Tony Blair's rewriting of Labour's constitution and political platform amount to an outright rejection of socialism and an embrace for the values of liberalism. But just how liberal can capitalism afford to be at the close of the twentieth century? SIMON KENNEDY looks at the curious evolution of the idea of democracy and the concept of "liberal capitalism'.
Decades of Stalinism gave capicalism's apologists and enthusiasts an opportunity to counterpose "communism" to democracy. HOwC C UCO Ce DCure Or a regime without democratic rights in the Bast was a pretty accurate one. erful propaganda tool; an "antimodel"" for capitalism's ideologues to scare the western working class into believing socialism means totalitarianism. They had a great deal of success In the popular mind socialism and ocmocracy naye occome seyered. The Soviet Union's "actually existing socialism" has established in mass consciousness the definition of socialism as an all powerful state, with intrusive and authoritarian interferences into a daily life which is highly regulated and centralised.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall capitalism's ideologues have gone hell for leather in an attempt to exclude any alternative to their system from political debate. A central tenet of this offensive has boen the attempts to identify the free market with "liberal democracy".
Democracy has bocome more than an alternative to "communism". It is now synonymous with capitalism. Newsreaders and philosophers alike make no distinction between the two. Yeltsin justifies his market reforms hy equstine his resration of freedom.
Brutal
Ask any trade union militant in talism and democracy will immediately he thrown into douht. The so-called "free world" has always included some of the most brutal and disgusting regimes of the twentieth century. most of the world, capitalism has not been accompanied by parallel democratic openings. Furthermore, the fPanting of "freedoms" in the west can be connected quite firmly to the economic domination of the colonial world by imperialist powLinkage Nevertheless there does seem to be a real and powerful linkage of capitalism and parliamentary "democratic" foims of politics in the advanced capitalist countries.
This takes the form of a state with a plurality of parties competing for office. Electoral rivalry is decided upon by a mass popular vote. The state formally has a series of "checks and balances" involving differing decision making centres. so as to maintain continuity and moderation.
Most conspicuous among these institutions is parliament, which appears to offer a place of free debate and decision making by representatives chosen by the clectorate. All cutizens are equal in toe polling booth - we get one vote each.
This arrangement deserves explanation. The coincidence is not by chance. There is good reason why liberalism and parliamentary rule remain the best possible shell for capitalism. The political form has its roots in the special features of this way of producing.
Capitalism is unlike any previous system or organising the ccocomyPrevious to capitalism goods were not generally produced for exFor most of its history, and in 4 change. Resources were not structured around the demands of the market.
Work was also differently organIT LOOKS LIKE A PERFECTLY BALANCED SYSTEM TO ME.
ised. So, for example, peasants in feudal times would work so many days for themselves and their families, and then a set amount on top of this wholly for their lords. This second period of work was theretore over and above thal needed by the peasant to maintain him or herself. It was "surplus labour". Traditional ties of duty, enslavement and coercion of various kinds, were used to "extract" it from the producers. Capitalism is different. In this form of production the extraction of surplus labour is not so obvious-it is hidden in with the rest of a worker's labour. In other words, the organi• sation of production and the appropriation of surplus labour by capitalists occurs at the same time.
The fact that the economic system enabies tose who own the tac tories and machines to extract surplus labour without overt coer. cion makes it a lot more difficult for the workers to see how they are being exploited. On the surface of things "a fair day's work for a fair day's wages" seems an equitable exchange.
This arrangement nevertheless rests upon a fundamental incquality. The vast majority of people are ex"HEREY ONE -'HELP WANTED: MUST PROVIDE OWN FACTORY'' cluded from effective control and ownership of workplaces and machines, unable to live outside of selling their labour power in order to survive. This division is basic to the system.
Goods are produced for exchange and labour is Dasco or "free" producers working for em. ployers who are themseives "frce" from any obligation to those who work for them outside of work time.
All the aes of nerconaty cuty. political custom and community discussion are gradually broken down. It is this system that is at the root of the "social disintegration" with which Blair and his communitarian brotherhood are so obsessed. As Marx puts it, only under capitalism do the appropriators discard all former "political and social embellishments".
There is a second side to the unique economic arrangements of capitalism. Alongside a "privatised" economic sphere, there is a separate public political one. The (wo are distinguished. This political sphere is called the state, with various administrative functions and a monopoly over the use of violence.
They are, of course, enmeshed. The state's primary political busiasso sustasn caeiasm No noed to divide But in a capitalist society there is no longer any need to embody the division between the rulers and the producers in the same sort of rigid exclusionary hierarchical political economic systems.
Capitalist exploitation is therefore divided into two senarate moments: i) economic appropriatioe and ii) political coercion. The state becomes a highly centralised, specialised and exclusive body. The oconomy is allowed to follow its own rules, "outside" of polities.
