Libertarian socialism

While many on the left say they are "socialist" this can mean so many different things to different people. I've come across labour party members telling me they are socialist yet come out with some really reactionary ideas. For me it’s a broad term which can describe many strands of thinking but I’d like to look at the libertarian version of the term and why I feel it needs remembering. There are soft left sorts who just want the rich to pay their tax to hard left sorts who still support the state others are anti authoritarian who oppose the state and much more in between. Marxists are socialists but propose a hierarchical party quite often to change society there are some who propose council communism which takes the ideas of democratic soviets and recallable delegates as a version to work for which I think for me they are closer to anarchist thinking than Marxist as far as I can tell. While Marxists and anarchists talk about fighting for the same thing a class less society the methods and thinking is often very different in achieving this. Even anarchists are socialist of a sort although more link themselves to communism as choose to disassociate themselves with the state socialist thinking of many on the current left who seem to hold the dominant thinking at the time being. To quote from an anarchist FAQ which puts this in a far better way than I ever could. "Many anarchists, seeing the negative nature of the definition of "anarchism," have used other terms to emphasise the inherently positive and constructive aspect of their ideas. The most common terms used are "free socialism," "free communism," "libertarian socialism," and "libertarian communism." For anarchists, libertarian socialism, libertarian communism, and anarchism are virtually interchangeable. As Vanzetti put it: "After all we are socialists as the social-democrats, the socialists, the communists, and the I.W.W. are all Socialists. The difference -- the fundamental one -- between us and all the other is that they are authoritarian while we are libertarian; they believe in a State or Government of their own; we believe in no State or Government." [Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti, p. 274] But is this correct? Considering definitions from the American Heritage Dictionary, we find: LIBERTARIAN: one who believes in freedom of action and thought; one who believes in free will. SOCIALISM: a social system in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods. Just taking those two first definitions and fusing those yields: LIBERTARIAN SOCIALISM: a social system which believes in freedom of action and thought and free will, in which the producers possess both political power and the means of producing and distributing goods. (Although we must add that our usual comments on the lack of political sophistication of dictionaries still holds. We only use these definitions to show that "libertarian" does not imply "free market" capitalism or "socialism" state ownership. Other dictionaries, obviously, will have different definitions -- particularly for socialism. Those wanting to debate dictionary definitions are free to pursue this unending and politically useless hobby but we will not). However, due to the creation of the Libertarian Party in the USA, many people now consider the idea of "libertarian socialism" to be a contradiction in terms. Indeed, many "Libertarians" think anarchists are just attempting to associate the "anti-libertarian" ideas of "socialism" (as Libertarians conceive it) with Libertarian ideology in order to make those "socialist" ideas more "acceptable" -- in other words, trying to steal the "libertarian" label from its rightful possessors. Nothing could be further from the truth. Anarchists have been using the term "libertarian" to describe themselves and their ideas since the 1850's. According to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the revolutionary anarchist Joseph Dejacque published Le Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement Social in New York between 1858 and 1861 while the use of the term "libertarian communism" dates from November, 1880 when a French anarchist congress adopted it. [Max Nettlau, A Short History of Anarchism, p. 75 and p. 145] The use of the term "Libertarian" by anarchists became more popular from the 1890s onward after it was used in France in an attempt to get round anti-anarchist laws and to avoid the negative associations of the word "anarchy" in the popular mind (Sebastien Faure and Louise Michel published the paper Le Libertaire -- The Libertarian -- in France in 1895, for example). Since then, particularly outside America, it has always been associated with anarchist ideas and movements. Taking a more recent example, in the USA, anarchists organised "The Libertarian League" in July 1954, which had staunch anarcho-syndicalist principles and lasted until 1965. The US-based "Libertarian" Party, on the other hand has only existed since the early 1970's, well over 100 years after anarchists first used the term to describe their political ideas (and 90 years after the expression "libertarian communism" was first adopted). It is that party, not the anarchists, who have "stolen" the word. Later, in Section B, we will discuss why the idea of a "libertarian" capitalism (as desired by the Libertarian Party) is a contradiction in terms. As we will also explain in Section I, only a libertarian-socialist system of ownership can maximise individual freedom. Needless to say, state ownership -- what is commonly called "socialism" -- is, for anarchists, not socialism at all. In fact, as we will elaborate in Section H, state "socialism" is just a form of capitalism, with no socialist content whatever. As Rudolf Rocker noted, for anarchists, socialism is "not a simple question of a full belly, but a question of culture that would have to enlist the sense of personality and the free initiative of the individual; without freedom it would lead only to a dismal state capitalism which would sacrifice all individual thought and feeling to a fictitious collective interest." [quoted by Colin Ward, "Introduction", Rudolf Rocker, The London Years, p. 1] Given the anarchist pedigree of the word "libertarian," few