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Reimagining socialism, reinventing democracy Barry Winter finds much to admire in Hilary Wainwright's book Reclaim the State, but says she is still romantically optimistic about the prospects of new left parties My interest in
Hilary Wainwright’s recent and, I think, important book initially came from a
desire to discover more about the practical ‘experiments in popular
democracy’ indicated by her sub-title. She provides a detailed and informed
survey of four attempts to create grass roots democracy, one from Brazil and
three from Britain. More specifically they are:
What will be
reviewed here, however, are her broader reflections on these experiences, allied
to a particular model of social change, one that aims to ‘reclaim the
state’. The theoretical issues raised by this approach, particularly in the
chapter on knowledge, power and democracy, together with the conclusion,
provides a valuable basis for re-imagining the socialist perspective.
For, whatever
differences the ILP has with Hilary Wainwright on the Labour Party, she is one
of the few people on the left trying to map out a similar terrain to ourselves.
She focuses on how to achieve social transformation through both parliamentary
and extra-parliamentary struggles for grass roots democracy, against private
capital and ‘in and against’ the state. Or, as she writes, the search is for
more vigorous forms of democracy through which to struggle for social justice. Her advantage is
that she occupies a relatively privileged position in these matters compared to
many. She is able to travel extensively and to publish her experiences and has a
history of doing so: wherever the ‘action’ is, she is. That’s not meant to
be cynical; rather, it is to acknowledge the importance of engaging
constructively with her analysis. Wainwright can
sometimes slide into over-optimism about the shorter term potential for change
which, perhaps, is influenced by the time she has spent in activist circles.
However, this is not a major problem. And, I feel, there is something of the
outsider about her although, oddly, she seems more at home in northern Brazil
than in east Manchester. Far more importantly, however, her work highlights the
potential for radical change in people’s practical activities, particularly
when combined with other political factors – and that is worth holding on to. The
flavour of change To capture the
flavour of the political changes taking place, she begins on a positive note
citing new forms of activism during a five-month period in 2002/3: the World
Economic Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil; the European Social Forum in Florence; a
youth activists’ meeting in Norway; the first conference of New Political
Initiative in Canada which brought together ‘a dense network of social
movements’; and the activities of the democracy movement in Taiwan. All these
developments, she argues, are a response to the ‘abject failure of mainstream
left parties to fulfil their promise’. Elected governments have failed to
challenge anti-democratic pressures from big corporations. Her purpose,
therefore, is to search for ‘stronger forms of democracy’ capable of doing
that. How can we turn the loss of legitimacy of the old order into an
opportunity to establish local and international forms of democratic power, she
asks? Her answer is to
find out more about the activities of people who are ‘currently reinventing
democracy against the odds’; to see the working principles they are
developing, the obstacles they meet, and to consider the lessons we can learn
from all this. To frame her
perspective, Wainwright cites Tom Paine’s Rights of Man, and what she calls
‘the foundation stone’ on which he ‘built his arguments for democracy’.
Writing during the early years of the French Revolution, Paine argued that
within the people there is ‘a mass of sense lying in a dormant state’ which,
unless aroused, descends with them into the grave. The aim should be to ‘bring
forward’ their capacities which, he argued, appear without fail at times of
radical social change. Wainwright uses
this notion of people’s ‘mass of sense’ to measure the kind of democracy
that followed historically, the situation today, and the kind of democracy we
might build in the future. The democratic
breakthrough for the majority in British society in the first half of the 20th
century, she says, was met by the persistent efforts of those in power to narrow
its scope and blunt its consequences. By the time of the Cold War,
representative democracy had been reduced to competition between elites with
popular participation kept to a minimum. This weak form of democracy was no
match for the growth of private business. The 1960s saw the
emergence of movements, however messy and nascent, that challenged these
arrangements and which provided a basis for regenerating democracy. These
pressures for democracy ‘shook up established social democratic parties and
parts of government’, she says. While elites across the world reacted with
alarm, social democratic leaders proved themselves unable to understand this
