Socialism - is it democratic?

Whenever there is a discussion about socialist ideas, it isn't long before someone contrasts the regimented, repressed society of Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, to the liberal freedoms available in the west. By associating socialism with the repressive regimes of the East, the clear intention is guilt by association.

A more sensible and informative approach is to look at what is meant by democracy itself and then to see how societies shape up. Using the same yardstick to look at both east and west will allow us to see that neither in fact, supports an active form of democracy.

Representative democracy

The essential principle behind representative democracy is that people are elected to make decisions and judgements on behalf of an electorate. They are put into a position where they are trusted to examine the issues fairly and honestly, and then to make decision based on their principles.

Typically they stand on a policy platform which outlines what they would like to see happen, the principles they stand for, the positions they take on specific political issues. But crucially it is not a mandate - they are not required to implement everything in the manifesto though it a popular misconception that they are. They are not bound by the platform they were elected on because they are expected to take into account the conditions at the time.

They are elected for a fixed period of time during which it is almost impossible to remove them. If, after being elected, they act against their stated principles, make prejudiced decisions, act dishonourably, unless they themselves decide to resign, they remain in place.

In order to stand in elections with any chance of being elected, the candidate has to have significant financial backing and normally the support of a political organisation. The influence exerted on and by the media is often critical and therefore substantial economic resources are required. Those candidates without that financial backing will not be elected. In the US, presidential candidates typically need to be millionaires.

In order to get onto the candidate list, individuals need to obtain the approval of political groups who control the financial resources required for success in elections. Whatever their personal political principles, they will adopt a line consistent with the platform of the group that controls the resources.

For this reason, a individual has virtually no chance of election success in parliamentary representative democracy. Political parties control both the selection of candidates and the resources required for election success. Political sponsors are an ever-present reality in this system.

Where all of the mainstream parties support capitalism, defend business, and wish to limit worker organisation and rights, the control by political parties reduces electoral choice to a single slate. In the US, both the democratic and republican parties stand almost for the same thing. Neither party wants to see any fundamental change in the economic system towards socialism and it is effectively a one-party choice.

Democracy under Stalinism

After the Russian revolution, workers took control of the workplaces, directly elected bodies of representatives called Soviets, and collectively made decisions that affected the whole of society. This pattern was repeated in many revolutions - the election of soviets was an important implementation of direct democracy. Working people never had such control over their lives, such direct access to the elected representatives, and the power to replace them if they stopped representing their interests.

Stalin and the centralised bureaucracy stamped out workers' democracy because it was a direct challenge to their rule. The party apparatus was, very much like in the West, used to select appropriate candidates, people who would toe the line and support the policies the party wanted to promote.

Although there were candidates, elections, representative bodies, they were filled with approved candidates, much like the House of Commons and the Senate. In the West, you had to be selected and approved by a party. And the same happened in the East. In both cases, democracy was reduced to ticking a box once every few years to choose between pre-selected approved candidates. In neither case was it any genuine democratic control. In both cases, the purpose was to defend the system from radical challenge.

Democracy from below

When representatives are elected in workplaces, in union organisations, it is common for there to be an opportunity to replace them if they lose the confidence of the people they represent. The election of a shop-steward will select an individual to serve for a particular length of time but those who elect them will be able to remove them if the need arises. That direct accountability is important to ensure that people are properly represented.

There is typically only a single requirement for the election of union shop-stewards apart from union membership and that is that they work in the workplace itself. They therefore experience the same conditions as the people they represent. They get the same pay, and decisions that are made affect them too.

Instead of restricting discussion to the issues decided by some party bureaucracy, or some parliamentary ruling party, active democracy opens up discussion to a much wider range of ideas. Instead of everyone agreeing in advance to the policies to be followed, even before the debate starts, active democracy encourages challenge and criticism. If something isn't right, or isn't working, then the organisations of working people are empowered to change it.

Do people need to be kept away from power?

One common criticism is that working people don't have the skills to make these decisions, that politics requires a layer of political specialists. Indeed it is often claimed that ordinary people wouldn't take the right decisions.

In fact history shows us that this is simply not true. Not only can people organise factories and production generally perfectly well, those people most able to run business are often those who have worked in them. The owners quite simply turn out to be irrelevant once production is organised to meet need rather than profit.

It isn't that people don't have the skills, but rather that they take different decisions. Instead of defending the owners right to make money, they reorient production to meet social need. That's the real reason why owners and politicians are suspicious of the exercise of democratic power by working people.

The bottom line

Workers' democracy is an active process that involves people in making decisions that affect them. It ensures that representatives are recallable, and are paid the same as those they represent. It broadens discussion and the expression of new ideas and wherever it has happened, it has shown itself to be effective and successful.

Both the West and the Stalinist East needed to close down any expression of workers' democracy and replace it with a layer of specialist politicians, selected to conform to the defence of the system rather than to change it. Whether as a communist party apparatchik or US senator, the entry requirements to candidacy included adopting an acceptable political line to get access to the resources needed for election. In the east, being chosen as a loyal party follower, or in the west as a millionaire representative of business interests, the process ensured the stiffling of democracy and its replacement by a controllable layer of representatives.

This is a million miles away from real active democracy and that is why both the communist parties and the western capitalist parties are so threatened by it.