Building Socialism Without Parliaments

Ever since Labour’s loss in the 2019 general election, many on the left have been contemplating whether Labour can still remain as a viable vehicle to deliver socialism in the UK. The subsequent revelations of chicanery, subterfuge and subversion within the party’s machinery ratified our underlying concerns over its suitability for such an endeavour; that the party can not be anything other than yet another that manages capitalism.

A mass exodus from the party has since taken place with thousands of ex-members and voters now feeling politically homeless. At the next general election, Labour may well get our vote but at this point, voting for them is purely a matter of limiting the damage that can be done.

This leaves us with a couple of questions: Is democratic socialism viable, is a revolution achievable and if not, what other options are there?

The Problems With Democratic Socialism

Democratic socialism, that is socialism enacted through currently existing structures and institutions of power and democracy, has a few major flaws as a concept which I’ll talk about further and hopefully successfully illustrate.

In the UK our method of vote counting, first past the post is, as many of us recognise, a huge problem to the point where one might even call it anti-democratic. Its very nature enforces a duopoly of political parties which have a majority in parliament. Whilst other parties do exist, they rarely get more than a handful of seats. This is the first hurdle for democratic socialism - there is no de facto democratic socialist party in parliament which makes entryism into a left-leaning party the only real option.

If a democratic socialist party does make it to an election through either entryism or formation of a new popular party, it has to contend with an establishment that is hostile to anything that does not reflect its own values and mode of operation; this hostility is simply a reflexive act of self-preservation but a hurdle to be overcome, nonetheless. Many Labour party members will attest to this.

Unless a democratic socialist party gets a landslide majority in parliament, it’ll be unlikely that it can enact any of the more meaningful and radical policies needed to transform our society and economy due to the overriding and opposing ideology of all other parties. Coalitions are unlikely and may only gain the party a handful of votes at best. This is the third hurdle.

But even then, a democratic socialist party that overcomes all these hurdles still has to contend with the fundamental problem of parliamentary democracy - whatever your party can do in one parliament, another opposing party can undo in another.

These points above only consider parliamentary democracy in isolation from the rest of society. The ultimate hurdle is thus: the ideology of society at large is the ideology of the ruling class. It is propagated and disseminated through books, TV, culture, religion, news media, social media, politicians and pundits, and so on. It’s self-reinforcing in a way that I attempt to further and more deeply explain here:

The Illusion of Choice: The Great Capitalist Con

Revolutionary Socialism

Revolutions are generally undesirable - they are brutal, highly authoritarian, bloody and violent. Furthermore, there is generally only one point where revolutionary intent can manifest and it requires the material conditions of the populace being so dire that the vast majority are radicalised. 

Within the UK, and as far as my interactions through social media and the public go, there is simply no appetite for revolution, for previously mentioned reasons. The material conditions needed to radicalise the populace do not exist even after 40 years of dystopia and economic turmoil generated by neoliberal capitalism.

The break that revolution seeks to produce with the powerful, deeply rooted state and economic system we have today also just seems far-fetched and unlikely. Even if such a revolution did succeed, it’s likely to produce the same moral failings that prior, successful socialist revolutions produced which are amplified and exaggerated by the bourgeoisie. These moral failings coupled with the authoritarian nature of revolutionary activity are probably the main reasons why many have an aversion to socialism, so if only for popular support, we should avoid revolution.

So What’s The Alternative?

In a nutshell, the left needs to stop putting its eggs in one basket and we need to stop pushing the establishment for change. We have for far too long had a reliance on bourgeois parliaments to produce radical change on our behalf. 

Let me be clear here - I’m not saying we should entirely dismiss parliamentary democracy, I’m saying that we should not rely on it. We should only use it to vote for the party who can do the best to mitigate the damage capitalism rains down upon us. We should not lionise any party or partake in the bourgeois institutes of democracy any further than is absolutely necessary lest we fall into a trap of partisanship. 

Parliamentary parties will only be persuaded to produce radical change once we have laid the groundwork for new modes of economic participation and local democracy. We have to be obviously better and more efficient than capitalism, and its pseudo-democracy, to the point that we eventually start to squeeze it out of existence.

