Quote. [voting] (1908)

From the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The only way to guard against throwing your vote away is to vote for the party that stands for what you stand for. To vote for something that you don’t want in order to avoid something else that you don’t is to do worse than throw your vote away."—The Call.

Blogger's Note:

My educated guess is that The Call cited above was The New York Call, which had been launched in May of 1908. There was a British 'socialist' paper with the title of The Call but that dates from 1916-20.

Anybody else think that the quote is reminiscent of the following famous Eugene Debs' quote?:

“I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.”

Voting: is it worth it? (2024)

From the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thursday 2 May 2024 saw another round of elections for local councils and regional mayors. They were followed by a media glut of psephological analysis and speculation as to the significance of results.

Claims and counter claims as to the reasons behind outcomes vied with each other. Those who had increased their numbers of elected councillors, such as Labour, the LibDems and the Greens, claimed vindication for their opposition to the present government and called for a general election now. Unsurprisingly this call went unheeded by the Prime Minister and his colleagues, who instead highlighted the odd anomalous result as indicating an underlying trend of support in their favour.

By the following Tuesday there were only occasional references to the election in news broadcasts as Parliament reassembled following the May Day bank holiday. Then it was back to the knockabout pantomime politics in the Commons. It turns out the elections and their reporting were largely, to quote Shakespeare, ‘…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing’ (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5).

Should there be doubt expressed over this sentiment, it is worth considering the extent to which the significance of the ballot was generally considered. A measure of this is the turnout, a factor briefly mentioned in the subsequent reporting. In one Metropolitan Borough Council area the rounded-up turnout figures ranged from 35 percent in the highest ward down to 16 percent in the lowest, with a borough average of 25 percent. Abstention was clearly the winner.

Was this feature due to apathy or antipathy, or perhaps an amalgam of them both? If apathy was the demotivating factor it maybe reflects negative attitudes cultivated by experience of previous voting making little or no practical difference. Antipathy is likely the expression of a cynicism grown from the same circumstances. One is a passive acceptance, the other can manifest as what might be described as bar-room anger, often expressed as vitriolic denunciation of politicians of all stripes and politics in general.

There are those who would denounce both attitudes for not making use of a most valuable asset, the vote. The argument runs along the lines that workers fought, and in some cases died, to secure the vote for working people in general, or women in particular.

Cannot deliver

Democracy, however flawed, is certainly always preferable to tyranny, so the vote is indeed a precious thing. However, accepting this raises a question. If the vote is valuable, why give it to someone you know will not, cannot, deliver on promises made?

Politicians are often fundamentally dishonest, but they can never be in a position to make the really radical changes that would benefit all society. Their problem is that everything people might aspire to costs.

The NHS is a case in point. It has grown from a quite basic level of medical provision at its foundation in 1948, to the hi-tech service it is today, dealing with a vast range of illnesses and conditions quite beyond its scope in the early days. The technology involved now would have seemed almost sci-fi in 1948. But those machines are expensive to develop, buy, maintain and operate. So when a government claims to be spending so many billion pounds more on the NHS than its predecessors, that is accurate.

It does not, though, come close to meeting the continually rising cost of realising actual need, or paying the staff adequately (in capitalist terms). With the result that voters have negative experiences from not being able to get GP appointments to not receiving vital treatment. The only source from which those costs can be met is the wealth owned and controlled by capitalism. Every pound raised rather than borrowed by government, national or local, ultimately comes from capitalism’s wealth, either directly as business taxes, or indirectly via income tax.

People see the problems and seek solutions, and replacing the party in power with another one promising change appears to be an option. Indeed, palliative measures may well be enacted, only for them to be frustrated by the economic demands and realities of capitalism. While voting is indisputably integral to a democratic political process, it is by no means a guarantee. Indeed, ‘democratic’ is often the word of choice in the titles of authoritarian regimes seemingly untroubled by the notion of irony.

The German Democratic Republic (GDR) of the Cold War period made use of institutions apparently modelled on those of its National Socialist predecessor. While the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) serves as a present-day example of the word erroneously used. A country claiming to be both socialist and democratic shamelessly promotes dynastic rule that so far has consisted of grandfather, father and grandson with, it seems, the great granddaughter being prepared for her turn. No doubt to unanimous popular acclaim.

The promotion of democracy is fundamental to the socialist cause, actual socialism that is, not just in name. A worldwide society in which capitalism has been replaced by the conscious action of the international working class, not some self-selected vanguard acting supposedly on its behalf. A society without rulers, dynastic, presidential or otherwise with truly democratic institutions organising the meeting of self-determined needs, rather than the production for profit.

Important but limited

Unless and until capitalism, driven to accumulate capital, has been replaced by socialism, there cannot be a fully democratic society. The present political expressions of democracy – free speech (more or less), universal suffrage (more or less), secret ballots and regular elections for local and national assemblies – are important.

Socialists can and do contest elections, being very much in favour of electors being able to engage with and show support for socialist ideas. Indeed, socialist candidates being able to garner increasing numbers of votes will be an indication that the working class is moving towards making the break with capitalism. However, this will only be realised when the working class develops democratic institutions whereby the ultimate component of democracy, presently excluded from the process, economic possession and control can be achieved.

Unfortunately, at the moment there seems to be no short-term prospect of that happening. So, while the knockabout nature of party politics remains, and the merry-go-round of office swapping continues, socialists must make whatever use they can to put their ideas. Democracy even in its limited form must not be demeaned, but challenged to become a more profound agent of change. Present limitations have been highlighted by the ease with which two Conservative MPs, Dan Poulter and Natalie Elphicke, crossed the floor to the Labour benches. Natalie Elphicke is particularly interesting as she was regarded as being on the right wing of the Tory Party, stepping easily into the centre-left opposition and welcomed by its leader. The promotion of democratic choice between left, right and centre proves to be little or no choice at all.

It is illuminating, however, that even authoritarian regimes often do hold elections, be it well-managed and controlled ones. Voting, it would appear, confers some, if spurious, legitimacy, even when the outcome is so predetermined it would make a political pollster blush.

Passive role

While what are sometimes termed liberal democracies, such as the UK, hold regular open elections with secret ballots, this does not mean democracy has been achieved. The vast majority, the electorate, are subordinated to a very passive role. They play no active part in formulating polices or selecting likely candidates to become their representatives. Rather they are consumers who choose, from a limited range of political products, those they consider best able to administer and manage the state for capitalism.

