Demanding the Maximum

A real democracy is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of leadership. It is about all of us having a direct say in the decisions that affect us. Leadership means handing over the right to make those decisions to someone else. We have at our disposal today the very means, in the form of an interactive internet, that could enable us to resuscitate the ancient model of Athenian democracy on a truly global level. Democracy is not about making a constrained choice once every four years or so in the winner takes all elections. Democracy means making proposals, amending them and finally deciding upon them - as well as in implementing and acting upon them. The more people can exercise their say in those actions, the more democratic the process becomes.Information must flow freely, so all can have an opportunity of reaching a decision, of judging the performance of delegates. Everyday life must be the signalling system that lets people know what their fellows want, the way of co-ordinating votes and decisions.A society of common ownership would have no need of constricting decision-making. We would share a common interest, and most people's actions and decisions would be immediately related to their day-to-day outcomes. Democracy would be an everyday process, just as the management of workplaces is now for the appointees of the owners. Just as appointees now are accountable to and removable by the owners, when we possess all the wealth in common we will have re-callable structures to ensure that we retain control of all decision-making levels.

Democracy under capitalism is reduced to people voting for competing groups of professional politicians, to giving the thumbs-up or the thumbs-down to the governing or opposition party . Political analysts call this the "elite theory of democracy" since under it , all that the people get to choose is which elite should exercise government power. This contrasts with the original theory of democracy which envisages popular participation in the running of affairs and which political analysts call "participatory democracy".

This is the sort of democracy socialists favour but we know it's never going to exist under capitalism. The most we will get under capitalism is the right to vote, under more-or-less fair conditions, for who shall control political power — a minimalist form of democracy but not to be dismissed for that since it at least provides a mechanism whereby a socialist majority could vote in socialist delegates instead of capitalist politicians.

The original Social Democratic parties had in addition to their “maximum programme" of achieving socialism something they called the “minimum programme” , a plethora of immediate reforms to capitalism. What happened was that they attracted votes on the basis of this miniumum prgtramme , not the maximum. They obtained reformist votes, and so became the prisoners of those voters. In parliament, and later in office, they found themselves with no freedom of action other than to compromise with capitalism. Even if they been the mandated delegates of those who voted for them then they had no mandate for socialism, only to try to reform capitalism. It was not a case of being corrupted by the mere fact of going into national parliaments but was due to the basis on which they went there .This restricted what they could do.

The Socialist Party advocates only socialism - the maximum programme !