How to make democratic decisions?
By John Keeley, Left Unity supporter & IOPS member.
Key to the success or failure of Left Unity will be its ability to include as much of the British left as possible, working together & winning people to a vision. The working together part requires a democratic decision-making process that allows all to participate & to feel that the decisions reached are fair, even if sometimes contrary to individual preference. What could this look like?
Should it be a group of people elected by another group who were supposedly elected to represent local groups, as at the first national meeting, who should set the agenda? Well, I think there’s a better way. If people look at the IOPS website – http://www.iopsociety.org/ – they will see that each chapter (local group) has its own page for news, events, a forum, a blog, projects, resources, list of members & importantly polls. This allows all to participate as equals. It’s not a substitute for local & national meetings, it helps facilitate them, it helps people keep in contact, it helps people learn & share ideas, but when there’s an important decision to be made it offers everyone the ability to participate. The polls can be at town, county, national & for IOPS at international level. It just requires people to log in.
Why doesn’t Left Unity look to do something similar? That’s if it really wants the party to be democratic & open to all to participate. Or is it going to fall into the trap like all the other political parties & just become yet another vehicle for political egos? I really hope not. But I’ve been around look enough to recognise that there are many who lust after power, & as much as they may say the right things & even believe them, when it comes down to it power becomes too tempting.
I would think IOPS would be more than happy to share the technological know-how on setting such a website up. If & when people vote for membership, subs-paying rights, we can have signed-up members writing articles, suggesting & voting in polls, as well as guests posting comments in the forums & in response to articles. This should convince people we are something different & not yet another political clique intending to rule over them. It would show people what real democracy looks like.
18 comments
18 responses to “How to make democratic decisions?”
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There is a problem with this. Many problems. It is clear that Left Unity is unstable. Too many people on board are incapable of disguising the fact that they want to alienate those who disagree with them. They want to humiliate them incessantly, doing so until they walk away in disgust. Either that or else they will resort to convincing like minded individuals to band together to purge those with a different point of view. Many of the worst offenders are those who want to smash those who demand rights for factions to caucus. They might find it hard organizing witch hunting while simultaneously drawing attention to their own anti-faction faction. This problem of disunity is clearly not a problem with one section of Left Unity. On the contrary, this squabbling is a painful index of just how shallow the roots of the organisation is at this stage. That is why Ken Loach was absolutely right to vote alongside Nick Wrack for his procedural motion. John Keeley wants Left Unity “to be democratic & open to all to participate.” But Left Unity only wants to unite the left, the left with each other; not the left with the right and the center, thank you very much. By definition, we don’t want all to participate in Left Unity. This poses starkly the question of who is and who is not part of the left. As Ken Loach made clear, anti-capitalism has to be key. Those who have made their peace with capitalism are not, in my opinion, part of the left. Not when we are dealing with uniting the left to pose an alternative in the electoral arena. Of course we can have ad hoc united fronts with those who have no ideological opposition to capitalism as an inherently anti-democratic, exploitative, wasteful, oppression festering system of omnishambling parasites. That said, when it comes to membership, those who remain agnostic (or worse) when it comes to capitalism have to be kept at bay.
Tom, you misunderstand me. I very much want & expect Left Unity to be anti-capitalist. To be on the left, in my opinion, is to be anti-capitalist. By ‘democratic & open to all to participate’ is referring to those who join Left Unity because they identify as being of the left & against capitalism.
But let’s not call ourselves anti-capitalist until we’ve defined what they mean by that. What percentage of this country define themselves at anti-capitalist? I’d guess around 1 in a thousand. So if you say “we’re an anti-capitalist party”, they’ll say “well i’m not an anti-capitalist so you’re not the party for me”. If we say we want direct democratic control of workplaces and communities, which is what i think socialism is, then we’ll have the support of a lot more people. There’s a huge diffence beetween being an anti-capitalist and calling yourself an anti-capitalist. Just like I know loads of people who think men and women are equal but wouldn’t call themselves a feminist, even though for me the two things are the same. Let’s not isolate ourselves with terminology before people have had a chance to engage with our ideas.
In our LU group we are already operating a Face Book page, as I am sure are many other groups. I think that the idea of developing this is an excellent one and is the very basis of moving towards a more democratic decision making process; that avoids direction being imposed from above.In conjunction with; a membership policy, statement of LU aims etc,regular meetings and participation in other activities, this is an essential part of democracy because contributions can be made in all directions, and ideas clarified.
Face book Pages are quite difficult to manage in my opinion, but I haven’t had much practice!
I suggested to our group that we should have closed forums for each group where they can discuss things more fully. Having to vote on delegates when you’ve just met everyone half an hour ago is not ideal nor is trying to discuss ammendments to this or that in endless e-mails bouncing back and forth from dozens of people. This sort of format makes it much easier for people to contribute when they have the chance.