As for capitalism itself, the electorate have no role in its decision making, no vote as to its operation. It has but one imperative, the ceaseless pursuit of profit, unhindered, as far as possible, by political or social considerations.

The electoral system also serves the prevailing ideological focus on national concerns. Voters are restricted to their limited participation in politics that stop at the borders. Devolution, often mooted as a more localised politics, narrows this focus even more, as do independence movements, such as the SNP. There is no sense of galvanising an international electorate to look beyond borders towards a worldwide politics. And certainly no prospect offered of transcending capitalism by organising a truly democratic movement to socialism.

This does not deprive the vote of its value. However unlikely or distant such a transformation might presently seem, voting must ultimately play a significant, perhaps determining, role in its peaceful and democratic achievement. The vote, therefore, is valuable no matter how cheaply it is presently spent. Refusing to give it away to parties who will not, and cannot, deliver promised benefits in return, is to recognise its worth and honour those men and women who struggled and fought for it. As a resource, spoil your vote until it can be put to good use, but don’t waste it or ignore it.

Dave Alton

Does voting matter? (2024)

From the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every four or five years, you get to vote for some well-meaning individual, who promises to cure unemployment, poverty and homelessness. After that, you have no control over them, no power to influence events. Tony Blair once said that you are at your maximum power when you vote. If this is the most power you have, it’s not a lot, is it?

Real power lies in the hands of the owners of the wealth in our society, the capitalists. They control the decisions that affect us most: what food to grow, what houses to build, what clothes to make. They do so on one principle: no profit, no production. Our needs come second to profit.

Voting for a party that works within this principle cannot address the problems of our community. Any party that promises this or that tax or law is leaving this principle intact, and the capitalists in charge. So a vote for them – Labour, the Tories, the Liberals, the Greens, the Nationalists, etc – is a wasted vote.

Maybe you don’t vote at all. Maybe you think voting is a waste of time because it doesn’t change anything. Certainly, we’d agree with you that a vote for Labour, the Tories, the Liberals or the others is a waste of time.

It’s a waste, particularly, if you leave it there, at the voting, at the nose counting, and take no further part until the next election. Democracy means much more than a cross on a bit of paper; it means organising, debating, discussing and examining the world around us to work out how to change it for our benefit. Democracy is too important to be left to the professionals.

We’d argue, though, that it’s still a waste of time unless you see that inequality of wealth means inequality of power. That as long as a minority own society, it must be run in their interest. Labour, the Liberals, the Tories, none of them want to do anything about that, they’re content just to beg the owners of our society for some scraps from the table.

There is, though, an alternative. You can join with your fellow workers with the aim of taking control of society, in which we do all the work anyway, and begin running it directly for our mutual needs. You can have the power of membership in a democratic organisation that does not seek to take power on capitalist terms, but just seeks to abolish this rotten system. You can use your vote to show others where you stand, and proclaim your opposition to capitalism.

That is why we campaign for the common and democratic ownership and control of the wealth of the world. If you do that, you can make democracy and equality mean something, and change the world so that it is run for your benefit, not the tiny minority’s. We’re asking you to join us in that campaign.

Editorial: Voting and democracy (1999)

Editorial from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Only about one in four people bothered to vote in last month’s election to the European Parliament, the lowest ever in a national election in Britain. Some are saying that this is a threat to democracy and an insult to our forefathers who struggled for the right to vote. Maybe, but only if you define “democracy” as the kind of representative system we have today where, every once in a while, we give the politicians a blank cheque to do what they want, or can get away with, in the meantime. Whether we can call this charade, in which rival leaders parade before us asking for our votes, a real democracy is another matter.

A real democracy is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of leadership. It is about all of us having a direct say in the decisions that affect us. Leadership means handing over the right to make those decisions to someone else. We don’t vote for leaders to implement this or that decision; we vote according to our ideological inclinations to give them a “free hand” to make decisions.

Does that mean that in a real democracy all our time will be taken up with making decisions leaving no time to do anything else? Not at all. A person may not be particularly interested in, or significantly affected by, what happens in a neighbouring community, judging that this is something better left for them to decide. On the other hand they may well feel concerned by the problem of global warming but, within the framework of a “representative democracy”, the only recourse available to them is to join some environmental lobby group to petition governments who are under no obligation to comply with their wishes but who will in fact be more obliged to attend to the needs of Big Business whose very activities have directly contributed to this problem.

The point is that the very mechanism of decision-making we have today is a product of the social system we live under. The market economy, with its built-in contradictions and conflicting interests, has massively complicated the process of decision-making itself. It has moved it further and further from the ambit of “ordinary people” as the system itself has become more and more globalised. It is this that has made the paper pledges of our elected leaders seem increasingly irrelevant and ineffectual as they attempt to grapple with the monster that holds them in its tightening thrall.

We have at our disposal today the very means, in the form of modern telecommunications, that could enable us to resuscitate the ancient model of Athenian democracy on a truly global level. What we conspicuously lack is the will and the imagination to look beyond the crippling assumption that capitalism is here to stay. In the meanwhile we delude ourselves into thinking that the economic dictatorship imposed by this class ownership of the means of living can somehow be made compatible with democratic control within a system of political “representation” which is essentially adapted to that end. But we can have a real democracy—as soon as a majority of us are prepared to replace minority class ownership by common ownership.

Electronic democracy (1998)

Pamphlet Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Autonarchy, the Ultimate Democracy. By Akiva Orr. Pamphlet can be downloaded from: http://www/autonarchy.org.il

Autonarchy, a word coined by Orr himself, means literally “self-rule” which in his view can be achieved by instituting what he calls “Magnetic Card Direct Democracy”. Every citizen would have a magnetic card and their own PIN number and all telephones, public as well as private, would be equipped with a device to read these cards. This would enable people to register their votes, which could be counted almost instanteously, on any policy issue put before them (Orr in fact argues that all policy decisions should be made in this way). Questions requiring a policy decision would be drawn up as a range of options by experts in the particular field concerned or proposed by a minimum number of citizens. A special TV channel would be devoted to discussing the pros and cons of the various proposals for policy decision which citizens could look at before deciding which way to vote.

Orr adds some other refinements but the basic idea is clear. Modern communications technology has opened up the possibility for mass participation in decision-making:

“The revolutionary changes in communications technology make it possible, for the first time in history, to sum up millions of decisions taken far apart into a single total in seconds and to display this continuously on millions of TV screens. Political decision-making by millions of people is now possible”.

