Letter: Marxism and pigeons (2025)

 

Letter to the Editors from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and pigeons

I always enjoy grabbing the Socialist Standard from the local radical bookshop, and read with interest the October Life and Times piece, ‘Chasing pigeons in the park’. Here stalwart HKM finds himself in a fractious encounter with a working class mother, and unsurprisingly, comes off worse for it. I would never advise anyone, Marxist or otherwise, to intervene in the parenting of a stranger’s child. It smacks of condescension, and I’m hardly shocked that she went straight for the jugular.

That aside, while I appreciate the article’s humane spirit and its attempt to connect everyday behaviour to the wider social order, I think it falls into certain traps that weaken the socialist case.

As an anecdote and moral exhortation, one small incident, a child chasing a pigeon, is made to carry the burden of a sweeping claim about capitalist society. What’s needed instead is structural analysis, grounded in class relations and historical development. Otherwise the critique risks idealism, as if cruelty will simply vanish once capitalism is abolished, and empathy will bloom automatically.

The piece also overlooks the way ideology and institutions actively reproduce capitalist values. Capitalism doesn’t just ‘promote thoughtlessness,’ it systematically manufactures individualism, competition, and alienation through schools, media, and the daily grind of wage labour. Those habits of thought won’t dissolve on day one of socialism, they will need to be challenged through conscious struggle, education, and organisation.

Under capitalism, ‘competition,’ ‘self-interest,’ ‘private property,’ and even what counts as ‘good parenting’ or ‘normal behaviour’ are all suffused with hegemonic ideas.

Finally, the article sidesteps the harder question of how socialism itself will handle conflict, scarcity, or antisocial behaviour. To imply that a socialist world will be one of effortless harmony is to underplay the ongoing, practical work of building and sustaining solidarity in the face of real contradictions.

In short, the piece has a sound moral impulse, but its reliance on anecdote and lack of class analysis blunt its usefulness as a Marxist critique.

Marx himself could well have been a pigeon fancier, though most likely encapsulated in pastry and well baked in a pie. While I can’t cite a specific reference for that, it is at least recorded that he did enjoy a pork and matzah sandwich when he could.

A.T.

Western vanguardist (2006)

Book Review from the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Rebel’s Guide to Gramsci. By Chris Bambery, Bookmarks, 2006. 60 pages. £3.

This is a short introduction, from an SWP viewpoint, to the life and ideas of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist Party leader who died from natural causes in a fascist prison in 1937. Gramsci appeals to the SWP and Western Leninists generally because of his more sophisticated version of vanguardism than Lenin’s.

In his Prison Notebooks he distinguished the situation in Tsarist Russia and some other parts of Eastern Europe from that in the West. In Tsarist Russia, he argued, the state was everything and the ruling class relied directly on repression to maintain itself in power; in this situation the task of revolutionaries was (in Bamberys summary of Gramsci‘s views) “to lead a direct assault on power when the opportunity arose”, as the Bolsheviks had successfully done in Russia (only to install themselves, we would add, as the embryo of a new ruling class).

In Western Europe, on the other hand, the ruling class ruled mainly through the “hegemony” it exercised over the working class rather than through direct force. In Bambery’s words again:

“In Western Europe . . . the ruling class rested mainly on consent and was able to rely on a variety of institutions within civil society which organised and reinforced this. Gramsci described these as acting like a complicated series of earthworks surrounding a great fortress – the state. So institutions like the church, the media, the education system and political parties helped secure the consent of the masses allowing force to be used sparingly and only in the last resort . . . So these networks of support for the ruling class and the ideas they helped to reinforce had to be undermined first through a long ideological struggle before a direct assault on the ruling class was possible . . .Communists had to set themselves the task of undermining the consent, however grudgingly given, which allowed capitalism to rule.”

This is an analysis we can accept and indeed had made ourselves. But the conclusion Gramsci drew from it was not the same as ours. We concluded that, as socialism too could only exist with the consent of the working class, the task of socialists was to directly, incessantly and exclusively campaign amongst fellow workers against capitalism and capitalist ideas and for socialism.

