Soviet Democracy

Pat Sloan

CHAPTER XVIII
WHAT IS DEMOCRACY?

We have defined democracy as government of the people, by the people, for the people. We must now ask what these words imply if a democratic system is to be really effective. What are the conditions in which it can be said that there really is government of, by, and for the people?

First and foremost, the people themselves must actively participate in the work of government, for only if they do this can any state really be a government of the people, and not a government over the people carried on by somebody else. Therefore, if government of the people by the people is really to exist, the people must be admitted to every branch of State administration, for otherwise there will automatically arise a separation of the governing authorities from the people which means that democracy will not be fully operative.

If the administration of any State is to be really accessible to the whole people, every administrative post must be open to all according only to the qualifications of citizens for fulfilling any particular job. But the qualifications of citizens are not something rigidly predetermined, but depend on the opportunities available for education and on the extent to which every citizen may qualify for responsible posts even though, in the first instance, he was not qualified at all. In the interest of democracy, then, every citizen must have equal opportunities for education, and to qualify for all positions in the running of the State. All citizens must have the opportunity to develop their natural abilities to the full, and to use them in the most responsible positions.

If, in any society, certain citizens are barred from the right to participate in the work of government, as a result of such peculiarities as sex or nationality, then this is a limitation of democracy. A really effective democracy will make no distinction between its citizens on the ground of nationality or sex, and every one of them will have an equal right to participate in government according only to his qualifications for the job, qualifications which he will have an opportunity to develop if he has the necessary ability.

Since, in every present-day community, the use of force may be necessary in the interests of the majority and against the interests of antagonistic minorities or external enemies, it is likely, in every present-day democracy, that some form of army and police force will be inevitable. But if this army is to be representative of the people themselves, and not become isolated from the people whom it is supposed to defend, it must essentially be recruited from their own ranks, and its commanders as well as its ordinary soldiers must be really representative of the people of the democracy. For, if the officers of an army do not represent the people that this army is supposed to defend, there is absolutely no guarantee that the same thing may not occur as has occurred in Spain, that the generals of such an army will not revolt against the government of the people, and co-operate with the most anti-democratic foreign States to suppress their own people and their own people’s democratic government.

In the preservation of law and order within the country, also, a real democracy would ensure that the police and the judges were drawn from the people themselves, in order to be truly representative, for only then can the people be guaranteed justice.

Every real democracy will always give freedom to every nation to determine its own fate and its own form of government. The oppression of individuals because of their nationality, or of whole nations because they are in a minority in the territory of any State—or even in spite of the fact that they are the majority of the people coming under a particular Government—as happens in certain empires, cannot be justified on any democratic grounds whatever. A real democracy will not only give to majority nations within its territory the right to self-determination, but will secure for small nations also the right of self-government so long as such a right is not abused to the disadvantage of the community of nations as a whole.

The governing of the people by themselves necessitates, among other things, the complete equality of freedom of expression on the part of citizens. Not only must there be equality of opportunity to participate in the work of administration, but also in the expression of opinions about the work of government. Therefore the Press and the meeting-halls must be equally at the disposal of all citizens in a real democracy, and any limitation of the control of such things to the hands of a small class is a restriction of the democratic rights of the people.

We are very much inclined, particularly in Great Britain, to discuss questions of democracy as if they concerned only the running of the State, without referring to the very important other activities in which the overwhelming majority of the people spend the greater part of their lives. In Britain the breadwinners of 90 percent of the population make their livelihood by working for somebody else in institutions and firms owned by somebody else. In such places of work the employee is subject to the dictates of the employer from morning to night, and even the question of whether he shall continue in the same job to-morrow is something which the employer may decide without any reference whatever to the will of the worker concerned.

