Democractic Socialism?

[urbanrevolt]

But the problem is we don't have real democracy- in most countries there isn't a democratic government of even a western liberal version- so there goes most of fruitloop and tbaldwin.

But even here there is something a bit like democracy- certainly democratic rights worth defending- but there are all sorts of problems- any attempt to even exercise slight democratic control e.g. leftish social democracy comes up against flights of capital, threats of coups and intervention. Most of the decisions in our lives are made by anonymous others veiled behind commercial confidentiality and acting on information and power to make major decisions over our collective lives.

Of course compared to Ethiopia or Bolivia, to give just two examples, there are valuable rights to defend- rights won by mass struggles often to the death- but the idea that we have here what the masses want is pure fantasy.

 

[tbaldwin]

But even here there is something a bit like democracy- certainly democratic rights worth defending- but there are all sorts of problems- any attempt to even exercise slight democratic control e.g. leftish social democracy comes up against flights of capital, threats of coups and intervention. .

I think that is a really interesting point about flights of capital etc.....

The Left doesnt really have much of an answer...
But without any kind of popular support they dont really need to be worrying too much about it at the moment..

But with Popular support it would become a real issue... Enabling acts and Nationalisation would play a part but the key would be that any measures were supported by the majority of the population.

 

[urbanrevolt]

Sure and reconnecting with ordinary people and their concerns and getting popular support is of course not only necessary but one of the major tasks of the left in this current era.

One reason I think the left has become less popular though is precisely because of defeats of mass struggles in the 70s, culminating in the smashing of the miners in 84-85 which still has deep reverberations

think 'enabling acts; could only really work if masses of workers were ready to defend and implement them on a local level

 

[mk12]

Sure and reconnecting with ordinary people and their concerns

And what are your reasons for the left not doing this in the past? No offence, but it seems to me that Permanent Revolution aren't exactly changing their whole approach to things.

 

[tbaldwin]

Sure and reconnecting with ordinary people and their concerns and getting popular support is of course not only necessary but one of the major tasks of the left in this current era.

One reason I think the left has become less popular though is precisely because of defeats of mass struggles in the 70s, culminating in the smashing of the miners in 84-85 which still has deep reverberations

think 'enabling acts; could only really work if masses of workers were ready to defend and implement them on a local level

I think your right up to a point the miners strike did have a massive effect on the Left but then so did the Poll tax and the fall of the Berlin wall...
Id argue the 3 issues all show the need to appeal to the masses. The Miners came very close to winning,with just a bit more popualr support they might have done.....The Poll tax was defeated by the mass opposition and protests.
Eastern Europe was a lesson for the Left that Populism is not a dirty word but a neccesity for Socialism to grow and to survive..
Sadly its a lesson most of the organised lefdt have ignored which has just increased their hopelessness.

 

[Pigeon]

Populism is not a dirty word but a neccesity for Socialism to grow and to survive..

So would you be comfortable with the description "authoritarian populist"?

 

[tbaldwin]

So would you be comfortable with the description "authoritarian populist"?

It sounds a bit of a loaded term....But of course Socialism has to be both to some extent...Not authoritarian in the top down Stalinist/Trot way.
But Authoritarian to the extent that its about implementing the wishes of the majority.
And of course Socialism that is not popular is pointless.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It sounds a bit of a loaded term....But of course Socialism has to be both to some extent...Not authoritarian in the top down Stalinist/Trot way.
But Authoritarian to the extent that its about implementing the wishes of the majority.
And of course Socialism that is not popular is pointless.

Authoritarian: adj. setting authority above liberty.

Now forgive me for quibbling but saying "Authoritarian to the extent that its about implementing the wishes of the majority" makes no sense unless you've completely re-written the definition of the word "authoritarian".

What you're describing with "implementing the wishes of the majority" is a form of open participatory democracy, nothing "authoritarian" about it.

Face it, Balders. Authoritarianism has an awful lot to do with top-down rule, and not a lot to do with anything else.