Gramsci concluded that a vanguard party should seek to establish its own “hegemony” over the working class, by assuming the leadership of the workers’ day-to-day struggles.

Adam Buick

England’s Dreaming (2019)

Book Review from the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mike Wayne: England’s Discontents: Political Cultures and National Identities. Pluto Press. 2018.

This is an attempt to make sense of political cultures and national identities with a particular focus on England in the light of both Brexit and moves towards Scottish independence. It is influenced heavily by the Italian quasi-Marxist Antonio Gramsci and his concept of hegemony. As such, much of the book is concerned with the formation of political cultures and identities – and how these inform national identity and political movements.

It is full of phrases like ‘highly multi-accentual’ and ‘counter-hegemonic organic intellectuals’ and so if you have an aversion to this sort of academic ‘discourse’ the book is not for you. Nevertheless, there are some good points within it and it is generally worth persevering. Much of it is concerned with the identification of ideologies and their key characteristics, mainly conservatism, economic liberalism, social liberalism and social democracy. Wayne explains the differences that characterise them and the relationships between them, including how they have often interlinked to form dominant ‘hegemonic blocs’ in various periods of modern British history. The most recent and notable has been the alliance between conservatism and economic liberalism, an alliance which is now facing various challenges as well as internal contradictions.

These inherent tensions between conservatism and economic liberalism are brought out well and mean that economic liberalism periodically finds common cause with social liberalism instead (as under Blair). This is because conservatism finds expression in three important strands of identity that the market economy of capitalism tends to undermine or contradict as a matter of course – ethnic/religious identity, national identity and ‘deep-history’ identifications (ie, tradition, routines and rituals, etc). As Wayne explains rather neatly:

  ‘Together these three strands attempt to create a moral framework for an economic system that does not have one, a point of national identification for a mode of production whose expansionary logic cannot be contained within the nation-state and a slowing down of historical change for a revolutionary change-obsessed mode of production’ (p.69).

These are the types of tensions he sees as having helped (among other things) fuel populism in recent years and it’s difficult to disagree. Sadly, as a counter-balance Wayne seems to be a calling for the recreation of the historic bloc that was based, in his terms, on the alliance of social liberalism and social democracy that dominated the post-war period in the UK until it started to break down in the 1970s and was rolled back in the 80s. He sees leftist Scottish nationalism as a potential vehicle for rekindling this and seriously underplays the negative role that nationalism plays in countries like Scotland where it is not as overtly right-wing and conservative as it typically is in places like England. But it is interesting too, that much polling evidence shows that the ideological make-up of the Scottish population is actually rather less different than is often supposed to that of England and Wales, especially on major left/right issues – and this goes unmentioned.

Also unmentioned is any real sense of what socialism might mean. It is a word used occasionally in historic contexts but it is never really made apparent what this is or how it might relate to (or seek to oppose) the other ideologies – or, for that matter, the tendencies some of them have helped foster that Wayne finds abhorrent in modern English political culture.

Dave Perrin

Was Antonio Gramsci a Socialist? (2017)

From the April 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month sees the 80th anniversary of the death of an icon of the left – Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci (1891-1937) was an Italian political activist who was imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist regime in 1926 and died while still a captive 10 years later from a combination of illnesses. He was an undoubtedly courageous figure who fought difficult family circumstances when young to educate himself and became a prolific writer and editor for the emerging left-wing press in Italy in the second and third decade of the 20th century. He wrote intensively of the need for both workers’ rights and workers’ revolution and actively involved himself in the political action he advocated. He was a leading member of the foremost left-wing movement, the Italian Socialist Party, until, after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, his disenchantment with what he saw as their over-timid approach led him to become, in 1921, one of the co-founders of the Italian Communist Party, which pledged allegiance to Lenin and the Bolshevik regime. Then, in 1922-23, he spent a significant period in Russia as delegate to the Communist International (‘Comintern’) and, on his return to Italy, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and served until his arrest and imprisonment. Sentenced to 20 years for subversion, he was however able to continue writing in prison, where access to books and the extensive knowledge of history and politics he had accumulated during his years of political activity led him to produce a mass of notes, observations and essays on an astonishingly broad spread of topics, later ordered into what were called the Prison Notebooks. It is largely on these and on the collection of letters he wrote from prison – mainly to family members – that his reputation as a social and political theorist lies.