It is this division berween the political and economic that provides the basis for capisalist democracy. It is a unique form of rule, for a unique tic sasistl Once the division of ecosomic and poltucal ts in place tich tie tt rower political sphere can be opened up to people outside of the economically dominant classes. On a formal level. politics becomes expanded in a way never soen before.
But it is an exceptionally restrictive form of politics.
While the citizenshin of western countries is vast, they are excluded from decision making about some of them. The citizen body is essentially passive. The people are nos al active citizen community, but a colIn this framework it
from the market. This is why Tony Blair can tell the leaders of News lection of private individuals. Although it includes rich and poor. owners of factories and offices alongside their workers, voting is contined to a small range of issucs Capitalism's new relation of economic and political devalues the very same citizenship its liberal advocates claim to extend. The powers of privalc hotchy de oue t remit of polities.
Yet in this same arrangement the economic domain of the market is given unprecedented powers. Capicalists are given huge rights of control over the working day-they probably have more control over the productive process than at any other time in history.
"The market is allowed to invade every aspect of our lives - personal relations, life chances, choices, diet.
producers. The Athenian peasant recreation, everything. No medieval citizen could claim to be master. despot ever had such powers.
less-rule by the demos implied libIt is the special economic features of capitalism that make possible a crabon trom coonomic cosrcion oy landlords and states alike. form of democracy that concentrates The idea of a civic community and on formal matters of equality and active citizenship, as opposed to a representation while leaving huge basic questions of power and control state apparatus imposed from outside, meant an unprecedented degree untouched.
Liberal politics, whether es- of freedom. This was limited of course, slaves were excluded, but it poused by the Conservative or the Labour Party, remain trapped in its was one of the few examples in history of genuine political rule by the restrictive framework. Liberal doc- direct producers. trine looks only at one side of the It is interesting to note here that CURION the ancient political philosophers aches tso aiscus ton or who have shaped modem liberalism how capitalist democracy enhances were amongst the most vociferous personal liberties from the powers of the state and from traditional repres- opponents of this democratic experiment. Plato in particular, was consive hierarchies, but refuses to contemptuous of all those who work for front the HUVEC pervasIYC a living. He was an anti-democrat. inequalities.
Modern liberalism grew not out of The right-wing ideological offenthe ideas of Greece, but the struggle sire that oegan in te lyous bas al tempted to push this even further. between the lords and their monThe market becomes described not archs. The much celebrated "demojust as a mechanism for the distribu. tion of goods and services, but the sphere of true freedom, unhindered by bureaucracy. It portrayed as an open sphere of action, without comas the assertion of independent powers by the feudal barons and Whigs. This is where liberalism's emphasis On Tras comes ot protecting lords' liberties from crown encroachment.
Liberalism, with its baggage of "rights", is therefore a very anachronistic creed. It borrows its themes from a pre-capitalist period when the idea of frecdom was primarily aimed at the traditional privileges of the aristocracy. This kind of privilege is no longer the chief source of inequality or oppression. Political status is not the determinant of our life chances. It can therefore have next to nothing to say about more fundamental inequalities which determine prope s existences The origins of partiamentary rule lie in this struggle by a privileged layer against anther privileged layer. The original "political nation" was a community of lords bent on retaining and extending their do with a vote once every five years.
This is che value of the Greek example. Unlike in the demos the capralst state stande "above" the citizenship. It has an identity outside of the community of producers. vidual "rights"" in Greece because the state had no separate existence from the producers themselves Greek democracy was thoroughgoing not restrictive Laborat parlamentarianism can therefore be said to be a replacement for democracy rather than its codification. It is a substitute. ( The English revolution provides a good example of this contradiction between parliamentarism and democracy. Radicals within Oliver Cromwell's army asked directly for the franchise after their victory. The saying that the right to be governed by a constitutional parliamentary government was enough. No one thought to pretend that this was "de. mocracy". They understood, better than liberal commentators today. that parliament was an alterative to popular power. Tony Benn, for exSOCIALIST OUTLOOK No 88, August 1995, Page 9.
The peak of democracy: the Petrograd Soviet meets atter the October more regular voting this reality would remain. Blair's proposals fo do away with hereditary peerage and "old boys network" of Oxford and Cambridge do not even begin so alter it. They amount to little more tah noc oue aho tota toscaIsation of a Victorian crony system that protects class division and capicalist exploitation.
Liberalism claims to offer rule by the people. But really it limits politics to the defence of "rights" which are often secondary or irrelevant. Its formal language encourages the illusion that formal political equality can achieve social and economic equality, whereas in fact it enshrines and codifies their division and disassoThis means that socialist democracy has to be more of a break with hberal democracy, rather than its ertension.
Bolsheviks History offers few examples of the kind of democracy to which we aspire. Probably the most powerful was the fledgling years of the Soviet
becomes impossible to even think of freedom
International that "the war between the public sector and private is over".
THIEF LIAR CROOK ADULTERER