Meanwhile, back in the real world

The establishment have milked it for all it’s worth but tomorrow, after the last stage-managed event surrounding that diamond jubilee is over, for the vast majority of the population it will be back to reality with a bang.

For the jobless teenagers bussed in from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth to sleep rough and work for nothing as stewards during the Thames procession on Saturday, it will be back to grinding poverty and a total absence of a worthwhile future.

For the unemployed it will be another week of fruitless searches for jobs; for those with disabilities, it will mean fending off intrusive medical tests (run by a private company on a pay-by-results contract) intended to force them into menial jobs.

For tens of thousands of homeless households tomorrow will mean another night in temporary accommodation, disrupting children’s education and making it impossible to bring up a family in a sustainable way.

For public sector workers, it’s the start of another month of jobs cuts and increased pension contributions deducted unilaterally on the orders of the ConDem government. And another year of a pay freeze while food prices, in particular, continue to soar.

For those lucky enough to have jobs, Wednesday will for many see a return to a hostile work environment where management makes sure everyone knows their place, getting to work on an overpriced, overcrowded transport system.

An unprecedented, co-ordinated state operation, incorporating the media and led by the BBC, has driven reality into a corner in favour of relentless pomp and pageantry that has gone on for hour after hour, day after day.

No matter that people are being slaughtered by the Assad regime in Syria, or that the Obama administration is using drones to execute at will in Pakistan, or that the global economy is irreversibly heading for a second, far worse crash. More important, beacons are being lit across Britain, loads of boats are struggling down the Thames and some pop stars are holding a concert outside Buckingham Palace.

The last few days have seemed virtually authoritarian in atmosphere, with a contrived “celebration” organised to mark what? The fact that a privileged woman, a huge landowner with several palaces, immense wealth, including a hidden collection of masterpieces, has held an unelected position for 60 years.

Discredited politicians have tried to use the occasion to create a sense of flag-waving Britishness that died with empire and is not particularly supported by the citizens of Wales and Scotland, let alone the minority population in the north of Ireland.

The ConDem government, perhaps the most despised in recent history, no doubt hopes that the queen’s diamond jubilee has taken some of the attention away from its austerity policies which have helped to deepen the recession triggered by the financial crisis of 2007-8.

Of course, the monarchy is not the all-powerful ruler who cites divine authority from God. That period of history ended with the execution of Charles 1 by Cromwell’s parliamentary forces in January 1649.

But it symbolises the fraudulent nature of what passes for democracy despite the immense struggles of the Levellers of the English Civil War, the radical movement of reformers of the late 18^th century, the Chartists of the 19^th century and the Suffragettes of the 20^th century.

Present democracy is little more than a show, a façade behind which corporations and financial institutions, markets and bond dealers, call all the shots. The monarchy is part of that theatre, with Her Majesty’s government the accomplices who direct the state to give big business what it wants and needs.

A fresh constitutional settlement is urgent to meet the aspirations of a disenfranchised majority of working people, replacing the power of the corporatocracy. Such a democracy could never include an unelected, hereditary head of state but would instead express the power of those whose labour actually makes society possible. Tomorrow is as good a time to start on this project as any.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Staying out of the hands of the state

The flowering in the numbers of civil society, non-state organisations, groups and campaigns is the reverse side of an historic decline in participation in formal political processes in Britain and an ever-increasing alienation from existing power structures.

That much is clear from a new report Making good society, which was produced by a commission set up by the Carnegie Trust under the watchful gaze of former New Labour advisor Geoff Mulgan. What is less certain is the path mapped out by the report for civil society in reshaping Britain.

The strength of civil society organisations is their relative independence from the state. It is where, as the report puts it, “people come together to pursue their shared interests, enthusiasms and values” on a not-for-profit basis, adding:

“In civil society, people come together freely as equals. Civil society has grown as an expression of the values of co-operation, solidarity, mutual commitment and freedom. It has complemented, influenced and challenged the formal institutions of democracy. And it has always stood for visions of a good society, as well as meeting more immediate needs.”

In 2006–7, the UK had 870,000 formal civil society associations with assets of £210 billion. Uncounted, but probably in still greater number, are the thousands of informal community groups that do anything from improving public spaces to campaigning for fee-free cash points, the report says.

Modern capitalist state structures, of course, stand for everything civil society doesn’t. The “values” of the state are about ruling over people, a partisan commitment to vested interests such as high finance and corporate power and a “freedom” so circumscribed that anything meaningful will certainly get you on to a more-or-less secret database. No wonder the commission found civil society so much more positive!