Hegemony

Gramsci is said, in the Prison Notebooks, to have developed a new and original kind of Marxist sociology, which, over the last half century or so, has engendered a vast range of debate, interpretation and controversy by academics and others – the so-called ‘Gramsci industry’. One of the key matters debated has been his concept of ‘hegemony’ (‘egemonia’). This was the term Gramsci used to describe what he saw as the prerequisite for a successful revolution: the building of an ideological consensus throughout all the institutions of society spread by intellectuals who saw the need for revolution and used their ability to persuade and proselytise workers to carry through that revolution. Only when that process was sufficiently widespread, would successful revolutionary action be possible. So hegemony was what might be called the social penetration of revolutionary ideas.

This outlook is very different from the fervour with which in earlier years Gramsci had greeted the Russian revolution and advocated similar uprisings in other countries. By the second half of the 1920s, with Italy ruled by a Fascist dictatorship and opposition leaders exiled or imprisoned, Gramsci came to see revolution as a longer-term prospect which would depend on the conditions existing in individual countries.

And it is this ‘long-term’ idea of revolutionary change that has been interpreted in very many different ways according to the standpoint or political position of the individual commentator. One way it could be read would seem to tie in closely with the Socialist Party’s view that only through widespread political consciousness on the part of workers and majority consent for social revolution can a society based on the satisfaction of human needs rather than on the profit imperative be established. In this light Gramsci’s hegemony could be seen to have the profoundly democratic implications of insisting on a widespread and well-informed desire among the majority of workers for socialist revolution before such a revolution can come about. Indeed it is clear that Gramsci was not unaware of Marx’s ‘majoritarian’ view of socialism (or communism – they were interchangeable for Marx) as a stateless, leaderless world where the wages system is abolished and a system of ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’ operates. In an article written in 1920, for example, Gramsci refers to ‘communist society’ as ‘the International of nations without states’, and later from prison he writes about ‘the disappearance of the state, the absorption of political society into civil society’. However, though he referred to himself as using ‘the Marxist method’, such reflections on the nature of the society he wished to see established are few and far between and cannot reasonably be said to characterise the mainstream of his thought.

Leninist

When looked at closely in fact, Gramsci’s thought is overwhelmingly marked by what may be called the coercive element of his Leninist political background. So, while undoubtedly in his later writings he came to see the Soviet model as inapplicable to other Western societies, he nevertheless continued to conceive of revolution as the taking of power via the leadership of a minority group, even if in different circumstances from those experienced by Lenin in Russia. The most important pointer to this lies in Gramsci’s view of the state. Hardly ever does he view socialism other than as a form of state. The overwhelming thrust of his analysis and his recommendations for political action point not to doing away with states and the class divisions that go with them but to establishing new kinds of states. In 1919, enthused by the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, Gramsci wrote: ‘Society cannot live without a state: the state is the concrete act of will which guards against the will of the individual, faction, disorder and individual indiscipline ....communism is not against the state, in fact it is implacably opposed to the enemies of the state.’ Later too, in his prison writings, arguing now for a ‘long-term strategy’, he continued to declare the need for states and state organisation, for leaders and led, for governors and governed in the conduct of human affairs – underlined by his frequent use of three terms in particular: ‘direzione’ (leadership), ‘disciplina’ (discipline) and ‘coercizione’ (coercion).

So, despite what Gramsci himself recognised as changed times and circumstances compared with Russia in 1917, he continued to be profoundly influenced by Lenin’s view that ‘if socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least 500 years’ – in other words that genuine majority social consciousness was unachievable. And in line with this, when looked at closely his ‘hegemony’, far from eschewing the idea of a revolutionary vanguard, sees an intellectual leadership taking the masses with them. In other words the ‘consent’ that his hegemony, his long-term penetration of ideas, proposes is not the informed consent of a convinced socialist majority but an awakening of what, at one point he refers to as ‘popular passions’, a spontaneous spilling over of revolutionary enthusiasm which enables the leadership to take the masses with them and then govern in the way they think best.

