Themes

Themes that underpin the Rethinking political representation and political parties line of inquiry themes that arise out of the social movement left of the last three decades or so (By Hilary Wainwright)

1. A critique of the predominant notion of politics reflecting the declining legitimacy of the traditional political institutions and the definition of politics that underpins them and collapsing allegiance to political parties.

The classic definition of political parties is organisations that aim to be in government or to be in a strategic relation to government.

Since the late 1960s though with many precursors an understanding of politics has developed as far broader than matters of state, government and legislature. This breaks the monopoly of political parties over politics; it also produces a situation where many of the functions traditionally carried out by political parties, and carried out in a particular way, are done by a multiplicity of actors in innovative and independent ways. Even electoral activity is no longer the exclusive preserve of political parties. Political parties are not a necessary condition of electoral activity; and electoral activity is not the only activity of a political party.

The narrow definition of politics exclusively in terms of government, state and legislatures is associated with a degeneration in the meaning of representation. It has slid from the aim of making present within the legislature the demands, ideas and knowledge of active citizens down to merely symbolising the people as an electorate that merely chooses between competing symbols. In the visions of the early, radical campaigns for democracy e.g. before the end of the 19th century, representation meant making present. This implied a causal relationship between a presence in the political institutions and the au tonomous force which it represented, based outside these institutions; an autonomous force or forces expressing popular feeling, opinion, activity, organisation, deliberation.

In most of today representative democracies representation has a primarily symbolic function, to symbolise the people or particular sections of the people, with the implication that those who are represented are generally passive in the process of the organisation of society, only periodically assenting or dissenting to how they are thus represented. Electoral politics is the competition for this symbolic role. As parties become absorbed in this process they lose any connection with the people as actors for social change in their own right. The idea of representation becomes associated with alienation, separation and frequently a presumption of superiority. If representation means making present, it is only one of many moments of politics, understood as purposeful transformation of society. This broader understanding of politics leads to theme 2.

2. The importance of distinguishing two senses of power.

• The importance of distinguishing two senses of power:

Power 1: as transformative capacity

Power 2: as domination, as involving an asymmetry between those with power and those over whom power is exercised.

The recent reassertion of power as transformative capacity first by the feminist and also radical trade union student and community movements of the late 60s and 70s and more recently by the global justice movement of the late 90s underpins and sustains a far wider understanding of the scope of politics beyond the traditional focus on state, government and legislation.

This recognition of the importance of power as transformative capacity and an associated enlargement of the definition of politics, also lays the basis for rethinking representation. It suggests a direction of strategic thinking about social transformation which goes beyond the counter position of movement forms of democracy on the one hand, and representation as making present on the other. It implies the need to inquire into forms, conditions and limits on representation as a way of “making present within the political system, movements and struggles and the sources of transformative capacity that they contain or indicate.

This implies that rethinking political organisation must be guided by investigating and understanding the present sources of transformative capacity; and this in turn re- quires recognition of the third point of the search

3. The multiplicity of levels of creative human activity all of which are potential locations of transformative capacities.

• The multiplicity of levels of creative human activity all of which are potential locations of transformative capacities.

This involves an understanding of social reality as consisting of at least four levels: interactions/relationship between people; enduring social structures that pre-exist particular individuals and relationships; the formation and character of human personality and consciousness; transactions and relations with nature.

Social movements and struggles involve all these levels of social being but their importance will vary from case to case, as will the appropriate forms of political organisation.

Just to list these indicates the dramatic enlargement of politics which flows from a recognition of power as transformative capacity and also points to the importance of a multiplicity of autonomous levels to politics. It also indicates the complexity of giving organisational reality to the idea of representation as making present autonomous forces for democratic transformation.
The other side of this enlargement of politics and recognition of the different levels at which transformative activity takes place is the four point of the search:

4. A radical development in our understanding of the mechanism of social change.

• We are working with a knowledge of open systems, an incomplete knowledge; we are increasingly aware of knowledge as tacit, practical and experiential as well as scientific.

These understandings of knowledge are closely associated with the understanding of power as transformative capacity and with the diffusion of efforts at social change. The implications for political organisation point towards an em- phasis on horizontal sharing and exchanging of knowledge; co-operative attempts to build a common memory; the self-consciousness of action and struggle as also an ex- periment and therefore the importance of ensuring spaces for reflection, debate and synthesis.

IMPLICATIONS/QUESTIONS

These conceptual themes are intended to sum up the direction of innovations and developments in the practice of social change with their associated implications for political parties and representation over the past thirty years or so. These developments effectively turn upside down the role of political parties in social change, challenging their monopoly, transforming the nature of their relationship with social movements, questioning the very nature and need for political leadership, radicalising the idea of representation and dramatically enlarging the notion of politics.

The first phase of this line of the inquiry was to explore critically the experience so far of attempts to change the nature of political parties in the direction indicated by these conceptual and practical shifts.

Contact person for the line: Hilary Wainwright (hilary1(at)manc.org)