Still going to describe yourself as an "authoritarian socialist", are you?

 

[Fruitloop]

Personally I think if you combine state authoritarianism with commercial interests and populism then you end up with fascism, in a fairly deterministic way.

It also makes the mistake of assuming that the w/c is a homogenous mass, whereas in fact the only thing they all have in common is their relationship to capital.

One example is the generation gap that exists in this country. 80% of wealth is in the hands of people who are 50 and over, and these groups are far more politically enfranchised than younger people. What this means is that political discourse is skewed towards their concerns - hospitals, fear of crime, pensions issues. Young people in Britain will be paying for a long time for the services that they receive at the moment, whilst being extremely unlikely to receive anything comparable ourselves when the time comes. The resolution of these kinds of problems requires some kind of social mediation, not just a head-count, as do lots of other issues around ethnicity, ethical standards etc.

People who want the kind of statist populism that tbaldwin espouses should rejoice, as this is the route New Labour is already going down - the attitude towards drug taking and coginitive liberty, censorship and pornography, toleration of political views outside accepted norms are all cases in point.

 

[Pigeon]

Personally I think if you combine state authoritarianism with commercial interests and populism then you end up with fascism, in a fairly deterministic way.

Quite. And if it's possible to be authoritarian in anything other than "a top-down way", I'd be interested to see how.

 

[mk12]

a democratic decision by the majority imposing its will on a minority? Isn't that authoritarian?

Personally I think if you combine state authoritarianism with commercial interests and populism then you end up with fascism

I'm not sure tbaldwin wants to combine anything with "commercial interests".

 

[greenman]

Good post there Fruitloop.

 

[Fruitloop]

I'm not sure tbaldwin wants to combine anything with "commercial interests".

I don't know how you tell, as there seems to be no political program whatsoever other than the 'will of the majority'. I think the majority at the moment would almost certainly go for commercial interests, since the aspiration of much of the w/c in the UK is simply to join the petit-bourgeoisie, and has been for a hundred years or more.

 

[mk12]

really?

 

[tbaldwin]

People who want the kind of statist populism that tbaldwin espouses should rejoice, as this is the route New Labour is already going down - the attitude towards drug taking and coginitive liberty, censorship and pornography, toleration of political views outside accepted norms are all cases in point.

New labour to some extent represent the views of the majority on some issues but on some they don't...And as things stand that only becomes a problem for a govt when enough people start to disagree strongly enough with them and people vote them out.
But the Limited Democracy we have now is not something that i think people should be satisfied with.
Its nonsense or just very lazy to say somebody arguing in favour of extending democracy therefore can be neatly summed up as New Labour..

 

[Fruitloop]

really?

Nation of shopkeepers innit.

 

[Fruitloop]

New labour to some extent represent the views of the majority on some issues but on some they don't...And as things stand that only becomes a problem for a govt when enough people start to disagree strongly enough with them and people vote them out.
But the Limited Democracy we have now is not something that i think people should be satisfied with.
Its nonsense or just very lazy to say somebody arguing in favour of extending democracy therefore can be neatly summed up as New Labour..

Good job I didn't do that then!

New Labour IMO represents the kind of statist populism that should be avoided regardless of how many people think it's a good idea. The ban on 'violent' pornography featuring consenting adults is a classic example, mobilising some kind of moral majority in order to censor types of speech and images that have little or no impact on the people doing the deciding, and which are properly the domain of individual choice and freedom. With respect to sexuality in particular I agree with Laing that:

"what we call normal is a product of repression,denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience..There are forms of alienations that are relatively strange to statistically "normal" forms of alienation, the 'normally' alienated person, by reason of the fact that he acts more or less like everyone else, is taken to be sane. Other forms of alienation are those that are labelled by the normal majority to be mad or bad."

 

[audiotech]

a democratic decision by the majority imposing its will on a minority? Isn't that authoritarian?

Bolshevik!