Human nature

Underpinning this lack of confidence by Gramsci in the ability of a majority to self-organise is a factor little commented on but particularly significant – and that is his view of what may be called ‘human nature’. In writing explicitly about human nature, which Gramsci does on a number of occasions, he expresses agreement with Marx’s view that human nature is not something innate, fixed and unchanging, not something homogeneous for all people in all times but something that changes historically and is inseparable from ideas in society at a given time. This view of humanity is in fact described by Gramsci as ‘the great innovation of Marxism’ and he contrasts it favourably with other widely-held early 20th century views such as the Catholic dogma of original sin and the ‘idealist’ position that human nature was identical at all times and undeveloping. But despite Gramsci’s stated ‘theoretical’ view on this topic, scrutiny of his writings in places where ‘human nature’ is not raised explicitly but is rather present in an implicit way points his thought in a different, more pessimistic direction.

When he writes about education, for example, his pronouncements about the need for ‘coercion’ indicate little confidence in the ability of human beings to behave fundamentally differently or to adaptably change their ‘nature’ in a different social environment. In corresponding with his wife about the education of their children, in response to her view that, if children are left to interact with the environment and the environment is non-oppressive, they will develop co-operative forms of behaviour, he states ‘I think that man is a historical formation but one obtained through coercion’ and implies that without coercion undesirable behaviour will result. Then, in the Prison Notebooks, on a similar topic he writes: ‘Education is a struggle against the instincts which are tied to our elementary biological functions, it is a struggle against nature itself.’ What surfaces here as in other places, even if not stated explicitly, is a view of human nature not as the exclusive product of history but as characterised by some kind of inherent propensity towards anti-social forms of behaviour which needs to be coerced and tamed.

Viewed in this light, Gramsci’s vision of post-revolutionary society as a place where human beings will continue to need leadership and coercion should not be seen either as being in contradiction with his theory of ideological penetration (‘hegemony’) or as inconsistent with the views that emerge about human nature when his writings do not explicitly focus on that subject. So we should not be surprised that Gramsci’s vision for the future is not a society of free access and democratic control where people organise themselves freely and collectively as a majority but rather a change from one form of minority authority to another – a change from a system of the few manifestly governing in their own interests to the few claiming to govern in the interests of the majority.

The evidence of Gramsci’s writings therefore suggests that the revolution he envisages is not one in which democracy in the sense of each participating with equal understanding and equal authority prevails. Crucially, the leadership function is not abolished. The hegemonisers will essentially be in charge, since they will be the ones with the necessary understanding to run the society they have conceived. What this society might be like he does not go on to say in any detail. But it would clearly not be a socialist world of free access and democratic control that rejects authority from above together with its political expression, the state. For Gramsci any such considerations were at best peripheral to the thrust of his thought and his social vision. And though he did have a revolutionary project, it is not a socialist one in the terms that socialism is correctly understood.

Howard Moss

Rise and Fall (1998)

From the January 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1 of this article can be read here.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does society. As every political trend or moral code becomes outdated and is abandoned, another fills its place. The recession was a turning point where many of society's preoccupations changed. In the second of a two-part article we examine what's new.

Sociologist Ulrich Beck asserts that we are faced with "manufactured uncertainty" because of the growth of human knowledge. In other words, the more we learn, the more uncertain we become of our achievements. In the past we could rely on social institutions to provide us with some certainty. As these institutions--organised religion, the welfare state, trade unionism, the left/right divide, state capitalism--become increasingly dated or discredited, humanity has had to find a new moral framework.

So much of what we took for granted is in decline, but we are not heading towards anarchy. General government expenditure as a percentage of GDP has continued to increase since the 1950s. (Social Trends, 1996.) The programme of privatisation means the state has been receding in its more direct economic involvement since the 1980s, but at the same time it is increasingly reaching into areas of our lives previously left alone.

