Reclaim democracy now!

Just because global elites are always harping on about “democracy”, claiming it as the ideal political system, doesn’t mean that we abstain from the question. The challenge is to fight for a more advanced democracy than society has achieved so far.

We shouldn’t accept the present democracy as the last word on the subject but see in its historical and social context. While the Russian Marxist and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin considered bourgeois democracy, a “great historical advance in comparison with medievalism”, he qualified this by adding:

But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich… in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.

Before him, Fred Engels, who collaborated with Karl Marx to produce ground-breaking analysis, wrote his seminal work on the origins of private property, family and the state. In it, Engels explained that however democratic the modern representative state was, its function was to maintain the rule of one class over another.

And that remains the case today in the democracies like Britain, the United States and France. Since Engels and Lenin, however, the fusion of capital with politics, particularly in the last 30 years, has further emasculated representative democracy. The Real Democracy Now movement that has flowered in Spain immediately and correctly identified the merging of the political system with corporate and financial power as the source of the problem.

So what should we struggle for? What about replacing democracy for the rich with a democracy for the dispossessed, the poor and the disenfranchised? What about extending democracy in new ways, by freeing people from the rule of the corporations and the banks, not to say the reactionary media? What about bringing democracy to the workplace, the school and the university through co-ownership and self-management?

Achieving these objectives will without doubt require the dismantling of the present state which in innumerable ways maintains and sustains the status quo. The is because, as others have shown, the present limited democracy is the political form that capitalism has assumed for itself.

It is both democratic and undemocratic at the same time, allowing certain freedoms while denying access to real power itself. You cannot imagine an advance in the nature and content of democracy within the present state because the two stand in contradiction to each other.

Opportunities for resolving this apparent puzzle are emerging through the movement of society itself in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and now Spain. We have to go beyond demands for participation and transparency. Important as they are, they sidestep the question of the nature of the state itself.

Arguing for and building people’s assemblies is a way forward in Britain and internationally. They can build on the growing resistance to the ConDem government on a range of issues and practice democracy by seeking to represent the widest range of social and political interests. They will challenge sectarian behaviour and undemocratic practices and discourage closed committees and pre-planning fixed agendas.

Assemblies established on a permanent basis can discuss the nature of the present democracy and what could be better; the nature of power – who’s got it and how do ordinary people win it. They can encourage sovereign decisions and direct action. They are both a means to bring people together across sectoral lines as well as the potential means by which we can democratically transform society and replace the state with a network of assemblies. Let’s reclaim democracy!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Power is not a dirty word

The occupation of Puerta del Sol in Madrid and actions in other Spanish cities organised by the Real Democracy Now/M-15 movement, openly challenges the country’s economic and status quo.

Where the movement heads next, its likely ambitions and aspirations, are hotly contested and debated in Madrid, Barcelona and outside Spanish embassies in other countries where solidarity camps have been established.

Some have designated the movement as the start of the Spanish Revolution and reject the mainstream political process, urging people “not to vote for them” in last Sunday’s elections. In London, one debate is between those who view it as primarily a Spanish question and others who favour a more global approach.

An open debate and struggle over ideas, orientation, strategy and tactics is fundamental. The M-15’s manifesto embraces this approach and the way the Puerta del Sol occupation is run encapsulates in microcosm how a future society could work more democratically than the present capitalist one.

For some, engaging in an alternative democratic, transparent process is a victory in itself and the movement should more or less leave it there. On his Beyond Clicktivism blog, Tim Hardy endorses philosopher John Holloway’s view that “the quest for power with the aim of transforming society sets us up for perpetual disappointment”.

Hardy claims the Spanish protests “don’t hope to seize power” and seek “instead to transform existing power relations” allowing “participants to directly experience the possibility of a better world through participating in assemblies and consensus decision-making.”

Well, yes and no dialectically speaking. The M-15’s manifesto says, for example, “the current status of our government and economic system… in many ways is an obstacle to human progress.” While the manifesto does not explicitly demand a new system, the implication is clear:

“The will and purpose of the current system is the accumulation of money, not regarding efficiency and the welfare of society. Wasting resources, destroying the planet, creating unemployment and unhappy consumers.”

In Holloway’s outlook, all power is alienating and is to be avoided; only consciousness developed in the struggle is positive. In his book Change the world without taking power (here’s an excellent critique of it by Phil Sharpe), Holloway focuses on human spontaneous activity because, he claims, it alone has the quality of overcoming alienation. Why it has not done so yet, despite countless mass struggles, is not explained.