This is undoubtedly true and some socialists have suggested that it could be used extensively in socialism. Certainly, socialism would be the best framework for such an “electronic democracy” and no doubt this will be incorporated into the democratic decision-making procedures which will be a feature of socialism. Whether people will want to go as far as Orr appears to and have “magnetic card direct democracy” as the only such procedure appears more doubtful as “indirect” elected delegate democracy also has its advantages. Not all decisions can be reduced to a simple “yes-or-no” question, nor can people spend all their time voting.

Orr puts forward his proposal as a move “beyond capitalism, socialism, anarchism”. While he understands the drawbacks of capitalism and anarchism well enough, he misunderstands socialism as “state ownership and rule by a socialist party”. This is not what we would recognise as socialism but is rather state capitalism.

Adam Buick

Notes by the Way: Making Strikes Illegal (1955)

The Notes by the Way Column from the July 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Making Strikes Illegal

The increase in the number and extent of strikes has started discussion in Government circles of possible new trade union legislation. The Economist (18 June) warns of difficulties and has an interesting comment on the part played by strikes in Capitalism.

  “One idea that needs to be consigned firmly to the scrapheap from the start is the proposal that strikes as a whole should be declared illegal, and that all trade unions should be constrained by law to accept impartial arbitration upon their disputes. This proposal is unfair, undesirable and impracticable. It is unfair because the threat of a strike is a trade union’s last weapon for securing an increase in wages to which it feels that its members are entitled; and, in an imperfect world, arbitration in a country where strikes were theoretically debarred would always be less favourable to the workers than arbitration in a country where strikes are still legal The proposal is undesirable because the pressure towards higher wages exerted by trade unions is a dynamic as well as an inflationary force in any economy; it helps to draw resources into the trades that are most profitable, and it forces employers into the most labour-saving, and therefore the most forward-looking, forms of production. Last, but not least, the proposal is impracticable because the trade unions simply would not wear it, and would always find ways to flout any such dictatorial decree; if 70,000 engine drivers decided that they all felt too ill to work on a certain day, no government could put all the 70,000 in prison.”

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The Election Results

Naturally political commentators have been busy since the election trying to interpret the heavy fall of votes that reduced the Labour Party M.P.s to 277 in an enlarged House of Commons of 630 members. (At the 1951 election Labour won 295 in a House of 625).

The Economist's analysis (4/6/55) produced the following summary:—

  “It was not the swung, but the stay-at-homes, who decided the election. The total poll was 76.8 per cent., compared with 82.6 per cent in 1951. Within those totals (1) Labour polled 12.4'million votes compared with 13.9 million in 1951. One-and-a-half million people—or more than one out of every ten of those who voted Labour last time—did not this time feel excited enough to turn out. (2) The Conservatives polled 13.3 million votes compared with 13.7 million in 1951. As they piled up some 165,000 votes in four Ulster constituencies where they were unopposed last time, it seems that over half a million people who voted Tory last time did not vote this time (3) The Liberals polled 722,000 votes, about 8,000 less then in 1951. In the constituencies with unchanged boundaries in which they fought in both 1951 and 1955, however, their votes went up by an average of about 450 per constituency. More than the whole of their increase in the share of the votes in these constituencies was at the expense of Labour.”

The Labour vote was 46.4 per cent, of the total vote compared with the Tories’ 49.7 per cent, and the 3.9 per cent that went to Liberals and others. In 1951 Labour got 48.8 per cent, and the Tories 48 per cent.

The Communist Party ran 17 candidates and lost 15 deposits through getting less than one-eighth of the votes— total cost of lost deposits £2,250. But comparing their votes at this election with the vote obtained in the same constituencies in 1951 (or in 1950 if no candidate stood in 1951) it would seem that on balance the Communists somewhat improved their position. The total vote of their 17 candidates was 33,144. In 1951 their ten candidates obtained 21,640.

Of the Bevanites the Economist says:—

  “It is not necessarily true to say that Bevanite sitting members did badly in this election. Mr. and Mrs. Bevan, the Coventry duet, and Mrs. Barbara Castle, did do rather badly; but they were in the sort of areas where the general trend was towards a low Labour turn-out. On the other hand Mr. Mikardo, Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Harold Wilson and Mr. Harold Davies all did rather well.”

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Remarkable Admission by Mr. Attlee

In a speech to a Labour Women’s Gala at Durham on 4 June Mr. Attlee spoke about the need for the Labour Party to carry on after their defeat in the General Election. Having mentioned the struggles “the blood, sweat and tears” of the present generation of Labour Party members and of their forerunners, he dealt with what remains to be done. And this is what he said :—

“We are nowhere near the kind of society we want We have an infinitely long way to go.” (Manchester Guardian, 6/6/55.)

Mr. Attlee meant by this that we are nowhere near Socialism.

Yet in 1949 in a speech at Walthamstow he said:— 

  "In these three and a half years you have had a new pattern set up in this country. The social reforms which we introduced nave not been patchy; they have represented a new social order. . . . We have had a great experience in democratic Socialism.” (Manchester Guardian, 22/1/49.)

In his Durham speech in June of this year Mr. Attlee claimed that the work of the Labour Party has endured despite their electoral defeat, because it has influenced the Tories:—

  “They have had to accept what we have done: in fact they claim to have done the same things only they say they have done them better. They have had to accept many things which 20, 30 or 40 years ago they would have denounced as heresies, impossibilities and silly Socialism.” (S. Times, 5/6/55.)

It is difficult to discover from Mr. Attlee’s various statements what conception he now has of the way in which what he regards as Socialism is to be achieved.

If in 1955 it is an infinitely long way off, what has happened to the “ new social order ” of 1949?

And if the "new social order” of 1949 was not to be taken literally but was Mr. Attlee’s fanciful way of describing some modest social reforms which the Tories also accept, how does Mr. Attlee think his Socialism ever will be achieved? For the Labour Party never envisaged the possibility of the Tories beating them at their own game of catching workers' votes with reforms, They never thought to see the day when a majority of the workers, having had Labour Government for six years, would prefer to see Capitalism run by Tories. Though, as it happens, this ought to have been no surprise at all to Mr. Attlee for in 1937 in his “Labour Party in Perspective” (p. 123) he wrote:—

  “The plain fact is that a Socialist Party cannot hope to make a success of administering the capitalist system because it does not believe in it”

Mr. Attlee’s dilemma is complete. For if he does not think the Labour' Party in office can make a success of the job of administering Capitalism how can he hope to win elections by showing that it is a success?