Throughout this century the state has played a role in trying to impose a moral code for society to compensate for the decline in institutionalised religion., but while religion offers supernatural explanations involving unknown powers, state-led morality is weaker because it comes directly from those with similar failings to our own trying to work with a system which can't fulfil our needs. We don't need to cast our minds too far back to remember the hypocrisy of the Conservatives espousing "family values" amid continual sex scandals. A stronger example of the state attempting to impose moral authority is the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994), which tightened up existing legislation concerning large public gatherings, police powers and the rights of travellers and police powers. More recently we have been introduced to zero tolerance zones, jobseeker contracts, increasing numbers of CCTV cameras and the possibility of identity cards. Since the late 1980s, concentration on individual behaviour and identity has overshadowed many wider issues of government and society.

When Tony Blair said that drug abuse was as important in Britain now as poverty had been in the past he encapsulated the way of thinking which now predominates. Today's assumption is that society itself is uncontrollable, and poverty, homelessness, crime and pollution are permanent, so all we can do is tackle the effects of these problems rather than their causes. In the past, governments have tried to give the impression that they are approaching problems at their source, even though history has proved them impotent. The emphasis today is not on how the individual can affect society, but how society affects the individual.

Increases in disposable income and the expansion of the mass media have meant that individuality is now more likely to be expressed through lifestyle choices than in any wide-ranging ideas, whether trade unionism, Christianity or politics. Any desire for social change has to be expressed through a collective mechanism, otherwise it is ignored or unfocused.

As a result the individualism of the 1980s has turned into the powerlessness of the 1990s. The supposed hallmark of the "Caring Nineties", that greed is no longer good, is only a convenient moral by-product of the recession. When material wealth is viewed as a reward for effort, then the attitude that wealth is destructive is more likely to lead to increased deprivation than a society where wealth is organised equally. Socialism is about wanting access to more and better, not accepting less and worse. In the early years of this decade the justification for reducing consumption was the threat of environmental destruction. But this particular ideology was a victim of the austere social and economic conditions which had created it.

The overriding feeling that society cannot be changed fundamentally has led to a proliferation of single-issue political parties, including the anti-abortion Pro-Life Alliance, the Referendum Party and, most successfully, Martin "anti-sleaze" Bell. Previously, such groups would have tried to influence one or more of the main parties. Now their opinion seems to be that the political system is so worthless it is best used to advertise a moral standpoint. They may be exercising a democratic right to attract support, but they show a dangerous lack of interest in wider political theories, of whatever kind.

The main political parties are leading this trend of simplification. The establishment of a Cabinet Consultative Committee (with Liberal Democrat participation) reflects Tony Blair's desire to "usher in a new era of politics" in which the government co-operates with other parties which share its views. In theory, the dynamic of politics is in the competition between differing parties to attract support. In Labour's new era the movement appears to be towards making the government as dominant as possible in parliament, leaving less room for parties representing opposing views. The first subject this particular unelected committee will discuss is electoral reform.

The possibility of a Lib-Lab pact against the dwindling Conservatives is evidence of a centrist consensus in parliament, rather than a one-party state. No major party now offers a distinct vision of the future, but instead aims to do its best within unambitious limits. The election campaign was based around promoting the "best" people, rather than the "best" political ideology. Since then, we have seen a number of measures concentrating on the image and behaviour of politicians. The ministerial code of conduct published on 31 July highlighted the government's mistrust of its own members. And the day before, the Blairs rubbed shoulders with their most image-friendly supporters, including Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Wallace and Gromit's animator Nick Park and Angus Deayton of Have I Got News For You.

In a way, this reflects an honesty not seen before in mainstream politics. The grip of the economic system is too tight to allow politicians much leeway, and the increasingly widespread perception of parliament as an unworkable technical process is a realisation of this. It is impossible for them to reform the governmental system to work for the benefit of the majority, so they find themselves trying to reform its image.