anarchists are happy to see it stolen by an ideology which shares little with our ideas. In the United States, as Murray Bookchin noted, the "term 'libertarian' itself, to be sure, raises a problem, notably, the specious identification of an anti-authoritarian ideology with a straggling movement for 'pure capitalism' and 'free trade.' This movement never created the word: it appropriated it from the anarchist movement of the [nineteenth] century. And it should be recovered by those anti-authoritarians . . . who try to speak for dominated people as a whole, not for personal egotists who identify freedom with entrepreneurship and profit." Thus anarchists in America should "restore in practice a tradition that has been denatured by" the free-market right. [The Modern Crisis, pp. 154-5] And as we do that, we will continue to call our ideas libertarian socialism. A.1.4 Are anarchists socialists? Yes. All branches of anarchism are opposed to capitalism. This is because capitalism is based upon oppression and exploitation (see sections B and C). Anarchists reject the "notion that men cannot work together unless they have a driving-master to take a percentage of their product" and think that in an anarchist society "the real workmen will make their own regulations, decide when and where and how things shall be done." By so doing workers would free themselves "from the terrible bondage of capitalism." [Voltairine de Cleyre, "Anarchism", Exquisite Rebel, p. 75 and p. 79] (We must stress here that anarchists are opposed to all economic forms which are based on domination and exploitation, including feudalism, Soviet-style "socialism" -- better called "state capitalism" --, and slavery and so on. We concentrate on capitalism because that is what is dominating the world just now). Individualists like Benjamin Tucker along with social anarchists like Proudhon and Bakunin proclaimed themselves "socialists." They did so because, as Kropotkin put it in his classic essay "Modern Science and Anarchism," "[s]o long as Socialism was understood in its wide, generic, and true sense -- as an effort to abolish the exploitation of Labour by Capital -- the Anarchists were marching hand-in-hands with the Socialists of that time." [Evolution and Environment, p. 81] Or, in Tucker's words, "the bottom claim of Socialism [is] that labour should be put in possession of its own," a claim that both "the two schools of Socialistic thought . . . State Socialism and Anarchism" agreed upon. [The Anarchist Reader, p. 144] Hence the word "socialist" was originally defined to include "all those who believed in the individual's right to possess what he or she produced." [Lance Klafta, "Ayn Rand and the Perversion of Libertarianism," in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, no. 34] This opposition to exploitation (or usury) is shared by all true anarchists and places them under the socialist banner. For most socialists, "the only guarantee not to be robbed of the fruits of your labour is to possess the instruments of labour." [Peter Kropotkin, the Conquest of Bread, p. 145] For this reason Proudhon, for example, supported workers' co-operatives, where "every individual employed in the association . . . has an undivided share in the property of the company" because by "participation in losses and gains . . . the collective force [i.e. surplus] ceases to be a source of profits for a small number of managers: it becomes the property of all workers." [General Idea of the Revolution, p. 222 and p. 223] Thus, in addition to desiring the end of exploitation of labour by capital, true socialists also desire a society within which the producers own and control the means of production (including, it should be stressed, those workplaces which supply services). The means by which the producers will do this is a moot point in anarchist and other socialist circles, but the desire remains a common one. Anarchists favour directs workers' control and either ownership by workers' associations or by the commune (see section A.3 Of an anarchist FAQ". Moreover, anarchists also reject capitalism for being authoritarian as well as exploitative. Under capitalism, workers do not govern themselves during the production process nor have control over the product of their labour. Such a situation is hardly based on equal freedom for all, nor can it be non-exploitative, and is so opposed by anarchists. This perspective can best be found in the work of Proudhon's (who inspired both Tucker and Bakunin) where he argues that anarchism would see "[c]apitalistic and proprietary exploitation stopped everywhere [and] the wage system abolished" for "either the workman. . . will be simply the employee of the proprietor-capitalist-promoter; or he will participate . . . In the first case the workman is subordinated, exploited: his permanent condition is one of obedience. . . In the second case he resumes his dignity as a man and citizen . . . he forms part of the producing organisation, of which he was before but the slave . . . we need not hesitate, for we have no choice . . . it is necessary to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would ensue two. . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant to a free and democratic society." [Op. Cit., p. 233 and pp. 215-216] Therefore all anarchists are anti-capitalist ("If labour owned the wealth it produced, there would be no capitalism" [Alexander Berkman, What is Anarchism? p. 44]). Benjamin Tucker, for example -- the anarchist most influenced by liberalism (as we will discuss later) -- called his ideas "Anarchistic-Socialism" and denounced capitalism as a system based upon "the usurer, the receiver of interest, rent and profit." Tucker held that in an anarchist, non-capitalist, free-market society, capitalists will become redundant and exploitation of labour by capital would cease, since "labour . . . will . . . secure its natural wage, its entire product." [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 82 and p. 85] Such an economy will be based on mutual banking and the free exchange of products between co-operatives, artisans and peasants. For Tucker, and other Individualist anarchists, capitalism is not a true free market, being marked by various laws