By Tim Bovy
Governments calling themselves democracies keep reminding us how unrepresentative they are. Consider the recently elected Labour government in the United Kingdom. The Labour Party now has a huge majority in the House of Commons, although they won only 34% of the vote – hardly a mandate. Based on this result, Britain should have a coalition government. That it does not makes it easier for Labour to ignore the wishes of the people and many of its own members, which the party has done in significant ways, depriving, for example, nearly 10 million vulnerable people of a winter fuel allowance, which 78% of individuals aged 55 and over opposed.[1]
Of course, there are times when government policy is formulated in direct response to people’s needs. The New Deal under Franklin Delano Roosevelt is one example, as is the New Deal Coalition, which continued through the presidency of Lyndon Johnson into the late 1960s, passing important civil rights legislation. One could argue, however, that the fundamental rights extended to black people should have been in place from day one of US history, explicitly enshrined in the US Constitution.[2] That they were not raises the important question regarding how those who govern us make decisions.
Almost all the benefits of growth were being monopolized by the highest paid and those wealthy enough to own significant portfolios of financial assets
What we learned in 2008, for instance, is that, as the result of government legislation, since 1976 “almost all the benefits of growth were being monopolized by the highest paid and those wealthy enough to own significant portfolios of financial assets,”[3] enriching society’s select and winnowed few at the expense of the many. In the growth “generated by the economic recovery since 2009, 95% was monopolized by the top 1%. They saw their incomes rebound by 31.4%. Meanwhile, 99% had seen virtually no gain in income since the [financial] crisis.”[4] Worldwide, this same tune keeps playing in what has become a fanfare to the elite. The question is: how can we create a fanfare to the common man?
In parts 1 and 2 of my articles in The World Financial Review, entitled “Towards Developing an Economic Model to Serve the Needs of the 21st Century,”[5] I attempted to limn the faint outlines of a civil market economy, in which democracy exists at the bottom where ordinary citizens enact legislation important to them.
To avoid any confusion with socialism or communism[6], in a civil market economy, the free market would still function, but not in the undisciplined manner that neoliberalism has fostered by disembedding the market from society. The free market would be tempered by civil society’s requirement that the market be subordinate to society, enabling the civil market economy to operate for the benefit of the entire population.
Citizens’ Assemblies would exist to carry out the mandates of civil society, defined in regular referendums, to promote the common good, as a conduit for representative democracy, enacting legislation in areas such as economic equality, climate change, human rights, health, and education, putting an end to political parties.
Some scholars argue that such a system is unworkable, claiming that political parties are necessary for democracy by providing a representative political system. I addressed this issue in my opening paragraphs. Governments are rarely representative. They are often opaque, customarily acting in their own self-interest and for the vested interests that support them for their own gain. Civil society, on the other hand, would be transparent and in continuous dialogue with the citizens’ assemblies regarding policies that are important to and benefit the entire population. However, to achieve this, we need to define the main characteristics of civil society, as it would operate within the civil market economy.
Education
In their first year of education, students would learn the importance of participatory government, taking courses in increasing levels of complexity on critical thinking, citizenship, and good governance to ensure that at 16 they would be ready to actively participate in the political process. They would also engage in something akin to moot courts, in which different points of view regarding important issues would be presented, argued, and resolved.
The Golden Rule and Social Justice
Civil society would incorporate two key concepts: social justice and the Golden Rule. Both have rich histories. We tend to identify the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” with Christianity, but it is a centerpiece of all three Abrahamic religions. Equally significant, it is a core principle in many ancient civilizations. As Simon Blackburn has noted, the Golden Rule “can be found in some form in almost every ethical tradition.”[7] It has also been on permanent display at the United Nations on a multi-faith poster, representing 13 different faiths, since 4 January 2002.[8]
Social justice, too, has ancient roots. As Karen Armstrong has observed, because urban civilization depended upon the labour of peasants in the ancient Near East, social justice played a vital role in society.[9] It also played a prominent role in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Its formulation for creating a fair society based upon social and economic equality perhaps achieved its greatest prominence in the 20th century, particularly in the writing of John Rawls and his work A Theory of Justice, published in 1971. For those of us alive at this point in the 21st century, its most meaningful expression came through the Occupy Movement in 2011, following the 2008 financial collapse.
The Occupy Movement as a Model for Civil Society
The Occupy Movement was global, seeking true democracy and a solution to social and economic inequality. Two of the Movement’s major strengths were its solidarity and inclusiveness, eventually spreading to over 950 cities in 82 countries. Equally important, it never coalesced into a civil society organisation (CSO); nor did it form a non-governmental organisation (NGO). It had no hierarchy. Nevertheless, it became a global movement that addressed some of the most important issues facing (and still facing) people in every country in the world: economic inequality, the lack of social justice, and the absence of real democracy. It demonstrated the possibility of civil society acting in concert, as expressed in the Movement’s slogan: “We are the 99%.” However, this collective voice lacked representation within government.
It demonstrated the possibility of civil society acting in concert, as expressed in the Movement’s slogan: “We are the 99%.” However, this collective voice lacked representation within government.