All the institutions in decline are based on appreciation of some sort of collective activity, while those rising to prominence encourage individualism. Activities or social structures which involve widespread interaction are being perceived as irresponsible or a threat. The Internet is a rare example of something which is both isolating and interactive and, undoubtedly, it is an excellent tool for streamlining global communication, but it has quickly gained a reputation as being an outlet for pornography reserved for computer geeks. While any scientific advance is open to question there is now less optimism about technology compared to the 1950s or late 1970s, despite the advances being made. The scientific developments grabbing the most headlines are those often perceived as amoral or unethical, such as sheep cloning or fertility treatments.

Even as western society moves away from recession, we still live in pessimistic times. The pre-millennial mood is that we have come too far for our own good. We find safety in nostalgia and risks in anything new. The fantastic achievements humanity has made in the realms of communications technology, space exploration, medical science and even in drama, music and the visual arts aren't celebrated enough. Humanity's view of itself has been tainted by a harsh economic and political system unable to keep up with our potential.

Mike Foster

Reformist dead – end (2) (2002)

Book Review from the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The State and Community Action. By Terry Robson. Pluto Press. 250 pages.

With the manifest failure of Labourite reformism and Keynesian economic policies by the end of the 1970s, the sort of people who previously had joined the Labour Party to get reforms designed to benefit “the poor” deserted Labour, setting up and joining instead single-issue campaigning charities and other such organisations to work towards the same aim, although with considerably lowered sights.

Among such organisations were grass-roots neighbourhood and community councils in areas inhabited by the worst-off sections of the working class. Incredible as it may seem today, some of these activists put forward the idea of “community action” as an alternative to “working class action” not just to get improvements within the capitalist system but even to bring it to an end.

It was never going to work since, despite the personal views of some of those involved, “community action” as such was in the same tradition of piecemeal reform as the Labour Party had been, only even more piecemeal in that whereas Labour had sought reforms at national level the “community activists” were only seeking changes at local level. Some of these charges – better street lighting, community centres, better provision of public services, more information about how to claim state benefits – were unobjectionable in themselves and did improve things a little but the idea that this had anything to do with “challenging capitalism” or “creating a culture of resistance” was, frankly, just laughable.

Robson makes this point in passing, but his main concern is the relationship between community action and the state. Following the riots in the black ghettos of America in the 60s and 70s and in Brixton and Handsworth in Britain a decade later, the governments in both countries decided to actively encourage “community development”. They set money aside to fund local community associations and full-time community workers. Robson accurately describes this as “letting the poor manage their poverty”. The governments' aim was clearly to allay discontent and integrate the people affected into mainstream capitalist existence.

This continues to this day, with the present Labour government's much trumpeted “local initiatives” aimed at ending “social exclusion”. There is also a narrowly financial aspect: letting the poor manage their poverty is cheaper than having this done by civil servants subject to civil service terms and conditions over pay, job security and pensions. In other words, full-time “community workers” are in effect cheapo state functionaries. To imagine, then, that such associations and such workers could form the basis of an anti-state, anti-capitalist movement is just a pipe-dream. Being state-funded these are no more likely to bite the hand that feeds them than the state would be to allow its hand to be bitten.

Robson tries to set all this in a wider theoretical framework by referring to the idea of “hegemony” of the pre-war, imprisoned leader of the Italian Communist Party, Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci, apparently, observed (not very originally) that capitalist control was not based on mere coercion but also on consent; according to him, this consent was mediated by “intellectuals” who transmitted ideas and values favourable to the ruling class amongst the general population. To overthrow capitalism, he concluded, the working class movement needed to produce its own intellectuals (who needn't necessarily be of working class origin) who would undermine the work of the pro-capitalist intellectuals and lead the working class against capitalism and its state – for Gramsci was, of course, still a Leninist vanguardist.

Robson's conclusion from all this is that while some of the university-trained community workers might have considered themselves to be such pro-working class intellectuals they were just the opposite: intellectuals co-opted by the state to get the worst-off sections of the working class to acquiesce to capitalist rule without kicking against the pricks too much.

It's an interesting theory but this is the least interesting part of the book. It also contains two errors that rather undermine Robson's credibility as a person who knows what he's talking about here. He includes the Bolshevik leader Bukharin as one of the theoreticians of Second International “economistic” Marxism (but he was only born in 1888 and didn't publish anything substantial till after 1917) and he also has the Paris Commune (1871) occurring at about the same time as the Chartists in Britain (1830s and 40s).