Tom, please use paragraphs my contact lenses are drying up! I’m not sure who wants to smash the rights of factions to caucus. I’m stunned by the amount of bickering over the rights of other organisations within left unity. No one seems to have a problem with members of other organisations joining as individuals and yet there seems to be some huge problem with other organisations not getting some sort of special rights. I’m pretty confused by the whole thing.
An interesting and innovative idea John. It is potentially a huge leap forward in direct party member democracy if all members of a political party can, after open debate on an issue, simply vote online. There was something very “19th century political practice” about the all too predictable shambolic moments at the national meeting on Saturday – as the experienced old Lefties used all the usual “procedural motion” tricks, and last minute motions, to hog the debating time.
Of course to have any sort of real party structure at all Left Unity has to move swiftly to being an individual member based organisation – based on subs paying members – and a “one member one vote” democratic structure.
I grow ever more impatient with the likes of “Tom”, with his endles whining about the tiny Left sects feeling “oppressed” by the widespread cynicism by the bulk of the unaligned Left Unity supporters , about their motives and aims . Trouble is Tom, many of us WERE members of Far Left groups in the past. We know only too well what the “game” is. We’ve played it ourselves. If the tiny “revolutionery” Left wants to participate productively and sincerely in Left Unity, then it can do so as individual members, with no special privileges . Of course the Left sects will caucus and factionalise, fair enough. But don’t think for a moment the rest of us, olde Trots in many cases, aren’t aware of the perennial “expose the reformist leadership – split the party – build the revolutionery sects out of the wreckage” gameplan of you and your ilk. You are all welcome to join, but we who want to build a radical mass Left party will also fight for genuine open party democracy and a party structure and manifesto which actually has the potential to recruit masses of people — waaaay outside of the orbit of the circa 7,000 or so who currently make up the ENTIRE Far Left activists in the UK.
Agree with both Johns! Like John P I was in a sect and know the game. You see it isn’t just about what they could do to hinder the growth of LU but also what kind of society they would create if they ever got power. Clue: the leader of the Socialist Party has been in place since the 1960s and the SWP is imploding because a fair chunk of their members rebelled against a leadership that is self-perpetuating and tolerates no opposition. Sound familiar? Don’t worry though,no one will be re-enacting the 1917 Russian Revolution anytime soon.
Meanwhile lets get positive about what we actually want to do as a party to make the world a better place (see the post ‘Stuff we can unite around?’for an attempt). John K has suggested a great way forward. I am going to propose the following to our Huddersfield group at our meeting tonight. Be grateful for your thoughts on this John K and everyone else. Is it technologically feasible or even a good idea…?
LET’S GET POSITIVE
1. We propose that that the national steering committee should discuss how to get a positive discussion on concrete alternative policies and ideas to austerity and free-market capitalism as a step towards building for our founding conference in the Autumn. We believe that if all we do is oppose cuts and protest the party will not survive long, but also recognise that the process of developing a realistic, convincing and relevant set of policies will take time and has to be open and democratic from the start
2. We suggest that if necessary, perhaps a small sub-committee of the steering committee could be established to facilitate this, made up of people who are genuinely interested in policy, have an open attitude and are willing/have time to get stuck into the sort detail coordination required
3. So to get things started we suggest that the website or other forms of social media are used to set up open online discussions about a wide range of organisational and policy areas with the specific aim of identifying possible policies that the party could adopt and campaign on in the future. Such forums to be separate from the main website/FB page etc and look at specific issues but be easily and clearly accessible from the main website
4. These policy areas could be:
a) how do we promote equality in society for all?
b) how do we hope to solve the housing crisis?
c) how would we seek to reform the education system?
d) how do we ensure that the welfare needs of people are met fairly?
e) what are economic alternatives to austerity?
f) how would we reform the tax system?
g) what should are attitude to the EU and international issues be?
h) how should a democratic green-left party organise to promote free-thinking, bottom-up politics and prevent egoism, careerism and factionalism?
i) anything else anyone wants to discuss and feels is important
5. If there is enough interest/expertise and enthusiasm for particular areas of policy it may be that members and supporters wish to get together face to face to discuss them. we suggest that the steering committee ask for volunteers to help coordinate chair these and get them organised.
6. However, we believe that the steering committee should respect the strong feeling expressed at the meeting on 11th May that we don’t want our new party to be disrupted by the existing sectarian parties/groups. We therefore suggest that anyone who volunteers to coordinate policy groups should not be a member of an existing party and be genuinely independent. After all, we all know that the main aim of a representative of one of the sectarian parties would be to promote their own faction and not the wider aim of creating a genuinely new party of the left.
