Our sham democracy needs replacing - and soon

If you are looking around for arguments that boost the case for creating a real political and economic democracy in place of the sham one we live under, then this week has seen them piled one on top of the other.

How about the inability of MPs on the Commons public accounts committee (PAC) to get to grips with the failure of global corporations operating in Britain to pay tax on their profits? Senior executives from Amazon, Starbucks and Google were accused of secretly hiding their profits in tax havens when they appeared before MPs.

MPs admitted that a director from Amazon was “deliberately evasive” about the company’s operations. And when a Starbucks executive told MPs that the coffee chain made no profits in Britain, MPs found the story too incredible for words.

Ultimately, however, PAC members were up against the law. Google operates in Ireland and Bermuda because they offer attractive tax rates. "Like any company you play by the rules [and] manage costs efficiently to offer fair value to shareholders," said executive Matt Brittin.

In response to that, all Margaret Hodge, the PAC chair, could do was to accuse the corporations of “immoral behaviour”. But there’s no morality and certainly no democracy involved here. The bottom line is all that counts. The state created the rules to benefit global corporations and these are what they play by.

Here are two more examples from today that add to the case for change. The same PAC was back in action this morning, reporting that taxpayers were unlikely to get back any of the £66 billion spent on shares in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds when they were bailed out four years ago.

That’s the equivalent of about a year’s spending on education by local authorities who have been ordered to cut their budgets by 25%. So the taxpayer is left with a load of worthless shares while the bankers continue to pay out record bonuses to themselves. Nice.

Finally, there’s the record low turn-out for the elections for police commissioners which were held yesterday. Clearly, the vast majority of voters find participation in such elections a waste of time. And they are right. There are already local police authorities that are made up of assorted councillors and others. Why add another tier of bureaucracy?

When you add to this the imposition of the burden of the economic crisis – a crisis they did not create – on the backs of ordinary working people, you have to conclude that the current system is “undemocratic and unjust”.

This truth, contained in the initial statement adopted by the Occupy London general assembly at St Paul’s a year ago, embraces all the institutions of rule that make up the British state/political system.

The evidence is that that this system of rule favours the 1% in a variety of ways and actions and, therefore, cannot be considered democratic in the true sense and meaning of the term. Virtually every element of the establishment is now seen as exposed and corrupt. People are searching for alternatives and answers.

We should not accept that this state/political system is the end of history in so far as the story of democracy is concerned. The time is right historically to consider what a real democracy would and could look like.

To this end, we appeal to all those who support democratic change to work together to develop an Agreement of the People for the 21st century in the spirit of the Levellers who fought for democracy during the English Revolution of the 1640s.

A new Agreement should form the basis of a new constitutional settlement that favours the presently powerless majority. It should propose new forms of democratic decision-making that go beyond representation.

Seven organisations are supporting the project to create and fight for a new Agreement of the People which gets under way in London tomorrow. Be there if you can.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Wanted: Real Utopias and real democracy

“Democracy has recently become extremely important and the key issue in politics.” You can count the political figures who say and mean that on the fingers of one hand. But that was the uncompromising message delivered by John McDonnell to Occupy London activists.

McDonnell is a rare breed in the shape of a Labour MP with principles and perspective. He had been invited to kick off a debate on democracy as part of the New Putney Debates, developing themes from the original debates in 1647 during the English Revolution.

This particular event, organised by the Real Democracy working group, had McDonnell pouring scorn on those who have claimed that the slow evolution of liberal democracy and its economic counterpart – capitalism - had culminated in the “end of history”, with the present system deemed the optimal form of the political voice of society. His alternative view is worth reflecting on:

“But then along came the economic crisis of capitalism. People woke up realising that they have no control over their lives and that governments cannot control the economic system and cannot supply the basic necessities of life. Unemployment and insecurity is on a scale not seen for a long time. My constituency office is now organising food packages for local people.

“We are at quite a crucial moment in our history. The idea of a system which is perfecting itself has failed. The debate now becomes fundamentally relevant to people as it did in the English civil war. People realised they had an opportunity to question and re-shape everything. Virtually every element of the establishment is now seen as exposed and corrupt. People are searching for alternatives and answers.

“It is a time to start envisaging real utopias, based on democracy.  We need to address the state and the economy and the links between the two. People have lost confidence in the state system we have and the politicians within it. Representative democracy is not the last word.”

A leading supporter of Occupy London responded that the last 30 years had led to a “society without power”. There was something fundamentally wrong and the problem was to animate people to do something about it.

