the area of concern. But this is not an original idea; governments have long tried, or claimed to be able, to deal with such problems in that way but whatever grants they make, and however skilfully and frenziedly they juggle with the finances, the problems will not go away. The reason for their impotence is that the problems are endemic to capitalism; poverty, for example, is an inevitable feature of class society and an accompaniment of wage slavery. As long as capitalism lasts — as long as there is a working class —there will be poverty and with it there will be extremes of poverty, just as there will be riches and excessive riches. So when a legislature sets itself to a session of financial juggling it is engaged in something which has no relevance to the abolition of capitalism's problems and none, therefore, to the interests of the working class who elected them.

In the end, the proof of where the efforts of a legislative body are directed lies in experience. After ages of laws being laid down, and repealed, are the working class any nearer to a solution of their problems? Has poverty been abolished? Is war no longer a threat to society? Is everyone as healthy, happy and secure as they can possibly be? The answer to all these questions is clearly a negative, which is not to be cynical or despairing but realistic.

This fact may be taken as giving credence to those who argue that legislative bodies are themselves irrelevancies, to be ignored by the working-class movement for the socialist revolution to take over society in the interests of the world's people. In fact that attitude misses the essential point. An elected legislature is the seat of power in capitalism, however its function may be misconceived and misused. The miners had this rammed home to them during their recent strike and it is time the workers as a whole grasped it. At present the voters send people to legislatures with a clear mandate to continue the capitalist system, which means to absorb themselves with measures which have no bearing on workers' lives.

But a socialist working class will use the occasion of an election in a completely different way. They will know that, as the legislatures are the seat of power, it is an act of futile waste to run up against them; they must be controlled before they can be used to bring about working class emancipation. This will be the function — strictly imposed, monitored and controlled which will be applied by the working class on their elected delegates in the establishment of socialism.

The revolution will bring a society of communal ownership and democratic control — a world of abundance and free access to wealth. Worldwide, legislatures will have their part to play in the revolution — it will be an act of historic significance.

Socialism and Politics (1997)

From the January 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

A prominent American capitalist once declared during an election race that Americans should vote for the man who promises them the least - in that way they would be voting for the one who would disappoint the least. For socialists the only way for workers to avoid disappointment is not to vote for anyone but themselves

Socialists hold that government, or the practice of people being governed, is peculiar to class society. The function of government is to run the state, to organise its laws and maintain the required degree of persuasion or coercion necessary to ensure that those laws are obeyed by the public. Additionally, of course, the state has to protect the external interests of its ruling class; which means that it falls to government to maintain armed forces to protect or extend the interests of that ruling class.

Conventional politics is about political parties putting forward candidates in elections and trying to convince as many people as possible to vote for those candidates on the ground that the individual candidate is not only capable of looking after their interests but also that he or she is a member of a political party that can be trusted with running the affairs of the state.

In practice it is more complicated than this. Generally, the existing political parties have built up a following of public support over a period of time. Like the core support of a prominent football team, these supporters display a tribal loyalty, largely uncritical and rarely concerned with any conception of reasonable consideration of the opposition. Effectively, it is the less committed, the floating voter, probably some ten percent of the electorate, who determines the outcome of elections. Those who make up the floating vote are probably those who perceive their interests to have been adversely affected by the party or parties in power and/or those who have been convinced that the policies of one or other of the parties will harm their interests.

In local government candidates are usually returned on the minority vote—frequently a small minority vote—of the electorate because the majority are not sufficiently concerned about the outcome of local government elections to want to come out and vote. In parliamentary elections, too, substantial minorities, sometimes as much as 25 percent or, even, 30 percent see no point in voting. The number of those who vote for a party, not because they support that party but because they are opposed, or concerned about, the party or parties opposing it, is substantial.

With the exception of the Socialist Party, all the political parties contesting elections, whatever name they use to describe themselves or whatever claims are made for them in respect to their position on the Right/Life spectrum of capitalism, put forward policies firmly rooted in the economics of capitalism.

In Britain the major political parties hold their annual conferences in the autumn and each of these is given major media coverage. These exercises have nothing to do with democracy, of course, for all the political parties—again, with the exception of the Socialist Party—believe in having leaders, and a party with leaders is not one run on the democratic mandate of its members.

These conferences are stage-managed to ensure that anything that may rock the boat is emaciated or exorcised and that verbal formulae are found to keep the faithful in line without provoking rebellion. Should Conference accept a motion that the leadership is embarrassed with, they simply dismiss it or circumvent it. Labour leaders are famous for paying scant attention to Conference resolutions and, remarkably, those who believe in the undemocratic principle of having leaders, are frequently infuriated when leaders do what they are supposed to do—lead.