As Sharpe notes: “In strategic terms Holloway can only postulate an endless repetition of struggle as being able to ultimately transcend alienation. This glosses over the tendency of spontaneous struggles to have alienating limitations and qualities that undermine the possibility of universal human emancipation. These embrace the tendency to gravitate towards reformist aims and restricted trade union type demands and the related acceptance of capitalism.”

The fact remains, whether we like it or not, that capitalism organises itself through state structures. The state is not some neutral body that can be won over to the side of ordinary people. Corporations and banks express their power over ordinary people through this state, which has physical force available to uphold its authority.

The state creates laws and practices that relate to property and share ownership, employment, working conditions, education, social rights, welfare and so on. It is in essence a capitalist state. Everything working people have gained is the result of a struggle AGAINST the state in each country.

What is new is that the political parties like the PSOE in Spain and Labour in Britain that once mediated between capital and labour through their access to the state’s political system, no longer pretend to do so. Corporate-driven globalisation has meant these parties’ effective integration into a market state.

In this context, making use of the existing state structures, including the political system, to shape human society in a progressive fashion is no longer a viable option. The present state has to go and power has to change hands, from the minority to the majority, in revolutionary practice. Corporate and financial power could be co-owned and controlled and exercised through a network of people’s assemblies.

Creating “real democracy now” demands nothing less.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Wanted: a democracy for the people

The Tory wing of the Coalition’s plans for the “Big Society”, which now include a massive shake-up of the police force, are not simply a cover for public spending cuts. They are far more sinister than that.

The Tories, especially, because they are genuine representatives of the ruling classes rather than the aspirant New Labourites, understand and are concerned about a deepening social and political alienation in Britain.

The parliamentary state does not rule through naked force but through a changing mix of ideology and practice. Because the state holds power for a minority – the capitalist classes – it actually needs, even craves, a legitimacy from society at large.

This is achieved through various mechanisms such as elections at national and local level as well as a reiteration of the importance of the state in maintaining order in society and providing essential services.

Without a consent that is also fairly active, the state tends to lose its authority. People stop voting, or express little trust or faith in mainstream political parties. This extends to a loss of “respect” for other parts of the state like the police force or the legal system. These are all a feature of Britain today.

New Labour’s response was to create more and more layers of bureaucracy while retaining power over decision-making at the centre. Thus schools and hospitals, for example, were overwhelmed with new instructions and targets almost on a monthly basis. None of this worked. Teachers and health workers – and the police – faced mountains of bureaucracy, which led to fiddling of figures on a grand scale.

The Tories’ approach to the challenge of securing support for the state is openly populist, by contrast. Plans for schools, the health service and now the police involve co-opting vast numbers of workers as well as members of the public. Teachers will be invited to have a direct say in the running of schools, for example, while “free schools” will go further and bring in parents.

Yesterday’s announcement about the police force involve directly-elected local commissioners, joint patrols with the community and the recruitment of tens of thousands of special constables. They will be unpaid volunteers but have powers of arrest like ordinary police.

The sinister side becomes more apparent with the prospect of vigilante policing and right-wing, racist commissioners being elected. Special constables will always be useful in times of social unrest and strikes, which is the period we are entering as a result of the economic crisis. And, of course, getting workers delivering front-line services involved in making the spending cuts that are coming up the line is a great way to divide and rule.

Our response cannot be, however, to let things remain as they are. That would put us in a position of defending the capitalist state and the way it does things. The Tories are desperately trying to modernise a state whose political structures are 19^th century while coping with the demands of a genuine 21^st century global financial and economic crisis.

This is a set of improbable contradictions. The capitalist state cannot possibly reform itself by handing over power simply because it does not and can never represent the mass of the people. A leopard cannot change its spots and the present state will always rule on behalf of corporate and financial power.

Our demand is not for “involvement” but a genuine transfer of real power. That means democratic control and ownership of resources as well as a political voice that is direct and locally based. The “Big Society” is not that, of course. But it does create a challenge which we should start to answer in a creative, revolutionary way to claim democracy for the people.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Power, representation and the state

There is now a competition between the Tories and some members of the New Labour cabinet about how to “redistribute power” in a bid to defuse an historic political crisis that shows no sign of abating.

Tory leader David Cameron is today setting out a series of proposals about changing the relationship between MPs and the government, including the idea of fixed-term parliaments, while Alan Johnson, the health secretary and a front-runner to succeed Gordon Brown, is advocating a form of proportional representation when it come to voting.

Cameron, astutely, put his finger on the key question in an article in The Guardian, where he wrote: “The anger, the suspicion and the cynicism – yes with politics and politicians, but with so much else besides – are the result of people's slow but sure realisation that they have very little control over the world around them, and over much that determines whether or not they'll live happy and fulfilling lives."

But what neither Cameron nor any other establishment politician is going to ever acknowledge is that this has always been the relationship between people and power in Britain and all other capitalist countries adorned with a representative democratic political system. Representation as a form of politics was designed from the outset to act as a barrier to and not as an access to power.

Representation as a modern political concept has its origins in the thinking of James Madison, one of the key architects of the American constitution. Concerned with the danger, to him, of “majority tyranny”, he wrote that representation provides a mechanism

to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose.

So Madison’s objective was clear – to avoid decisions “pronounced by the people themselves”. Instead, they would be “represented”. Representation is, therefore, a transfer of power to others, its alienation. This seemingly voluntary giving up of power enabled then allowed the ruling classes to consolidate their rule through the construction of specialist institutions which evolved into the capitalist state, of which Parliament (and Congress in the US) is a subordinate part.

What Cameron and others are talking about are some cosmetic alterations to formal procedures in order to continue to disguise this essential truth about the nature of power in capitalist society: that ordinary people have no power – and can never access it – so long as the state continues to sustain the basic relationships of capitalism, whereby the rich and the powerful make the key decisions. This is the material basis for the alienation in society that Cameron refers to, which is reflecting itself in politics so sharply precisely because of the collapse of confidence in the capitalist economic and financial system.

In Unmasking the State, we put forward a series of proposals for a new, transitional democratic state which would replace the existing institutions and actually give ordinary people direct access for power so long denied them. Some of these ideas are summed up in our People’s Charter for Democracy, which we urge you to sign and help build the momentum for the revolutionary transfer of power itself to the majority.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Masters and servants: the state at work

The notion that the police are, or should be, “public servants” is an admirable ideal. Unfortunately, it bears little relation to reality, as the policing of the G20 protests have proved.

Some in the liberal media, like The Observer, see the main role of the police as “keeping the peace”, describing them as “our police”, a neutral body which, according to the paper’s editorial yesterday, should not become the enforcers of government policy. This also reflects the views of Nick Hardwick, chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) who told the newspaper that the police should be the public’s servants “not masters”.

The IPCC, however, is part of the same set-up that includes the police. It’s “independent tag” is purely nominal. Just like the Metropolitan Police, it had to adjust its statements on the death of Ian Tomlinson, allowing a second post-mortem. Hardwick runs a lame-duck organisation that, it will be recalled, did nothing to prevent police from evading responsibility for the cold-blooded killing of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes on the Underground.

Hardwick, like The Observer, wants to limit the angry popular reaction to the policing of the G20 and other actions. So far the IPCC has received more than 185 complaints relating to G20 of which almost 90 were from alleged victims of - or witnesses to - police force. A further 52 relate to complaints about police tactics such as not letting people through an area.

Over the weekend, more graphic video shot by the Climate Camp showed further evidence of police brutality. Today, it emerged that another branch of the state had handed secret police briefings to the energy corporation E.ON in the run-up to last year’s camp near the Kingsnorth power station in Kent. Officials from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) gave the company detailed information about protesters and their plans.

Kevin Smith, a spokesperson for the Climate Camp, said: "The proposed coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth is a source of both international climate embarrassment to the government and reputational damage to E.ON, so it comes as no surprise that they are colluding to undermine the growing social movement of people in this country who are determined to prevent it from happening ... We demand to know who is responsible for passing on this information and see them held accountable."

Liberal MP David Howarth, who obtained the emails, said "it is as though BERR was treating the police as an extension of E.ON's private security operation". Mr Howarth, you have hit the nail on the head – even if you don’t want to draw the conclusions from what has been established.

The apparatus of the capitalist state is at the disposal of the corporations and capitalism in general. From time to time, this means using force and mass arrests to intimidate and break up lawful protests; it also involves handing over unknown sums of taxpayers’ money to banks who have helped wreck the economy. Ministers and their cronies abuse the same state machine to destroy and smear opponents, as revealed in the notorious Damian McBride affair.