‘new democratic groundswell’. Wainwright asks an
important question: why has the radical edge of parties of the left become so
blunted? She looks at several possible explanations: that complacency in office
saps political ambition; that concern about career or party generates reluctance
to face the conflicts and uncertainties caused by radical change; that patronage
tames people’s radicalism; that the state is not neutral but run by those who
favour the existing social order; and, not least, that capital deploys
considerable bargaining power. While accepting the
validity of each of these accounts, she argues that, in themselves, they do not
provide the answer. She sees them as indicative of the pressures acting on left
parties but not as the basic reason why they compromise. The source of that
problem, she says, is the in-built flaw in conventional social-democratic
thought: the assumption that the state, under control of the party, is the prime
agency of social change. The assumption that the state itself is the means for
the party in office to act upon society relegates the labour movement and the
wider society to acting as supporters. Their role is to get the party elected
into office. From there, party leaders can steer the state in the appropriate
direction. This leads to a
consideration of what she describes as ‘the politics of knowledge’ which,
for her, is the foundation for rebuilding democratic politics. Here the crucial
question is what kinds of human creativity count as the source of relevant
knowledge, or know-how? Or, put another way, whose knowledge is recognised as
valid in public decision-making? Four
perspectives To answer this,
four political perspectives are evaluated: neo-liberalism, social democracy,
‘the third way’, and the participatory left’s alternative. For
neo-liberals like Hayek, the social order is the haphazard outcome of history,
refined through the evolutionary process of trial and error. The state should
not interfere in this ‘spontaneous order’ but protect it from political
intervention. Accident is the main mechanism for social evolution. Knowledge is
not a social process – where people can learn collectively about their actions
– but an exclusive, individual quality. Creativity is achieved by narrowly
pursuing self-interest. Social democracy
has a less explicit theory of knowledge, she argues. It rests on the view that
managing the state is primarily a matter for those with valid forms of
knowledge: experts, scientists, professionals, leading business people,
consultants, academics, and so on. Such knowledge can be codified and
centralised and it can be appropriated and distributed by a single institution:
the state. Social democratic governments have, says Wainwright, ‘unconsciously
relied upon the practical knowledge of those who manage the status quo’.
Expert-based forms of knowledge are seen as neutral, as beyond partisan or
vested interests. Implementing policy is seen as a ‘value-free, machine-like
process’ to be decided by elected politicians and implemented by impartial
civil servants. In this way, social
democracy wastes the resources of those who provide its mass base, ‘the
massive force for change which exist[s] beneath [its] eyes’, she argues. Yet,
ironically, the rigid hierarchies in state institutions are inefficient, partly
because they deny the insights and knowledge coming from below. Wainwright does
argue, however, that strong state institutions are needed to ensure social
redistribution and equality of provision. She argues that
Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have produced a ‘third way’ that is a deceptive
political hybrid. They have abandoned the social-democratic tradition and given
up on social transformation. Instead they seek ‘meagre social amelioration’
drawing from the language of the radical left but relocating the public sector
in the market. One of the weaknesses of new Labour’s variant of neo-liberalism
is that it lacks a coherent understanding of knowledge. It reproduces the social
engineer’s desire for predictability and centralised control but almost
romanticises the tacit know-how of the business person and grants the market
‘magical powers of co-ordination and efficiency’. In contrast,
Wainwright argues that for the participatory left a genuine third way politics
recognises the value of practical knowledge and sees it as being both social and
sharable. It thereby replaces the social-democratic view of knowledge with a
more open, networking approach. It is built upon people sharing their practical,
everyday knowledge and experience. Such knowledge is, by its nature,
fragmentary. It’s rooted in emotions as well as ideas, in the things that
people do, and not only in what is written down. It has ‘to be discussed and
pieced together first’, and it can then draw upon other kinds of theoretical,
statistical and historical knowledge. Collective
enterprise Combining the
social nature of knowledge with the goal of democracy, in Tom Paine’s sense,
provides the way to create and develop people’s capacities, she argues.