Common policies

There is one central theme running through the policies of all these parties however they may appear to differ. That theme forms the basis of contemporary capitalist politics. That theme is the argument about where the money is to come from to fund social welfare legislation. In the post-war decades it was argued, and generally accepted by all the parties, that capitalism would be more efficient if the working class, who produce all the real wealth, were more closely integrated into the system. Capitalism’s economic experts claimed they had found a formula for ending the boom/slump syndrome; unemployment would be a thing of the past, unemployed workers would no longer be a drain on the system and a fully subscribed national insurance scheme would provide general health care and other social welfare benefits.

These ideas may have concretised the aspirations of the Left but they originated with people like Beveridge and Keynes who were both committed not only to retaining capitalism but to building a bulwark against the threat of change by making the system more user-friendly for the working class. It would be fair to say that for a few decades after the war these ideas dominated the entire political spectrum.

Complex changes in the global economy, sharper competition, a decline in the rate of profit, and unemployment, attended by inflation as governments chased the Keynesian will-of-the-wisp, clearly demonstrated the inability of capitalism to support even the modest postwar reforms of the system.

But, in the world of capitalism, such reforms have to be met out of taxation and in practice, all taxation is ultimately borne by capital; on that point both Adam Smith, the patron saint of capitalism, and Karl Marx, originator of scientific socialism, agreed. That means that there is truth in the arguments of the now-dominant Right that taxation impairs the competitive ability of one group of national capitalists to compete with the capitalists of another area who bear a lighter burden of taxation. Translated into the current political philosophy of Blair and Major, the argument runs that low tax defends existing jobs and promotes new sources of employment.

This, then, is what is at the core of contemporary politics. Which party can be trusted to reduce or, at least, not to increase the overall tax burden on the managers and directors whose function is to maximise the profits of the owning class? That task involves funding the shrinking remnants of the social welfare provisions, maintaining the state’s military capacity, and meeting the increasing need to deal with awesome social problems, like crime, vandalism, and a youth culture of alienation, which characterise a society in decay.

These are the problems which the major political parties say have to be addressed and all of them accept the framework, the restrictions and limitations which capitalism imposes, as the only permissible arena in which to address them. These restrictions and limitations impose their own logic on the party leaders whose principle task now is to embellish policies which bear a tawdry similarity. It all adds up to the arrogant assertion by political leaders that they, by virtue of their superior abilities, are better equipped to handle the brutal priorities of the system than their opponents.

The Socialist Party takes a different approach from that of all the other political parties, indeed it could be said that, if the common strategies of all our opponents represents the definitive elements of a political party, the Socialist Party is not so much a political party as an organisation intent on abolishing politics.

Rendered absurd by history

Firstly, we do not seek a mandate to take over the existing social system and to attempt to organise it in such a way as will benefit the majority class of wage and salary workers. Capitalism, we affirm, is based on the exploitation of the working class and we would be as absurd as those Leftist organisations who promulgate acres of reforms if we were to assert that we could administer that system in such a way as would benefit the class on whose exploitation its entire fabric rests.

We can share with some elements of the Left a detestation of politicians who make a career out of lying to the majority working class but we do not blame these politicians for their persistent failure to rationalise capitalism—in fact we readily admit that if the Socialist Party accepted a mandate to run capitalism in the interest of society as a whole we would fail every bit as ingloriously as those who make the assertion—rendered absurd by history— that they can perform such a miracle.

Our purpose in all that we do, from producing this journal, running public meetings, fighting elections, is to bring the case for socialism to the attention of the working class; our message is the patently obvious truth that capitalism has fulfilled its historic mission and is now a really frightening impediment to further progress. That progress we define as socialism: a way of organising the affairs of humanity that is not dependent on, or influenced by, the interests of a class that owns and controls society’s means of producing and distributing its needs.

The case for socialism is based on the incontestable fact that there exists on this planet the potential to provide adequately for the whole of the human family. Further, and equally incontestable, is the fact that the overwhelming majority who are forced to endure the awful inadequacies of capitalism have the power now to abolish capitalism by democratic means and institute a new era of real peace and real prosperity.

The last hundred years has witnessed the exhaustion of all the many schemes put forward to make capitalism a civilised system. For a time it seemed that some slight changes would make the system a little more tolerable but the experiment, puny as it was, has obviously failed and socialism is now the only feasible way to go.

Finally, we should say that with the achievement of socialism, the socialist movement will disappear, its historic mission completed. So, too, will the state, the government and the politicians. There will no longer be separate interests to be pursued, no longer a need to cut the cake in such a way as will benefit some at the expense of others. Government of people will give way to a democratic administration of the needs of society.

