Saturday, April 24, 2021

White Guilt

 


Derek Chauvin is guilty. The news was greeted with a sigh of relief by white America. After all, this shows that American justice works and that Mr Chauvin was the proverbial bad apple, who has now been removed from the barrel. Black Americans can sleep easily in their beds knowing that this was a terrible tragedy but one that has now been put right. Or, not.

When the verdict was announced people on Twitter were popping gifs of champagne corks flying. I understand why, but what were we celebrating exactly? In the space of just 9 minutes and 29 seconds George Floyd’s life was snuffed out and, let’s be honest, if there hadn’t been video of the event that police officer would never have been disciplined let alone convicted. 


A pandemic of police violence


In this case the evidence was so strong that anything but a guilty verdict would have simply added to the litany of miscarriages of justice which are commonplace in American justice when white police officers kill black people. Did I say American justice, in the U.K. we have the grotesque story of police officers taking selfies with the bodies of two young black women who were murder victims.  In Germany the police force is riddled with neo-fascists.  In Canada a black woman “fell” to her death after police were called to her flat, whilst Mounties were videoed punching a First Nations chief in the head.  In November police in France spent 15 minutes on video beating and racially insulting a 42 year old black music producer. Even in “liberal” Sweden police have taken to profiling black and ethnic minority people in a controversial racial profiling policy. This is a pandemic of police violence against people from ethnic minorities.


And, as if to reinforce the point, this week police in Ohio shot and killed a 16 year old black girl Ma'Khia Bryant whilst investigating a knife crime. The Mayor of Columbus asked: “Did Ma'Khia Bryant need to die yesterday?”  Now I don’t know the facts of this case or of 47 year old Andre Hill an unarmed black man shot by police officer Adam Coy, but I do know the answer to the Mayor’s question. No. No, Ma'Khia Bryant did not have to die. If she were white she probably would still be alive. If she lived in the U.K. rather than the US she would probably still be alive. If she was middle class she would probably still be alive. These incidents have three things in common. The deaths are the responsibility of the police. The victims are black. The police are armed. If the police were not armed they would not be able to keep shooting people. These are not accidents. There is a structural issue at play here. And, yes, I know George Floyd was not shot so guns are not the whole problem. Indeed, disarming the police would only take away the means, not the motive.


But, hey, Chauvin is guilty. Justice works. On the other hand, as Britons we don’t have to worry about any of this. In the U.K. the Government issued a report detailing how Britain is a beacon of racial harmony. A report denounced by the United Nations as citing “dubious evidence to make claims that rationalize white supremacy by using the familiar arguments that have always justified racial hierarchy”. Perhaps the biggest omission from that report was that it didn’t start “Once upon a time..” because the reality is it was an absolute fantasy created by people who began by denying systematic racism exists and end by searching for the positives for black people in a system that treated them as cattle to be bought, sold, branded and used. Over on Twitter and Facebook the Government’s incipient racism has brought out the white supremacists and racist bigots circulating their filth for those who want to see anybody different to them as the enemy.


Protest works


In America, meanwhile, the end of Trump’s Presidency has, at least on the surface, driven the racists backwards. This verdict unless something goes seriously amiss with the sentencing is, whatever else it signifies, a victory for Black Lives Matter. If there had not been a worldwide protest at the treatment of George Floyd it is likely that Minneapolis Police would have been able to protect Derek Chauvin. If this trial proves anything it is that protest works. It is a testament to all those who took to the streets during a pandemic that anything even remotely looking like justice happened.


It was, predominantly, black people taking to the streets in America that forced the world to take notice of the viral video taken by 17-year old Darnella Frazier who described seeing Mr. Floyd “terrified, scared, begging for his life.” That video went viral and sparked protests across America, in the U.K., Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Syria, Mexico. Such Worldwide protests have only really been seen recently for environmental action. In the same way that people across the globe suffer from environmental degradation so too do ethnic minorities across the globe suffer from racism and police brutality. When you have no respect, no access to power and no resources protest is where you end up. Protest is the reason Derek Chauvin was brought to justice. Lack of protest is the reason so many other black lives will not be.


There is little doubt that white liberals will try to minimise the impact of protest but does anybody seriously think that even a country that is institutionally racist could ignore thousands of people on the streets? Well, yes is the answer. The response of white liberalism when confronted with majority black protests has traditionally been to ignore them, lie about them, demonise them and then criminalise them. Think the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others. White liberals like to believe that they are decent people who believe in fairness, but something said to me recently has more than an element of truth about it. When confronted with racial issues, it was asserted, whites feel uncomfortable and they don’t particularly like feeling uncomfortable. 


White comfort


The reason that makes sense is the truth is that none of us like to feel uncomfortable and whilst most nice white folk are not racist they are comfortable in a system in which being white, especially if you are middle class, can be a definite advantage. Let’s be clear here, it is not only blacks who have a hard time from the police. I interviewed a young trans activist this week - Layla - and she made the point that the police weren’t interested in violence against trans people either. (You can hear that interview in full on next week’s Socialist Hour podcast.) People protesting in Bristol and London have been attacked by the police for trying to protect their right to protest. If you can’t see the irony there then you are lacking an irony bone.


