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1 Claiming democracy for the people

Full-on globalisation has resulted in an unholy alliance between the state, political parties, corporate and financial power in all the major capitalist countries. From London to Washington, from Berlin to Rome, from Tokyo to Seoul, the story is essentially the same.

Democracy is reduced to a sham, a façade behind which real decisions are made and power exercised over ordinary people. Elections count for little and the aspirations of ordinary people are denied by state systems that work for big business.

The financial meltdown exposed the real power relations in capitalist society for all to see. Bankers lined up for state bail-outs, but working people are having their hours and pay cut, or losing their jobs and their homes. Essential services for all are being slashed.

Struggles for jobs, homes, action on the climate, in defence of social and political rights immediately come face to face with state forces acting to defend the existing social and property framework. Activists are detained under anti-terror laws and their communications intercepted. Occupations, from wind turbine workers on the Isle of Wight to car workers in South Korea, are subject to siege conditions and violent assault by the police. Effective strike action is curtailed in countries like Britain by draconian anti-union laws.

Each state more and more resembles the senior management team of a corporation, with the prime minister or president acting like a chief executive. Their role is to smooth the way for transnational corporations and banks to operate as freely as possible and to create new markets and profit-making opportunities in areas such as education, health and pensions.

In fact, it can often look like a merger, with leading lights from the world of business sitting in governments like New Labour and states like Italy under the control of billionaire businessman Berlusconi. Ministers in Britain leave office and within weeks are sitting on the boards of major corporations.

The state is the lynchpin of the social system of capitalism, holding it all together. It provides the essential ideological, political, social, legal, educational and coercive frameworks without which society in general and capitalism in particular cannot function.

Real power, control and influence lie beyond the reach of ordinary people. Authority instead is concentrated in the hands of permanent structures that rule over, rather than on behalf of, society. In Britain, these institutions include central and local government administration, central bank, legal and penal systems, the police, armed forces, secret intelligence agencies, the monarchy and a whole variety of quasi-state bodies.

Their role is to “defend the realm” – the territory of Britain – from any threat, external or internal. Promoting radical, let alone revolutionary, change in relation to the state is considered a threat to the established order, making it “acceptable” to subvert legal political and campaigning organisations through covert means. In major confrontations like the miners’ strike for jobs of 1984-5, state forces are deployed physically to maintain the status quo.

The state has control over formative education, setting out what is taught in schools to ensure that the social contract of capitalism – employer and wage earner – is binding and permanent and that the notion of democracy conveyed reinforces the status quo. Established state religion in the shape of the Church of England plays a similar role while the mass media, especially the BBC, can be relied upon to sing the same loyal tune.

The modern state in Britain came into existence in the 19th century to allow corporate and financial interests to flourish while keeping society from breaking apart. Corporate ownership of the means of production and property, including land, was enshrined in law. Shareholders and employers got to retain profits from the exploitation of labour. A police force was created to maintain the status quo, while the army enforced colonial rule. The machinery of government expanded into every corner of Britain and its Empire.

After two world wars, in the face of popular anger, a welfare state was built in many countries. It seemed to signal a new era of social harmony, with the state mediating between conflicting class interests. Then, following the economic crisis of the 1970s, the tsunami of privatisation, spending cuts, anti-union laws and corporate-led globalisation swept all that away.

Post-war controls over the movement of finance and production were abandoned and the trade unions shackled. The unregulated, free market capitalism that is now in disarray was brought into being by the US and British states, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union.

Because capitalism is now globalised, each state has ceded power to supra-national bodies like the WTO and is subject to the demands of the transnational corporations and international finance. When the TNCs and bankers say jump, the state does exactly that. In the market/business state we are expected to carry the entire cost of the financial crisis while bankers’ bonuses return to their previous astronomical levels.

Political representation developed out of the bitter and long struggle against the ruling classes for the vote and basic democratic rights. In Britain, it led to the creation of the Labour Party and eventually to reforms like the health service achieved through Parliament.

Now this historically important but nevertheless limited form of bourgeois representative democracy without power is in terminal crisis. Globalisation has reduced the control of the national state over the economy and thus eroded the basis for achieving reforms through elections to Parliament.

It was this process that transformed Labour – founded on reforming capitalism – into an outright capitalist party. Its leaders have shut down internal democracy and transformed New Labour into a party that promotes war and the capitalist economy in competition with the Tories.

While MPs have fiddled their expenses, Parliament has failed to protect rights won over centuries, such as habeus corpus and the right to a jury trial. Nor did they defend the right to free education and health care. These same rights are being progressively dismantled by the executive as the welfare state gives way to privatisation and a profit-driven market state backed by all mainstream parties. This has led to huge abstentions at elections, and amounts to a lethal undermining of the right to vote, creating disenfranchisement on a massive scale. It undercuts any claim that we live in a democracy. 

It is ironic that in spite of devolution, the British state is more centralised than ever before, and assemblies and parliaments have not brought significant improvements for people in Wales and Scotland.

Yet it would be a worthless sort of independence if achieved within a crisis-ridden capitalist system. Independence will only improve the lives of ordinary people if it is won as part of a transformation of the whole British state and in a way that nurtures and defends the material unity of the working class in every region and country.

As the state turns more and more to repression, surveillance and foreign wars to maintain its grip, we need to claim democracy for the people. Without a comprehensive revolutionary regime change we cannot breathe new life into democratic achievements and make the right to vote mean something again by creating representation with power.