Richard Montague

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

Are you an abstainer? (1999)

From the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year has been dubbed the "year of elections". This month there are local elections and elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, next month elections to the European Parliament. We're putting up a limited number of candidates, but are you one of those very many people who doesn't see the point in voting, and can't be bothered with politicians? If so, read on, you just might find this interesting.

You may have noticed that whoever gets elected, nothing really changes. This is because politicians normally have no intention of changing anything. They're really doing very nicely out of the system as it is, thank you, slump or no slump. While they enjoy their executive lunches, cars and kickbacks, the rest of us miserable suckers are supposed to toe the line, "yes" the bosses, and work ourselves into early graves to earn wages that wouldn't buy one of their bottles of claret.

If you're still reading this, you'll notice it isn't your ordinary run-of-the-mill election manifesto, with the usual vague promises and smiley conman confidence. Well, that's because we're not politicians, and don't let our name, and the fact that we are standing for election, fool you into thinking we are. The fact is, we represent an idea which is most unpopular and unfashionable these days, an idea which is ignored by the media, dismissed coldly by politicians, and avoided by anyone who prefers the status quo to stay put. This idea is revolution.

What are we proposing? Well, you must admit it would be difficult in one short article to prove any case beyond question, especially a case as big as this. All we can do is give you the bare bones, so don't be surprised if it doesn't convince you straight off. We're revolutionaries, not magicians. If you don't have questions to ask at the end of this then we're not doing our job properly, or you're not giving it any thought. And if you have questions, we can only suggest you contact us to ask them.

OK, you know that in our world, private property is king, and that the rich make the rules. You probably know that only about 5 percent of the world's population is rich, while 95 percent does all the work and lives in varying degrees of poverty, debt and stress. You may have concluded that this situation causes everything from street crime to international warfare, and you have almost certainly suffered yourself from the effects of overwork, deprivation and other people's "anti-social" behaviour. Considering that private property society, or capitalism in its developed form, was built by human beings, it is an amazingly anti-social and unfriendly system, and it brings out the worse in us. We treat each other with suspicion and we treat the planet with contempt.  

Undoubtedly this state of affairs is bad news all round, but what can be done? The politicians' response is to ignore the problem and talk about trivia instead, hoping nobody will notice. Look at their manifestos. That's why nothing changes. Our response is direct, and simple: the 95 percent need to sort their act out and abolish the private property principle, that mutual agreement that says one person has the right to own and keep what other people need, even if they should die because of it. And every single day, people are dying because of it. The real enemy of humanity is not a person or a group of rich people, it is simply this agreement.

What comes after capitalism?

Privately-owned property is an anachronism in this day and age. There is enough food in the world to make every individual fat. There are ten empty houses to every homeless person. Technology is producing abundance so fast that commodity prices keep collapsing, yet nobody has yet recognised what this all means. It means that there is a higher level of civilisation, of science, or arts, of culture, of personal fulfilment, waiting to come after capitalism—an advanced society which, because it has abolished scarcity, does not contain all the horrors that have dogged human organisation until now. From the standpoint of such a society, we in capitalism are still living in the Dark Ages, with our wars, famines, pollution and other disasters, and our outlook is suitably bleak. And from our present standpoint, a post-scarcity society seems a dim and distant image, a matter for the 22nd century perhaps, but not now. Lulled by the incessant idiotic chatter of politicians and their meaningless agendas, we do not notice that even now, today, we are standing on the very threshold of that post-scarcity world. All we have to do, as individuals, is take one step.

Revolution is a scary word, but it doesn't have to be a scary thing. If you prefer, think of it as a kind of social "upgrade", like building a better and faster computer. We don't advocate violence, although we can't know of course that the rich will quietly abdicate when they see that the game is up. But there is a personal revolution to face, as well, because a free society requires responsible members, not children who just play "follow-the-leader" and do as they are told. It's true that we get the society we deserve. Revolution consists in learning to deserve better.

Well, you've made it to the end of this strange manifesto. No mention of Europe. No mention whatsoever of local issues. No promises of "I'll do this and I'll do that for my constituents", no flattery, no sweet talk. Maybe now you'll sigh and throw this in the bin. If you vote for us you won't get a wage rise or a tax cut, but then again you probably won't anyway. Just remember, all those other candidates are happy to continue with the private property society you know and don't love, and equally happy to assist it in every possible way. They are selling you out, and your kids, and their kids after them. They are politicians. We are private citizens, democratically organised as a party to advertise revolution but not lead it, to abolish political power not keep it for ourselves, to promote a free society without rulers, and to disband when we have served our purpose. So if you vote for us now, it's not because we've conned you into it with charming lies. It's because you've just taken that all-important small step, the step that begins the journey.

Paddy Shannon