Does Parliament matter
- This topic has 46 replies, 10 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 6 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I went to a lecture yesterday that presented findings on the effectuiveness of parliament versus the executive. It seems to be quite a detailed examination that demonstrates that not only does Parliament matter to present day politicians, but ti actually seems to be central to politics.
Some of the research is here:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/research/parliament/select-committees
Quote:Around 40% of [parliamentary Select Committee] recommendations are accepted by government, and a similar proportion go on to be implemented. Calls for small policy change are more likely to be accepted and implemented, but around a third of recommendations calling for significant policy changes succeed.
– The report identifies seven additional types of influence: contribution to wider debate, drawing together evidence, spotlighting issues and changing ministerial priorities, brokering (improving transparency within and between departments), accountability, exposure, and generating fear.Similar research shows how often the Lords has forced amendments, and how far Whitehall will go to avoid a commons defeat. Grist for our mill that parliament does matter, and that we should take control of it, if only to disrupt the potential use of the state against a conscious socialist majority.
I don't think in any of my readings of party literature have we differentiated between the House of Commons main chamber where we would sit and the work of the Select Committees in our particiption of Parliamentary process?Just how are MPs appointed to those? Would a lone or few SPGB MPs be involved. I can't recall Caroline Lucas or George Glloway being involved except as witnesses in cross-examinations or submissions.Curious of their legal powers, too, to call and examine people, We know about the US Senate Committees and their McCarthy witch-hunt but could Murdoch have said Go Stuff yourself in the UK when he was called to account with impunity?40% of their recommendations are accepted by government but of those, only 40% are implemented by the government, mostly minor details, the crossing of the t's and dotting of the i's …i'm not maths gifted but isn't that kind of actually low. Or am i misreading
Quote:Around 40% of [parliamentary Select Committee] recommendations are accepted by government, and a similar proportion go on to be implemented.And 2/3rds of big changes proposed are rejected.We can count on one hand the really big issues that get rejected by Parliament because Whitehall (is this term also deceiving in that it suggests a parallel power to parliament of minsterial civil servants). The refusal to sanction Syrian military intervention would be one recent example…but of all the various Committees post-Iraq criticism, little of substance came of them, imhoAs for House of Lords, a bit of irrelevance because just how practical are the prospects of SPGB peerages being installed? Or do you argue the aristocrats and sycophantic party fund donors will reverse their class loyalties? Maybe one or two might just as one or two capitalists will forgo their class interests and join us for reason of saving the planet from environmental destruction maybe. ( Hopefully Bill Gates will join the WSPUS and provide billion$ to organise his own demise)Is this really grist for our mill or ammunition for those who say that any socialist in parliament would end up administering capitalism by engaging in Committees, albeit critically? I do argue that involvement Parliament is necessary with the caveat – not everywhere, not at everytime.
I think I may have quoted this here before or maybe it was on libcom, but here's an extract from a Trotskyist pamphlet by Doug Jenness entitled Lenin As Election Campaign Manager (apparently, he did that too) on how in 1912 the Bolshevik members of the Fourth Tsarist Duma acted:
Quote:On the opening day of the first session of the fourth Duma, the joint caucus refused to participate in the selection of a presiding committee and a presiding chairman. This action was indicative of the policy that the Bolshevik deputies were to take for the next two-and-a-half years. They spoke on the floor, introduced exposes about the conditions of the working class, demanded answers from various government ministers about why things weren't being done better or differently, and participated in committees. But they did not help work on legislation or pass laws. On almost all the bills that came before the Duma, they abstained from the vote. When occasionally a law was introduced that would have a certain benefit for the working class, they would vote for it. But that occurred very, very rarely in the reactionary Duma.Oh dear, it seems we have more in common with the Bolsheviks than the ICC and CWO, at least until they got power and dissolved parliament.
The point is parliament counts, and they can't simply sweep it aside (not all the research mentioned in the lecture is up on the website yet).Primaries, in the states, involve registering the party with the state (and meeting certain requirements) and having voters register, there's nothing to stop false registeration of voters with a primary so a heartfelt fascist could register as a democrat to vote in their primaries, for example. They are also a means of insulating the politicians, who range at large and are no longer dependent on the ggood will of freely associating activists. They are a terrible and rotten idea.
I always thought our case was about using elections to parliament as did the impossibilist elected to a legislature in Canada – not actually participating in parliamentary governance. At least when Sinn Fein won electoral support, they refused to go along with parliamentary protocol of swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen.If you think open primaries are a form of state assimilation although you don't seem to have pressed that point perhaps regretting it, wait until you get on your first select committee.