But most people have no reason to distrust the police. Unless you step across a line the police will protect you. For most white people they are assumed to be on the right side of the line unless they do something to be on the wrong side. For black people they are assumed to be on the wrong side as the default position. It can be difficult for white people who believe the world is essentially fair, or at least believe that the unfairnesses can be alleviated by a procedure or regulation, a policy, to understand what daily harassment means. You have to imagine stepping outside your home and running the risk of being racially abused by random racists who think they are better than you simply because of your skin colour. You have to risk being stopped and searched by police regardless of whether you have actually done anything wrong because you fit the profile. Or being stopped if you are driving a ‘nice’ car because people like you aren’t supposed to have nice cars. Black and Asian people don’t have to imagine that World. It is their daily lived experience. And, they don’t have a choice. You don’t escape police harassment or racist abuse by moving to a nicer area as white people can, because your colour singles you out. It is relentless. And, I am not surprised that they are angry about it. Because for all our liberal propaganda that things are improving, would George Floyd be dead now if that was true? Would Osime Brown be facing deportation if that was true? Would Mohamed Hassan still be alive if he had been white? 


But anger is not enough even if it is understandable. Racism is illogical. It makes no sense at all. The colour of your skin is no indicator of the person you are. Not all black and Asian people are nice. I’ve met a few that I didn’t get on with at all. But I’ve met plenty of white people I don’t get on with either. The point is that racism is structural, institutional and endemic. It is not confined to Ku Klux Klan nutcases wearing white hoods in America, or skinheads with swastika tattoos in the U.K., it is embedded in the very fabric of our society. And, I’m sorry to say this, but unless we actually change everything about our society it is likely to remain.


Dripping in blood


Capitalism is a social system founded upon the slave trade. As Pryamvada Gopal showed in a New Statesman article 7 years ago virtually all the British banks, and most of our big businesses are in the position they are because they were beneficiaries of the slave trade. As Gopal points out, many “perfectly ordinary middle-class people come from families which were compensated for the loss of slaves. The freed slaves, of course, never received such compensation and their families inherited, instead, the poverty and landlessness which blights them to this day.”  Marx once described capitalism as being born “dripping with blood”. Much of that blood was from the whips and chains used to extract surplus value for the predecessors of today’s elite. Of course, it was not just the Caribbean slave trade that defined modern capitalism but also the whole notion of Empire. I don’t have space to trace the history of empire here but simply note that apart from devastating the countries which were brought within its remit the British Empire left behind a legacy of racist beliefs about white supremacy that are every bit as pernicious as those accompanying slavery.


So when the Tories get their knickers in a twist over statues to long forgotten slavers it is not the statue they are defending but their right to define our past. Indeed, it is their right to, quite literally, whitewash that past. To issue a report only days before the Chauvin verdict declaring a country literally at the heart of the racist enterprise that has left a legacy of white supremacy as a beacon of racial harmony might be considered insensitive. But, like Trump’s support of his Ku Klux Klan supporting fans it is more than that. It is a denial of the reality of the real lives of so many of our fellow citizens. It is a battle cry to those who believe their white skin makes them better than their black and brown neighbours. It is the clarion call of a racist elite determined to maintain a racial hierarchy and to undo any reforms that have been won through years of struggle and heartbreak.


I was born white. Not much I can do about that. Do I feel guilt for what white people have done in the past and continue to do to black and brown people? Not particularly. I feel guilt that it took me until my teens to really question this racial hierarchy. And guilt that I have not been more vocal in my opposition to beliefs about racial hierarchy. But, that said, I made a conscious decision as a young man to treat people as people and not judge anybody on their skin colour. That doesn’t make me a paragon because as a white person I still benefitted from their oppression, even if I had no desire to. It was that realisation that led me to a conclusion that it was not about what individuals did, but about how we react as a collective, as a society. The fact is that structural inequalities, including racism, require a structural solution. Liberal/Tory society  offers no strategy for challenging inequalities because the system they support, and which supports them, relies on inequality. It requires a class of people with nothing to sell but their own labour and a class that controls the means of production. The point is that creating a black and Asian middle class does not do anything to challenge the racism inherent in society. I am not saying that black and Asian people should stop fighting to be treated as human beings. Or that outrage about George, Osime or Muhamed is misplaced. This is not a “anything that isn’t class struggle is a waste of time” post, but a recognition that the cultural change that people talk about is only possible with a structural change. And, that change will require a change not only in the way we view each other, but in the way we organise the wealth in society. A wealth created by the many, but hoarded by the few.


A society founded on racist foundations is rotten to its core. For those of us lucky enough to have what appears to be a good life it is had on the backs of the suffering and humiliation of generations of people. That suffering is worldwide and still ongoing. People can feel guilty about that if they wish, the more appropriate response, in my view, is anger and a determination to change things. For those who say ‘all lives matter’ as if saying ‘black lives matter’ means other lives don’t they need to pull their heads out of their own backsides and realise it is precisely because some lives have mattered less that the struggle for equality has neither been won nor gone away. I’m a socialist. I believe, as an article of faith, that people should be judged only on their character and not on arbitrary features. I support the rights of black people, brown people or women to self-organise, but ultimately until all the oppressed peoples find common cause those struggles will, at best, create reforms that maintain the hierarchy but in a more palatable way and at worst achieve nothing tangible at all as the next generation of racists simply push them back. We have to pull together because, frankly, as Marx and Engels wrote we have nothing to lose but our chains, we have a World to win.