and monopolies which ensure that capitalists have the advantage over working people, so ensuring the latter's exploitation via profit, interest and rent "So anarchists consider themselves as socialists, but socialists of a specific kind -- libertarian socialists. As the individualist anarchist Joseph A. Labadie puts it (echoing both Tucker and Bakunin): "It is said that Anarchism is not socialism. This is a mistake. Anarchism is voluntary Socialism. There are two kinds of Socialism, archistic and anarchistic, authoritarian and libertarian, state and free. Indeed, every proposition for social betterment is either to increase or decrease the powers of external wills and forces over the individual. As they increase they are archistic; as they decrease they are anarchistic." [Anarchism: What It Is and What It Is Not] Labadie stated on many occasions that "all anarchists are socialists, but not all socialists are anarchists." Therefore, Daniel Guerin's comment that "Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man" is echoed throughout the history of the anarchist movement, be it the social or individualist wings. [Anarchism, p. 12] Indeed, the Haymarket Martyr Adolph Fischer used almost exactly the same words as Labadie to express the same fact -- "every anarchist is a socialist, but every socialist is not necessarily an anarchist" -- while acknowledging that the movement was "divided into two factions; the communistic anarchists and the Proudhon or middle-class anarchists." [The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs, p. 81] So while social and individualist anarchists do disagree on many issues -- for example, whether a true, that is non-capitalist, free market would be the best means of maximising liberty -- they agree that capitalism is to be opposed as exploitative and oppressive and that an anarchist society must, by definition, be based on associated, not wage, labour. Only associated labour will "decrease the powers of external wills and forces over the individual" during working hours and such self-management of work by those who do it is the core ideal of real socialism. This perspective can be seen when Joseph Labadie argued that the trade union was "the exemplification of gaining freedom by association" and that "[w]ithout his union, the workman is much more the slave of his employer than he is with it." [Different Phases of the Labour Question] However, the meanings of words change over time. Today "socialism" almost always refers to state socialism, a system that all anarchists have opposed as a denial of freedom and genuine socialist ideals. All anarchists would agree with Noam Chomsky's statement on this issue: "If the left is understood to include 'Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the left. Lenin was one of the greatest enemies of socialism." [Marxism, Anarchism, and Alternative Futures, p. 779] Anarchism developed in constant opposition to the ideas of Marxism, social democracy and Leninism. Long before Lenin rose to power, Mikhail Bakunin warned the followers of Marx against the "Red bureaucracy" that would institute "the worst of all despotic governments" if Marx's state-socialist ideas were ever implemented. Indeed, the works of Stirner, Proudhon and especially Bakunin all predict the horror of state Socialism with great accuracy. In addition, the anarchists were among the first and most vocal critics and opposition to the Bolshevik regime in Russia. Nevertheless, being socialists, anarchists do share some ideas with some Marxists (though none with Leninists). Both Bakunin and Tucker accepted Marx's analysis and critique of capitalism as well as his labour theory of value (see section C). Marx himself was heavily influenced by Max Stirner's book The Ego and Its Own, which contains a brilliant critique of what Marx called "vulgar" communism as well as state socialism. There have also been elements of the Marxist movement holding views very similar to social anarchism (particularly the anarcho-syndicalist branch of social anarchism) -- for example, Anton Pannekoek, Rosa Luxembourg, Paul Mattick and others, who are very far from Lenin. Karl Korsch and others wrote sympathetically of the anarchist revolution in Spain. There are many continuities from Marx to Lenin, but there are also continuities from Marx to more libertarian Marxists, who were harshly critical of Lenin and Bolshevism and whose ideas approximate anarchism's desire for the free association of equals. Therefore anarchism is basically a form of socialism, one that stands in direct opposition to what is usually defined as "socialism" (i.e. state ownership and control). Instead of "central planning," which many people associate with the word "socialism," anarchists advocate free association and co-operation between individuals, workplaces and communities and so oppose "state" socialism as a form of state capitalism in which "[e]very man [and woman] will be a wage-receiver, and the State the only wage payer." [Benjamin Tucker, the Individualist Anarchists, p. 81] Thus anarchists reject Marxism (what most people think of as "socialism") as just "[t]he idea of the State as Capitalist, to which the Social-Democratic fraction of the great Socialist Party is now trying to reduce Socialism." [Peter Kropotkin, the Great French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 31] The anarchist objection to the identification of Marxism, "central planning" and State Socialism/Capitalism with socialism will be discussed in section H. It is because of these differences with state socialists, and to reduce confusion, most anarchists just call themselves "anarchists," as it is taken for granted that anarchists are socialists. However, with the rise of the so-called "libertarian" right in the USA, some pro-capitalists have taken to calling themselves "anarchists" and that is why we have laboured the point somewhat here. Historically, and logically, anarchism implies anti-capitalism, i.e. socialism, which is something, we stress, that all anarchists have agreed upon (for a fuller "discuss of why "anarcho"-capitalism is not anarchist see section F). With thanks as ever to an anarchist far http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/secA1.html#seca13