Therefore, in the economic life of this country to-day there is not the slightest pretence at democracy. Every employer has the right to run his own concern as he wishes, to take on and to discharge workers, and to impose such conditions of work as prove profitable to him. In his own factory every employer is boss, and the people who print the newspapers and run the railways, who work in the factories and toil in the mines, have not the slightest say in the way in which these organizations shall be run, or the workers treated. In their daily lives the vast majority of our people spend their time under the dictatorship of an employer, of a man who happens to possess the means of production with which others must work in order to make a living.

Any real democracy, quite apart from the control of the State itself, would have to give to the people the right to run all those organizations in which they spend their time and earn their living. This would mean that, so long as there were privately owned factories, the workers would have to be represented as well as the owner on the board of management; and, for economic democracy to be really effective, the whole of the Economic concerns of the country would have to be taken over by the democratic State or by co-operatives. In such circumstances it could be ensured that the people who worked in a concern would be directly represented on its management as workers, while, at the same time, responsibility for general administration would rest with a manager appointed by the State, and responsible to the democratic Government of the people themselves. Only in this way could democracy be introduced in economic life, and without democracy in economic life any talk of real democracy is to a great extent illusory.

I think that most readers will agree that the essential characteristics of a real democracy which are described here do not exist in Britain to-day. I think that, if they have read Parts I and II and not skipped to this part first, they will agree with me that such a democratic system does already exist in the U.S.S.R. But how does it come about that people who refer to Britain as a democracy often refer to the U.S.S.R. as a dictatorship, when we find that the real essentials of democracy exist in the U.S.S.R. and not in Britain.

It is true, of course, that in Britain to-day we enjoy very valuable democratic rights as compared with the peoples of Fascist countries. We may make speeches in any meeting-halls that we can afford to hire and that the owners will let us have, or in any streets where the police do not decide that we are causing an obstruction—other, that is, than outside a labour exchange, where such meetings have been banned by Lord Trenchard; we may publish literature if we can afford a printing press, so long as the police and the courts do not consider such matter to be obscene or seditious, libellous or blasphemous; and we may form organizations as wage-earners, to force the employers to improve the conditions of their employees, though we may also get the sack for doing so. Further, when political parties whose active membership comprises about one-thousandth part of the population of the country offer us candidates at elections, we may choose between them or not choose at all. And, if we can persuade one of these political parties to put us up as a candidate at an election, and to finance our campaign for us, or if we are rich enough to finance ourselves and stand as “independents,” we may stand for election to Parliament or local government. If, when elected, we decide not to fulfil the policy for which we were elected, this matter is our own affair until the next election! All these rights, it will be noted, include an element of democracy, and a non-democratic element. In so far as they represent democracy, such rights are to be defended and extended; in so far as they are limited, they fall short of the really effective democracy which we have outlined. The U.S.S.R. has introduced something new into democracy, because it has made democracy really effective in one respect after another in which, in other countries, it is still narrowly limited.

How does it come about that so many of the most loud-voiced supporters of democracy in Britain to-day, quite irrespective of their political affiliations, can denounce the U.S.S.R. and the Fascist States in one breath, while Britain alone, it would seem, stands proudly as the standard-bearer of democracy in a distracted world? How can we explain the fact that when examining the U.S.S.R. we found that from bottom to top, from the management of a factory or a block of flats to the administration of the President’s office itself, the people themselves are taking part in government, and yet such a system is condemned from 2,000 miles away as a dictatorship only rivalled in its viciousness by Fascism?

The answer lies in the existence of different conceptions of democracy itself. One conception, defining democracy in terms of certain traditional institutions which exist to-day, attacks all other systems as contrary to democratic principles. This is the orthodox defence of the British system at the present time. The other conception starts out with a study of the actual economic and social position of the people in society, and then asks to what extent they can or cannot be said to be governing themselves. And it must be admitted that, when the British system is approached in this way, though much preferable to a Fascist dictatorship, it appears to be anything but a system of effective democracy when compared with the situation existing in the Soviet Union. To take the economic life of the people alone, in Britain they play no part in running the concerns in which they spend a major part of their lives. They have to work under the dictates of a master, and the masters taken together only amount to a minute proportion of the total population.

