The Working Class Must Constitute Itself the Nation and Vest Sovereignty in the People!

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The Working Class Must Constitute Itself the Nation and Vest Sovereignty in the People!

How do the people become the decision-makers? What is the nature of people’s empowerment? Over what will the working class and people have decision-making power?

These are a number of the questions that have immediately come to mind over the past week or so. Tony Blair has made a number of speeches, for instance at the Scottish Labour Party Conference, dealing with the question of power, politics and people. David Miliband, who is Minister of Communities and Local Government, has continued to elaborate the government’s thinking on "putting people in control" and the "devolution of power" to the people. And the Power Inquiry ("an independent inquiry into Britain’s democracy", the centenary project of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust) has released its final report entitled "Power to the People". In other words, the issue of people’s empowerment has become an issue of the moment, in the context of the crisis of representative democracy and the concentration of executive power in the hands of the Prime Minister and a handful of Cabinet ministers.

The Rowntree Trusts approach the problem from the angle of radical reform, in essence of a revitalisation of the parliamentary reform movement of the early and mid 19th century in the wake of the French Revolution. In this regard, the solution, which they stress is urgently needed, is a "major programme of reform to give power back to the people of Britain".

Tony Blair, in addressing his own New Labour troops, has also tried to cast the Labour Party in the mould of radicalism. But the thrust of his and Miliband’s arguments is quite different. They are taking forward the position staked in the opening shots of the election campaign when Alan Milburn asserted that the election would be one of New Labour winning power so as to hand power over to the people. It is interesting that in setting the context for this elaboration, Tony Blair explains that "modern politics is almost a conspiracy against understanding". But Blair is such a dyed-in-the-wool advocate of the values of capitalism and competing in the global market that his contribution dramatically deepens the conspiracy. His programme is one of corporatism in the name of "making the hard decisions" to make the lives of the people "better".

The New Labour argument develops from the twin issues of the "strategic state" which "pushes power down to the people" and the call for a growth of volunteerism and local charitable work. In this scenario, power is devolved from central to local government, and then from local government to the voluntary sector, which is labelled the "third sector" of British society. It is evident that this scenario dovetails into the programme of neo-liberalism and privatisation of social programmes being carried out by the government under the fraudulent banner of giving "choice" to the "consumer". Thus the so-called "investment with reform" programme, which is enriching the private sector and causing crisis and havoc with health and education, is to be bolstered with a new phase of "partnership between state and the third sector". A "Compact Commissioner" is to be established, whose brief is to do with contracts with the voluntary sector, and overcome the crisis in the welfare state, in other words to assist in devolving responsibility from government to the people for the state of the crisis caused by the social and political system.

The crux of this argument is, as Miliband says, that "the mission for the 21st century must be to spread power to citizens both to act individually and collectively. Delivering this mission requires reforms to markets and to government. But the third leg of the stool – the third leg without which the other two are of limited use – is the voluntary sector. The third sector is the supplier of power to individuals and communities."

What kind of power is this? How can this be a way out of the crisis when the people have no power, for example, to decide the direction of the economy, to dictate questions of foreign policy, of war and peace and security. Is it not primarily a mechanism for making the people complicit and responsible for the so-called national and universal values, for indoctrinating the people with the New Labour ideology which is supposed to work for the whole people, for obscuring that supreme power lies with the financial oligarchy, and for maintaining this dictate with the royal prerogative inctact?

Society and its political system and institutions stand in urgent need of democratic renewal. The working class needs to be in a position of power to take hold of the wealth it produces and apply it for the public good, and vest sovereignty in the people.