Is the Green party a left wing party and should the left support them?

Is the Green party a left wing party and should the left support them? I like the Green party know a fair few of their members and all seem genuine to me. A fair few are what I’d even describe as socialist and left wing. But are the greens a party that the left could rally behind and more to the point are they even left wing at all? All very interesting questions. I would say personally from my experience they’re on the left without a doubt where you place them after that becomes a big debate. I’d almost compare their politics today as almost old labour style politics of public ownership and higher tax’s on the rich as a basis to go forward. I see the greens as an interesting party with lots of variety and some very forward thinking individuals including their on single MP in Caroline Lucas who I like a lot and have heard speak on a number of occasions. I think she is independent and speaks out on things she believes in and is not tied to a party line like many MP’s are. Whether you are in favour of parliamentary politics or not you cannot fail to notice the green party of late having taken control all be it in a minority fashion in Bright and Hove. Yes the ruling group fronted by the greens have passed on cuts and no amount of hand ringing can get away from this fact for me. Having been a socialist party member and previously stood for TUSC this did not go down well in the anti cuts movement when the green lead council in Brighton passed on the cuts and look to again this year too. But do we therefore right off the greens as a party and a wider movement all because of Brighton city council? Maybe if you are a dogmatic sort I suppose. I tend to look at things a bit more rationally these days in a sense. Those of us outside the party often point to the record of the Greens in Germany, where the party joined a neo-liberal coalition and voted for the Afghanistan war, and in Ireland, where they joined a right wing government and cut healthcare and benefits while saying it was OK because they were creating new cycling schemes. Against this we are told that the Green Party of England and Wales is different – the most left wing Green Party in Europe, even. Does this all stand up ? Well the Brighton council thing does not want to go away it seems and the greens will be judged on this their claims to the contrary. Of course that is not the whole story of the Green council in Brighton. As you might expect, it has been pursuing many sustainability initiatives. More significantly, it has just declared that no Brighton council tenants will be evicted if they cannot afford their rent because of the bedroom tax. And councilors have been active in supporting all sorts of other local campaigns. But when it comes to the key issue of fighting austerity, there is scarcely even a cigarette paper between the Greens’ “fairer” cuts and Labour’s. The bogeyman of Eric Pickles’ administrators coming in and making the cuts is used to justify… making the cuts. Spotting the pattern After the first Brighton budget, the Greens held a vote at their conference on whether it was the right to make the cuts. It wasn’t even close – two thirds backed the Brighton councilors. It was at this point that Joseph Healy, one of the founders of internal left wing grouping Green Left, quit the party on principle. As he noted “A few days later at the party’s national conference, despite vigorous objections from Green Left, the party voted to support the Brighton decision. Pragmatism had defeated principle, realpolitik triumphed over radicalism. While the Green Party has many good socialist members, and some radical policies, it is not a party of the left – deliberately so. It has always included different wings of the green movement. Quite a large element of the membership are devoted to an agenda of ‘cycling and recycling’, with a narrow focus simply on environmental issues. While there are many who see themselves as part of the left, they are happy to work alongside those who use the phrase “neither left nor right” with a straight face. Open expressions of leftism are widely seen as a turn-off to voters, and class is generally not thought relevant. The party just voted to put a commitment to “social justice” in its constitution, but that’s as far as it is willing to go. The consequences of this are that Green politicians’ positions can be all over the map. I l have a lot of time for the greens but are they ultimately the answer. I am not sure. I do think they have much to offer and have some very good genuine members but I’m just not sure managing the left side of capitalism is a goal worth fighting for. . Of course we’ll all work with Greens in the battles we face against austerity – and with the many people in Labour, too, who want to oppose the Tories’ destruction of everything we’ve worked for. There is too much at stake not to. But the Green Party offers no solution to the problem of working class representation, or a left alternative to the mainstream consensus. After all, if the Greens are the answer, then why are so many crying out for something new?

Building a new electoral base for socialism will have to be done, but will take time, patience and ingenunity

This excellent post i found on the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition website highlights the tasks for a new socialist electoral base which does need to be built and the need for it is greater than ever i feel. I talk to people on the internet alot who feel no party truely represents them. Well TUSC is what is missing i think. A true new workers party with socialist roots and appeals. Under neath i have posted a excellent article that many may or may not find interesting. I know i certainly did.

This article comes from Will Mcmahon a TUSC representitive helping to promote its message.

Over the last decade or so many socialists living in Britain who come from a variety of different political traditions have reached the conclusion that the route for socialism has been cut-off through the Labour Party and we have to begin again by building a new socialist party.