The Labour Party used to dismiss the S.P.G.B. case for concentrating on winning straight support for Socialism, with the argument that the workers did not want Socialism “an infinitely long way” off, but wanted a Labour Government to give them practical benefits now by removing the worst causes of discontent.

But now we have Mr. Emanuel Shinwell, Minister of Defence in the Labour Government, telling the Staffordshire miners that the reason Labour lost the election was that “most people were satisfied with things as they are. But they were dissatisfied with the disgraceful brawling in the Labour Party and by what seemed to be a scramble for power.” (Reynolds News, 12/6/55).

So the workers, after 50 years of Labour propaganda, do not want a Labour Government to give them practical benefits now but want a Tory Government to do the job.

Where does Mr. Attlee go from here?

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Is it Foolish?

The following appeared in the Stratford Express (3 June, 1955):—

“How Foolish

  “It seems so simple to put a cross against the name of a chosen candidate—so simple that it is almost impossible to go wrong. Yet in these local divisions scores of people wasted their votes by spoiling papers in one of a variety of ways. In one of the West Ham divisions, for instance, there were 40 spoilt papers. Some people had added their name and address; some had scrawled the letters S.P.G.B. (Socialist Party of Great Britain) on the paper, while others had voted for each of the candidates and a few had put the paper in the ballot box completely blank. An indication of their state of mind, perhaps!"

It is, of course, the reference to the S.P.G.B. that concerns us, and it has to be taken in conjunction with the statement that it is “so simple to put a cross against the name of a chosen candidate.” But suppose you don’t choose either candidate. Suppose you are one of the million and a half former Labour voters who could discern so little difference between the parties that it wasn’t worth while voting.

Or, again, suppose you are a Socialist and do not want Capitalism at all, not Labour-administered Capitalism or Tory-administered Capitalism? What should you do then? Is it foolish to show on the ballot paper what you do want? It has at any rate had the merit that it caught the attention of the Stratford Express.

Of course Socialists would prefer to have their own Socialist candidates to vote for, but the Labour, Tory and Liberal parties, by agreement on the £150 deposit, made it very difficult for a small organisation to enter the field.

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Peaceful uses of Atomic Power

All the people who are clamouring for “wars without H-Bombs” instead of working for a social system that won’t engender war, think they are being ever so humane and practical when they plead that atomic energy should be put to “peaceful uses for the good of mankind.” What they really show is that they haven’t learned the first thing about the cause of war.

Alongside the clamour about bombs, but attracting less attention, powerful groups of firms in all the leading countries are preparing for the struggle to gain the market for atomic equipment. One group of seven British engineering and electrical companies has formed the Nuclear Power Plant Co., which, according to the Evening Standard (19/5/55), has a capital of £1,000,000, but has behind it the £75 million of the sponsoring companies.

An Atomic Trade Fair is to be held in Geneva in August. A Financial Times correspondent reports:

  “The exhibition is to be attended by representatives from 84 countries and companies from the U.S., France, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Holland and Norway will be exhibiting their designs for atomic power plants and for nuclear energy equipment of all sorts in an effort to gain future business in competition with the U.K. from countries less experienced in atomic power development.
  “Russia will be exhibiting atomic energy designs and equipment of many types, and her exhibit may rival those of Britain, the U.S. and France—the largest exhibitors.”

(Financial Times, 8/6/55.)

A Financial Times editorial (11/6/55) pressed the importance of these early stages “for competition will grow increasingly fierce and what is done now will determine the success of Britain in the future.”

The simple fact is that Capitalism's fierce conflicts for markets and raw materials, are not and cannot be "peaceful," whether the commodity on sale is atomic plant, coal, petrol, steel, textiles, or anything else. Here is the breeding ground of war.

This is very unpleasant reading for well-meaning Pacifists, but these are the facts of Capitalist life.

The rivalry in obtaining sources of uranium and other materials for atomic power, and in capturing markets for atomic equipment, will be just as fruitful of international conflict as were past struggles to acquire iron ore, petrol, coal, etc., and markets in which to sell the products.

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The Millionaires’ Welfare State

According to the Daily Express City Editor (25/5/55) Mr. Harold Samuel has done very well for himself under the “Welfare State.”

  “They tell you that it is impossible to make a million in these days of super-high taxation. Well, young man, do not be daunted in your endeavours by such talk.
  “For here is West End property man Harold Samuel to prove that it can be done. And proving it three times over.
  “For under a share plan which comes this morning from Land Securities Investment Trust—key company in Mr. Samuel's property network—he lets drop that his personal stake is 692,000 Ordinary shares.
   “And in markets each of those 10s. shares command a price just Is: short of a fiver at 99s. In all £3,426.000.
   “Lush indeed has been the money-making of anyone who backed the Samuel's star when he took over Land Securities eleven years ago.
   “Then its shares were priced at 8s. a go in markets. Allowing for free issues each of those shares would now command a dizzy £66 apiece.
   “For the Samuel policy has been to build the group up big in property at a time when property values were rising even faster than his shares.
    “A policy which pays off handsomely—for Mr. Samuel.” 

Note the dates. The foundations of the “Welfare .State” were being laid in 1944 when various schemes were prepared under the Coalition Government and put into operation after the Labour victory in 1945. And it is in this period that Mr. Samuel has built up his three and a half millions. And what predominantly helped to push up property values was the Labour Government’s inflationary policy, faithfully continued by the Tories.

The Welfare State ought to have at least one very enthusiastic backer.

There are many others, too.

The rise in property values that helped Mr. Samuel has "been paralleled by the rise in share values on the Stock Exchange and for the same general reason. And Mr. Gaitskell, in the House of Commons on 16 June, 1955, estimated that holders of ordinary shares have gained £5,000 million through the share rise of the past 15 months.

And all the time, including the years of Labour Government, small savers who put money into the Savings Bank or Savings Certificates were having the real value of their savings whittled away by the same price rise.

This must be what the Labour Party means by a more equal distribution of wealth and what the Tories mean by a property-owning democracy.

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Calling up Striking Seamen

The Daily Mirror (17/6/55) published the following:—

  “One hundred seamen involved in the unofficial strike of Cunard liner crews received preliminary notices of call-up at Liverpool yesterday.
  “They are men aged between eighteen and twenty-six. whose call-up was deferred when they joined the Merchant Navy.
  “Now they are unofficially unemployed and liable to be called-up. The notices they received by post yesterday asked them to say which service they preferred.
  “Many of them rushed to the Shipping Federation in Liverpool to ask what to do.
  “Strike leaders said: ‘They were told at the Federation that if they signed a form promising not to break any more contracts with the Maritime Board the call-up would be deferred again.
   “ ‘This is a form of intimidation.’
  “Normally if men under twenty-six leave a ship several weeks elapse before they are assumed to have left the sea and to be liable for call-up.'”