Saturday, April 17, 2021

#StarmerOut

 



The latest You Gov poll for The Times puts the Tories on 43% and Labour on 29%. Now as regular readers will know I am sceptical of polls and especially of You Gov polls, but this is clearly very bad news for Labour. In some respects, it should be said, that the Tories are clearly benefiting from the success of the vaccine rollout and the easing of lockdown restrictions in England. But as The Times point out “That is not only YouGov's clearest Tory lead of the year, the 50th in a row recorded by all pollsters, but it pegs Labour as less popular than they were under Jeremy Corbyn.”


The bad news for SirKeith doesn’t stop there. In polls as to who would make the best Prime Minister he is now on 26% to Johnson’s 34%. You possibly remember the excitement amongst Labour’s right when SirKeith was leading Johnson back in the summer. But since then it has been downhill all the way. From a high of 37% in September a fall of 11 points in a little more than 6 months. Even among those identifying as 2019 Labour voters only 58% say they would now vote Labour. To be fair polls tend to show more movement amongst voters than actually takes place but among 2019 Tory voters 71% remain loyal.


Unite to beat the Tories


This news was greeted with the hashtag #StarmerOut on Twitter, and this in turn brought out the Starmeroids who rather than face the truth that Labour is eating itself from the inside, trotted out the usual nonsense. A Twitter user called @Andy67_Mac made the usual call for unity “Why can’t left wing Labour Party members,bite the bullet and unite the party to get rid of BOJO and his cronies. The Tories have a smug grin on their faces because they know Labourer’s in house fighting will lose them the next GE and a Corbyn clone won’t win it either.” Meanwhile Ayesha Hazerika, who spent most of the run up to the General Election undermining Corbyn could only manage “Terrible figures for Labour.” 


Yet another You Gov poll which was published this week makes interesting reading. Amongst Labour members 64% think that SirKeith is doing well as leader, a figure which is, naturally, highest among those who voted for him (89%) and lowest among those who voted for Rebecca Long-Bailey - remember her? - where it is just 17%. However, only 48% think he has changed Labour for the better, with 27% saying he’s made no difference, though quite where they have been for the past 12 months it’s difficult to say. 70% of members want him to stay as leader, and even if Labour performs badly in May 64% think he should remain.



In some ways the polling figures are good news for both right and left. The right are using the response to them as evidence that the only thing stopping Labour storming ahead is the fact that the remaining “Corbynistas” are undermining the leader. The left, meanwhile, are lost in the belief that SirKeith’s unpopularity will lead to votes switching to independent socialists, the Northern Independence Party, TUSC etc at the local elections and this will result in SirKeith being removed.


Nailing the lid shut


For what it’s worth although I will not be voting Labour in the forthcoming Welsh Senedd election I doubt that TUSC, who I will be supporting, will get a seat. I suspect Labour will lose seats and be forced into a coalition with Plaid Cymru. In Scotland anything but a resounding victory for the SNP seems unlikely and in the England council elections it looks like the Tories will emerge the winners if recent polls are anything to go by. In Hartlepool much as I would like to see Thelma Walker get the Northern Independence Party over the line that seems unlikely and the seat will most likely go to the Tories thus nailing the coffin lid shut on Labour’s Red Wall.


What these results show. most clearly, and although they are only polls and should be treated with caution (a fact which Labour’s right, who previously seized on bad poll data to tell us anybody but Jeremy would have been 20 points in the lead, have suddenly discovered) is that from the perspective of the left Labour are a lame horse. The most humane thing we can do is put the poor creature out of its misery. But, the left Twitter response was not #AbandonLabour but, as we’ve seen #StarmerOut. The emotional pull of Labour, even amongst those who have left credentials remains strong.


Reading the comments, and I suppose the same caveat applies to Twittter that these are hardly representative, what is interesting is that the left regard SirKeith as having betrayed what they think of as true Labour values, specifically he is seen as the anti-Corbyn. I wouldn’t argue that SirKeith is anything other than a careerist whose political journey has been calculated to get him exactly where he wants to be. But, it is perplexing, to me, how many people remain in the Labour Party despite despising SirKeith because they retain a belief that passing motions at CLP meetings might make a difference.


Suspensions lifted


I note that Lee Rock and the suspended comrades from Sheffield Hallam Labour Party have this week had their suspensions quietly lifted. In Lee’s case with no further action. In the others with an administrative warning applied. I suspect that similar will be happening throughout the U.K. But, the reason they were suspended in the first place was the removal of the whip from Jeremy Corbyn. That remains in place. What that means is that if there were a snap General Election Jeremy could not stand as a Labour candidate. Left-wing members have been victimised, many of them put through an emotional wringer and for what?


The emotional hold that Labour has over the left in the U.K. I previously referred to as a form of Stockholm Syndrome  and at the time I suggested it was those who refused to leave that were affected by it. But the #StarmerOut trend is evidence that it extends further. It would seem that there are a significant number of people out there who believe that Labour can be turned around. As Julie Harrington, who I have the greatest of respect for, says: “I think Starmer should realise that pissing off the left is most definitely a vote loser for the Labour Party. They cannot win without us. Yet he continues to suspend the left for the most pathetic reasons.” Whilst I agree with the sentiment, the underlying theme is that the left should be in the Labour Party and that if we were that we could turn it into a socialist party (again). 