Electoral battles are but one front in an on-going battle with the ruling-class and will for a period involve many more electoral defeats than successes. Ultimately, electoral outcomes will be governed by waves of class struggle, union strength and working class confidence. However, irrespective of the ongoing level of class struggle, working people are asked, and are asking themselves, on an almost annual basis, which party are they going to vote for?

In England, the Walsall Democratic Labour Party and the Socialist Alternative in Coventry have demonstrated that local bases for socialism can be built and sustained for a number of years. While a local vote for a local socialist is a good answer to some local political questions, most political questions in the electoral field are, in the end, answered by voting for national governmental alternatives.

The long run survival of these bases ultimately depend on a national political formation to replicate their success in other areas. The question for socialists is how do we build this national political alternative and what vote is a good enough indication that the project is making headway?

Some argue that the target of five per cent (the percentage vote needed to retain your deposit in a constituency election) is the threshold by which success and failure can be measured. This is not a view I share. Nor is this view shared by those who have built minority parties that have had an impact on national politics over the last two decades.

The tables below show how these parties have developed their presence as national force. Note the low votes that they have had to endure while they have been building their electoral machines for future challenges. Rather than taking the view that it is not worth standing if the vote is likely to be less than five per cent, they have stood ever further and wider into what sometimes seem completely hopeless areas. They have adopted this strategy for one simple reason: it has enabled them to spread and deepen their roots and consequently to develop their national organizational strength.

In less than two decades, UKIP (with a constituency mainly based on and to the right of the Conservative Party) have broadened their base by standing more and more candidates across the country. Rather than being troubled by the five per cent threshold, or even some much lower votes, (eg 0.53 per cent in seats targeted in 1992 and 1.06 per cent in 1997 when UKIP saved just one deposit out of 194 candidates) they have pressed on in the belief that their core political message has political resonance. After 20 years and five general elections UKIP have built an electoral base that has begun to alter the electoral arithmetic and are now close to a million votes.

UKIP
Year Candidates Number of Votes Seats Deposits Saved % Total Vote % Vote in Contested Seats
1992 17 4,383 0 0 0.01 0.53
1997 194 106,028 0 1 0.34 1.06
2001 428 390,563 0 6 1.48 2.16
2005 496 605,973 0 38 2.20 2.80
2010 572 920,334 0 99 3.10 3.45



The Green Party has followed a similar strategy. According to the five per cent rule, the Green Party should have stopped standing a wide numbers of candidates in elections long ago and simply concentrated on their heartlands. But they didn’t; once again, convinced that they had a national political constituency constituency, they stood widely. Note that the experiment they conducted in 1997 of standing fewer candidates was quickly abandoned.

GREEN PARTY
Year Candidates Total votes Average votes per candidate % of total vote Average % of vote per candidate Saved Deposits Number of MPs
1979 53 39,918 753 0.13 1.46 0 0
1983 109 54,299 498 0.17 1.04 0 0
1987 133 89,753 675 0.28 1.35 0 0
1992 253 170,037 672 0.51 1.27 0 0
1997 89 61,731 694 0.21 1.34 0 0
2001 145 166,477 1148 0.63 2.75 10 0
2005 182 257,758 1416 1.04 3.29 22 0
2010 310 265,187 855 0.96 1.81 6 1



Finally, look at the votes of the BNP, built on a growing economic crisis that has impacted on some of the most depressed areas abandoned by Labour in its search for the hallowed middle ground of politics:

BNP
Year Number of candidates Total votes Average votes per candidate Percentage of vote Change (percentage points) Saved deposits Number of MPs
1983 53 14,621 276 0.0 N/A 0 0
1987 2 553 277 0.0 0.0 0 0
1992 13 7,631 587 0.1 +0.1 0 0
1997 56 35,832 640 0.1 0.0 3 0
2001 33 47,129 1,428 0.2 +0.1 7 0
2005 119 192,746 1,620 0.7 +0.5 34 0
2010 338 563,743 1,668 1.9 +1.2 73 0



It took the BNP a bit longer to work out that by focusing on a few areas in the hope of maximizing a local vote the party had cut itself off from all those whom might vote for it nationally. By 2005 the penny had dropped in the Griffin bunker and by 2010, in the space of just three general elections, the BNP had gone from 47,129 votes to over half a million.

As suggested above, there are political, social and economic reasons for the rise of the fascist vote, but the determining electoral factor was that the BNP stood widely across the country so that they could collect up as many votes as possible from their core constituency and develop roots in those areas. Fortunately, the BNP’s response to almost tripling its candidates and votes between 2005 and 2010 has been to implode into internecine strife. However, the far right will regroup and continue to exploit the vacuum left by the absence of a socialist alternative in areas abandoned by Labour. The fascists understand that 1.9 percent nationally – or half a million votes, is not to be abandoned without a fight.