Creativity and innovation, so vital for social change, come first from practice,
and the priority should be to investigate critically the activities of people
who are seeking to establish new democratic institutions. From this
perspective, the development of a genuine third way is a vast ‘collective
enterprise ... in which every individual desiring change has both a creative and
critical role to play’. Here, it seems, she is not applying traditional left
notions of class but is being inclusive of all who desire progressive social
transformation. This collective
enterprise of creating popular power beyond the ballot box is already underway,
she argues. It generates a series of questions: for example, how to strengthen
local control without also being parochial?; how to balance the need for
centralised power, to redistribute wealth and limit private interests, with
people’s need to have access to power locally?; and how to sustain stronger
forms of democracy given the powers of global corporations and the global
superpower, the United States? In the final
chapter, Wainwright says that the people whom she met on her travels were aware
of losing the tug-of-war over local public institutions – housing estates,
city finances, local council departments and services. They saw that elected
politicians had neither the means nor the will to save them. However, through
different combinations of political parties, community movements and active
trade unions, people are beginning to construct new forms of democracy. Here, I
can only hope that her assessment is right. In what she
describes as a journey of political discovery, based upon the belief in the
creativity of practice, she offers three sets of linked ideas that she hopes
will be useful in furthering democracy:
By developing new
and multiple forms of bargaining power she means widening and deepening
engagements with state and private institutions across a wide range of issues
(and not just workplace relations ‘important as they are’). The aim is not
to replace parliamentary democracy but to complement it with arrangements that
allow popular participation. Behind this approach, Wainwright recognises that
democracy is not something that is ever settled but involves ‘a constant
struggle’. Given the crisis in
liberal democracy, this means that participatory democracy not only needs to
secure legitimacy for itself, but should also seek to reinvigorate
representative democracy. Not only must the participatory processes secure
results, but they must remain autonomous from the state. This complex
relationship better enables public institutions to withstand the pressures of
private capital because they have won some popular support. In addition, this
implies the need for alliances with the social economy, such as co-operatives
and mutuals, as well as trade unions. By political
follow-through, Wainwright argues that participatory democracy requires
political pluralism, fair electoral systems, freedom of information, and the
effective scrutiny of power. A momentum for extending the reach of democracy,
whereby each new assertion of power allows for further gains, means that is an
escalating process. A
new kind of party Central to this is
the need for a new kind of political party, she argues, one that is committed to
the participatory process in terms of its structure, culture and policy-making
process. Here the Workers’ Party in Brazil is favourably contrasted with the
operations of the African National Congress (ANC). She also notes that there are
a number of parties emerging that, in effect, are the electoral voice of
coalitions of social movements. These hybrid movement/party organisations raise
various issues about social change but it is important that, while they sustain
dialogue, mutual learning and co-ordination, there must be a division of labour
between them. This is because
there will be a necessary tension between electoral parties and social
movements, not least about the time needed for taking decisions. They will
operate with different time-scales, with movements stressing the need for people
to argue, to make mistakes and to learn from them. Of course, the political
process envisaged here is not a tidy one but that is what makes it so creative. This brings us to
Wainwright’s third point, about international developments. She argues that,
as she was researching her book, an extraordinary movement was coming into
being, beginning with the World Social Forum in Brazil in 2000. We are seeing a
global movement which combines diversity with unity and which has ‘an
intensity and density of activity for democratic change of society’. What is
taking shape, she argues, is a movement that, in line with Tom Paine’s
beliefs, can effectively draw upon people’s creative capacities. Comment This attempt to
summarise the book’s main arguments raises many more issues than can be dealt
in this review. It has not been possible, for example, to assess the case
studies themselves. Instead, it is the merits of the wider political
perspectives found in Wainwright’s account that can most usefully be explored
here. She provides us
with a greater awareness of international developments, particularly the social
forums that have taken place across several continents. We do need to have a
better grasp of what is taking place at these levels and to try to engage with
them. She is not alone in finding them a heady and exciting prospect. I am perhaps a
little less confident about their longer-term prospects while I welcome their
emergence. Wainwright’s
analysis of the politics of knowledge raises ideas that have not been explored
in much detail but they have much to commend them. She is right to argue that it
delineates the different political perspectives about valid knowledge, and who
should play a role in shaping and determining human life itself. These are
notions that can be developed much further. What I want to
stress, however, is how close she is to the ILP’s general perspectives on
social change. We share an emphasis on continuing democratic processes; on the
social, political and economic alliances that can be constructed; on the linked
but separate character of left parties and movements; and on the need to learn
by doing through trial-and-error in a practical, creative but untidy process of
development. Particularly
significant is her engagement with the practical politics of the here-and-now;
the attempt to reclaim the state and to open up state institutions to
democratising pressures. This shows her – and our – political distance from