We need hardly be surprised at the action by the authorities but how do Liberals, who profess to be the protectors of individual rights against Tory reaction and Labour Regimentation, view the editorial in the Liberal Star (16/6/55) which urged the new Tory Government to take this step?

  “Surely Parliament must take a hand without delay. After all, the Minister of Labour and National Service have power to serve the strikers with their call-up papers.”

It is only fair to add that the Liberal Manchester Guardian protested at the Government’s action.

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Co-operative Strike Beating

The Cooperative movement long ago forgot its origins and is just another Capitalist trading organization. But it does not so regard itself. It claims to be a movement to help the workers and is in direct association with the Labour Party and T.U.C. The following heading and extract is from an article in Cooperative News (11/6/55). They show that the trading operations of the Cooperative movement, conducted according to normal Capitalist rules within the framework of Capitalism, create precisely the same outlook as is to be found in any other trading concern. ‘

“Beat-the-Strike measures are in full swing 

  "By using their own transport and in some cases working late into the night, co-operative societies throughout the country are beating the rail strike. Coal supplies, which are the hardest hit, are being carried by societies' own lorries from the pitheads.
  “At Derby Society, coal department employees worked throughout last week-end restocking the coal yards. With the society’s own vehicles and tipper lorries borrowed from the building department, the society built up a sufficient stock to satisfy present demands.”

Of course those responsible for this will indignantly retort that they could not do anything else in the circumstances. Too true. Those who think they can "beat the Capitalists at their own game” have no choice but to strive to preserve the great illusion they have created.

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Educational Progress?

At the annual conference of the National Association of Head Teachers the President, Mr. Frank Barton had something to say about the educational system. After mentioning that the hopes roused by the Butler Education Act had still not been fully realised, he said:—

  "Is this really surprising? Popular education has always had a parsimonious existence. It was conceived in poverty, born in penury, cradled in privation, and nurtured in frugality.
   “Unfortunately the niggardly attitude which characterised its introduction still persists. In this respect some local administrators are as much to blame as the central Government. Taking into account the increased numbers of pupils and the inflationary value of the pound, we are spending less to-day on educating the children of this country than we spent before the war. This can hardly be called progress.
   “Too many of our children are still being educated in overcrowded, under-heated, unhygienic, and badly lighted conditions. It is regrettable that one solution to the shortage of classrooms has been the utilisation of ugly nineteenth-century buildings with dark, dungeon-like passages." (Manchester Guardian, 30/5/55.)

Edgar Hardcastle

The Influence of Television (1961)

Book Review from the May 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Television and the Political Image by Joseph Trenaman and Denis McQuail, Methuen, 30s.

During the last few years, a new word has crept into the English language. Psephology is the name given to the business of putting voters under the microscope and probing their innermost electoral reflexes. Where once people simply voted at election time, now every cross must be checked and analysed.

We might have expected that television would come into this. No self-respecting psephologist can ignore a communication medium which four-fifths of the population have access to. 1955 was the first television election, although at that time sound broadcasting was still dominant. 1959 was different; apart from the enormous increase in the number of T.V. sets, both channels broke with past practice by putting out such programmes as the B.B.C.s “Hustings" and Granada's “Election Marathon".

What were the effects of this? Did, for example, any votes change sides because of the parties' broadcasts on T.V? Did television affect attendance at political meetings, the number of party workers and so on? A Research Unit at Leeds University (working on a Granada grant) tried to find answers to these, and other, questions. They closely studied the campaign on television and at the same time sampled political opinion among the voters in the two Yorkshire constituencies of Pudsey and West Leeds. Television and the Political Image reports their findings.

The authors conclude that television had little effect on the outcome of the 1959 election. Partisan programmes were not as well received as those which hid their propaganda under an informative camouflage. The professional slickness of the Labour Party programmes, which so irked the newspaper reviewers, was not generally resented. Whatever knowledge the viewers had on the issues of the campaign tended to increase as a result of their watching television.

The specific validity of such conclusions may be open to argument. But the overall picture of the voter which emerges from them seems fairly accurate: somebody who is mostly bored with politics and who, when an election stirs him to vote, does so in accordance with his hitherto sleeping prejudices.

Television and the Political Image is not light reading, and it is loaded with statistical tables and graphs which demand close study. Doubtless, we shall see many more such works, for if the power-conscious parties can find out why the working class vote as they do, they are a long way towards winning an election. If Trenaman and McQuail are any guide, Labour's problem in 1959 was to convince everybody that their promises were not rash bribery. The Tories, it seems, must still work hard to persuade us that they really care about the aged and the needy.

This is a dirty game. And the psephologist, busily adding up his figures to discover the reasons for the working class preferring one type of capitalist subjection to another, does not make it any cleaner.

Ivan

Greasy Pole : Life, death or suicide? (2011)

The Greasy Pole column from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thanks to New Labour’s trumpeted policy of being “tough on crime” administered by the likes of Jack Straw and David Blunkett (they never actually got around to the other bit about tackling the cause of it all) there are something over 85,000 people in prison in this country (also, they never sorted out whether over-crowded prisons proved that they had succeeded, or failed, to beat crime). At present none of the prisoners is allowed to vote; in any case if they were not banned the fact that they come from homes all over means that the effect would be dispersed between many constituencies and so unlikely to affect any single result. Which has not lessened the interest, not to say at times passion, over whether anyone who has been locked up for offending against some of the accepted norms of property society, by theft or violence, should have a say in how that society is run day-to-day.

Europe

The controversy was brought up for wide public discussion by the case of one John Hirst. By no means an easy, attractive man – as a child he was abused after being placed in a Barnardos home and suffers from Asperger’s syndrome – Hirst was sentenced to 15 years in prison for killing his landlady with an axe in what was described as a detached, callous manner. In the event he served 25 years and after release under supervision on licence he personified the campaign to overturn the ban on prisoners voting, on the grounds that it contravened the Human Rights Act, which became law in the UK in 2000. This Act, which was greeted in many a court room with derisive irritation, sprang from a guarantee in the European Convention on Human Rights of “free elections…by secret ballot under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the people in the choice of the legislature”. But it was not all plain sailing thereafter. In April 2001 the High Court in Britain rejected an application for the enfranchisement of prisoners but three years later this decision was itself overturned by the European Court of Human Rights, leading the Council of Europe in December 2009 to question whether the general election due in May 2010 would be illegal. Which did not, of course, prevent that election going ahead even if some of the candidates were subsequently imprisoned for other criminal offences. In February last, the Commons emphatically opted to keep the ban although this flew in the face of the country’s obligations as a signatory to the ECHR and could lead to prisoners suing for damages which might total as much as £160 million.