The problem we have is somewhat of a chicken and egg scenario - do we need a radical change in systems of laws, justice and democracy first or do we need to set up the paradigms for socialism first? My thinking is the latter because many of these paradigms are already in motion: Co-operatives, municipalism (The Preston Model), people’s assemblies, mutual aid groups, trade and credit unions, etc. 

These paradigms are obviously socialist in many aspects but limited in ability by bourgeois systems of law, justice and democracy. As a simplistic example, a co-operative cannot truly be socialist until property laws are reformed or the concept of private property is abolished altogether, and labour laws and markets are reformed or abolished.

So, what we need to do is to expand these institutions where possible and continue to organise and further our systems of democracy and we need the right tools to be able to do so. We need to build a secondary structure of power.

The Tools Of Our Democracy

“For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

How right Audre Lorde was when she wrote this, but it does beg a question: What tools then will dismantle the master’s house?

The tools we build ourselves, of course!

In the 21st century, we are blessed with a plethora of digital tools; apps, websites, communication tools, open-source software, social media, e-books and new methodology, which when combined with other traditional methods of organisation can help us manufacture and further expand paradigms of socialism.

Take WhatsApp and Discord, for example, both great platforms for chatting and sharing plans or documentation with like-minded socialists locally, across the country or internationally. WhatsApp has the added benefit of being end-to-end encrypted due to the nature of the platform. Another possibility for gaining sign-ups and membership to a group is Google Forms.

Crowdfunders and similar tools can be used for mutual aid, to help kickstart a worker co-operative enterprise that benefits the community or to purchase and fund other programs such as libraries or adult learning courses. Given the amount that a recent crowdfunder raised for Jeremy Corbyn’s legal defence, it’s not out of the question for crowdfunders to be used to purchase housing or even to start a community credit union!

E-democracy is now a possibility within the reach of many and is a massive boon for organisers. Both Loomio and the upcoming Wobbly app offer such a thing; Loomio is intended more for general democracy needs whereas Wobbly will be more focused on organisation within the workplace. 

Many open-source alternatives to the above exist, but there is something to be said of the satisfaction gained from weaponising tools developed by the bourgeoisie against them.

So, in the words of Lenin, what is to be done? As an example:

Create a local People’s Assembly. First, get as many like-minded people involved as possible and sign them up through Google Forms in order to keep within GDPR compliance. Email members and invite them to Discord or WhatsApp groups. Create democracy through Loomio, create your plans through Google Docs or Open Office and share them with the group. Arrange meetups, use crowdfunders to rent town halls if needed. This can also be a great way to manoeuvre local businesses and institutions into utilising The Preston Model of municipal socialism - especially desirable if your area has been deprived of government funding for some time.

Once an Assembly has enough members, it also has enough collective power to pressure and lobby local bourgeois governments, and business, into the desired action.

Optimism, Not Pessimism! 

This is of course all easier said than done but there are two points I need to make here: 

We must remain optimistic about self-emancipation - socialism from the grassroots is a possibility because we have the tools, the attitudes and drive for change. We just lack motivation and a clear path forward which we must manufacture ourselves.

We must not fall into a philanthropic trap - by this I mean we should be careful not to allow room for the bourgeoisie to defund our communities just because they see our efforts for self-emancipation and conflate them with self-philanthropy or charity. Many wealthy business owners also invest in the community at large and the loss of that investment could be disastrous. We, of course, wish for self-emancipation but the bourgeoisie remains the key holders for self-reliance as they control the monetary and financial systems. 

We must start by forming the building block of socialist democracy - the People’s Assembly. Only then can we seek a transformation of society based upon the will of the many rather than the undemocratic whims of the few. If a new society and economy are born from the grassroots, from planting the seeds of democracy in this fashion, it can only continue to be democratic.

The most delectable part of all this is that metaphorically, capitalism has produced the very rope by which it’ll be hung. 

We can do this, we have the technology, we have the will and we have the solidarity.

Start small, but think big. We have nothing to lose but our chains.