Trying to turn Labour socialist is like trying to turn margarine into butter. It can’t be done. The fact that they look similar confuses the issue, but they are simply not the same thing. Whenever Labour gets near power the left within the parliamentary or prospective parliamentary ranks get nervous that being too radical (for which read anything resembling radicalism) will lose votes. The fact that so many Labour members are happy with SirKeith’s leadership is all the evidence you need to see that Labour is not, never was nor never will be a socialist party. It is, at best a liberal party. At worst, a conservative party.


Leaked report


When Jeremy was leader masses of us, some 300,000, flocked into the party believing that it could be transformed into a radical social democratic campaigning organisation. At the time we didn’t fully understand that the PLP were, with only a few exceptions, hostile to any form of radical agenda. Even less were we aware that Labour HQ was staffed by people whose politics can best be described as centre-right, though the leaked report suggests that ‘conservative’ would be a fair description.  In CLPs up and down the country the influx of new members was greeted with dismay by many of the established members who were happy to treat the Labour Party as a social rather than a socialist club. Of course not all CLPs are the same and some became bedrocks of Corbyn support. But for many new members they were tolerated at best made unwelcome at worst. The feeling of being an uninvited guest intensified after December 2019 as the right tightened their grip on the party at all levels.


The left parliamentarians, particularly those in the Campaign Group, were so caught up in the possibility of power that they not only turned a blind eye to the witch-hunt taking place under their noses they colluded with it. When Jackie Walker was hounded out of the party she received no support from the Campaign Group, when Marc Wadworth was falsely accused of racism by Ruth Smeeth, nobody came to his aid and when Chris Williamson was accused of anti-Semitism merely for saying that Labour should defend itself John McDonnell, no less, told him that he should apologise to the Zionist lobby including the Board of Deputies.  Rebecca Long-Bailey, we should not forget, not only gave no support to Chris but signed the pledges created by the Board of Deputies labelling support for Palestinian rights anti-Semitic. And, if we are expecting the Campaign Group to carry the flag for socialism we should note their abject betrayal of Jeremy when he was suspended from the party following the publication of the EHRC report which despite its best efforts found no institutional racism in the party.


And yet, despite this leftists continue to see a Labour victory as preferable to a Tory one. As if the reality is not that in power Labour’s radical agenda has been so timid as to be barely noticeable. I believe that many who joined to support Jeremy believe that if Labour do badly in May that this might trigger a leadership challenge. In this election a left wing candidate (Zarah Sultana would be a popular choice) will stand and under one member one vote the, still predominantly, left membership will elect a socialist who will transform the manifesto back into one resembling 2017 and socialist Labour will, somehow, sweep to power. For anybody who has been harbouring those thoughts perhaps seeing them written down will make you realise that this scenario is simply not going to happen.


Leadership challenge


One thing those hoping for a left wing challenge need to account for is that in order to stand for leader any prospective challenger needs 10% of the PLP to sign their nomination. Labour currently has 199 MPs meaning that a prospective leader has to have the support of 19 MPs. There are 34 Campaign Group MPs meaning that a challenge is possible. However, the right fell for one member one vote previously and there is simply no conceivable way that a challenge will occur until they change the rules to favour their preferred candidate. No matter how badly SirKeith is doing, the right will not sacrifice him if they think the party will swing back to the left. But, even if, let’s say, Zarah was to get nominated and win, does anybody seriously think that the majority of the PLP and the right dominated national officers would treat her any better than they did Jeremy? She is already on a target list for the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Those smears have disappeared currently because a right-wing Zionist is leading the party they would emerge very quickly if the left were anywhere close to gaining control.


So, whilst it’s nice to see SirKeith under pressure, the left need to realise that we have deserted the sinking ship now is not the time to cling to its flotsam. If the goal is transforming society not merely alleviating its worst excesses then we need to regroup. It’s not even as if we need to pepper the sinking Labour ship with holes, those on it are kicking through the remaining seaworthy parts and letting water flood in. Let’s be clear Labour’s strategy of appealing to Tory voters is failing. This is not 1997 re-run, it’s looking far more like a re-run of 2015. We need to regroup and unite but not to paddle in the stench filled waters of electoral politics. The challenge for the left remains to build organisations which can challenge power in more meaningful ways than putting a cross every few years next to the name of some careerist who turns on us the minute they are in office.


Saturday, April 10, 2021

We don’t need no representation

 



Last week I wrote a piece called ‘The case against FPTP’ which was a deliberately misleading title, because many people would have, wrongly, assumed, that I was making the case for proportional representation (PR), which I wasn’t. I expected people to be critical of me for not jumping on the PR bandwagon which has been steadily building up a head of steam in left circles.


Most critical responses to the piece were variations of the FPTP vs PR theme. Essentially, advocates of PR assumed that if I didn’t support PR I was clearly advocating for FPTP. A point I tried to address last week when I said that the case for PR could pretty much be reduced to “FPTP - bad, therefore PR - good”. But, as I also pointed out FPTP and PR are from the same family - representative democracy. A debate about the relative merits of each misses the point. If we narrow the debate to how best to select ‘our’ reps, we still end up with the same, or very much the same, reps. The fact is, and this becomes clearer by the day, it is the entire political class that is letting us down and given the high levels of dissatisfaction across the political system, it is clear that this phenomena is pan-National and regardless of which system to choose them is used. In short, the majority of people, the majority of the time feel disenfranchised by the political systems they live under.


