đłď¸Labour's U-turn on Citizens' Assemblies Shows They Fear The People
The Labour Partyâs 24-hour U-turn on introducing Citizens' Assemblies is testament to the radical idea of actually letting ordinary people control their own future. When you realise that, itâs no wonder Keir Starmer fears them. He should.
Citizensâ Assemblies are our last hope for rational governance in our age of climactic collapse. But the âpowers that soon will beâ were keen to co-opt that. They only want to use them to patch up the fraying legitimacy of the neoliberal regime. Thatâs kind of what the Labour Party does.
But once the spectre of real democracy was raised, the Party dropped the idea like a hot rock. Just like when Labour responded to Corbynmania by desperately trying to stop ordinary people joining the Party.
Citizensâ Assemblies have been the wet dream of the liberal middle classes for a while now. Itâs like the last cake they can throw out the window of their ivory towers before the pitchforks come out. It wonât work.
Any citizens assemblies will back the people by definition. It would just take too much obvious manipulation to thwart them once they inevitably come up with rational, common sense policies. Things like: âApparently this country doesnât have enough money for its people to live in dignity. So letâs tax the mind-bogglingly rich. We can use that to pay for some hospitals, schools and public transport.â
Itâs beyond naive to believe the elites will simply fall for the idea that Citizensâ Assemblies are a âgood ideaâ - like turkeys voting for Christmas.
Thereâs no point waiting for the government to do this for us. Theyâll only ever allow a pale imitation of the real deal.
Citizensâ Assemblies are not a technocratic solution. They are a political revolutionary act. If given real power as a House of Citizens, they can change the regime from a corrupted representative form to an incorruptible sortition-based system where ordinary people are selected by lottery.
Citizensâ Assemblies will take real power only by radical social movements setting them up for themselves. They will then quickly gain popular political power to counter the constitutional power of the House of Commons.
So the scene will be set for the classic battles of twenty-first-century social struggle. Bring it on.
I've got two focuses:
- Revolution - Building social formations to create revolution and guide moments of social disruption.
- A Balanced Society - Building the new civilisation based on a new balance of deliberative democracy, compassion, and limited consumption.
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