Far from acting as public servants, the institutions and personnel of the state are indeed our masters and it will remain that way whatever the outcome of inquiries and investigations that are allowed to try and take the heat out of the situation. They will be used to obscure the real issue in society – that the limited democracy we struggled for has been eroded by an authoritarian state that is beyond reform. How ordinary people have to become their own “masters”, in order to create new democratic forms beyond the present state, is the subject of A World to Win’s open discussion this Wednesday. Come and join the debate.

Paul Feldman
AWTW 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

Dr Who and the economic crisis

An economic crisis like the one we are now in has a ruthless, market-driven logic all of its own. As it takes its toll of jobs, homes and living standards, the results of the collapse of credit-fuelled growth also exposes fundamental limitations of the capitalist state system and advance the case for revolutionary change.

New Labour is confused and close to paralysis, like rabbits caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, as the economy spins out of control. This week alone business confidence is reported at a 16 year low; mortgage approvals are down 60% in a year and house prices are heading south in a big way; builders like Wimpey are laying off workers; Marks and Spencers have reported a dramatic fall in food sales and lorry drivers are in London today in a protest against rising fuel prices.

Oh, and shares plunged yesterday, taking the FTSE 100 more than a 1,000 points lower since May when there was talk of the credit crunch being at its highest peak. Now the financial sector is bracing for more bad news as decades of fantasy finance deals continue to implode. Both to governments and ordinary people, it seems as if external forces from the outer limits of the solar system have taken over. But this is not an episode of Dr Who with the Daleks taking over Earth.

The facts are that capitalism is a system based on creating economic forces and processes that are then subordinated to the unseen hand of markets for sale at a profit. Commodities are produced that may or may not sell, that use up resources at a rapid rate, within a credit-driven production and purchasing system. While workers co-operate across the globe in producing commodities and services, their products are placed on the market in a haphazard and chaotic way.

This anarchic side of capitalism lies behind past and present crises. Today’s disruption to the economy has aspects which are unique and which contribute to the impotence of states to make any impact. The corporate-driven globalisation process has created economic and financial activities that transcend state borders and national controls in their scope. This makes governments fearful of intervening lest they drive capital away to other parts of the globe.

But even before the recent globalisation period, capitalist states and governments hardly exhibited the capacity to overcome recessions and slumps. This is no mystery, although it is often presented as one. The present-day state system evolved out of the need for capitalists to find a political expression which could facilitate their activities in the broadest sense. Their requirement, for example, of an educated, fit workforce is formally delivered by a state (although corporations are increasingly “partners” in this process).

Restrictions on the right to strike are implemented through laws and courts, for example. While the democratic side of the state has allowed people a vote in who governs them, it cannot alter this essential characteristic of the political system as a mechanism for maintaining and developing capitalism itself.

Therein lies the weakness of the state when economic crisis becomes the dominant issue in society, as it is doing in Britain today. The forces at work are largely outside of its control in the shape of privately-owned corporations and financial systems. These capitalist forces themselves are equally unable to buck the market, as Marks and Spencers has found out. In this situation, adjusting interest rates or bailing out a bank or two has negligible impact or can even make matters worse. People rapidly lose confidence in existing politics and governments as a way of solving problems, as New Labour found out last week when it finished fifth in the Henley by-election behind the far-right BNP.

This is not merely an issue about New Labour but about the state system as a whole. The state has demonstrated on countless occasions that it is a creature/prisoner of the very forces that when they spin out of control, devastate millions of lives and threaten global conflict. Bringing economic forces under some kind of social, democratic control, therefore, is absolutely necessary if we are to begin the task of getting to grips with the crisis. The key to this is building support for the project of replacing the failed capitalist state with a democratic, alternative model based on people’s power.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

The eunuch of all Parliaments

When the leader of a major political party devotes 2,500 words in a national newspaper to the crisis of the parliamentary political system, he confirms that it’s not only New Labour that is in free fall. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is expressing the fact that the authority, legitimacy and role of the state itself is now being called into question by increasing numbers of people.

Of course Clegg has some self interest because without some change in the voting system, for example, his party is continually squeezed by first-past-the-post elections. But his article in The Independent reveals real fears amongst the political elite.