So much so that it would like to harness the untapped power and potential of civil society in “responding to the triple crises of our time: those of political trust, economics and the environment.” Don’t get too excited, however. We’re not talking revolution here. Quite the opposite.

For example, the commission wants a greater role for civil society in creating “stable, responsible and transparent financial activity”. This would be achieved, suggests the report, by “strengthening its capacity to influence financial institutions and regulators through building its own specialist institutions that have the knowledge and authority to challenge conventional financial thinking.” Or by “mobilising citizen investors, the millions of ordinary people with pension plans and savings, so that their future incomes are derived from companies that operate responsibly and sustainably.”

In reality, however, the financial system is on the edge of a precipice and pension schemes are in meltdown. Final salary pension schemes are being unilaterally wound up while the state has had to take on limited obligations of companies that have gone under. Now the state scheme itself is under threat.

After correctly pointing out that representative democracy in Britain was created in large part by pressure from below, principally through the struggle of the Chartists and Suffragettes, the report advocates using civil society to breathe new life into the political system through a bigger role for civil society in “organising deliberation, argument
and decision-making”.

However well-meaning, this is surely the wrong approach to civil society organisations. They flourish precisely because they are operate and exist in an environment that is largely self-created. Drawing them, as the report suggests, into solving society’s deep problems will lose them their independence. Nor would this answer the related crises of democracy, the economy and the environment. That will only come when the state itself is transformed and democratised through mass action because it is certainly beyond reform.



Paul Feldman
Communications editor

A Charter for Democracy

How to defend our rights but also secure them in a lasting way was the overall theme running through our Stand Up for Your Rights festival at the weekend. Dramas portraying the struggles of the Levellers of the 17th century and the Chartist movement of the mid-19th century attested to the fact that this is not a new question.

There is, however, plenty of evidence to indicate that new opportunities are rapidly emerging that could, if grasped, enable us to do complete the unfinished business of great movements for rights that form an essential part of our deliberately obscured revolutionary tradition.

A World to Win does not claim to have all the answers. That is why we work with others. But we know this:

• the existing capitalist state and the capitalist economic and financial system it presides over are in deep crisis.
• they cannot control the slide from recession to depression – the markets have spoken.
• neither the state nor the economic system can be reformed in any meaningful way.
• pressure and protest will provide the fuel and energy but cannot in themselves bring about the change we have to have.
• the state and the government are weak, desperate and discredited.
• they have actually lost any assumed right to rule over us.
• creating democratic people’s power in place of corporate power is not a long -term dream but the immediate issue before us.

We need a movement, a force of people that is irresistible, in order to achieve this goal. That is why at the festival we launched a Charter for Democracy. In June 1837, the East London Democratic Association passed a resolution proposed by George Harney that “their brethren of the working and productive classes” form similar associations as the “only rational means of obtaining universal suffrage” and “the overthrow of the monied tyrants who grind the sons of labour to the dust”. In that spirit, the Charter of 2008 says:

The existing system of government fails to represent the interests of the vast majority of people and is democratic in name only. Instead, the state’s primary purpose is to promote business interests at the expense of ordinary working people.

Under these conditions, our hard-won right to vote is undermined and the mass of people are effectively disenfranchised. As the global financial and economic disaster deepens, we refuse to pay for the crisis of capitalism through mass unemployment, repossession of homes, loss of pensions, tax and price rises and cuts in spending on vital services.

We therefore support the campaign for a republican Britain based on a written constitution that would:

• end the rule of political elites and bureaucracies and instead create new local, regional and national Assemblies, representing diverse communities and workplaces

• extend democracy through co-operative forms of ownership and workplace control of major corporations, enterprises and services

• establish social rights to housing, education, health, transport, training, employment, pensions and care in older age

• guarantee basic human rights to organise, strike, speak and act free from state surveillance and interference

• safeguard the civil and religious rights of minority communities and adopt a “no borders” approach to refugees and asylum seekers

• eliminate speculation and profit as the basis for society, ensuring that both ecological care and basic human needs shape production, consumption and lifestyles.

We will initiate, encourage and support all actions such as campaigns to stop repossessions, occupations of threatened workplaces and the rejection of higher fuel and transport charges.

To this end, we will work to establish local and national Conventions for Democracy to build support for the transfer of political and economic power to the majority.

We appeal to everyone to take part in this project for the Charter as a matter of priority. That’s the best way to stand up for our rights.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor