Money Can Buy You Votes

As pundits queue up to expound what went wrong for Labour and why the Conservatives won control, it is important to remember an old adage – follow the money.

A key political issue in any society is whether the benefits generated by people’s joint efforts as workers and citizens should be siphoned off to boost the bank accounts of a few, or shared out more fairly and productively in terms of people’s pay and the support for public services that serve the common good.

Seen clearly in these terms, most people would of course reject politicians who promote the former, and give their backing to those who champion the latter.

Unfortunately, plutocratic politicians have one big, financial advantage. By committing themselves to doing whatever they can to help the wealthy few exploit the masses even more, they get all the assistance that money can buy.

The UK has provided a case example of how this is done with a two-prong approach. First, the superrich, from hedge fund managers to property tycoons, make sure politicians on the right can substantially outspend those on the left. For example, in the final week of the latest election campaign, with many voters still undecided, the Conservative Party received 10 times more in political donations than the Labour Party. And it was no coincidence that the Conservatives in government had by then brushed aside the Electoral Commission’s recommendations and changed the law to allow a 23% increase on what can be spent in election campaigning.

Secondly, corporate moguls have been buying up media outlets for decades. Through those channels they continuously spin out stories about how society’s problems have little to do with laws and policies favouring the superrich, but are all due to vilified scapegoats such as benefit claimants and immigrants (and the EU too for good measure). As for any politicians who dare to stand up to corporate power – the tax evaders, the profiteers, the phone hackers – they are relentlessly presented as foolish, dangerous, incompetent, and untrustworthy.

If anyone doubts that advertising, direct selling/campaigning, media coverage etc can have a critical influence on people’s behaviour, they need to be reminded of how corporations spend billions on their marketing and PR, and the whole new online information and networking industry is sustained by money spent on advertising. And the goal is never to convert everyone, but just to get enough people to go with one product/political party on enough occasions.

So instead of pinning blame on those politicians who have tried to halt the rise of corporate power and challenge plutocratic politics for being ‘out of touch’ with the electorate, the most pressing task for any democratic society is to tackle the problem of money buying up political control.

It is the most insidious form of corruption. And until those in government are prepared to put an end to it, it will only spread further. But how can those who defy the plutocratic mantra get into government in the first place? That requires a new form of progressive populism that engages people on the ground through honest conversations. It can be done [1].

--
[1] Look at the electoral success of the left in Latin America for the past two decades.

Remember: Together We Can

Many people have written at length about the contradictions inherent in neo-liberal ideas. But they could have saved themselves a lot of time if they had seen neo-liberalism, not as a public philosophy, but as mere propaganda concocted to give the most unrepentant egoism a veneer of respectability.

Neo-liberal doctrines are not devised to show how society could be organised for the common good, but to convince the 99% beneath the plutocratic elite that any collective action by them would only make things worse for everyone.

The central theme is simple: do not join forces through unions, do not pool resources through taxation, do not protect each other with a public safety net, and do not support any international political institutions that may get in the way of transnational businesses. The benefit is supposed to be greater freedom for the individual. The intended outcome is that those in charge of powerful corporations can do as they please without anyone capable of reining them in.

Key to the neo-liberal deception is that collective action must necessarily be bad – less efficient, more unresponsive, and likely to deprive people of what they want. In reality, provided they are steered cooperatively and monitored democratically, collective action can in many cases deliver greater efficiency, higher responsiveness, and secure improvements that most individuals could never hope for on their own.

Of course, support for collective action in certain cases does not rule out individual action in others. In fact, one of the most important advantages of collective action is the provision of fair rules and effective enforcement so that people can pursue many of their goals in life through individual actions without being held back or injured by others who care only for themselves.

There is no disputing historically that unions have secured higher wages and safer working conditions for workers; public health systems have provided reliable care for more people than private firms prioritising profits; worker-run and worker-owned firms have greater productivity and higher worker satisfaction; international political bodies sustain peace and cooperation more effectively than when it is just left to individual states.

To ensure any collective action keeps its focus on the social purpose it is designed to serve, the approach known as ‘Cooperative Problem-Solving’ serves as a tried and tested guide. (See ‘Cooperative Problem-Solving: the key to a reciprocal society’). By embedding the elements of respect for participants, critical deliberation as the means for resolution, accountable decision-making, and systematic review and revision, people have been able to achieve much more than they could if they had been left to their own devices under the prevailing hierarchical structures.

Some of the examples illustrating how well it could work were captured by the last Labour Government’s ‘Together We Can’ programme - including how crime and fear of crime could be substantially reduced; pupils’ confidence and performance boosted; housing services and tenant satisfaction greatly improved; community enterprise developed and sustained. (See the guide to resources on ‘Together We Can’)

Ultimately, the hollowness of neo-liberalism can be seen in the contrast between the ‘Together We Can’ support for cooperatively guided collective action that demonstrably enhanced the common good, and the egoist politics that leaves individuals to fend for themselves so the powerful few can remain unchallenged in how they treat others.

What's in a Vote?

Imagine you walk into a restaurant, and some people sit there forking up imaginary food and insist that others with empty plates before them should do the same. At the other end of the room, a hungry couple offered a variety of real food refuse to eat any of them because the menu does not contain the perfect dish they have always dreamt about.

That restaurant is our electoral system. There are those who want people to vote even in cases where it would not make any difference. They acknowledge that in seats where the incumbents have the backing of an overwhelming majority of the local constituents, a vote against them would not change anything. Yet they want to see people exercise their vote so much that they would even advocate compulsory voting for all.

By contrast, we also have those who regard it as a complete waste of time to cast a vote for anyone unless that person subscribes to the same policy position they hold on virtually every issue. Whatever differences the candidates may have between themselves, they are all branded as “the same” just because none of them represents these purists’ ideal politician.

Both these outlooks focus on chasing after their own sense of political perfection and neglect to pursue what would actually help to bring about a better government.

A key reason why so many people don’t vote is because with the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system, in a sizeable majority of seats in, for example, the UK Parliament (at least 60% of the seats) or the US Congress, to get the incumbent voted out is statistically highly improbable. Making it compulsory for people to vote in these cases would not change anything except perhaps make them even more disillusioned.

But making the system one based on proportional representation means every vote will count. And when people can see that the number of seats to be held by any political party will be proportional to the number of votes cast for that party, they will have an incentive to vote for the party they most strongly support, knowing each vote will directly increase the proportion of seats to be gained.

Meanwhile, since under the prevailing system the electoral battle is to be decided in the marginal seats, then one should lend a hand by helping to persuade voters in those seats to vote so as to bring about a more responsive government by backing the most appropriate party in each constituency.

Whatever people’s party political differences maybe, they must realise that just as it is necessary to press for proportional representation because a vote against incumbents in totally safe seats under FPTP would be a wasted vote, a vote for a candidate who stands no chance of winning a given seat would also be a wasted vote.

In fact, in the critical seats that could determine if a country would continue to sacrifice the poorest for the enrichment of the wealthiest, voting for anyone other than the candidate who stands the only realistic chance of dislodging the current government supporter, or keeping out an even more plutocratic/scapegoat-persecuting candidate, might well prove to be disastrously counter-productive.

--
Of related interest to this post: see ‘10 Things about the State of Our Democracy’

Note: As for the old arguments against proportional representation system: (1) the suggestion that first-past-the-post (FPTP) gives a better connection between a voter and the politician thus elected is spurious since the voter-to-winner ratio is so high that there is little real connection, and most people would rather deal with a politician from the party they back; (2) the warning that a proportional system could let in more extremist parties begs the question of why, if a party is so extreme that the country should seek to keep it out of public office, legal restrictions should not be placed upon such a party directly; (3) the pseudo-justification of FPTP delivering a clear-cut majority for the government is flawed in theory (because a country divided on ideological or socio-economic terms should not be ruled by a contrived majority) and in practice (even FPTP is yielding coalition government with the smaller parties gaining more support).

Thatcher, Europe & Referendum

Amongst politicians who proudly declare themselves ‘Thatcherites’, there is one policy that has become almost sacred – namely, to precipitate the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union by holding a referendum on the issue. Ironically, it was Margaret Thatcher who most cogently set out the argument, regardless of whether one were pro or anti remaining in Europe, against deciding the matter by means of a referendum.

She did this when she was the Leader of the Opposition in 1975 when the then Labour Government proposed a referendum to decide if the UK should stay or leave the then EEC (European Economic Community). It shows that sometimes when they are unencumbered by power, politicians can be quite effective in questioning the powerful:

“On all major matters the essential task of government is decision. That does not mean absence of argument or absence of some differences. It means the capacity to reach a decision after argument and consideration, and sticking to it or resigning.

We now face the new system. If the Government cannot agree, gone is the discipline of resignation, gone is the principle of accountability to Parliament. The new doctrine is to pass the buck to the people.

… Perhaps the late Lord Attlee was right when he said that the referendum was a device of dictators and demagogues.

The treaty [with Europe] has been in operation for over two years. I know of no country in the Western World in which a referendum has been used to override a treaty obligation which had been through all its parliamentary stages and had been in operation for two years. Such a step would have a damaging effect on Britain's standing in the world. …

We know … the present Prime Minister was firmly against a referendum. But problems and divisions were arising in his own party, and one group of dissenters campaigned for a referendum. We accept that any hon. Member who holds strong views on the legislation itself is entitled to propose any method which he chooses to defeat it. But when Cabinets and Shadow Cabinets come to deliberate, they should bear in mind all the constitutional consequences of the course of action proposed to be slow to undermine cherished principles which have served liberty well for a long time.

It is quite possible to put a democratic case for having referendum provisions. If a referendum is put forward seriously as a constitutional instrument, we should need to consider the different kinds of referenda involved and what they implied for the present rules and conventions of our political order.

Assuming that we wanted the referendum provisions to apply only to constitutional questions, we should try to define what that means in a British context—an extraordinarily difficult exercise. If we wanted to avoid leaving the decision on whether to have a referendum to the whim of future Governments, we should have to think of some means of limiting its powers.

This White Paper has come about because of the Government's concern for internal party interests. It is a licence for Ministers to disagree on central issues but still stay in power. I believe that the right course would be to reject it and to consider the wider constitutional issues properly and at length.”

(40 years on from that speech by Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons on 11 March 1975, ardent Thatcherites from Cameron to Farage should take note from their political idol when she had so comprehensively exposed the pitfalls of resorting to referenda).

Invasion of the Power Snatchers

Human history is filled with reminders that we should treat each other in a reciprocal manner, and not let anyone get away with taking advantage of others in ways they would never tolerate themselves. Embedded in ethical codes, moral tales, and religious commandments – this Golden Rule tells us that everyone should be accorded equal respect, and none is to be placed at the whim or mercy of someone else. This calls for sustained vigilance against anyone seeking to appropriate too much power for themselves.

Exceptional circumstances, which call for power to be vested in a single decision-maker, should be treated precisely as exceptional with effective plans to end any temporary concentration of emergency power.

And we should beware of the antics of those who are as adept at assuming the mantle of a Midas as that of a Caesar. We must be prepared to reverse the hyper-accumulation of wealth by an elite, and ensure it is adequately counter-balanced by tax-based redistribution. Attempts to deceive people into surrendering power to a privileged few by dressing the latter’s interests up as vital economic, military or religious goals must be exposed and rejected. The basic needs of those in the weakest position must never be passed over in any trade-off to satisfy the demands of the strong. The capacity for whistle-blowing by the few and open protest by the many must be reinforced and built into the machinery of civic resistance.

But when confronted by the entrenched position of the powerful, it is easy to believe that the concentration of power is not just unavoidable, but irreversible. Precisely because the power gap has widened, the powerful would be less and less inclined to give way, while others are powerless precisely to the extent that they cannot challenge the status quo. Instead of tackling the problem of power imbalance, people are then told to accept the inevitability, even the sanctity, of power divisions such that reciprocity gives way permanently to an asymmetric relationship – the disadvantaged shall act out of deference or fear to ensure they are not even worse off, and the privileged shall act out of their generosity or mercy in granting a few small concessions.

Consequently, all too many resign themselves to living under prevailing power structures, because it is drummed into them that significant changes could never be achieved.

In reality, power relations that are more balanced and thus conducive to reciprocity can be attained. Throughout history, the progressive struggle has successfully challenged the epistemological authority of dogmatists, and opened up the field of knowledge to wider participation; confronted the evaluative authority of edicts and traditions that neglect the interests of those with little power, and promoted the equal respect for all; and opposed the executive authority of leaders to make unaccountable decisions, and introduced instead more power sharing.

Yet the enemy of reciprocity is never completely vanquished. As soon as we let our guard down, those who seek to dominate and exploit others will emerge again and manipulate society to amass wealth and power for themselves at everyone else’s expense.

To protect all that is fair and decent in human interactions, we must therefore relentlessly repel the invasion of the power snatchers.

--
For a detailed exposition see: Against Power Inequalities: a history of the progressive struggle.

Cooperation Unbound: a new model for democratic education

History has shown that once authoritarian hierarchies have secured a foothold, they tend to focus on consolidating their top-down control. Whether the institution in question is the government of a country, a body with a dedicated function (e.g., an army, an orphanage, a care home), or a commercial enterprise, so long as the powerful few at the top are not effectively held to account by those who have to comply with their instructions, they will often maximise the benefits to themselves at the expense of everyone else.

One of the most notable features of the democratic struggle during the 19th/early 20th centuries was the drive to enable the disempowered majority to learn why and how they should go about getting a greater say about the decisions that affected them. Reformists who wanted democratic cooperation to replace authoritarian controls recognised their cause could only be effectively advanced if education played its part. And in quick succession, learning providers such as the Working Men’s College (founded 1854), Cooperative Women’s Guild (1883), Ruskin College (1899), Workers’ Educational Association (1903), Cooperative College (1919), National Council of Labour Colleges (1921), were set up.

But in recent decades, support for democratic education has slipped down the agenda. And with every economic downturn, funding from state and philanthropic sources was not only cut back, but it would henceforth be more tightly squeezed into employment-focused training to meet the needs of a largely non-cooperative economy.

In order to rebuild the momentum to democratise state and business institutions, four steps should be taken to develop a new model for democratic education with reciprocity at its heart.

First, lifelong learning providers should explore with representatives (from social, cooperative, and community enterprises; trades unions; worker-owned/worker-run partnerships; and other progressive institutions) what type of education will best encourage and enable more people to contribute to the success of those organisations.

Secondly, they need to put in place partnership arrangements to deal with course development, financial commitment, and impact review. These should be at a level that would be neither too large to render communications superficial nor too small to hinder economies of scale.

Thirdly, the partners can agree their organisational backing and funding support on the basis of how they will benefit in directly quantifiable economic terms and as measured by SROI (social return on investment), from a range of courses and programmes co-designed to raise understanding of how the barriers to democratic cooperation can be overcome.

Finally, when partnership structures, course contents/delivery, and funding agreement are in place, further investment support can be sought from relevant government agencies, social investors, CDFIs (community development finance institutions), and progressive foundations to help with the continuous improvement of the learning opportunities and the widening of their accessibility.

Back in 1879, Professor James Stuart of the University of Cambridge, a leading proponent of adult education, remarked that the cooperative movement “is a democratic movement if there ever was one. It therefore cannot repose on the good sense of a few; its success will depend on the good sense of the masses.”

It is time we accept that we cannot rely on goodwill funding or grants dispensed to those on the receiving end of a supplicant relationship. We must integrate the objectives of social justice, economic vibrancy, and political inclusion into a reciprocal partnership, and use that as the foundation to revitalise democratic education.

--
You may also find this relevant: ‘The Case for an Open Cooperativist Development Agency’
A longer version of this essay, which may be of interest to those in the UK involved in lifelong learning, or cooperative and community development, can be found here

Politics & the Cooperative Gestalt

A core aim of politics is to get people to experience the world in ways that certain pronouncements and policies would resonate with them much more than others. It is no coincidence that public relations, opinion polls and political strategies have become inextricably linked.

Whether the majority of people are, for example, becoming more disposed to view human suffering as being primarily down to the personal flaws of individuals, or essentially caused by institutional failings, can have a key impact on what kind of political platform will win the most public support.

People’s tendencies to take one view or another on these matters are often shaped in turn by where they stand in relation to three pairs of dichotomies regarding, respectively, the attitudes, beliefs, and commands we encounter in life:

1. Deference to the values & preferences of a privileged few v. determination to regard all needs and desires as equal.

2. Absolute certainty & faith in established dogmas v. pervasive scepticism & iconoclastic embrace of the new.

3. Compliance with the rule by one unquestionable individual (or group) v. insistence that everyone should choose for oneself without any collective requirement.

Depending on which combinations prevail in one’s mind, one would be disposed to back those politicians who appear to chime with that psychological frame. And while the Right might have been in the past characterised mostly by the former position in each of these dichotomies, and the Left often presented as gravitating towards the latter, contemporary politics tend to mix and match. In fact, a recent tendency amongst many politicians has been to say that the ‘centre’ is what they are about. But without showing clearly how that differs from the more familiar dichotomies, their stance has come across as something akin to:

“We appreciate the concerns of the privileged should not be too hastily brushed aside, but we don’t want to ignore the needs of ordinary people. We are not certain what we believe but we don’t want you to doubt everything we say. And we don’t like a powerful few dictating terms to us but we don’t like leaving decisions to individuals either.”

In short, bland and vague. And some have reacted against this centrist platitude by dashing headlong to one or another pole of the old dichotomies. Thus libertarians wanting to shrink governments to nothing, and anarchists wanting to see the back of all corporations. Traditionalists invoking religious purity or national pride to attack anything they dislike. Radicals impatiently dismissing all social or economic reforms as too slow and too cautious.

But politics does not have to be about either the muddled middle or polarised opposites. The dichotomies outlined above can be displaced by an entirely different set of dispositions – namely, the Cooperative Gestalt.

According to the cooperative gestalt, the most constructive way to interpret and respond to our experiences consists of being disposed to:
• Upholding or revising our attitudes towards other people so long as that leads us to show greater mutual responsibility and respect in our dealings with other people.
• Assessing the claims made by anyone in relation to the extent it has been subject to cooperative enquiry whereby provisional certainty is granted so long as the door remains open to revision based on new evidence or argument.
• Backing decisions that have been made with genuine citizen participation so that all those affected by the decisions are able to make a meaningful contribution to them before they are finalised.

A politics that speaks to and reinforces the cooperative gestalt is one that rejects not only simplistic extremes, but also has no time for mechanical triangulations that merely take the midpoint of rival views. It provides a real alternative that engages with human propensity towards reciprocity. Historically, it evolved out of the cooperative-communitarian tradition, and has in the past inspired progressive movements that draw people together to preserve valuable relationships and healthy differences, as well as curtail threats to common wellbeing and corrosive inequalities.

It is time politicians learn to reconnect with this inclusive mindset, and focus on applying it to the development of policies that will bring about a more cooperative and sustainably prosperous society.

--
You can read more about the cooperative-communitarian tradition by going to:
‘Communitarians: an introduction’ (short article); or Communitarianism (book-length exposition).

For the connections between the cooperative gestalt and:
A. Lifelong Learning: see ‘The Cooperative Gestalt’;
B. Political Reform Movements: see Against Power Inequalities;
C. Dystopian Visions: see ‘Cooperative Gestalt & Dystopian Fiction’.
D. Corporate Social Responsibility: see ‘The Cooperative Gestalt Approach to CSR’.