The tables above show that a small national party can make enough inroads to create an electoral block that begin to change the terms of the national political debate if it stands widely enough to express a level of political strength. The lesson is don’t stand in just the few seats where it is possible to get above five per cent – this will only serve to cut you off from the overwhelming majority of your core support; and don’t let low votes limit your electoral ambitions – to build a national party stand as far and wide as possible. What we all know is that building a new electoral base for socialism will have to be done – but it will take time, patience and ingenuity.

Building a political home for your core support to live in

By standing as widely as possible TUSC would be able to advertise its presence to as wide a layer of its core support as possible and invite them to join. The most reliable estimates suggest that despite the growth in their aggregate electoral vote, all three parties discussed above have quite small party memberships. UKIP has about 10,000 to 14,000 members (depending on how you count); the Greens have around 10,000 members and the BNP have between 6,000 and 8,000 members. In rough terms this means that at the last general election the Greens have one member for every 25 votes received and the BNP and UKIP one member for every 60 votes. (Labour was one member for every 50 votes).

If TUSC were to make a broad challenge at the 2012 and 2013 local elections and 2014/15 general election then merely by advertising its presence and presenting itself as a national political party it could draw more potential members into its orbit and build the platform for a core membership organization. If TUSC was ambitious and aimed for two per cent average vote in core seats in England at the next general election then, assuming TUSC actually built a membership campaign and structure alongside the election campaign, the number of people joining would increase and bring more resources and people for the future battles to come.

By core seats I am thinking of those seats that Labour won in 2010 in England (191) – although TUSC could stand much wider than that number. For example, if TUSC were to average 1000 votes across 200 constituency seats it would win 200,000 votes. To put this in perspective, TUSC and allies stood 180 candidates in about 170 council wards in 2011 and got 25,000 votes. This was, proportionally, about six times more than the 12,000 votes that TUSC got in around 500 average council wards it stood in as part of the 2010 General election. (Incidentally, even though TUSC was late off the blocks for the 2010 General Election, you will see if you revisit the tables at the start of this article, even that vote is comparable to UKIP/Greens/BNP when they first stood.)

General Election England 2011
Party Seats Seats
change Votes % %
change
Conservative 297 +92 9,908,169 39.5 +3.8
Labour 191 -87 7,042,398 28.1 -7.4
Liberal Democrat 43 -4 6,076,189 24.2 +1.3
Green 1 +1 258,954 1.0 -0.1
Speaker 1 0 22,860 0.09 -
Turnout: 25,047,355 65.5



So 200,000 votes in England is not beyond the realms of the possible if it was decided as a plan of action to stand 200 general election candidates. (The Greens stood 200 candidates, almost half in the more prosperous South East and got over a quarter of a million votes.) It is out of such results that a national party can be built. At a Labour Party votes to membership ratio (1/50) this would produce a possible membership of 4,000, or the Green party ratio (1/25) it would be 8,000.

It is for this reason that it is the aggregate vote (rather than the low vote in particular areas) makes a difference over the long run. A national presence, even on a low percentage vote, can translate into a party membership that in itself can build a local election campaign presence in areas where they did not previously exist. Rather than shun the low votes TUSC should stand widely to accumulate more of them – because they are the raw material out of which a nationwide socialist presence will be built. Put simply, in order to rally to a flag you have to be able to see it in your locality.

The aim would be to create a virtuous circle of standing widely, and out of the contacts made building a national membership and resource base, then using this national membership and resource to build a local electoral interventions to reach more people. Out of this strategy, combined with an ongoing presence in working class communities and trade union campaigns, some local strongholds would emerge and be sustained. Then rather than being embattled out posts these areas would be the advance guard of a growing nationwide electoral challenge. This is the lesson of the Green Party and, unfortunately, even UKIP and the fascists.

Electoral politics can be brutal.

The count can feel quite an uncomfortable place to be when you know that you are going to come last (as I have done twice since February this year). Especially after you have trod the streets week in and week out leafleting and knocking on doors trying to winkle out the socialist vote, when your party is new and the potential voter may not have heard of it or your candidate. As can standing next to Labour Party members who may have won, many of them councillors who have recently voted to cut local services to working class communities.

If the thought of a low vote feels like a rebuff from the class then it is perhaps worth considering the 33, 45 or 96 working class people who saw the election name ‘Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition – against the cuts’ and in the ballot box decided to vote for you or the candidate you have worked for. They were sending a message: ‘I am a trade unionist and a socialist and I agree with you’. This is the kindling of a new socialist party and alone is a reason to stand and to begin the process of building a new party that can represent the working class; but this will only be worthwhile if it done as part of a national project that those voters they might later consider joining.

