pussion or constaint.
Enemy Anyone who interieies with is operation becomes an enemy of freedom and liberty. Any and all restrictions on it are deemed unhcalthy, to be permitted only where there is a threat of social breakdown that would get in the way of profit maximisation.
In this framework it becomes impossible to even think of freedom from the market. This is why Tony Blair can tell the caders of News cratic" Magna Carta was in fact a International that "the war between master's charter asserting the froethe public sector and private is over". dom of lords against the crown-and.
The Canadian Marxist academic for that matter, over the peasantry Ellen Woods depicts a vivid contrast they lived off. between modern liberal democracy The origins of modem political and the demos of ancient Greece. forms explain to a large degree why liberalism - meaning an emphasis on quently refer to this as the "golden limited government. civil herties age" of democracy, and argue that it toleration, individuality and plural. provides the model for our present ism - has become the dominant popolitical arrangements, it was in fact litical ideology. a radically different system. Magna Carta and that other totem Athenian democracy, unilke that or locralsm, the 1088 Glonous of the modern west, broke down the Revolution, were not milestones in the struggle for democracy, so much "rights" to exploit those below Representative democracy's true meaning was those who considered themselves social superiors representing those below them.
It is then, the opposite of democratic self-government. It expresses the control of political power by an elite, excluding the producers. It disassociates polities from popular power. Thus, strictly speaking it is parliament that is sovereign, not the people. The only place legitimate libcrai polles is possioie is in ine chamber. The rest of us have to make ample, is mistaken to see Cromwell as a democrat in the sense we should mean by it. He was in favour of a constitutional oligarchy.
This would suggest that liberalism is not just inadequate, in need of massive extension, but an anachronistic and incifective political creed for confronting the realities of mod. ern capitalism. Liberalism fails to touch the coonomic sphere of capitalist domination that so determines our lives. The powers over production, appropriation and distribution of our products are excluded.
Vast areas of daily life remain outside its definition of "politics". The workplace, the allocation of most resources the distribution of products and the organisation of la. bour are controlled only by "laws of the market" Interference with its de. mands is deemed anti-libertarian.
The redefinition of democracy away from popular power made possible by capitalism makes possible such a limited perspective. Democnacy is reduced to liberalism.
cyca i noctal acmocracy was massively extended by the opening up the institutions of the state and demic Neil Harding explains it well:
"For a brief period of perhaps nine months after the October revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks committed themseives to the most audacious attempt at transforming the vocabulary and practice of polities since the French Revolution of 178.... the idea of soviet democracy was directiy counterposed to that of "bourgeois", "liberal' or 'parliamentary" democracy. It signalled the direct, unmeditated participation of the people in the administration of public affairs." 1 Such an extension and transformation of democracy is only made possible by the overthrow of the state. Liberalism does nothing to make this a reality. Inn the meantime falst exploitation behind a smokescreen of ''rights". As an outdated and ineffective ideology it is a than its champion. Ellen Meiksins Wood's book Capitalism vs Democracy is published by Cambridge University Press 1995
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 88, August 1995, Page 10