Clegg writes that the ceremonial aspects of parliament hide “a crisis in which the public feel ever more alienated from, and angry towards, the political class. And a crisis in which Parliament itself is neutered by the all encompassing power of the centralised Whitehall state”. He says that there is “a spineless abdication of scrutiny and accountability at the heart of our government” and claims: “The mother of all Parliaments has become the eunuch of all Parliaments.”

As evidence, he cites the fall-off in voting, where in 2001 and 2005,more people didn’t vote than supported the winning party, New Labour, or the fact that three out of four people say they think politicians don’t tell the truth. It is true, as Clegg writes, that “people have been locked out of politics for too long”. But what he cannot recognise, of course, is that this is how the system has always operated – except that the situation has clearly deteriorated rapidly in recent decades under Thatcher and then Blair/Brown.

Ordinary people have only ever been allowed a modest participation in politics through the occasional visit to the ballot box where they could elect representatives to govern on their behalf without any further accountability. Voters have never had a direct democratic voice or role, even after the franchise was extended nearly 150 years ago. Parliament has never had any effective control over what the government does since that time.

A number of processes have come together to discredit even this limited version of democracy. During the last 35 years of corporate-driven globalisation, the state has more and more abandoned parliamentary niceties to rule in a kind of managerial style that tries to imitate the transnationals. The British government, or the “executive”, itself is hardly in control, let alone parliament. For example, economic policy, large areas of law, environmental policy and so on are determined at European Union level by unelected and totally unaccountable commissioners or by global bodies like the World Trade. All the major parties, including Clegg’s, have embraced the market economy’s philosophy and only disagree about marginal questions.

So Clegg’s call to redistribute power within the essentially capitalist political system, to remedy what he calls “the imbalance of the system” not only misses the point but stands no chance of success whatsoever. No one is going to set up a convention of citizens to draft a new constitution for Britain to, as he puts it, “make power contingent on accountability” or give MPs real power over an executive which in turn is in thrall to corporate power.

The Lib Dem leader clearly feels, rightly, that time is running out and warns that the “greatest danger” is “the feeling that change is no longer possible”. To which we should add: Change is no longer be possible in the old way, through traditional institutions or political parties. So as parliament won’t and can’t yield, the time has come to create and extend direct democracy through mass action. In fashioning real democracy at every level, including the workplace, we would set out to break the capitalist monopoly of power. In doing this, we would be acting in the tradition that created the parliamentary state in the first place.


Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor

Composting the state

The Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow brought activists, local communities and others opposed to the building of a new runway at the airport, together in an inspiring, united way. The political support of local MP John McDonnell was also important, especially in dealing with the state. This enclave of democracy and self-organisation surrounded by surveillance cameras and massive searchlights, police horses and vans was a shining example of self-sacrifice and utopianism. The camp was well prepared and organised and did not allow itself to be derailed by innumerable provocations from police and media. An extremely high level of understanding about the crisis was self-evident, with many scientists and students of ecology present.

A united front of a different kind confronted the camp – a combination of the New Labour government, the global corporate owners of the airport and the forces of the state. These forces remain unmoved by the protest. The government is not much concerned about the communities who are under the flight path of the proposed new runway. Expansion of the airport is deemed an economic necessity – and that’s what counts for this government. Ferrovial, the construction giant that owns the privatised British Airports Authority, worked closely with thousands of police (and police spies) to blockade the climate camp and protect their property.

Which brings us to the nub of the fight against climate chaos – how can we tackle the source of global warming if we are denied access to the means to do so? There is no doubt that the science, technology and organisational skills exist that, if deployed in a positive way, could open the way to a sustainable future. But at present these resources remain in the hands of the global corporations like Ferrovial and are deployed primarily in the interests of profit. Endorsing this set-up are governments like New Labour, who insist that carbon emission reduction policies do not interfere with the market economy and, as a consequence, make no impact. Finally, the institutions of the state like the police, using a wide range of powers including anti-terror laws, will use force to protect private property and their political masters.

Direct action serves to highlight some of these problems but because it is restricted to a series of short-term protests leaves unanswered the strategic challenge. This revolves around the pressing need to transform the economy from one run along capitalist lines to a system that is founded on a co-operative, not-for-profit basis offering maximum protection to eco-systems. It is a mistake to think you can achieve these aims without addressing the issue of the state and state power. Capitalism rules through the state and especially since globalisation, the state is pretty much immune to pressure and protest.