Another raised the issue of globalisation and how it dominated economics and politics: can institutions such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and the United Nations democratised or do alternative international institutions need to be created?

The irreconcilable conflict that led to the original Putney Debates was powerfully brought to life in a performance at St Mary’s church, Putney on the exact day and venue that they took place 365 years ago.

Actors Damian LeBas as Leveller and senior military figure Thomas Rainborough, Michael Edwards as Henry Ireton (Cromwell’s son-in-law)  and Dominic Golding as John Wildman (civilian and probably the author of the Agreement of the People) were outstanding in an 11-strong cast, directed by Natasha Langridge in a rehearsed reading of Caryl Churchill’s play, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire.

Earlier, speakers had brought out the inspirational significance of the English revolution, which, said one person, “everything in our political culture today tells us – ignore it, forget about it, it never really happened, and if it did it was only a minor insignificant event”.

Leveller demands in the Agreement of the People, seen as the basis for a new constitution, were far beyond their time and were rejected by the army grandees. But the fundamental thrust of their arguments about suffrage and natural rights were to re-emerge in centuries to come.

A contribution from A World to Win proposed a contemporary form of the Agreement to open up “a new page in democracy that would have to go hand and hand with a social revolution in terms of ownership and control of land, the economy and finance.”

The New Putney Debates have opened the doors for a wide discussion on different approaches: “make and mend”, regulation within the existing institutions or a revolutionary change. The Revolution Will be Networked assembly on November 17 will take up this challenge.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win

Unfinished business of England’s October Revolution

In the early days of October some 365 years ago, the Levellers movement began drafting two documents that would become the political high points of the English Revolution which had developed out of the war between King Charles I and Parliament.

The Case of the Armie Truly Stated was published on October 15, 1647 and by the end of the month, the Levellers had also produced An Agreement of the People for a firm and present peace upon grounds of common right.

Astonishingly, for the times, the New Model Army led by Oliver Cromwell had yielded to pressure to allow for a Council of the Army to meet. It was made up of officers and rank-and-file soldiers, whose representatives were thenceforth known as Agitators.

With the army camped at Putney and Charles I held prisoner, the civil war seemed over. What the two documents set out was a constitutional settlement that had no place for monarchy or the House of Lords. Moreover, they emphasised that power should lie with the people and that the vote be given to all “free men”, with parliaments elected every two years.

These earth-shaking documents came before the Council of the Army at stormy debates held at a church in Putney that lasted from October 28 until November 9. The Case of the Armie Truly Stated declared:

Whereas all power is originally and essentially in the whole body of the people of this nation, and whereas their free choice or consent by their representers is the only original or foundation of all just government, and the reason and end of the choice of all just governors whatsoever is their apprehension of safety and good by them, that it be insisted upon positively, that the supreme power of the people’s representers, or Commons assembled in Parliament, be forthwith clearly declared.

The Agreement stated:

That the power of this, and all future Representatives of this Nation, is inferior only to theirs who choose them, and doth extend, without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons, to the enacting, altering, and repealing of laws, to the erecting and abolishing of offices and courts, to the appointing, removing, and calling to account magistrates and officers of all degrees, to the making war and peace, to the treating with foreign States, and, generally, to whatsoever is not expressly or impliedly reserved by the represented to themselves.

What the Levellers put on the table were questions that still resonate today about the relationship between rulers and ruled, between property and politics, the independence of the legal system and the nature of power and the state.

It was Cromwell’s son-in-law Henry Ireton whose response at Putney summed up the bourgeois nature of the revolution that brought an abrupt end to absolute monarchy and created the social conditions for the subsequent emergence of capitalism.

Ireton said the vote was rightly restricted to those who have “a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom”, namely “the persons in whom all land lies, and those in corporations in whom all trading lies”. He added that “liberty cannot be provided for in a general sense if property be preserved.” Sounds very much like the corporatocracy that rules Britain today!

Although representation through the vote was eventually conceded (but not completely until 1929), the sovereign power of the people mooted by the Levellers (and the proto-communist Diggers) remains as out of reach as ever.

The English Revolution of the 1640s erupted because the relationship between the state and the people had broken down in an irretrievable way. You could argue that the existing relationships between the capitalist state and the people is equally fractured. The state rules for and on behalf of corporations and banks and against the people.

Occupy London working groups are holding a series of events as the New Putney Debates this month and next, and on November 17, an Assembly will be held in London to work on a new Agreement of the People. Both events provide opportunities to complete the unfinished business of England’s October Revolution.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor