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Reclaim the State, Experiments in Popular Democracy
Review of Hilary Wainwright's book by Patrick Ainley
Verso 2003, ISBN 1-85984-689-0, 252 pages, 15 (hb)
Several recent titles feature The State. Books like George Monbiots
Captive State show how the state has changed. There is though
a peculiarly English tendency to assume that The State remains unchanged
because there has been no revolution here for nearly 400 years and no
invasion for nearly 1000. Bob Jessops The Future of the Capitalist
State is an honourable exception but his description of a Schumpeterian
workfare postnational regime is never going to catch on! It is appropriate
therefore that an American, Phillip Bobbitt, has found a widely acceptable
term to identify the changes that have taken place in what he calls
the new market-state.
Whereas Jessops approach is theoretical and Bobbitts historical,
Hilary Wainwright takes a personal and journalistic approach in her
easily read account of visits to four places East Manchester, Luton,
Newcastle and Porto Alegre in Brazil where she finds experiments in
popular democracy to reclaim the new market-state. Her encounters with
the reality of struggles in and against the new market-state generate
new theory in practice.
For these are not purely defensive struggles to return to the former
welfare state. As a public sector trades unionist tells her: If we
are actually going to defend services then just arguing for the status
quo is not going to engage the public. Instead, Hilary explains, the
aim is to redirect market-state forms of contracting out public services
and community development towards reforms that pave the way for further
transformation in a steady, cumulative process towards participatory
democracy as the basis for both economy and state. This means rejecting
the old left mantra only solution, revolution, while recognising with
the Exodus Collective on Lutons Marsh Farm Estate the reality that
many people dont want to attend endless meetings.
It points toward not only new forms of democratic organisation, as
in participatory budgeting for the city of Porto Alegre or the popular
management of East Manchesters New Deal for Communities, but a new
public sector trade unionism which differs from the more fundamental
conflict that divides management and unions in a private company.. workers
defending not just their wages but the public nature of their work.
The battle is not only against privatisation but for a more effective
service than that previously delivered by top-down welfare-state bureaucracy.
As Hilary points out, This very redistributive element of public services
makes possible their distinctive form of efficiency.
In producing alternative plans to Newcastle Councils Private Public
Partnership proposals, the Public Services Alliance there brought together
as many organisations as possible to defend the public sector. This
in turn points to new realities with which academic theory has yet to
catch up in a new class alliance between the formerly-manual working
class and white-collar, non-manual employees, reflecting the formation
of a new working-middle class in society as a whole. At the same time,
it also becomes important for success to engage and sustain a section
of the traditional working class that has been increasingly relegated
to underclass status.
As Hilary writes, The old systems of local government have failed
partly through their own mistakes, partly through forces beyond their
control. The only alternative to escalating chaos, followed in all
likelihood by the authoritarianism of either the state and/or the far
right, is an organised democratic participation in the management of
public funds backed by real redistribution of resources to the poorer
communities.
As well as new public service trades unionism building new class alliances
in and against the new market-state, Hilary describes A new kind of
party that consciously rejects the idea that it has a monopoly of correct
ideas. Or that it could have a monopoly of power even if it ever seized
the commanding heights of the new market state because power has been
devolved to global capital. As a result, Across the world, from Scotland
to South Korea, an increasing number of parties are emerging that are
in effect the electoral voice of coalitions of social movements. For
instance, the Akbayan in the Philippines or the Brazilian Workers Party.
These are just some of the theories in practice that emerge from Hilarys
search for more vigorous forms of democracy through which to struggle
for the new Utopia of human survival. But as she adds in a footnote,
Concepts alone can never achieve institutional change, though they
can help to clarify the practice of the movements with whom they share
their origins. This relates to her introductory discussion of what
she calls the underlying issue how to bring forward what Tom Paine
called the normally dormant mass of sense.. which never fails to appear
in revolution.
Hilary Wainwright shows how such a revolution against the unsustainable
new world order of the new market-state can begin.
References
Bobbitt, P. (2003) The Shield of Achilles, War, Peace and the Course
of History, London: Penguin.
Jessop, B. (2002) The Future of the Capitalist State, Oxford:
Polity.
Monbiot, G. (2000) Captive State, The Corporate
Takeover of Britain, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Patrick Ainley
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Reviews
Reclaim the State, Experiments
in Popular Democracy
Review of Hilary Wainwright's book by Patrick Ainley
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A new European Constitution
by Laurence Keeley
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