Shifting the democratic paradigm


As socialists, I’m happy to be read by liberals, or even Tories, but I am clear I am writing for those who self-identify as socialists first and foremost. But, as socialists we need to stop being so timid in our views. More importantly, with “democracy” absorbing so much of our energy, we need to promote a paradigm shift in democratic theory. That means understanding that the poor quality of political representation we endure is not a moral failure of our reps - though to be fair, it’s often that as well - but is a side effect of the system itself. People enter public office very often with good intentions but the systems they are working within are designed to thwart those intentions. Of course, in theory, we could elect 650 socialists to Westminster and, in theory (putting aside the House of Lords for a moment) those socialists could abolish the House of Commons and replace it with workers councils or some other form of decision-making forum. My point though is that the tendency is for parliament to change those who enter it, more than they change parliament. Though to be fair, the Labour women who entered in 1997 did manage to get rid of the House of Commons barber and replace him with a hairdresser instead. Or to be precise, they changed a male hairdressers into a unisex one.


Nicholas Dickinson, an academic, makes the following observation in a paper aimed at reforming, not abolishing, the British Parliament: “experienced from the point of view of a new member, entering a new institution presents the problem of adapting to a predetermined role while retaining a sense of the purpose for which one joined. Parliaments face these problems in a particularly acute form, with new members entering in large groups at a time of maximum institutional disruption around elections. Most of these new members have little or no previous experience as legislators at a national level, but frequently do possess a strong sense of mission and a desire to make change.” His conclusion that new MPs are socialised by their party in order to “change behaviour in ways relevant to party loyalty,” is interesting for it is strongly suggestive that even an independent minded MP is likely to succumb to pressure from the whips to conform.


As Tom O’Grady has put it in relation to the Labour Party’s growing army of ‘careerist’ MPs: “They are more willing to take policy positions for strategic political reasons (such as gaining the favour of certain sections of the electorate) or to help advance their political career, and they are more instinctively loyal to the party leadership. Hence careerists have lower relative ideological support for left-wing policies, and their ideologies are less important in determining their stances in the first place.” The point being that as politics has shifted from being a vocation motivated by public service to a career option for a particular cohort of middle class individuals so the opportunities to promote left-wing causes through parliament has diminished. In short, changing the method by which those careerists are chosen will do nothing to change the fact that most of them care less about particular policies than the satisfaction of their own career goals. They may well have “a desire to make change” but when confronted with the reality that adopting radical positions is not a good career choice will do what people in all bureaucracies do - conform to the rules in order to secure their own personal well-being even if that means abandoning the people who put them there in the first place.


How representative are our representatives


It is not just that our so-called ‘representative’ democracy marginalises all but a tiny elite, but that the elite, no matter how chosen is not particularly representative of the people it supposedly serves. In December 2019, shortly after the U.K. General Election the Sutton Trust noted: “while there have been big political changes in the House of Commons, the educational background of the country’s MPs has stayed remarkably consistent. Before the election, 29% of MPs attended private school – four times higher than the rate in the general population. And after the election that figure hasn’t budged, still standing at 29%.” Much was made in the media of the growing number of MPs who had attended comprehensive schools the Sutton Trust note that: “this isn’t because of fewer MPs going to private schools, but rather due to a drop in those having attended grammars.” It is not just that a disproportionate number are privately educated that matters but at a time when, roughly, 40% of the population had a university education 80% of MPs were university educated. This shows that the role of politician has undergone a process of professionalisation. This can be seen in the educational backgrounds of MPs. The last available data is from 2015 when precisely 3% of MPs were from working class backgrounds. The majority (31%) were from professions (disproportionately barristers and solicitors) followed closely by business ((30%). For comparison purposes according to the 2011 Census approximately 47% of the population are working class.


Perhaps this class bias could be changed by moving from FPTP to PR, but evidence from Wales is not encouraging. Of the 60 members of the Welsh Senedd some 75% in a recent analysis were degree educated. Though, interestingly, in a survey of the general population carried out at the same time only 10% of women and slightly less of men thought their educational level would be a barrier to them standing. Whilst 60% of women and 50% of men thought their inability to speak Welsh would be. In this respect, I suppose we should remind ourselves that to be an elected representative requires no formal qualifications other than being a registered voter. I will stick my neck out here and say that most people from working class backgrounds are taught to defer to authority from an early age and encouraged to see themselves as playing only a supporting role on the political stage. Some of us never quite learn those lessons, but I am under no illusion that it is educated, middle class people who have filled roles that were there a strict sense of proportionality would be filled by people from estates whose only recourse is to direct action when all else seems to fail.  If we had a properly functioning democracy decisions about flammable cladding would have been taken by the residents of Grenfell not a council committee which ignored the complaints of residents and made a bad decision based on financial considerations.


The fact is we have reduced ‘democracy’ to its lowest common denominator. And, whilst I accept that arguing for a complete change of system might seem wildly utopian, hence the sarcasm tinged “good luck with your direct democracy” from one Twitter user who in a fit of pique that I wanted more evidence that PR would fundamentally change anything immediately restricted my access to the debate, this is another example of settling for minor reforms of the system or advocating revolutionary change.  If we are to embrace a campaign for electoral reform wouldn’t it be beneficial to, at least, begin the process of arguing for a socialist democracy? To do that means stepping back from the tendency to embrace what appear to be populist notions and to ask questions which begin the far more useful process of changing the paradigm. In short, we need to question not just the mechanisms of parliamentary democracy but the very basis of its claim to be democratic.