Why, then, if in the economic life of the country there is such a dictatorship, do the people tolerate this state of affairs, having, as they do, a variety of democratic means of expressing opposition at their disposal? If the British State is democratic, then the people must have chosen to work daily for other people for wages and under conditions over which they have no control. Or is it, perhaps, that the extent of democracy is really so limited that the people have no opportunity through the State of effectively limiting the power of the owners of the means of production? Certainly, so long as they believe that a highly limited democracy is really an effective system of democracy, they will not try to extend their democratic rights, but will be passive victims to every kind of encroachment. Therefore, it is essential that the people appreciate the role of the property-owners in British democracy, a matter which we shall discuss in detail in the next chapter.

In general, so long as the factories and the mines, the newspapers and the meeting-halls, are privately owned, to such an extent also are the working people subject to a certain degree of dictatorship. The work-man is told by the employer when he may earn a living, and under what conditions. And the working people as a whole, who cannot afford to own large newspapers and meeting-halls, are at the mercy of the continual propaganda of those who can. The extent of democracy is in this way limited in every community by the degree to which there exists the private ownership of the means of production, thus subjecting the working citizen to the dictatorship of an employer; and by the extent to which there is private ownership of the means of propaganda, thus subjecting the ordinary citizen to a perpetual bombardment of those ideas which the property-owners desire to propagate. Finally, as will be shown in the next chapter, in a a democratic State in which the means of production and propaganda are still in private hands, the State, too, is subject to the control of these property-owners to an overwhelming degree.

When we survey the world to-day we find that the extent to which effective democracy is enjoyed by the people varies from country to country. In Fascist countries, where there is an open terroristic dictatorship, and the property-owners retain their power, we find that the Workers and peasants who form the majority of the population are not allowed to combine their forces at all in order to fight for better conditions; they are forbidden to have their own newspapers or to hold their own meetings. The workers play absolutely no part in the running of the concerns in which they are employed, and they cannot even organize themselves in order to ensure that they will be paid a living minimum wage. To express their opinion, either of the employer or of the State, in a way which offends either of these, is a crime. Fascism thus completely destroys all vestiges of democracy. The democratic organizations of the people for improving their conditions of life are driven into illegality, and forced to take on a revolutionary form.

Fascist States combine an open dictatorship with the existence of private ownership of property concentrated in a few hands. In contrast to these countries, we have the democratic States in which, though the means of production are in private hands, and the means of propaganda are mainly so, the working people have the right to organize in trade unions, to hold meetings, and to publish their own newspapers in so far as they can afford to do so. If, in such countries, the workers can sufficiently well organize themselves, they can force the employers and the State to grant them better conditions of life: While such a system as this is vastly superior to Fascism, it still suffers very great short-comings, for there is still nothing approaching real equality of rights for all citizens. Even under conditions of democratic government, so long as the means of production and propaganda are privately owned, the owners have always reserves of property which the workers have not, and these reserves give an economic power in bargaining with the workers and a political power in propaganda, education, and in running the State, that can hardly be over-estimated.

Only when, as in the U.S.S.R. to-day, the means of production and propaganda are socially owned and controlled, is there no longer the domination of society by a small class that owns the property. In the U.S.S.R. no man owns a factory, and therefore no man can dictate to another man at will whether or not he shall have a job, and, if so, on what conditions. And, together with this, the socialization of the meeting-halls and the newspapers has made the means of expression equally available to all, instead of being only at the disposal of private owners. In addition, in the running of the Soviet State the ordinary citizens are drawn into the work of administration, while universal suffrage is enjoyed by all without such things as property and residential qualifications which elsewhere favour the owners of property.

