Posted by John, June 20th, 2011 - under Plebiscites, Revolution, Socialism, Socialist democracy.

Tags: Democracy

Tony Abbott wants a plebiscite on the carbon tax. Of course this is just a cheap political ploy to wedge Labor since polls show about 60 percent of Australians oppose a carbon tax.

I might want a plebiscite on bringing the troops home, and on gay marriage. Polls show a majority support both.

I too might want a plebiscite on equal pay for equal work and on taxing the rich. Both might well get up.

I won’t want a plebiscite on the death penalty because it is likely to be overwhelmingly supported. So too might one on turning the boats back or blowing refugees out of the water.

Plebiscites are not about giving power to the people. They are about reinforcing and strengthening the institutions of capitalist power and the bosses overall framework of rule.

They are about enhancing vested political interests, often those in opposition but with a popular issue, pursuing their own highly selective agenda.

They are about entrenching the political elite in their positions of power as political elite, even if the immediate result is a shift of power within that elite.

Is there an alternative? Can we democratise society?

Our current democracy is limited to voting every few years for capitalism’s team A or team B.

This democracy is confined to the ‘political’ arena. There is no democracy in the workplace. If there were profit would be under threat.

In every great working class revolution the question of democracy rises to the fore.

Workers simply cannot assume power through capitalist institutions like Parliament. They are driven by their position in society and the way production is organised to set up their own democratic institutions of government.

They can only do this through winning democracy in the workplace – through every worker there discussing and debating the way forward and electing representatives to local, regional and national and ultimately international bodies of democratic working class rule.

From the Paris Commune in 1871 onwards, in every great working class upsurge workers have begun to organise democratically in their workplaces and in doing so to challenge the rule of capital.

The most obvious example of this was the Russian revolution in October 1917 and the short lived rule of the soviets or workers councils.

In a number of countries across Europe after the first world war workers set up similar democratic organs of rule.

Jump forward almost 40 years and over the failed German revolution of 1923, the Chinese revolution of 1925 to 1927 and the Spanish Civil War.

In Hungary in 1956 a workers’ revolution broke out against the Stalinist ruling class and workers began to set up their own democratic institutions. In 1979 in Iran workers set up shoras or councils which opened up the possibility of democratic working class rule.

These councils are democratic. In many revolutions representatives are subject to automatic recall if their workplaces don’t like what they are doing or have done; they are paid the average wage; meetings are daily and all workers on site can and do participate.

It is in the struggle that such democratic gains can be won and through which workers become fit to govern.|

Plebiscites are the creature of conservatism; of a time when politics and the working class are disconnected, even divorced; when workers feel alienated and sullen, defeated and despairing; when there appears no alternative to capitalism; when the left is weak and has no voice.

Democratic workers’ councils are an expression of the working class on the cusp of history; democratising society and organising production to satisfy human need. Only under such democratic arrangements – socialism – can we truly be free.