To compost capitalism, to recycle corporate wealth, resources, technology, science and skills, we have to compost the state as well. The movement against climate chaos, and other groups fighting for a sustainable, non-capitalist future, have to direct their energies towards transforming the state. In place of the fraud of the parliamentary system, we should campaign for forms of direct democracy at local, regional and national level. We should extend the principles of democracy beyond the vote to include self-management and control of workplaces and public bodies. This would mean democratic ownership and control of all the principal economic, financial and technology resources by communities, producers and consumers. Do this and we really will have composted capitalism.


Paul Feldman, communications editor

Targeting the climate camp

The lurid media headlines aimed at the climate action camp, combined with systematic police harassment, just about sum up the state of Britain today. Anything that disturbs the status quo and challenges corporate assumptions about the environment or anything else is regarded as intolerable and dangerous. The state will crackdown to block any serious protest action if necessary, and you wouldn’t put it past the police to concoct an excuse to shut the camp down. For example, the Daily Telegraph today declares that “Heathrow protesters 'may stage bomb hoax'”. The source of their story? Why, none other than a spokesperson for the British Airports Authority, which has already tried to ban people from attending the camp. "We are particularly concerned they [anarchists] will try to disguise themselves as passengers or members of our staff, because the protesters have already evaded our officers on two previous occasions," a spokespeson said.

No doubt police will now stop and search people entering the camp site to make sure they are not hiding “smart clothes” which could then be used to disguise themselves as “ordinary people”! The same BAA, which is owned by the global construction firm Ferrovial, has already suggested that the camp could be a perfect cover for terrorists to mount an attack. On that logic, any gathering of more than three people could be considered dangerous, anywhere in Britain. What about football crowds, or people going to a cricket match, or to a race meeting? Surely terrorists could buy themselves a club shirt, carry a picnic hamper for Lord’s or buy a morning suit to attend Ascot and then blow themselves up. The only answer is for people to attend sporting and other events in their underwear – or to be banned from assembling in large numbers either to enjoy themselves or take part in a protest.

While the police state is being put together under the sponsorship of the New Labour government, the show must go on. Downing Street has warned that "action that would disrupt the running of Heathrow would be unacceptable”. So what is actually acceptable? The enforced expansion of Heathrow, which will destroy communities living under the flight path of a new runway, and add to climate change is fine. So too is covering up the government’s inability to meet European Union targets on renewable energy. According to reports, government officials have secretly briefed ministers that Britain has no hope of getting remotely near the new renewable energy target that Tony Blair signed up to in the spring - and have suggested that they find ways of getting out of it. Officials within the former Department of Trade and Industry have admitted that under current policies, Britain would miss the EU's 2020 target of 20% energy from renewables by a long way. And they suggest that "statistical interpretations of the target" be used rather than new ways to reach it. At least the government is consistent. There was a target for cutting carbon dioxide by 20% by 2010 in the 1997 manifesto. This was later referred to not as a “target” but as “domestic goal we will move towards”. The mounting media and state attacks on the climate camp are aimed at silencing those who want the truth to come out – and who, more importantly, want to do something about it.

Paul Feldman, AWTW communications editor

Terrorism and 'our way of life'

The near-miss terror attacks in London and Glasgow reveal the futility of the government’s policies and methods, which all lead in one direction – towards full-scale, authoritarian rule. For, in the end, the government’s aim of “defeating terrorism” will require a police state apparatus on an immense and permanent scale. Clearly, MI5 and the police knew nothing about those who tried to blow up a London night club and Glasgow airport’s terminal. This is despite the fact that MI5’s budget has been doubled under New Labour. To remedy that situation, the state will need to know what everyone is thinking and doing, especially those living in minority communities. One half of the country will have to spy on the other half, turning Britain into a nation of informers. The Blair government went a long way down this road, handing the police immense new powers under a series of anti-terror laws. These undermined the principle of habeas corpus, which is supposed to prevent detention without charge or trial. Brown intends to go further, extending the period police can hold suspects and allowing the state to use telephone intercepts in court.

But new laws, however draconian, will make not a jot of difference when it comes to “defeating terrorism”. No self-respecting terrorist will be deterred by the threat of imprisonment or detention without trial. They are committed to their destructive, reactionary acts for ideological reasons. Many are prepared to die in committing atrocities, as the people of Iraq discover to their cost in an horrific way each day. Terrorists do not care if they effectively strengthen the hand of the state they actually oppose.