Fairness again


If it is the case that ‘democracy’ is simply about electing representatives drawn from a very narrow strata of society, then why bother with it at all. Perhaps the 30% or so who don’t vote are actually the wise ones. Because, let’s be honest once you have put your cross next to what is a narrow range of individuals what further input do you get to the system. MPs always claim to be acting on behalf of “their constituents” but in what way do they attempt to do so? The only time most MPs take your views into account is when they support what they intended to do anyway. If we are interested in electoral reform rather than starting with a critique of first past the post, we might be well advised to start with democracy itself.


Last week I made it clear that I was rejecting the fairness claims of both FPTP and PR. For people who had embraced PR as a left-wing cause this was quite disconcerting. It is though not unreasonable for people to ask me what I propose instead. I often say it is easier to know what we oppose than what we propose. If we go back to the book I mentioned last week - Robert A Dahl, Democracy (1998) - in his review of democracy he, like most democratic theorists, traces its origin to Greece and the city state of Athens. This is his brief summary of their system: “At it’s heart and centre was an assembly in which all citizens were entitled to participate...the main method for selecting citizens for the other public duties was by a lottery in which eligible citizens stood an equal chance of being selected.”


Critics will point out that to be a citizen you had to be male and most citizens were also slave owners. These are good points but neither invalidate the claim that the type of democracy they practiced was more effective at allowing citizens a direct say in decision-making than either FPTP or PR. Representative democracy has its origins in a movement which claimed at the same time to be for ‘freedom’ but was terrified of being plundered by the mass of the poor. Freedom to vote for the many had to be tempered by a system that continued to protect the wealth of the few. This demand for the vote began in France during what we now call ‘the Enlightenment’ and had its most vocal expression in the fledgling democracy of the United States of America. It was precisely to prevent a ‘tyranny of the majority’ that the American constitution was designed to prevent the poor from taking the possessions of the rich, possessions we should note that included human slaves. 


Fear of the mob


Alexander Hamilton, one of the drafters of the constitution, was most concerned to protect the few from the many. As Anthony Arblaster notes: “There was a need to give the ‘rich and well born’ a ‘distinct, permanent share in the government’ through which they could ‘check the imprudence of democracy’. .... It was the view of Hamilton that a representative democracy avoided the dangers clearly inherent in ‘simple democracy’” The point here is not to give a history lesson but to note that even at its inception representative democracy had as an express aim to preserve the wealth of the few. In case you think anything was different in England, James Mill writing in the 1840’s tried to allay bourgeois fears of ‘the mob’ by pointing out that the middle class “‘the class which is universally described as both the most wise and the most virtuous part of the community’, would still dominate in a democracy because: ‘Of the people beneath them, a vast majority would be sure to be guided by their advice and example’.”


From the nineteenth century onward what we now call ‘the establishment’ has been fearful of extending decision-making to the masses based on a fear that those masses might want to take some of their wealth to alleviate their own suffering. The barrier between real power (as exercised by the rich elite) and potential power (as held by the working class) has always been a middle class that neither challenges the hegemony of the upper class, nor allows their own position to be challenged by the working class. Fear of the mob still exists but has been transferred down from the aristocratic elite to the technocrats and bureaucrats who make up the middle class. Access to those with power and an extension of civil society creating opportunities to perpetuate their own class position has included dominating the political process through the professionalisation of representation supported by a dominance of the mass media, judiciary and education systems. Proportional representation, if I am right in my analysis, is a distraction much like equal opportunities which whilst allowing some so-called minorities to enter the middle class did so by ensuring that the vast majority were still staring at a glass ceiling.


I don’t like generalisations or stereotypes, so let me clarify that when I talk of classes they are not meant to be anything but heuristic devices, by which I understand devices which throw light upon a topic but which are not empirical representations. Which is a rather long-winded way of saying that not all middle-class people are agents of the rich elite, neither are all of them inherently hostile to working class power. Indeed, for the working class to ever remove the ruling class it will require an alliance of the working and middle classes. My emphasis on the working class is structural not emotional. In that sense, it is Marxist in origin and a shorthand for some incredibly complex relationships which a blog post does not allow an analysis.


From a socialist perspective there is nothing to choose between FPTP or PR whilst they remain methods of preventing the majority of people any meaningful say over their own lives. Whether one method of choosing representatives is fairer than another method matters little to the 47% or so of people who not only do not get to be MPs or Councillors but fully understand that the disasters visited upon them by a system that regards their lives as inherently expendable is not going to be challenged by electoral chambers that are designed to protect the rich from being plundered by the mob they still regard that 47% as representing. We now possess the possibility of genuine democracy based not on choosing middle class representatives but on allowing all citizens a say in the decisions that affect them. That we are not even discussing citizens juries as a model of deliberation shows the lack of initiative which we often fall victim to. The best we hope for is ensuring that parties, almost totally dominated by the middle class, will be more “fairly” represented as they go about their business of maintaining a status quo they do quite nicely out of thank you very much.