 

[greenman]

Nation of shopkeepers innit.

Today shopkeepers, tomorrow mutualists, the day after, revolutionaries!

 

[mk12]

Bolshevik!

unfortunately the bolsheviks didn't impose majority decisions on the minority.

 

[tbaldwin]

New Labour IMO represents the kind of statist populism that should be avoided regardless of how many people think it's a good idea. "

I think that view is very dodgy...Are you really saying that regardless of what the majority of people think,your views should override them?

 

[Pigeon]

Are you really saying that regardless of what the majority of people think,your views should override them?

Say the majority of people think homosexuality should be illegal, or even punishable by death.

Or that all people with the surname "baldwin" should be interned in camps...your theory kind of falls apart, doesn't it?

 

[tbaldwin]

Say the majority of people think homosexuality should be illegal, or even punishable by death.

Or that all people with the surname "baldwin" should be interned in camps...your theory kind of falls apart, doesn't it?

Does it? Its a very pessimistic view of people you have....It could be described as very reactionary.....Are you suggesting that Democracy is all very fine in theory but people really can not be trusted with it,unless they are educated etc.....
Kind of thing that those who argued for Aparthied said...."You cant just give everyone the vote" eh.

I think that if a society became more and more democratic that something like homophobia would not grow as fast as it does in less democratic and open societies.

 

[Fruitloop]

I think that an opinion is not necessarily more right for being widely held. For example, if the majority were to vote for fascism, or a return to capital punishment, then I'd most certainly think they were wrong and argue and struggle against it. Similarly, the fact that a numeric majority of Yanquis believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 doesn't actually make it so.

Actually I think the majority of people are a lot more egalitarian, democratically minded and liberal than either they are given credit for, or than you would expect given the regressive nature of the dominant ideology. But to say this is not to fetishize majority opinion or to overlook the inescapable deformations that Capital currently exerts on culture.

None of this is intended to claim any superior knowledge, or some kind of objective 'view from nowhere'; rather the point is to recognize the potential fallibility of all judgement, and the tendency toward domination that exists in any power structure. The main reason for caution is the possbility that false judgements made on a large scale combined with a state apparatus that has become dominating towards its subjects is capable of unleashing hell on its citizens, notwithstanding the best intentions with which the whole system was set up. Further to this is the ethical conviction that decision-making power should be proportional to the effect of the decision on the individual making it, not one where weight of numbers allows one group to exercise arbitrary authority over another - a situation from which only strife can result.

 

[scawenb]

I'm afraid Democratic Socialism has already been used. It was the ideology of the Labour Party and especially the big Socialist Parties across Europe. It is even still used by New Labour - such as Jack Straw's recent article in New Statesman (http://www.newstatesman.com/200609180016).

The problem with democracy is whose democracy do you mean?

 

[mk12]

have you read the thread?

 

[Pigeon]

Are you suggesting that Democracy is all very fine in theory but people really can not be trusted with it,unless they are educated etc.....

I've no idea how any society could possibly be considered democratic unless the population was educated. Unless medieval theocracies fit your definition of "democracy".

 

[Pigeon]

I think that an opinion is not necessarily more right for being widely held. For example, if the majority were to vote for fascism, or a return to capital punishment, then I'd most certainly think they were wrong and argue and struggle against it. Similarly, the fact that a numeric majority of Yanquis believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11 doesn't actually make it so.

Fucken right: what's that Orwell quote about a minority opinion not necessarily being a wrong one, even if it's a minority of one?

 

[tbaldwin]

Fair enough....There are views that the majority hold that i think are wrong.

Obviously the world would be a much fairer and funnier place if i had sole charge of say a limited area like Europe.
But if the majority are against me would it be right for me to assemble my troops and just take power?

 

[tbaldwin]

I've no idea how any society could possibly be considered democratic unless the population was educated. Unless medieval theocracies fit your definition of "democracy".

Educated is a bit of a loaded term though isnt it? Indoctrinated?