Richard,
As the IOPS website shows it’s technologically possible.
But nothing is perfect, & it takes trial & error to learn just what should be put up for a vote & how the questions should be phrased.
A recent IOPS poll was poorly constructed & for most of the questions the option ‘no preference’ got the most votes.
The key point though is aspiring to equality in decision-making as much as is practically possible, so we don’t in any way emulate those groups that have the same old faces holding power all the time, as you rightly mentioned.
This is an excellent idea Richard and a discussion I think that needs to be had. Too often the conversation gets mired in denouncing and opposing but not offering concrete solutions. We need to start having this debate on what should replace the failing systems that we have in place.
Yes John!
Good thinking John. For the potential success for the LU project one of the most important factors will be the vibrancy of local LU groups. I have the impression that the inaugral conference on Saturday exuded a hurriedness by the national organisers to put in place a framework for a party that barely exists at present. I think some of that haste stemmed from the desire of some to snuff out any threat of the project being ruined by the activities of Marxist parties with their own agendas.
My approach to this issue is that local groups, well ventilated with facebook, twitter pages can provide an opportunity for constructive dialogue between all the small groupings on the left. Thuis is something that has not happened anywhere near enough over the years. On so many occasions people have tended to remain loyal to their tribal factions to the detriment of pooling together to further campaigns. It may sound naive on my part to believe that a new spirit of greater co-operation can be fostered, but I believe that local campaigning is the context that best opens up such possibilities.
This is why I have been quite critical of the stance taken by Mark Perryman. His language only reinforces the insular mindset of many members of small Marxist groups and parties – when their methods are criticised people react defensively and are less willing to enter into a more thoughtful discussion and analysis
Not just Mark, Darren, lots of people on the site have voiced similar opinions. Have you experienced anything like they describe? Or maybe been part of it yourself? Ever known anyone – friend or family – who can now not be persuaded to take part in our work due to their previous experience of these ‘tribes’.
For those not personally involved, many of us have wasted a lot of time being tolerant of the sects in local campaigning, as you suggest, only to deeply regret it when they undermine, destroy or hijack our hard work – or cynically use it as a recruitment opportunity. The sects are not just poor, over-sensitive pedants, they are actively malign with interests that conflict with unity.
This has resulted in a lot of good people being put off being active in the left – but most importantly, positive results that would have arisen from the left’s work have been hindered or thwarted, causing actual harm to real people. Life is too short and the situation too bad for us to waste any more time on self-indulgent people and their sad little groups.
Mark is open in his critique and every negative observation comes from a desire to transcend our present nadir and build a better, far more effective left; along with the kind of positive suggestions for how this can be done, not just what we are against, as Richard suggests above.
I look forward to working with you in the future.
Yes let’s harness technology but don’t forget the computer poor.
Need to look at Italy’s 5 Star Movement for internet democracy I reckon.
When we talk of uniting the Left. I think we should mean anyone to the Left of the Labour leadership. If only people who already identify as “anti-capitalist” can join then we’re going to be doomed to be just another irrelevant sect. People get very emotinal about words like “socialist” “capitalist” “revolutionary” “reformist” without defining what they mean by them. Calling yourself a revolutionary is immediately off-putting as the idea of storming Buckingham Palace is so far from people’s ordinary lives. So say what you mean, you want workers to own their own their workplaces and manage it democratically? Say that. People will like that.
Joe,
Whether Left Unity offers an overtly anti-capitalist vision or just peddles the notion that capitalism can be reformed to be more egalitarian is a separate debate to how we make democratic decisions.
I not only want to see Left Unity offer an anti-capitalist vision, but to also organise in a way that allows people to participate as much as practically possible in decision-making. If the people who join end up voting for a reformist message, then that’s at least democracy.
Very stimulating thread this – thanks. I was interested to read the comment about sharia economics on Iram’s page. And I wonder whether the stable state economy idea (put forward in the novel ‘Ecotopia’ years ago has any mileage. I’m convinced that we have to be open to ideas that are new to us – and be ready for creative thinking about everything – as Micheline said.
Left Unity should be for people. People in the UK have a rich understanding of politics and the current political situation but are mostly exlcuded from political debate. Drawing on this understanding should guide the development of Left Unity. Most people would agree that no one should die because they can not afford to heat their home in winter. Left Unity could maybe offer constructive direct action on this issue and many others.Action coupled with a simple socialist core statement offers an alternative vision and hope.
John, good idea. Can you tell us a bit more about the “security” of the polling system (not the https kind!). Is it open to abuse (people building multiple online ids)? Are you suggesting it’s used for polling and voting / is there a distinction? Are you suggesting it can be THE party voting system? Or do you see it playing a role in aiding discussion – with some other process for actually making decisions? Thanks.