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Saturday, April 3, 2021

The case against first past the post

 


There is a growing movement on the left for proportional representation for national and local elections. When I question people as to why they want PR I’m inevitably told two things. The first reason is that it is a means to get the Tories out. Now I hate the Tories as much as the next socialist but if, as is usually assumed, they have the electoral system sewn up why would they change it? But, the second reason, which seems to me to be stronger, is that PR would replace a system that is inherently unfair.


Is first past the post inherently unfair? It’s a reasonable question given that in the U.K. it is a system that seems to disproportionately favour one party and that party is the Conservative Party who have formed the government in 77 out of the past 100 years. It is a virtual Tory hegemony that leads people to the conclusion that an alternative system must be ‘fairer’ and the most fair alternative is proportional representation.


The assumptions underpinning the claim that PR is, by definition, fairer need some unpicking. Anybody who reads my blog regularly will know that I am no supporter of the Conservatives. Indeed it should be fairly obvious to even a casual observer that I favour the total transformation of capitalist society into something I make no apologies for calling socialism.


Fairness


It is sometimes asserted that first past the post (also referred to as winner takes all) must be less fair because only the U.K. and Belarus use it. However, this is both untrue and, in terms of fairness, irrelevant. A system is not fair simply because it is popular, it is fair if it satisfies some independent criteria of fairness. Imagine for a moment that only one country in the World was genuinely socialist (some might make that claim for Cuba, for example) would that mean that by definition it was unfair. 


It is worth pointing out though that according to FairVote whilst PR is the most popular form of electoral system for national elections it is only used in 89 of the 174 democracies they surveyed. Winner takes all is used in 64 countries including USA, India, Ethiopia and Canada as well as the U.K. 


In fact, it is only recently that the majority of the World have lived in anything resembling a democracy. Indeed, 2002 was the first year when there were more democracies than autocracies. 

But, even in those countries that are, theoretically at least, democracies there is evidence of growing dissatisfaction with the way the system works. The Pew Research Centre 

surveyed 34 ‘democracies’ and in almost all of them dissatisfaction with the system was high. In Greece, 74%, the U.K. 69%, the U.S. 59%, France 58%, and Japan 53% express dissatisfaction with how democracy is working in their country. What they don’t ask, unfortunately, is what exactly they are dissatisfied about.


They did ask what aspects of democracy people supported. Here there was a noticeable difference between countries but a fair judiciary was first or second choice in almost every country. Free religion tended to top the poll in the remaining countries but was least popular in the other countries. It was most popular in Nigeria, South Africa, Israel, India, Kenya and Turkey. The 34 countries did not include the majority of the Muslim World presumably because most of them would not be considered democracies by the Pew Research Centre.


Dissatisfaction - with what?


Being dissatisfied with a system, and bare in mind that the majority of countries surveyed use some form of PR, is not the same as saying that people want a change of system. It is certainly not the same as advocating any particular system. Did people express more dissatisfaction in systems they considered unfair? It’s a fair question given that PR advocates are placing considerable emphasis on fairness. What we would need is to map dissatisfaction against fairness to see if there actually was a relationship.


Nobody seems to think constructing an index of fairness is a worthwhile exercise. But, we do get an index of happiness. Let’s make a massive, and quite possibly flawed, assumption. People who live in fairer societies should be happier. The U.K. which uses FPTP comes 34th in the World Happiness Index. Costa Rica which tops the Happiness Index uses PR. Ipso facto, as they say, PR must be fairer. Mexico, which is 2nd, has a Presidential system which uses a mixture of electoral systems, including PR. So far, so good, PR, it could be argued, makes people happier. It must therefore be fairer. 


Not to pour water on PR enthusiasts but whilst the U.K. is 34th with its highly unfair, allegedly, FPTP system. Jamaica, a constitutional monarchy (like the U.K., not surprisingly given its the same monarch) and a 2-party system comes in 10th on the HI. Perhaps the truth is elections play so little role in most people’s lives most of the time that they make no impact on their happiness.


In the 2019 Hansard Society report into political participation over one-fifth of people in the U.K. say they do not engage in any political activity at all. Almost half (47%) say they do not feel they have a say in decisions that affect them. 


Reprentative democracy


So,  whilst this is all interesting it does not help answer which system of democracy is most fair. For that we need to think of what the possible systems are because too often the choice is reduced to FPTP or PR. But that assumes representative democracy is the only form of democracy worth arguing about. Whilst you would expect liberal parties (ie all of them) to not see anything wrong with a system that provides them with a livelihood, it is a little surprising, and perhaps just a bit disappointing, that people who situate themselves on the left seem to lack either the imagination or the commitment to argue for a more inclusive form of democracy. 


Of course we consider democracy an important part of liberalism because achieving anything resembling universal suffrage was such a battle. It was only in 1832 that the Representation of the People Act extended the suffrage to men, but not women, who satisfied a property qualification, a rental of £10 per year. Remember at this time many people were on tithe property which meant they paid no rent. In 1867 the vote was extended to working class men. Women were still excluded. It was not until 1918 that the vote was extended to women over 30 who satisfied a property qualification. To summarise, liberal claims to be the epitome of democracy have to be tempered with the knowledge that the elite who controlled that democracy opposed, at every step of the way, any extension of the franchise. As Anthony Arblaster has noted “..’bourgeois’ democracy has proved in more than one respect to be a false dawn, realising only a part of the promise sought by so many of those who struggled to achieve it.” (Arblaster, 1993, 97) He cites the Chartists and the Suffragettes both of whom sought far more than the vote and whose struggles for equality were, in some respects, derailed by obtaining the vote.