Adam Buick

Democracy and Capitalism (2011)

From the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why in the end the two are incompatible

Democracy, either as simply a word in our lexicon, an actually existing system or a utopian ideal, is a  concept which should be wide open for discussion. The term is bandied about to represent something which is generally poorly understood, something which is widely recognised as being the status quo but  with little or no thought given to the relationship between what we each individually mean when we use it and the situation on the ground to which we are referring.

Democracy is something alleged to be a system of popular involvement which leans towards majority consensus; but ask ten people, or a hundred, and get widely differing explanations of what it is or what it should be. It is a word that is ill-defined, misused, overused too ambiguously and has been hijacked by governments and elites to deliberately misinterpret their actions and so deceive a captive and poorly represented electorate.

For example – In the 'largest democracy in the world', India, how do the majority of the population on $2 or less a day consider they are being represented? And how many of the minority even pause to consider the possible effects of this lack of representation on the majority?

For example, in so-called 'developed' countries, many of which have just two or three major political parties becoming ideologically closer and closer so that there is little difference whichever is voted in, how can this false choice be deemed democratic? A choice between two or three closely related manifestos, differing in minor details but overall being variations of the same business-friendly agenda, distanced from the majority of the voters.

Existing political democracies

Electorates worldwide haven't had the true experience of involvement, of having had their voices heard, at any significant level to have resulted in a culture of expectation of inclusion in the various processes of so-called democracy. Rather than an expectation of involvement there is apathy, cynicism or a complaining mantra heard far and wide that governments don't listen to the people or that they put on a performance of listening pre-elections and then make wide ranging excuses for their negligence in following up on promises or manifesto declarations.

Polls show people in greater numbers becoming further and further removed from statements made by politicians both right and left on topics which impact on daily life – wages, working conditions, high unemployment, cuts in health care, education and general public spending, poor infrastructure, creeping surveillance, big-brother laws and questionable aggressive involvement in the affairs of other nations. And who can determine any significant difference between left and right whether in the US, UK or most other nations where all are beholden to corporate capitalism?

The current hierarchical systems of 'democracy' can never effectively represent the widely differing demands of majorities on wide ranging topics. What this system gives can more accurately be termed imposition. When people judge they are getting less democracy as time goes by – arrest on suspicion of almost anything, tighter control of cyberspace, personal information passed from agency to agency without consent, working conditions changed without consultation, retirement age increased, education budgets severely cut (all these currently in focus in many countries) – the discussion required is much more than how to take back lost ground and go on to gain more leverage. It becomes how to take control of the direction and quality of our own lives; in other words how to move forwards to a true and meaningful democracy.

“Capitalist democracy”

A UK government sponsored think tank, Wilton Park, concluded in a paper in 1996 that 'Democracy must not be confused with capitalism. The former is a political system while the latter is an economic system. Although many capitalist countries are democracies, capitalism can exist without democracy.'

According to Noam Chomsky, writing in On Power and Ideology and referring to the US as a 'capitalist democracy', true capitalism isn't possible, state intervention being a necessary component for several reasons: to regulate markets, to support business interests and to employ its means of violence in the international arena on behalf of  business.

Chomsky being a highly respected political commentator and activist over a number of decades, many would agree with this assertion and with his comment that democracy is a commodity – you can have as much of it as you can afford. It is probably pertinent to add to Chomsky's statement that true democracy also is not possible in capitalism because the system (and the market) is manipulated by the capitalists to fit their agenda by use of media, advertising and lobbying. The incompatibility of capitalism and democracy, which follow opposing principles, render democratic capitalism an oxymoron.

Apathy and complaint

Many so-called democracies tend to breed apathy for a variety of reasons. Decisions have long been made for people not by people, electorates distanced from their representatives, decisions made with no consultation process and 'leaders' believing they have been selected to take the reins and make all decisions on behalf of the voters. It's taken for granted that once elected the 'member' decides on behalf of the electors.