the insurrectionary left, whose incantation, ‘only solution, revolution’,
she dismisses. However, despite
her concern with seeking practical reforms through the state, as part of a
process of social change, there is still a gap between us when it comes to
whether we see the Labour Party as potentially important in that process. Ironically, it is
new Labour’s seriously flawed attempts to revive communities (of which
Wainwright is rightly critical) that provide most of her study’s examples of
local attempts at democracy. This suggests to me that Labour remains, not only
an important arena for political action and policy formation, but that the local
struggles which she writes about might be more effective if they found
reflection within the party itself. Interestingly, her
work drew an early response from within the party and from what some might see
as an unlikely source. Catalyst, the left-of-centre think tank published a
working paper on democracy by Angela Eagle MP, which is clearly influenced by
Wainwright’s account. The pamphlet is critical of new Labour and seeks ways of
expanding democracy and going beyond the market mechanism. Angela Eagle belongs
to the ‘New Wave’ Labour group of MPs and, while she identifies herself as a
social democrat, she openly accepts Wainwright’s critique of traditional
social-democratic views about the neutrality of the state. She also says that
the political process in Britain runs on very outdated views about whose
knowledge is valid; that Labour politics has been exclusive rather than
inclusive; that it allocates a passive role to the wider party membership; and
that it ‘wastes the experience and creativity inherent in most people to
organise a change for the better’. Eagle argues in
favour of what she calls ‘quantum politics’, the acceptance that the world
is complex and not entirely predictable. She advocates a deeper democracy and
draws on five years of experience as a minister to argue that current processes
are creating cynicism among party activists who feel excluded from decision
making. She argues: ‘There is much merit in considering how the process of
administering policy and programmes can be opened up and allowed to proceed in a
bottom-up rather than a top-down way’ based on ‘genuinely empowered
citizens’. Admittedly, one
Eagle does not of itself make a summer, but her pamphlet shows that there are
people within the party who are willing to go beyond the constrictive politics
of the present and value democratic politics. The question is how to welcome,
support and strengthen these developments as an important part of the wider
process of social change itself. Arguably, it also shows that new forms of
political co-operation and understanding are gradually taking shape within the
party. This seems far more tangible than waiting for the emergence of a new
party of the left to emerge. Where I am least
enamoured of Hilary Wainwright’s analysis is her consideration of the reasons
why parties of the left lose their radical edge. It is not that the ideas she
examines are invalid, far from it, although I might give them a different
emphasis. Her argument about the significance of social democracy’s misguided
view of the state is also crucial, but perhaps more as part of a package of
explanations that both interact and reinforce each other. Social
conservatism What most concerns
me is the absence of a sufficiently explicit acknowledgement of the electoral
constraints acting upon all left parties. For, while it is vital to see the
potential within people when it comes to social change, it is also important to
recognise that winning elections deals with actually existing social
conservatism within the electorate. In addition to the pressures of capital,
this conservative outlook seriously impedes Labour – as it would any new party
of the left. Electoral
considerations shorten political horizons and encourage great caution among
party leaders in particular. Put crudely, there is a dynamic at work here:
social conservatism reduces political radicalism among left parties which in
turn often reproduces social conservatism, and so on. Of course, on some issues
significant sections of the public can be ahead of parties, but they can also
lag far behind. That is why
electoral politics alone can never be enough to generate social change. Left
parties seeking office through elections are vital, but they are likely to be
the slowest boats in the flotilla. Progressive social movements will often be
the political pioneers of change, better equipped at challenging established
ideas and social practices, and creating new ones. Each needs the other but
there is bound to be considerable political tension – sometimes open conflict
– between them. Each has a different political role that has to be recognised
and respected by the other, even though many people will, of necessity, belong
to both. The critical question is, where and how are these arguments to be aired
and, if possible, resolved? Wainwright
recognises this. Yet her oft-stated desire for a new party somehow obscures
these problems and relocates them somewhere in the future (and to the issue of
different time-scales). In doing so, she undermines one of the strengths of her
account – that she is offering a relevant politics for the here-and-now based
on existing conditions. In contrast, far
left politics are basically propagandist – they are for a future that neglects
or devalues the present, one that provides few practical steps forward that can
engage large numbers of people. Their answer to most issues is to swell their
own ranks in readiness for the revolution. By placing an
emphasis on new parties of the left Wainwright neglects what we can and should
be doing today in the UK. We should build with and through the institutions that
are available, learning how to use them to the best effect. This requires skill
and political dexterity, and it also keeps us in touch with the world as it is. The future starts
today, not in anticipating the arrival of a new party. We have much to be
grateful for in her book. It may even be possible to seek forms of co-operation
on the broad areas where there is agreement. But in waiting for
the new party to materialise, Wainwright is adopting the role of one of the
disempowered characters in Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. This is a
fine drama, but it is neither a practical nor a political manifesto.
Hilary
Wainwright (2003) Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy, Verso. Angela Eagle, MP
(2003) A Deeper Democracy: Challenging Market Fundamentalism, Catalyst. |