But let’s stop this dance. Whilst we are busy skipping round the pole with democracy on it, and thinking all we need do is shape that pole, we are failing to notice that buried beneath it is real democracy. We can only really understand what it is we have lost (indeed most of us never had in the first place) by stepping back and surveying the scene. Instead of asking whether this or that system of representative democracy is fairer, we need to ask what is democracies purpose? Is it, as it is in virtually every so-called democracy of the liberal World a system to allow a small elite to secure well paying prestigious jobs every four or five years? Or, does it have some deeper meaning?


Judging democracy


Robert A Dahl, considered by most who know about these things as one of the leading theorists of democracy makes the point in his excellent (and mercifully short) book Democracy that an ideal democracy is concerned with how to make decisions, not simply how to elect an elite to make decisions for us. He argues for five criteria by which we might judge democracy. They are:

  1. Effective participation
  2. Equality in voting
  3. Gaining enlightened understanding
  4. Exercising final control over the agenda
  5. Inclusion of adults


By any fair assessment it is hard to think that all citizens can effectively participate in our democratic processes when a handful of billionaires control the majority of the means to shape the debate. I do not disagree that there is inherent unfairness within FPTP as practiced in the U.K. Tony Broomfield’s excellent review of post-war democracy leaves little doubt that the system is rigged. My contention is not that FPTP is fair but rather that PR would be no fairer. It is the notion of representative democracy that is at the root of the problem and finding new ways to choose representatives is simply rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship, except in this case the ship is not actually sinking because those of us who should know better are keeping it artificially afloat.


Robert A Dahl makes the following observation: “..representative government originated not as a democratic practice but as a device by which non democratic governments - monarchs, mainly - could lay their hands on precious revenues and resources they wanted, particularly for fighting wars. In origin then, representation was not democratic; it was a non democratic institution later grafted on to democratic theory and practice.” (Dahl, 1998: 103)


Proving your point


But, I hear the PR advocates, as they continue their gaze on FPTP, cry “we just need a fair system and we will have a democracy, the history does not matter”. Quentin Quade, an American political scientist makes what I think is a valid point about advocates of PR. That is that they “..typically describe it as more "fair" and more "just." ..In fact, each of these good words applied to PR begs a question and calls for a rarely given philosophical argument to establish a meaning for "fair," "just," "representative," and so on. ..The only thing certain about PR is that it will tend to re-create society's divisions and locate them in the legislature. That is its purpose, logic, and result.” In other words, according to this critic of advocates of PR they are looking in the wrong place, make vague and unsubstantiated claims for its efficacy and make logical leaps to make societies ills a result of various voting systems rather than anything else. Referring specifically to Britain he notes: “attempts to attribute Britain's relatively pallid economic record to its majority-forming system are entirely unconvincing. Britain has performed poorly by comparison to some other countries--a weak showing that is traceable in part to poor decisions and not just difficult circumstances. But wise decisions are not guaranteed by any political system, and the impact of unpromising circumstances should not be underestimated.”


So, where does this get us? Advocates of PR can’t realistically claim it is fairer unless they define fair which mostly they don’t. Their argument consists of telling you that an alternative system is not fair and leaving you to draw the conclusion that what they propose is therefore fairer. My advice, though if you are committed to PR you will ignore this, is not to fall for that trick. If the goal of democracy is to enable decisions to be made that have the consent of the majority then it is clear that neither FPTP nor PR work. The fact is that in delegating your responsibility for decision making to somebody else you undermine your own claim to be an equal citizen. As the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau put it in 1762: “..yet it may be asked how a man can be at once free and forced to conform to wills which are not his own.” The fact is he can’t and to bring this up to date, neither can a woman.


When I last wrote about PR I was accused by one person, who probably never read what I said, of seeing the demand for PR as a liberal plot because I noted that in the widely quoted Electoral Reform Societies arguments for PR all the systems they proposed resulted in the balance of power being held by the Liberal Democrat’s. But, in reality it matters little who holds the balance of power the result remains that the decision making in society remains in the hands of a minority elite who are not only rarely challenged but have shown in their treatment of trade unions and of Jeremy Corbyn that there is no depth too low for them to plummet in pursuit of maintaining their political, social and economic superiority. As Quade says PR is not a system which can, or intends, to challenge inequality, poverty or injustice, it simply makes sure that those maintaining that system can claim a legitimacy for doing so. 


The clamour for PR, once the preserve of the Liberals, has now been joined by some big hitters of the left including John McDonnell and Clive Lewis. It’s advocates include Owen Jones Evolve Politics and the Greens. But beyond pretending that it would get rid of the Tories the claims for PR tend to rely on the emotional appeal of “fairness”. If the left want to make a statement about democracy it is not to continue to prop up a system that disenfranchises the vast majority of the people for all but one day every two or three years, but start a conversation about how we develop systems that would enable all of us a genuine say in the decisions that affect us. A conversation that would include our pitiful education system, the ownership of the mass media and the low standard of political representation that we are having to endure. But, let’s be clear those people on the left who are telling you that PR is part of that conversation are modern day snake oil sellers. By definition, a capitalist political system favours the capitalist class and their acolytes. The conversation needed is about replacing that system. And, if I’m honest, the revolutionary situation that could presage that conversation is not upon us. Yet


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