Who Helps Wins

Progressive politicians keep bemoaning the challenges they face. The Right get more money to generate publicity, have no compunction with pumping out fake news, are devious with deploying misleading claims, and can always count on media moguls happy to divert public frustration towards a multitude of scapegoats. In response, progressives struggle to come up with strategies, slogans, narratives, that would win over the electorate.

But what people want is real help with their problems. They are not asking for a political vision to change their world. They are not waiting for a new narrative to reframe public debates. They are certainly not pondering as to which party can come up with a more convincing strategy. They just want help with what is making their lives difficult, and they are desperate to find out if someone will offer it.

In the US, the Democrats are dreading they will lose control of Congress because, among other things, they have not managed to pass the Build Back Better plan with its promise of nearly $2 trillion social spending. In the UK, Labour’s pinning its hope on the Tories imploding over Partygate while its own offer is still barely registered with the public. In France, the Left were not even able to mount a challenge to Macron in the presidential run-off when that was taken up by the far-right instead.

Again and again, progressives find themselves stuck in the shadow, hardly seen as the political force dedicated to solving problems inclusively and democratically, but mostly caricaturised as figures obsessed with issues tangential to people’s everyday concerns. What they must do is focus on giving people the help they really want – help with the setting up of thriving enterprise, obtaining decent jobs, meeting the basic needs for food and energy, securing an affordable home, having access to good healthcare, living in friendly and stable communities, and being well protected from bigotry and criminal behaviour.

Progressive groups should form social enterprise to offer goods and services at the lowest possible prices, organise community support networks to provide for those caught in poverty, and develop advisory and advocacy service to help people get what they need from private and public bodies (e.g., jobs, housing, utilities), especially if any of these prove to be unresponsive or discriminatory. Fund raising, income generation, and volunteer support would be channelled to sustain and where appropriate, expand these provisions.

Instead of asking for donations to run election campaigns which connect with people only once every so many years, this help-focused approach would create a day-to-day relationship for progressives and the communities they work with. As part of this process, they can readily explain that things can improve further provided key obstacles are removed through particular local and central government actions, and these will happen if the people themselves back the progressives in the elections to come.

There is no mystery to how community-based enterprise and support network can be successfully developed.  The book, Tomorrow’s Communities, is full of evidence and examples regarding how it can be done. The challenge is to integrate that into progressive grassroot politics. Make the offer of help an everyday experience for all who seek it.

Who helps wins.

The Case for Communitarian Democracy

It is not uncommon to hear phrases such as ‘we must defend democracy’, ‘that is undemocratic’, or ‘democracy is not good enough’, but how often are people clear about what they mean by ‘democracy’?

‘Democracy’ means many things – a multi-party electoral system; majority rule; power sharing amongst all citizens; accountable government; participatory decision-making; equality of political status; one person, one vote; every vote carrying the same electoral weight.  When some want to promote democracy, and others lament its shortcomings, they might not so much be contradicting each other as talking about quite different forms of governance.

What is distinctive about communitarian democracy is that it addresses the vulnerabilities of relatively superficial forms of electoral politics, and formulates requirements which would maximise the equal and deliberative input of all members of society in shaping how they are governed.

It has three main components, and each of these has three conditions, giving a total of nine requirements to meet to secure effective democratic governance:

[A] TOGETHERNESS: citizens should be connected through a sense of mutual responsibility; they need to recognise each other as interdependent members of society with common concerns.

[1] Shared Mission:

Solidarity should be cultivated by facilitating people in developing a practical understanding of what they seek together – such as the pursuit of security, the improvement of living conditions, or other objectives that matter to everyone.

[2] Mutual Respect:

There can be little trust in any collective decision-making arrangements if certain groups and individuals are discriminated against.  Mutual respect must be taught and safeguarded against exclusionary tactics such as targeted insult and intimidation, or the promotion of racial or cultural divisiveness.

[3] Coherent Membership:

Responsive governance needs those under its jurisdiction to understand and appreciate why they benefit from that common jurisdiction.  Citizenship should be grounded on the awareness of their rights and responsibilities, and the conditions for bringing in new members as well as the criteria for suspending membership terms.

[B] OBJECTIVITY:citizens should be able to reason and judge through cooperative enquiry; their deliberations must be protected by safeguards for impartiality and enforcement against deception.

[4] Collaborative Learning:

To steer clear of both the autocracy imposed by some know-it-all and the anarchy of perpetual disputes, we need cultural and organisational arrangements to advance extensive collaborative learning to build a shared and dependable knowledge base.

[5] Critical Re-examination:

A system of critical re-examination, that will review ideas in the light of the evidence and cogent arguments, is needed to minimise the likelihood of people stepping back from reasoned deliberations with others, or holding their own views as unquestionable for all time.

[6] Responsible Communication:

Reliable governance calls for safeguards against irresponsible communication which might otherwise undermine objective deliberations and cast a shadow over the prospect of citizens attaining a shared understanding of what they should do as a group.

[C] POWER BALANCE:collective decisions should be made on the basis of citizen participation; arrangements and reforms are needed to enable citizens to have an equal say in shaping public policies.

[7] Participatory Decision-Making:

Inclusive governance requires the adoption of tried and tested participatory practices that make it possible for citizens to engage deliberatively in a wider range of pubic decisions, and give everyone a fair share of influence so that none may come to dominate others.

[8] Civic Parity:

There should be no unbridgeable gulf between the influence different groups of citizens can bring to bear on the rules and practices that affect them all, and this necessitates limits on inequalities in wealth, political connections, and social status.

[9] Public Accountability: 

Collective self-governance requires a distribution of power that will enable any given group to hold to account anyone in that group whose actions impact on the lives of others. This needs to be sustained by an effective system of public accountability.

Instead of defending or denigrating ‘democracy’ when it merely refers to some superficial form of electoral system, we should focus our energy on developing the kind of governance that we really need as a society – that of communitarian democracy.

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For a detailed exposition of communitarian democracy, see Time to Save Democracy: https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/time-to-save-democracy