In 2011 for every Sheffield, Coventry or Preston there were other TUSC votes that were just below or above one per cent. It is important to get all votes into perspective. For new small national parties this range of votes is normal, especially with small financial resources and finite numbers of people to call upon and, it has to be said, a relatively late election campaign. However, what is important about the TUSC results was not those at the top or the bottom of the range of votes, but those in the middle two quarters – the middle 50 per cent. The voting range in the middle is between 2.2 and 5.4 per cent (perhaps a welcome surprise to some of those who stood for the first time) and more than respectable for a new party standing it is first local elections. Not at all disappointing, but in fact something to build upon and comparable with other new parties in Europe who have the benefit of a much more proportional system. For example, The United Left Alliance in Ireland received a mid range vote of between 1.5 and 9.2 per cent.

We have a base – but we have yet to reach them

Between 1997 and 2010 the Labour Party lost over two million working class votes. While some of these voters decamped to other parties, the majority have simply stopped voting because they have no party to vote for. Then there are those left wing voters who do vote Labour because there is no other credible left alternative available. These are the millions that TUSC can reach but only if it has a strategy bold enough and wide enough to reach them.

Will McMahon, a member of the TUSC Independent Socialist Network 24 May 2011

Why i'm in favour of prisoner votes

I've been thinking about this issue for a while and i've made up my mind.

I am in favour of giving votes to prisoners in the United Kingdom. I feel that voting is a right not a privillage to people. However bad your crime you have committed and some are terrible i can assure you that having the right to vote should not be taken away from you.

It has no affect on your punishment of serving time at her majesty's pleasure but what it does do is give you a voice. I'm a big advocate of human rights and this i feel is one. For years we campaigned for votes and a democractic society. Now we have it we must not abuse it.

Especially with women who have only been legally allowed to vote since about 1928. This is something we must treasure and uphold in this country.

In many countries such as newly over thrown Egypt many men and women still dont get to vote.

Ok i may not think that voting in Great Britian today may change things dramatically with both Labour and the Conservatives supporting capitailism, something i'm strongly against if you were not aware but as a left winger i do feel that prisoner votes are essential and enabling prisoners to vote can be made part of their overall rehabilitation back into the wider society.

I do recognise there are various forms of crime and each case may be assessed individually still but on the whole i dont think this will harm prisoners or society as a whole and this group of votes is just waiting for a proper left wing political party to grasp hold of and run with. It is as they say there for the taking.

As i've taken a while to come to this decision as it is quite a big issue. I am throwing it out there for everyone who radsthis blog to comment on if you please. I'd be interested to read your views.
I think this goes beyonda purely left wing stance in many ways, it stands as a fairness for all. Something of which as a socialist i am truely in support of. As a classless society i'd loveto see fairness for all in terms of crime and punishment too. Giving prisoners the right to vote is not devalueing why they are in prison in the first place, often for very serious crimes but the right to vote should not play a part in that juditial process at all in my opinion. It is a right, a human right which must never be taken away from a truely democratic society.

sadly underneath here is the Guardian report about the result of the vote in the house of commons last week on the matter of prisoner votes. The article below goes in to various detail about rights of people and various MP's views on votes for prisoners and also the EU's iinvolvement in British politics today. Interesting little piece.

MPs have voted overwhelmingly in favour of maintaining a blanket ban preventing prisoners from voting, strengthening the government's hand as it seeks to water down a ruling from the European court of human rights.

Ministers will start drawing up a compromise proposal after MPs voted by 234 to 22, a majority of 212, in favour of a cross-party motion that said parliament should decide on such an important issue.

The motion called for the retention of the status quo in which all prisoners, except those on remand or imprisoned for contempt or default, are barred from voting. Under one option being examined by ministers – who were expecting the strong vote – judges would be given discretion to decide which prisoners could vote.

The non-binding vote prompted Eurosceptics to call on the government to consider withdrawing from the court. Blair Gibbs, of the Policy Exchange thinktank, said: "Now is the opportunity to go to the root of this problem which is the expansionist Strasbourg court. The UK government should use prisoner votes to reassert its authority over Strasbourg, and if necessary, prepare to leave the court's jurisdiction if it cannot be reformed."

The vote came at the end of a lengthy debate in which MPs lined up to condemn a court ruling that called for the lifting of the blanket ban. David Cameron, who gave Tory backbenchers a free vote, invited MPs to deliver a clear signal of their opposition to the ruling by supporting a cross-party motion tabled by Jack Straw and David Davis.

Davis, the former Tory leadership contender, told MPs: "The general point is very clear in this country – that is that it takes a pretty serious crime to get yourself sent to prison. And as a result you have broken the contract with society to such a serious extent that you have lost all of those rights – your liberty and your right to vote.

"So it is not unjust. Every citizen knows the same level of crime which costs them their liberty, costs them their vote. What the court calls blanket rule I call uniform justice."

Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, told MPs that a constructive debate could lead to a more flexible stance in Strasbourg. The court judgment, made in October 2005, had been made in part because parliament had not held a substantive debate on the ban, introduced in 1870. Britain proposed granting the vote to prisoners jailed for less than four years, though judges would have discretion to remove this right.

