VOTING AND DEMOCRACY;
MEANS AND ENDS
The June Pathfinders page was in two parts “Would people in socialism
spend all day voting on everything?” (small print) and “How would
people vote?” (bigger print). The small print told us about
“collaborative filtering” (CF) software. Developed for capitalist
marketing purposes and producing recommendations based on people’s
likes and dislikes, CF can apparently be used in socialism to stop us
voting all day on everything.
The example is given of a farmer using CF to get recommendations about
what to vote on: crop yields, GM technology, etc. CF can also put
people “in touch with other people of similar interests” – a variant of
computer dating? Small-print Pathfinder admits that unfortunately
“Technology cannot resolve issues of responsibility...”
Bigger-print Pathfinder presents as a dream what to me seems more like
a nightmare: “... in the future the technology to debate, dispute,
appeal, complain, conference and vote will all be in place – at the
touch of a phone button.” The trouble with this is that it confuses
means with ends. The essence of democracy is having information and
ideas to exchange, considerations to weigh up, debates to participate
in – and, in some cases, balances to be struck.
In the old days – and even to some extent today – the means to those
democratic ends were focused on paper or persons – books and other
publications, public meetings, casual or serious conversations. Now
these old means are being challenged by new technology means – a screen
to watch, a mouse to move, a button to push.
I don’t doubt that a phone button or other technological device can
play a part in voting and democracy. Some people – with busy lives or
physical disabilities? – may find “new hat” voting technology better
than the “inconvenient, time-consuming”, in-company-with-other-people
method illustrated in Pathfinder’s photo and labelled “old hat”. But
whatever technology is used, it is still a means to an end. It is not a
substitute for that end. Debating, disputing, etc are not matters of a
person relating to a piece of technology. They are matters of a person
relating to one or more other persons using some form of technology as
a means.
According to a 1970s pop song, video killed the radio star. It didn’t.
Books are said to be on the way out. They aren’t – but they do have new
technology competitors. This applies to debating, disputing, appealing,
complaining, conferencing and voting. You can do these things directly,
more or less face-to-face with other people. Or you can go a little or
a long way on the road to human-to-machine “relationships”. The choice
is yours.
STAN PARKER (by
e-mail).
|
Manchester Branch
Meetings
Monday 25
July, 8 pm
Discussion on
Charity
Saturday 30 July, 2
pm
Why You
Should Be a Socialist
Hare and Hounds, Shudehill, City Centre
CHISWICK
Tueday 19 July 8pm
Showing of film
CAPITALISM AND KIDS' STUFF
Committee Room, Town Hall, Heathfield Terrace (corner Sutton Court
Road), W4
(nearest tube: Chiswick Park)
|
|
Edinburgh Branch
Sunday 3 July,3pm
G8 Summit meeting
One World -One People- One Solution
Quakers Friends Meeting house,Victoria Terrace
(above Victoria Street)
contact email
Jimmy
Matt
Alan
Lancaster
Branch Meeting
Monday 18 July 8pm 9ring to confirm)
What will constitute criminal behaviour in a
socialism?
The Gregson Centre, Moor Lane, Lancaster
Enquiries:01524 383798
|
|
Declaration
of Principles
|
|
|
This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the
formation of the
party in
1904, its original
language has been retained.
Object
The establishment of
a
system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
Declaration
of
Principles
The Socialist Party
of
Great
Britain holds
1.That society as at present
constituted is based upon the
ownership of the means of living
(i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.)
|
|
by the
capitalist or master class,and the consequent enslavement of the
working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2.That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests,
manifesting itself as a class struggle between those who possess but do
not produce and those who produce but do not possess.
3.That this antagonism can be
abolished only by the
emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master
class, by the conversion into the common property of society of the
means of production and
distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.
4.That as in the order of social
evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, |
|
the
emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all
mankind, without distinction of race or sex.
5.That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.
6.That as the machinery of
government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to
conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken
from the workers, the working
class must organize consciously
and politically for the conquest of the powers of government,
national and local, in order that
this machinery, including these
forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the
agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and
plutocratic. |
|
7.That
as all
political parties are but the expression of class
interests, and as the interest of
the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all
sections of the the master class, the party seeking working class
emancipation must be hostile to
every other party.
8.The Socialist Party of Great
Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to
wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged
labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the
working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end
that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system
which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may
give place to comfort,privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom. |
|
|
| To Next page ->
To contents ->
To
Socialist
Party-> |
|