The prospect of a full-scale police state, parallel with a permanent threat of terror attacks, is unacceptable, self-defeating and, of course, no solution to the issue at hand. So what is the alternative? Brown says he wants to win the “hearts and minds” of the Muslim community in Britain, to encourage them to oust the extremists from their midst. How arrogant this sermonising approach is. We live in an unequal, capitalist society where the “values” of society are more often than not set down by the ruling elites in order to keep the rest of us in check. Being “fair and tolerant”, for example, does not prevent the government from demonising minorities and running scare stories about immigration and integration on a weekly basis to feed the right-wing tabloid press. Muslim communities suffer disproportionately from low-pay, unemployment and poor housing. In Brown’s competitive, “open markets” society, they and other poor people have to sink or swim.

Internationally, “our way of life” is not that attractive to other people. Britain and the United States have together destroyed Iraq as a functioning society, creating a cause celebre for terrorists all over the planet and are restoring the credibility of the Taliban in Afghanistan. They prop up despotic regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Israel, to name but a few countries, and have driven despairing Palestinians to the point of civil war. The corporate-driven globalisation that Brown champions continues to widen the chasm of inequality worldwide. Only today, the United Nations warned that the whole of sub-Saharan Africa - the poorest region of the world - will fail to meet the goals set seven years ago for eradicating global poverty by 2015. The UN said the world was failing in the battle to combat hunger, cut infant mortality and put every child in school. Creating social and cultural conditions where terrorism is not an attractive option is patently beyond the capacity of globalised capitalism. That is the dilemma we have to grasp as a matter of urgency.

Paul Feldman, communications editor

New Labour's nuclear charade

The High Court ruling that New Labour’s "consultation" on its energy policy was "misleading" and "seriously flawed" is further proof that the mid-19th century system of representative democracy is no longer fit for purpose. As if to confirm this view, Tony Blair’s immediate response was that the nuclear power station programme would go ahead, whatever the judgement said. More and more people are being forced to come to the conclusion that the existing democratic process is a sham and essentially excludes ordinary people from consideration. It was clear from the start what was going on. Blair had already declared that nuclear power was "back on the agenda with a vengeance". The consultation was a charade. There was no supporting evidence on the economics of nuclear power and what the judge called "inadequate" information on waste disposal. In the end, Mr Justice Sullivan ruled that groups were asked to respond to a document where the information was "wholly insufficient for them to make an intelligent choice". As one blogger responding to the judgement put it yesterday: "The truth is out. We, the public, don't matter. The arrogance of modern government knows no bounds. Any ‘consultation’ is a sham, and yesterday's judgement lays that bare. If politicians wonder why they are held in such contempt, that is why. They just mouth fancy soundbites. Debate or reasoned argument? Forget it. Anyone who tries to argue is ridiculed or marginalised." Nuclear power is only the latest in a series of major decisions taken behind closed doors, without reference to parliament, let alone the public. Just think tuition fees, ID cards and, of course, the invasion of Iraq which millions of people marched in opposition to.

Ultimately, Greenpeace’s victory in the courts is symbolic and that’s the question that really needs addressing. Increasingly large numbers of people feel disenfranchised because their opinions and votes count for little. The fact that over 1.3 million motorists have used the Internet to register their opposition to road pricing is as much an expression of frustration with the traditional political process as anything else. They also object to the idea of having a device inside the car which would monitor their movements. Which brings us to yet another example of secret decision-making aimed at strengthening the state’s powers at the expense of ordinary citizens. The Home Office has just agreed to a European Union scheme to set up a network of national crime records across 27 states. Police across the EU will get free access to Britain’s DNA, fingerprint and car registration databases. The exchanges could be up and running as early as next year and might eventually lead to the creation of a single EU-wide database. Britain has by far the largest DNA database in the world – 50 times the size of the French equivalent. When New Labour took office in 1997, it held only 700,000 samples – by 2008, it will hold the samples of some 4.2 million people and is growing by 500,000 a year. Critics point out that the DNA database has effectively become a permanent list of suspects. So the undermining of the democratic process goes hand in hand with the building of an authoritarian state. The case for a new constitutional democratic settlement, one which reflects the aspirations of the powerless majority rather than the privileged economic and political elites, grows stronger by the day. Achieving such a change has to become top priority.

Paul Feldman, communications editor