Democracy is not something absolute. A Fascist State may, in particular circumstances, make some concession to public opinion which gives an opportunity for the people to express their views on some matter which intimately affects them. Such a measure would be of value to the people as a step in the direction of democracy. It would be to their interest to use such a concession as a means for obtaining further concessions and further democratic rights. A democratic capitalist State may impose limitations of certain kinds on the power of the property-owners by laying down legislation for the protection of the working people, by setting limits to the amount of money which may be spent in elections, and so on. But a democratic State may also curtail democracy, as, for example, in Britain, when Lord Trenchard banned the holding of meetings outside labour exchanges, or when, after the General Strike in 1926, the Government placed a number of restrictions on the rights of the working people to organize themselves and to unite their forces in a struggle for better conditions against the dictates of private property.

Every Fascist State includes in its population a majority of people who live by their own labour, and who will use every opportunity to wring better conditions of life from the property-owners. Because Fascism cannot kill the people who work, it cannot pluck out from its State those forces which continually demand expression—the democratic forces of the working people. The organizations of the people may be forced underground by a Fascist dictatorship, but they cannot be wiped out, for the people who make such a movement are the vast majority of the population, and the employers cannot live without them.

In the democratic State in which the power of the property-owners remains intact, tendencies towards greater or lesser democracy are both possible, according to the organized strength of the majority of the people on the one hand, and of the property-owning minority on the other. To the great property-owners the ideal State would be one in which the political rights of the workers were no more than their economic rights when working in the factory. For in such a State the property-owners could pursue whatever policy they desired without fear of opposition. Therefore the interests of the great property-owners are always bound up with the curtailment of democratic rights and with a tendency towards Fascism.

On the other hand, to the working people in every capitalist democracy any curtailment for the rights of the property-owners in favour of the workers represents a growth in democratic freedom. The extension of the right to hold street meetings and demonstrations can only benefit the working people, those who are least able to hire meeting-halls. The limitation of the rights of private individuals to use their newspapers for political purposes by greater working-class control over the Press can only benefit the working people—the majority of the population—and is, therefore, democratic. The replacing of property-owners by working men and women in the Civil Service, army, and law courts leads to a greater representation of the working people in the running of the State, and is a democratic measure. So, from the standpoint of the working people, the prospects of increasing their democratic rights are always present. The extent to which these opportunities are utilized depends on the degree to which the working people are aware of their position and organized to improve it. In the last analysis it is the relative strength of these two sections of the population that decides whether Fascism or democracy shall triumph, and, if democracy, the extent to which this democracy shall be made real by the limitation, and finally the complete annihilation, of the powers of property, economically and politically.

It would be a great error, however, to assume that any capitalist country consists only of workers and big employers. Actually, there is in most countries a considerable middle-class, consisting of small employers. These small employers, under present-day conditions, are continually menaced by the growth of monopoly, and are increasingly desirous of utilizing all democratic means of controlling the operations of the great property-owners. As a result, the small capitalists find themselves lining up with the democratic forces, with the working people, against the great monopolies and Fascism. In this fact of the present day lies the economic basis for a Popular Front, for Democracy and the small man, against Fascism and monopoly.

Perhaps the greatest danger, in Britain to-day, which faces the democratic forces, the vast majority of the population of the country, lies in the fact that the power of property in the British democratic system is grossly under-estimated in practically all public utterances on the matter. Therefore, bearing in mind all that we now know about the democracy of the U.S.S.R. let us turn to a short study of democracy in Britain to-day. Nowhere in the world could a better example be found of the power of property to utilize democracy for its own ends, thus rendering it almost ineffective as a weapon of the people of the country. Moreover, the ineffectiveness of democracy creates an acute danger of open dictatorship. For the less the people of the country realize the extent to which their democratic rights are already seriously limited, and threatened with still further limitations in the future, the more easily they may be induced to believe that democracy itself, rather than the imperfections of that democracy, is at fault when the system does not work satisfactorily for their interests.

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