Civic Death

In terms of legislation the matter goes back to the Forfeiture Act of 1870, which moderated some of the consequences of “civic death” dating back to the 14th century. The present ban was imposed in law in 1983, 1985 and 2000, which placed the UK at variance with most other European countries and in accord with the likes of Armenia, Bulgaria, Estonia and Hungary, so that a government which professes to staunchly respect the rule of law and the sanctity of its treaty obligations has persistently acted in an illegal and cynical way. Some prisoners – and others outside gaol – may have their own opinion about the motivation of those who preach endlessly about “right” and “wrong” but who are ready to apply their own, conveniently flexible, interpretation of these terms. Is this a problem to those who solemnly construct capitalism’s regulations governing property and privilege? For one thing, the possibility of losing the right to vote through being sent to prison is unlikely to have deterred any of those 85,000 from their efforts to improve their lot through the kind of theft or violence which capitalism rules as illegal. For example in the recent elections in the Irish Republic only 191 prisoners out of a total of 4,500 registered for a vote. So the ruling class can be reassured; from casual contact with some inmates of those grim monuments to futile punishment it is unlikely that if they had the vote they would use it in the only constructive possible way; rather, after their own fashion they will support at the ballot box the whole society of class denial and exploitation – on the assumption that they can so re-arrange things as to be the exploiters.

Cameron Is Ill

David Cameron has said that the very idea of prisoners being allowed to join the millions of misled, prejudiced, unthinking voters makes him “physically ill”. It is difficult to believe that someone who has so ruthlessly scaled the greasy pole is so delicate. Is he not propelled into nausea at the evidence of capitalism’s desolation? Famously reputed to be an affectionate family man, was he not repelled when Save the Children reported that 1.6 million children in the country he rules over are living in extreme poverty? Does he suffer sleepless nights when he hears of yet another incident of children being slaughtered under the guns and missiles in Afghanistan? Are his digestive processes affected when he is informed of the effect of his government’s policies on benefits for the frail and elderly who, no longer a viable employment prospect, look on their future with fear? So what is the scale of the matter? Before it recently emerged into the news through the processes of the law, there was no apparent awareness of it among the electorate at large. It was not an issue during that last election. The entire dispute in this case is another irrelevance when the urgent need is to end a society under the rule of the likes of Cameron and his lies. To end, in other words, this present situation where those who can vote do so as a kind of civic suicide.

Ivan

Editorial: The Suffragist Debate. (1910)

Editorial from the August 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The two day’s Parliamentary debate on D. J. Shackleton’s Parliamentary Franchise (Women) Bill was of considerable interest and we find in it much support for the stand we have taken in opposition to the Women's Suffrage Movement. Winston Churchill showed with great force that its effect would simply be to multiply fagot votes for the wealthy—not that he is so immensely concerned for the political representation of the workers as for the electoral success of the Liberal party. The whole trend of the debate too, showed plainly enough how essentially undemocratic is the spirit of the Women's Suffrage Movement and the measures it proposes, as witness the remarks of Messrs. M'Laren and Balfour for and of Mr. Lloyd George against the Bill. The attitude of the latter is curious as compared with his plea for his Pensions Scheme. His excuse for the paucity of this ratepayers' Godsend was that one must necessarily begin with a small instalment, but now we are told that the "Women's Bill" is to be condemned because it is a small instalment! The humbug of the whole process was demonstrated when a large majority for the second reading was converted into a large majority for its relegation to the Parliamentary dusthole.

We have no quarrel with the abstract proposal that women should have an equal part with men in the arrangement of the common activities, i.e., politics; but that is a very different matter to advising working women to join a franchise agitation at this time of day. And more than ever is the stupidity of their participation demonstrated in face of such proposals as those of Shackleton, Pankhurst, Snowden and Balfour.

Eire constitution changed (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a referendum held last month the Eire constitution was amended to abolish the "special position" of the Catholic Church (see Socialist Standard, August 1972) and to reduce the voting age to 18 (see Socialist Standard, September 1972).

Greasy Pole: How Not to Spoil Your Vote. And Why (2013)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The General Election of 1992. A reminiscence. Going to the local polling station after all the experts had used their surveys and samples and focus groups to let us know that our one and only choice had to be between the hysterical bluster of Neil Kinnock and the plaintive reticence of John Major. Planning to use my voting paper to state the socialist reasons to reject all of them and set out the real alternative. My six-year old son Tom agreed to come with me, probably after his own expert analyses had led him to hope for a consequent happy visit to the local Game Boy stockist; he had not then read any Upton Sinclair or George Orwell or The Communist Manifesto. The polling station was pretty busy with so many people hunched over their voting paper. Not long after I had begun my contribution, when I had barely had time to deal with the negatives of Kinnock and Major, Tom became impatient and embarrassed by my being immobile while so many others were so quickly in and out. When his muttering and sleeve tugging became too intrusive I cut short my mini-manifesto and we headed off for the Game Boy. I blamed the politicians.

This was brought to mind by the low voter turn-out in some of the recent by-elections – Corby, Manchester Central, Cardiff South – and the reasons suggested by the political pundits, who so often claim to be The Voice Of The People, that the voters were suffering from a compound of habitual apathy and election weariness. Which did not take enough account of the reports that an interesting number of those who did go to the polls completed their ballot paper not by a cross but a statement of their reasoned opposition to all the candidates and in some cases their disgust with the entire media-obsessed game of politics and its players. This was not apathy but an active statement of choice. Truly, it could have been better – more effective and encouraging – had it been driven by a conscious intention to point towards the valid alternative but it was enough to allow a tremble of optimism that as a habit it might catch on.

Corby

Meanwhile in Corby there was a notable turn-out of 42 percent to hint that the one-time steel town had shaken off its flirtation with the undeviatingly self-promoting Tory Louise Mensch. It says enough about David Cameron’s vaunted “A” List of candidates that it should throw up somebody like Mensch and it was to widespread relief that she announced her intention to resign the seat as soon as possible to spend more time with her trans-Atlantic family and her heavily prosperous pop-star manager husband. Which aroused some rumours about the reasons for Cameron failing to make himself aware of her glittering talents. And – perhaps crucially – about the evidence that had she clung on she would have been crushed in the next general election. None of this prevented her, during the by-election, praising her aspiring successor Tory Christine Emmett as “… a true local girl … she’d be a wonderful MP”, apparently unaware that this might have lost Emmett a bunch of votes.

Manchester Central

In Manchester Central, had she dared to show her face, Louise Mensch would not have received a warm welcome. This constituency’s turn-out of 18.16 percent was the lowest since the by-election in Poplar during the unusual circumstances of 1942; it is a place which has never before had a woman Labour MP. In a constituency where, according to one voter, the party could “put a rosette on a dustbin and it would win” Labour offered one Lucy Powell who, although undoubtedly a woman, was considered to be steeped enough in Labour politics – Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign manager and then Deputy Chief of Staff – to be welcomed as a “Labour Party apparatchik”. There was however one niggling doubt about her; in the neighbouring Manchester Withington in 2010 she surprised a lot of people by failing to unseat the LibDem MP John Leech. So that in the recent by-election her candidacy needed to be nourished enough for her to trot out banalities like “We have to think in terms of empowering communities to make decisions for themselves and get people involved so they feel they can aspire”. Well in the end it all went according to plan; the dustbin came out on top and Manchester Central has a new woman MP.

Rotherham

As the polling stations closed their doors and Louise Mensch faded away across the Atlantic attention switched to three other by-elections: Croydon North, (turn-out 26.5 percent) Middlesbrough (25.91 percent) and Rotherham (33.63 percent). The last of these contests was unusually piquant because of its similarity to Corby in the voters’ assumed anger over its MP’s behaviour. Denis MacShane was forced to resign over a succession of matters including some typically extravagant expense claims which brought his integrity into question. One example was a clutch of 19 false invoices which he submitted, described by a Parliamentary Committee as “plainly intended to deceive”. Little wonder that the Respect candidate ran a poster van publicising “Denis MacShame”. Rotherham’s reputation is as a tough town where once they dug coal and smelted steel; it has not elected a Conservative since Labour’s disaster days of 1931. And it has never before had a woman MP. Which raised some searching questions (and a walk-out of members) when the locally prominent Maroof Hussain was beaten to the nomination by a national party favourite Sarah Champion, who went on to win with a delighted UKIP in second place.

None of these elections would have caused any abstinent electors or polling booth essayists to doubt that, at the least, they had appropriate consistency on their side. If capitalism’s current crises have done nothing else they expose the impotent panic among the self-appointed experts – the economists, politicians, analysts and the like – as each of their preferred remedies is exposed as a discredited sham. It is in contrast to that feeble confusion that those who stand aside to put forward the case for a different, cohesively humane system can truly be described as the radicals.

Ivan

Editorial: How Shall We Vote? (1989)

Editorial from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the parties, except the Tories, discussed electoral reform at their autumn Conferences. Labour rejected it, but the minor parties—the Liberals, the SDP and the Greens—came out in favour as the only way of getting more of their members into the House of Commons. They also floated the idea of a pact with Labour to oust Thatcher in return for the introduction of proportional representation. Electoral arithmetic is on the side of the anti-Tory parties since at the last election, as indeed in the two previous ones, Thatcher and the Tories were returned even though four out of every seven voters rejected them. So is there a need for electoral reform?

We might as well give our answer straightaway: No, there isn’t. A majority seeking to replace capitalism by socialism only requires one thing of an electoral system under capitalism—that it should allow a majority opinion to reflect itself as a majority of seats in parliament. We are not interested in whether the system ensures a strong and stable government of capitalism nor in whether it ensures a fair representation of capitalist political parties. As the existing electoral system in Britain does allow a majority viewpoint to be translated into a majority of seats, we see no point in diverting our energies from our task of working towards the emergence of a socialist majority towards working for electoral reform within capitalism.

However, since socialism will be a fully democratic society we do have an interest in what is and what is not a fair electoral system since such a system will be an essential part of the democratic decision-making and administrative structure of socialist society.

From the point of view of democratic theory, an electoral system should ensure that the persons elected really are representative. The case against the first-past-the-post system that applies in Britain is that it does not necessarily do this when there are more than two candidates. This is because it allows a candidate to be elected with less than 50 per cent of the votes (that is to say, against the will of a majority of the voters), as were 45 per cent of MPs, of all parties, at the last general election.

There are various ways of avoiding this. Organising a run-off between the top two candidates in a second ballot (as in France) or, what amounts to the same thing, allowing voters to place the candidates in order of preference (as in Australia) and, if no candidate gets 50 per cent, to eliminate the bottom candidates and redistribute their votes amongst the others until one of them does reach this figure. This system, known as the alternative vote, is widely used in trade unions for the election of their officials and is favoured for parliamentary elections by some in Labour Party and even by some Tories. A variant of it, known as the Single Transferable Vote (STV) is applied in Ireland, both North (except for Westminster MPs) and South. Under it voters again place the candidates in order of preference but in a multi-member rather than a single-member constituency. A candidate is not elected unless, and until, after successive redistributions of the votes of the bottom candidates, they obtain a certain quota of votes. This is the system favoured by the Liberals, the SDP and some in the Labour Party. It is frequently described as a system of proportional representation even by its partisans but in fact it is not. It is essentially a system, like the second ballot and the Australian alternative vote, for ensuring that those elected attain a minimum level of representativity. It is only incidentally that, in a context of competing political parties, it ensures the representation of minority parties enjoying a certain minimum, but not necessarily low, level of support amongst voters.

As all these systems are compatible with democratic theory, no doubt they will continue into socialist society for the various delegate bodies that will form part of its democratic decision-making structure. Proportional representation, properly so-called, is a different matter as it presupposes the existence of competing political parties and was in fact devised precisely for such parties. It requires multi-member constituencies (which can be the whole country, as in Holland and Israel) and party lists rather than individual candidates. A great variety of PR systems exist in the various countries which practise it but these are all based on the principle that the seats should be allocated to the party lists in more or less strict proportion to the number of votes obtained.