1.1 Revolutionary solutions

Extending and expanding democracy to give expression to what the term actually means – the power and rule of the people – has to focus on building a momentum which leads to the dismantling of the existing state.

In its place, the people themselves would develop a transitional democratic state that takes forward the achievements of the last 200 years in winning basic democratic rights.
It would go beyond representative democracy, which actually dilutes and filters the aspirations of the powerless majority until they are acceptable.

Abolishing the present division between political and economic power would create the conditions for the rule of the majority for the first time in history. Britain’s currently neutered Parliament could be transformed into a body with real executive power as part of a democratic state at all levels in society.

A People’s Convention on the constitution should be called. It should consider extending democracy in new ways. For example, all workers should have the right to democracy at work, whether in a factory, hospital call centre, in public transport, civil service, local government, offices, shops, schools, colleges or university. All major decisions would require the consent of the workforce. Self-management would replace hierarchies.

1.1.1 Framework for democracy

A framework for a new democratic Britain could be built around:

• Local, regional and national People’s Conventions/Parliaments with executive as well as deliberative power and control over resources
• delegates that reflect diversity in our communities, with distinct voices for workplaces, women, minority ethnic citizens, older people, young people, students and small businesses
• an electoral system in balance with the new participatory system
• delegates to be paid no more than the average national income and subject to recall and removal by local/regional voters at any time
• mass involvement in the new democratic process through the Internet and other media
• extensive consultation with voters before decisions are taken at any level

A new constitution would enshrine a Charter of Economic and Social Rights and should include:

• the right to co-operative ownership and self-management
• employment for those who can work and average pay for those who cannot
• decent housing at affordable cost for everyone
• free education for students at all ages; the right to free continuing education and training
• equal pay and job opportunities for women; free child care
• free health care at all levels and types of treatment
• dignity in old age through pension provision at average income, and free social care
• safe and nutritious food at affordable prices
• rights to live in an environment shaped by ecological care and basic human needs.

1.1.2 The rule of law

We need to take forward what human society has achieved in terms of law while abolishing the existing class-biased framework of private property and the wage-labour contract. A new courts system would involve lay judges with special training. A commission would investigate what laws inherited from capitalism need scrapping or amending in the light of the structure of the new society. The rule of law must prevail with courts and lawyers free from state interference.  

A Bill of Rights should affirm in unconditional and positive terms individual rights to liberty and freedom from arbitrary arrest and include:

• habeas corpus, requiring people arrested to be brought to court and charged or released immediately
• free and equal legal representation
• freedom from state surveillance and interception of communications
• rights to organise, associate, demonstrate and strike
• equality in all areas for minority communities
• the free movement of people based on “no borders” principles.

The criminal law system is not so much about “justice” or even “fighting crime” as a way of reinforcing existing punitive forms of social control and authority. In particular, young people are made scapegoats for the ills of society as a whole. Instead of medieval naming and shaming, retribution, vengeance and punishment, we should emphasise reparation and community self-control and influence. Law should make offenders face up to their responsibilities and their impact on communities.

The existing, barbaric prison system should be scrapped. Where it is unavoidable to detain offenders, a new approach would make rehabilitation the sole priority. A transitional state should set out to decriminalise drugs as a step towards dealing with the abuse issue. We should encourage the use of arbitration, adjudication and conciliation so that communities come to accept that they have a responsibility for the personal and social development of all of their citizens.

The police force in Britain is incapable of serving communities because of the way it is established, run and controlled. The bureaucratic, secret world of the police means they are often closer to the criminal fraternity than ordinary people and many vulnerable and innocent people end up serving long sentences for crimes they did not commit. The community should learn to police itself, relying on professional help where necessary, and the existing force should be reorganised to serve communities. 

1.1.3 State within the state

The secret intelligence agencies, MI5 (Security Service) and MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service) together with the police Special Branch would also be abolished. The secretive Privy Council, which has powers to impose rule by decree, will be dissolved. These are the key sections of the state within the state. The army, together with the navy and air force, which is used to fight wars on behalf of the capitalist state, would be reorganised as a defensive force under democratic control and command as a prelude to their dissolution. All their weapons of mass destruction will be scrapped.
 
The state administrative machine of departments, executive agencies and quangos is inherently conservative and remote. Expertise is used to reinforce the status quo or vested interests. Existing government departments function to maintain social control. For example, 90% of those involved in carrying out the functions of the Home Office are attached to the prisons and asylum systems.  
 
Charities that support vulnerable people now bid against the private sector for funds, undermining their whole reason for existing. They have been co-opted into a “value for money” approach and continuous cost cutting. With the end of the market state, they can play a crucial role in a society that is in transition from deprivation and inequality to equality and fairness.

We will be obliged to replace the existing administrative machinery with new bodies under the sway and control of national, regional and local People’s Assemblies. The aim should be the elimination of state administration wherever possible and an end to special privileges and making a career out of bureaucracy. The institution of monarchy would be dissolved and the Church of England separated from the state.

What we have set out are ideas for a transitional state, which will facilitate its own eventual dissolution. The more people get involved in determining their own lives in collaboration with others, the more diminished will be the power of the state and the more unnecessary it will become.

Each country will find its own path to freeing the people from state oppression and creating new democratic structures that reflect revolutionised economic and social relations. In this way, we would open a new chapter in the history of international relations. These would be based on co-operation and collaboration to solve the pressing issues facing humanity in every corner of the globe and the United Nations would mean just that for the first time in its history.

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