The absence of any real engagement with the Occupy Movement from President Obama, for example, was commented upon at the time. Among the occupiers that Andy Kroll interviewed in Wall Street’s Zuccotti Park, there “was simmering disappointment with the president. Frustrations included: a bank bailout that didn’t rescue underwater homeowners; an economic team seen as too cozy with Wall Street and too distant from the lives of ordinary Americans; a health care reform bill without a public option.”[10] For someone whose policies were predominantly neoliberal, including enriching private insurance businesses through the Affordable Care Act and working with his economic advisors to benefit the 1% by privatising profits and socialising losses during the 2008 financial crisis, President Obama was ideologically ill-suited to represent the needs of the 99%.
The image this conjures could not be more undemocratic: the elite’s spokesman in the White House meeting with his neoliberal economic advisors to introduce socialist policies, or what the German finance minister described as “interventionist tendencies akin to communism,”[11] at the expense of the common people who, being outside of America’s oligarchic structure, were left both powerless and without representation.
Moving towards a Governmental System Suitable for the 21st-Century
We see this non-representation of the people in other areas as well. As I mentioned in a previous article: “Most people…grasp the significance and impact of climate change. ‘That voices from the climate movement,’ notes Rebecca Solnit, ‘have finally succeeded in making the vast majority understand it, and many care passionately about it, might be the biggest single victory the movement will have.’ In Scotland alone, ‘A poll by YouGov, commissioned for the [Save Our Wild Isles] campaign, found four out of five Scots (81%) want to see all political parties come together to produce an action plan to protect nature, with 79% backing harsher penalties for businesses whose actions contribute to the decline in nature. Almost three-quarters of Scots (71%) said they are worried about the state of nature in the UK.’”[12] To date, such a bipartisan action plan has not appeared, with considerable differences among the parties, based upon the interest groups they serve, regarding transitioning away from fossil fuels.
The wishes of the 81% of Scots, however, might very well have been achieved in a citizens’ assembly. “[In] 2016,” for example, “the Irish Parliament assembled 99 citizens to deliberate on stubborn issues, including a constitutional ban on abortion. A majority of the assembly proposed that the ban be struck down, after which a national referendum confirmed the result and changed the law – all accomplished without involvement of established political parties.”[13]
In part 2 of my article, I will discuss “The Role of Citizens’ Assemblies” in the civil market economy’s bottom-up democratic structure, and how they would interact with civil society through new Constitutions that would establish the framework necessary to replace outdated governmental systems that belong to another era and are ill-suited to the needs of the 21st Century. We do not need a revolution; we simply need a new way of thinking.
About the Author
Tim Bovy has over 35 years of experience in designing and implementing various types of information and risk management systems for major law firms such as Clifford Chance; and for international accountancy firms such as Deloitte. He has also developed solutions for organisations such as BT, Imperial Tobacco, Rio Tinto, the Kuwaiti government, The Royal Household, and the US House of Representatives. Tim is an elected member of The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, an Independent Think Tank based in Central London, and holds a BA degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame, and MA and C.Phil degrees from the University of California, Davis.
References
[1] Danielle de Wolfe, “Exclusive: Almost 6 in 10 Brits think the Chancellor is wrong on winter fuel payment cut,” LBC News, 26 October 2024 available at https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/winter-fuel-payments-budget-2024-rachel-reeves/
[2] “Our Constitution, writes Howard Zinn, was not framed for ’we the people’ but to secure the interests of the ‘fifty-five privileged white males who wrote it,’ adding that the government has served ‘the wealthy and powerful’ ever since. In his view, the problem isn’t that the dream was deferred but that it was a nightmare from the start.” Quoted in Daniel Immerwahr, “History isn’t just for patriots,” The Washington Post, December 23, 2020, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/12/23/teach-history-american-patriotism/?arc404=true
[3] Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World, London: Allen Lane, 2018, p. 456
[4] Ibid., p. 455
[5] Tim Bovy, “Towards Developing an Economic Model to Serve the Needs of the 21st Century – Part 2,” The World Financial Review, August 4, 2024, available at https://worldfinancialreview.com/towards-developing-an-economic-model-to-serve-the-needs-of-the-21st-century-part-2/
[6] It should be noted that the “communist regime had disapproved of civil society,” which forms part of the core of the civil market economy. See the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, Oxford University Press, Third Edition (2009), edited by Ian McClean and Alistair McMillan, under definition of Civil Society, p.81.
[7] Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 101. Quoted in “Civil Society,”
Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#cite_note-20
[8] Mezei, Leslie (May 2002). “The Golden Rule Poster – A History: Multi-faith Sacred Writings and Symbols from 13 Traditions”. Spiritan Missionary News / Scarboro Missions. Archived from the original on 11 June 2023. Retrieved 21 February 2022. Quoted in “Civil Society,” available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule#cite_note-poster1-21Ar
[9] Karen Armstrong, A History of Jerusalem (London: Harper Collins, 1997), 20.
[10] Andy Kroll, “Missing from Occupy Wall Street: Barack Obama,” Mother Jones, October 13, 2011, available at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-barack-obama/
[11] Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World, London: Allen Lane, 2018, 393
[12] Tim Bovy, “Towards Developing an Economic Model to Serve the Needs of the 21st Century – Part 2,” The European Financial Review, August 4, 2024, available at https://www.europeanfinancialreview.com/towards-developing-an-economic-model-to-serve-the-needs-of-the-21st-century-part-2
[13] Katherine Ellison, “Can we have democracy without political parties?,” BBC Future, 8 June 2021, available at https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210607-can-we-have-democracy-without-political-parties
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