The essence of democracy is popular participation not competing parties. In Socialism elections will not be about deciding which particular party is to come to “power” and form the government. Politics in socialism will not be about coercive power and its exercise and so won’t really be politics at all in its present-day sense of the “art and practice of government” or “the conduct of state affairs”. Being a classless society of free and equal men and women, socialism will not have a coercive state machine nor a government to control it. The conduct of public affairs in socialism will be about people participating in the running of their lives in a non-antagonistic context of co-operation to further the common good.

Socialist democracy will be a participatory democracy rather than the choice every four or five years, with or without proportional representation, between rival gangs of professional politicians that passes for democracy today.

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

Votes for some Workers (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

November 1868 is a significant date in British working class history. For in that month was held the first general election in which the majority of electors were workers. Most workers, it is true, were still excluded but enough had the vote to elect a majority of socialist delegates had they wanted to. It is true also that the Second Reform Act of 1867 was a miserable compromise between the Tories and the Liberals, both of whom were opposed to democracy and afraid of giving the vote to too many workers.

In 1832 the workers had been tricked into backing their employers' demand for a share with the landed aristocrats, big merchants and bankers in running the government. The First Reform Act was framed so as deliberately to exclude workers and in fact, in some cases, they were actually disfranchised. This was not an experience they easily forgot. The manufacturers had used the threat of a workers' uprising to scare the governing classes into sharing power with them. One of the first acts of the government elected under the new franchise was to reform the Poor Law system: they made it harsher in order to drive people into the factories (or, as they would say today, to encourage “mobility of labour”). Partly as a result of this for the next decade or so the government was, in Chartism, faced with the real threat of a workers’ uprising.

Chartism, the first independent workers’ political party in the world, was an expression of general discontent with early capitalism. Their six-point charter, which included universal manhood suffrage, added up to a demand for a democratic state. They were convinced that with democracy the workers could reshape society in their own interests. This was well expressed in the words of one of their songs: “We will get the land, when we get the Charter”. It was this emphasis on the need for winning political power that commended Chartism to Marx and Engels and it taught them that the workers’ class struggle must become political. The Chartists in fact failed to achieve any of their aims. Their last monster demonstration in 1848 failed ignominiously. Faced with the choice of passively accepting parliament’s rejection of the Charter or insurrection they backed down. The more determined kept up the struggle for a few more years coming to absorb the ideas of the French utopian communists like Babeuf and Blanqui and even those of Marx and Engels.

By the 1860’s the trade unions, after years of syndicalist-type opposition to “wage-slavery”, came to accept the wages system and put forward the conservative slogan of “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” Their leaders were rejecting violent overthrow of the the government in favour of working for small improvements within the system.

The manufacturers, who were the gainers from 1832, were now eager to push out the old landed aristocracy and have the state machine all to themselves. The successful Anti-Corn Law campaign led by Cobden and Bright had whetted their appetite. They saw as one way of increasing their control to extend the suffrage to their workers who they knew would vote for them. So despite the failure of Chartism the Reform issue was raised from time to time after 1850. However, the restricted franchise did not allow the radicals their due weight inside the Liberal party. The Whigs, themselves landed aristocrats, still had a great say and Lord Palmerston refused to allow a Reform bill. When he died the way was clear and in March 1866 Gladstone introduced a Bill which by lowering the property qualification would have given the vote to many workers. But the Whigs had their last fling. Some forty of them voted with the Tories against the bill. The government resigned and a minority Tory one took over. Almost immediately they were faced with a country-wide Reform agitation. Bright on behalf of the manufacturers’ National Reform Union called for ratepayers’ suffrage while the trade unions and the First International backed the Reform League which, like the Chartists, stood for universal manhood suffrage. It was the League that organised a great demonstration for 23 July at Hyde Park which the government banned. The organisers refused to accept this and the demonstration went on. The crowds pulled down the railings at Hyde Park and swarmed in. The fear of insurrection and a revival of Chartism, suggested by this, scared the government and Disraeli introduced his own Reform bill, more radical even than Gladstone's, in order, as he said, “to dish the Whigs”.

Marx commented favourably on the tactic of playing off one section of the governing classes against another which the workers had used to get factory laws. The passing of the Second Reform Act presented the same spectacle. The Tories proposed to give the vote to all ratepayers in the towns, while the Liberals wanted a steadily falling property qualification. Since the Liberals had a majority in parliament the actual Act, which with similar ones for Scotland and Ireland increased the electorate from 1,350,000 to 2,470,000, was a compromise.

If Disraeli had hoped to gain the new voters' gratitude and so dish the Whigs he must have been disappointed. The 1868 election returned Gladstone with a big majority. The new government then set about stripping the aristocrats of more of their privileges: they reformed the civil service and the universities; they disestablished the Church in Ireland; they brought in compulsory elementary education. Once again the workers had been used by the manufacturing capitalists as tools in their fight against the landed aristocracy. But this time it was voluntary. The workers allowed themselves to be used in this way. The new voters of 1868 set an unfortunate precedent which has been followed at every election since: they used their votes to hand over political power to the capitalist class.

One of three Tory Ministers to resign was Lord Cranbourne (who later as Lord Salisbury was three times Prime Minister). His complaint was that power was being transferred to

those who have no other property than the labour of their hands. The omnipotence of Parliament is theirs.

Marx and Engels took a similar view. Writing on the Chartists in the 1850's they had pointed out that universal suffrage in Britain would amount to political power for a class-conscious working class. They seem to have regarded the Second Reform Act as a “radical sham” and a travesty on democracy, as indeed it was. But, although fearing a “pro-slavery rebellion", Marx knew its significance as he showed in his famous speech at the Hague in 1872 when he stated that in America, Britain and perhaps Holland the workers could win power for Socialism peacefully, by winning a majority in a general election.

The government extended the franchise to workers in Britain under pressure, partly from the workers themselves and partly from some capitalists who saw this was in their interests. The workers' vote is a real gain, a potential class weapon which should, in Marx’s phrase, be used as “an instrument of emancipation". The government could not, as some claim, now suddenly suspend democracy, for besides being essential to the smooth running of modern capitalism, it is part of the political consciousness of the working class. By their past actions, from Chartism to pushing down the railings in Hyde Park, they have forced governments to take their views into account. Nor is universal suffrage a fraud, as these same people claim, a trick to convince us we have some say in the running of social affairs while the real decisions are made elsewhere. Parliament does control how the state machine is used—whether troops stay East of Suez or fight in Aden, what the police should do to control riots outside the American embassy, what laws the Courts should enforce—and universal suffrage does allow workers to choose who shall sit in Parliament..

Adam Buick

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,