There is scant reference to the masses in times of major decisions – where to cut public spending, whether to involve a population in invasion or war, how to deal with the effects of harsh economic downturn. Even mass demonstrations against unpopular decisions can leave the elected unmoved and intransigent. As a result there has long been a culture of complaint, a collective feeling of  impotence with no expectation of being heard, even if seemingly listened to.

It is easy to recognise from both an individual and collective standpoint what it is, in work, in life, society, environment, that is required to be changed, removed, expunged; however it is not so simple to know exactly what should be put in its place or how to do it. Most people can more readily identify the negative aspects of their lives which they want rid of than they can imagine the positives to replace them. They have been part of a manipulative system for too long and have become passively compliant.

Anger and indignation can be positive motivating factors enabling people collectively to come to the realisation that if power won't heed the people then the people must act together, take hold of the power and make it their own if they are to become the active part of the decision making process.

Whereas emotional stimuli can play a useful part in rallying individuals to a cause overall a plan is vital. We need to understand not only where we're coming from but why and where we're headed. It's not enough to know what we're working against but significantly more important to understand and affirm what we're working to achieve. This largely entails each individual actively raising their own consciousness to higher levels of understanding and commitment which ultimately will lead to a majority of the working class pulling together in order to take control of their own collective destiny.

                               

Dissent

Politically to dissent is simply to disagree with an official decision, course of action or set of principles but the term of reference has become debased and it is now commonly understood to be something other than seeking to have an alternative view expressed overtly; it is often conveyed as being connected to some kind of subterfuge, a covert, possibly illicit movement to overturn an established regime.

Dissent, because it is seen to be too far outside the mainstream of traditional politics, becomes a threat. And what leads to dissent? Poor working conditions and levels of pay, high costs of food, services, fuel, etc., high levels of unemployment, high levels of homelessness and poor housing conditions, perceived injustices with regard to minority groups, creeping surveillance and curbs on freedom of expression, limited access to health care and education, widespread corruption in the corridors of power, inconvenient secrets leaked to the media revealing a catalogue of lies and deceit that the people aren't supposed to be a party to, oppression and repression; in general lack of democracy in one form or another. Any one or any combination of these issues, coupled with a particular geographical location and appropriate timing could lead to the blue touch paper being lit and then look out for the explosion.

Active dissent from the majority.

It is surely too narrow official, bureaucratic and parliamentary or oligarchical decisions which lead to all the states referred to immediately above – decisions taken which sideline, ignore, humiliate, debase and exclude the recipients from active participation in any of the decision making processes for surely  one does not dissent from decisions one had a free hand in making.

Real Democracy 

If democracy is to mean more than one vote nationally and another regionally every few years, an arrangement that most will agree displays a huge deficit of democracy and does little to represent public opinion, then an alternative system must be devised. An alternative system involving the general public in all decisions which impact upon them, their communities and local environments, one which embraces the notion that all are entitled to be active participants in the local and global community.

In order to invert the current system with the outcome that it will be society at large's decisions that are to become the norm means that each community's ideas and plans will be presented, discussed and decided upon by those within those communities. All discussion in the public domain; no minorities behind closed doors weighing up pecuniary advantage. The will of the people – so often disregarded – the will of the people on an ongoing basis, not just for the moment when they put their tick in a box, but the ongoing will of the people, giving ongoing legitimacy to all decisions in the best interests of all.

Hierarchies are necessarily divisive in their manner of imposition, patriarchal minorities holding onto power in situations opposed by their electorates until forced to give concessions or step down. Governments don't easily give up their power and use various means to cling on through thick and thin whether in Africa, Asia, Europe or the Americas. Noam Chomsky has said, 'Propaganda is as necessary to bourgeois democracy as repression is to the totalitarian state.' The purpose of both to keep control.

In contrast the ethos of true democracy, with a horizontal structure, has a unifying factor with people working together for the best outcomes for all. Real democracy must mean a system of common ownership, production and consumption, moving from a system of passivity to one of proactivity and empowerment by sharing responsibility for decisions and outcomes. In a true democracy people would have real choices in all areas of their lives, not choices manufactured to suit business, market and monetary interests.

Janet Surman