Grieve said: "While, of course, members of the House are entitled to express their disagreement with the judgment of the European court – and indeed I have done so myself – the fact that we may be in disagreement doesn't in itself solve the problem.

"In order for the views of this House to be helpful, we need to demonstrate that we are engaging with the concerns of the court and also that we are not just expressing a series of frustrations – although I have to say I have felt rather angry on this issue in recent years. We do have to see whether by a dialogue about what the house considers to be proper and reasonable in respect of prisoner voting we can ensure that we bring our weight to bear as a legislature in terms of the development of the jurisprudence of the court. That gives us the best possible chance of winning the challenges which may then occur thereafter."

The attorney general warned Eurosceptics that Britain would be acting "tyranically" and in breach of the rule of law if it defied rulings from the court. Grieve issued the warning after Claire Perry, a Tory backbencher, asked what mechanism existed to enforce the will of the court.

The attorney general said there was no mechanism, but added: "So one needs to be a little bit careful about this.

"The principles on which United Kingdom governments have always operated is that if there are international obligations which confer a power on the court and the court orders compensation, we will honour those international obligations. It is our duty to do so because without it we diminish our own status in terms of our respect for international law as much as for domestic law. It is a bit of a red herring to suggest that just because it can't be enforced that it is a justification for ignoring something. That would be a fairly momentous change in UK practice."

Britain had to comply with the court's judgments, said Grieve, because it signed up to the European convention on human rights, which provides the legal basis for the court. It underpins the Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog, which has 47 members.

Labour's former home secretary, Jack Straw, denied that the Human Rights Act he introduced was to blame.

"The tension, the conflict, which we have to resolve today can in no sense be laid at the door of the Human Rights Act nor indeed, in my judgment, at the plain text of the convention. Rather, the problem has arisen because of the judicial activism by the court in Strasbourg widening their role, not only beyond anything anticipated in the founding treaties, but also not anticipated by the subsequent active consent of all the state parties, including the UK."


Denis MacShane, Labour's former Europe minister, defended the Strasbourg court. "I believe that peoples of other regions of the world – Africa, Asia, South America – would die to have an ECHR to tell their government what to do," he said. "Populist illiberalism is the new politics of much of the continent. It's a shame to see it arrive in the Commons – I hope our country does not tear up the treaty or quit the Council of Europe."

Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust said the vote did not express the view of the Commons as nearly two-thirds had not backed the ban. Ministers were allowed to abstain, though their aides were free to vote for the motion. "In a free vote, 234 MPs chose to hang on to the 19th century punishment of civic death enshrined in the 1870 Forfeiture Act," Lyon said. "22 MPs voted against the motion. This means just over one third of the total number of MPs in the House of Commons voted to retain the ban.

"Although the vote is not legally binding on the government, the message it sends to prisoners and people working in the prison service is a poor one. The outdated ban on prisoners voting has no place in a modern prison system, which is about rehabilitation and respect for the rule of law."

A democratic country i think not

After reading http://liberalconspiracy.org/2010/11/13/tories-plan-militarisation-to-deal-with-protests/

the way the tories want to deal with protests and so called civil arrest from now on suggests to me they are against anyone protesting. Be it political or anything. This is strikes a veryw orrying chord with me that if notably the left is being monitored if we are going to protest or not this shows a inbalance in this country that we must oppose. How can a democractic country monitor this sort of activity. If people wish to plan protests why cant they. Just police it better its quite simple. Monitoring and spying on leftist groups is wrong and is not politically fair or democratic in my opinion.



The article will appear in sundays Observer newspaper and this is a exert from the piece

As police face continued criticism for failing to control the march, the Observer has learned that defence firms are working closely with UK armed forces and contemplating a “militarisation” strategy to counter the threat of civil disorder.

The trade group representing the military and security industry says firms are in negotiation with senior officers over possible orders for armoured vehicles, body scanners and better surveillance equipment.

The move coincides with government-backed attempts to introduce the use of unmanned spy drones throughout UK airspace, facilitating an expansion of covert surveillance that could provide intelligence on future demonstrations.

Derek Marshall, of the trade body Aerospace, Defence and Security (ADS), said that such drones could eventually replace police helicopters. He added that military manufacturers had discussed police procurement policies with the government, as forces look to counter an identified threat of civil disobedience from political extremists.

Meanwhile police sources say they have detected an increase in the criminal intentions of political extremists and are monitoring “extreme leftwing activity” in light of last week’s student protest.

The office of the National Co-ordinator for Domestic Extremism (NCDE) said it was feeding information to Scotland Yard’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which holds a database of protest groups. NCDE, which in turn works closely with the Confidential Intelligence Unit that monitors political groups throughout the UK, said it had already recorded a rise in politically motivated disorder.


I would love to know peoples thoughts in this. Do the police and security of this country monitor extreme right wing groups and their plans and activities too ?

it just seems like a big swipe at the left and our right to protest to me.