Parliament involves registering the party with the state (and meeting certain requirements) and having voters register with the state! Open primaries may require voters to register with the state in the United States but you could register supporters of the party with the party alone with a valid address in the UK and post out the ballot. I (and we both) wholeheartedly disagree but I don't want to derail this topic.
Don't think it's derailing the topic overmuch. I've found more time at a keyboard. Primaries are for burkeans, they remove the relationship between an organised party and the candidate, in essence reducing voters to passive reflectors choosing between free agents who can represent whatever positions they wish (in the states, it often comes down to who has the most money to reach out to get the most name recognition). With primaries, instead of a membership voting on policy and selecting candidates (and removing candidates!), anyone can put themselves forward as the Socialist Candidate, with whatever policies they (and they alone) want, and see if they can win a majority. In between elections, there is no connection. Active membership of a party represents a qualitative commitment that should be rewarded with access to structures that shape and form policy. Indeed, to my mind, party membership is far more important than votes, and one way in which parliament could be used by the socialist movement is that once there is a majority, the party structures could effectively become the mechanism for direct democracy (the party is the workers councils).As to the House of Lords, there is the prospect of bits end looming. If the Liberals get wiped out (or reduced to a rump in the commons next year) they will still have 105 out of 793 Lords. This will not go unnoticed that they will remain a power in the land despite the elections. Indeed, it could be that to get rid of their undemocratic remnants whoever forms the next government will have to abolish the place. (Any putative UKIP government would have to spoend at least two years fighting the joint).
I'm possibly not understanding here or (particularly in the case of open primaries), imagining a different implementation than you are.As for party membership being more important than votes and the party structures becoming the mechanism for direct democracy, if ever there was a recipe for a new Nomenklatura this was it! Suffice to say, I disagree with you although it would be nice to see the House of Lords get the boot.
Well, lets try this: we don't particularly care who our candidates are, since they are going to vote exclusively as instructed by our membership, so they could be any of us. In other parties, the elected representetives set the policy (in effect) and the freer they are from binding policies the easier they have it. One way of being free is to have primaries, the candidate runs on their own personal manifesto, which would become the party manifesto if they are chosen to contest the seat by the party.We want people to join the party, in order to effect direct democracy, and bind our delegates. When the party is billions strong, it would effectively dissolve into the community and simply be the structure for anyone to come along and instruct a delegate (the party membership lists just become an electoral roll, etc.).
Going to parliament and doing nothing (apart from preventing it being used against the socialist re organisation) appears to contradict principle 6. This principle seems to suggest that socialists will be very busy in parliament.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.
Vin Maratty wrote:Going to parliament and doing nothing (apart from preventing it being used against the socialist re organisation) appears to contradict principle 6. This principle seems to suggest that socialists will be very busy in parliament.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.This has been discussed briefly on another thread, but is a very important topic.I never saw that as any clear cut instruction as to what Socialist MPs (that sounds awful) might get up to if voted into parliament, whether doing nothing or supporting beneficial reforms. In fact it doesn't mention parliament at all. The closest it comes is "conquest of the powers of government".I had thought that parliament was representing the electorate, whomever they are at any given time. Whereas a government does the governing.In fact that brings up the issue of what happens if the people decide to use the SPgb, as elected representatives to gain control of the powers of the state, and the SPgb become the majority in parliament. Do they form a peoples government to dismantle the capitalist system? Presumably this must also take place in a substantial amount of countries to be viable.But would there be a Socialist Party of Great Britain government for a brief period?
So what happens if the SPgb find themselves with just over a majority of Socialist MPs (shudder) in parliament?How do they move from there to dismantling The State?
SocialistPunk wrote:So what happens if the SPgb find themselves with just over a majority of Socialist MPs (shudder) in parliament?How do they move from there to dismantling The State?When I joined in the 70s I think some members believed that dismantling or abolishing the state was an anarchist tendency and that socialists would use the state to dispossess the ruling class and establish socialism: The state would simply cease to have a function. That is my view. I do not support the immediate abolition of the state.
As you've previously alluded to, the "revolution" will be transnational. I cannot envisage "any" scenario, that would lead to a mass Socialist consciousness in the UK, that is not replicated in a majority of other states. It is only my humble opinion, but I do not think ideas would or do spread in this way and most assuredly not, in the Internet age, with universal communication being so quick. It's been proved that ideas and images can go viral, in a decidedly short time, why not revolutionary ideas?Once a universal majority conscousness pertains, the dismantling of the superstructure of Capitalism will not take long, IMHO.I think "Delegates" would be a more applicable term than MP's.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.