Title: Review: Brian S. Roper, The History of Democracy: A Marxist Interpretation
Abstract: Democracy in developed economies has been under attack for the past forty years. In many countries, the post-war period saw the establishment and extension of representative democratic institutions, mainly through local government bodies. The 1970s and early 1980s saw experiments in participatory democratic forms with local service users having a direct input into how public services were delivered. For example, in England, local authority housing tenants in some cases were members of housing committees alongside local councillors1. However, the neoliberal age has brought with it a rolling-back of these democratic institutions. As public services have been privatised they have been taken out of the democratic control of both local and national electorates. The new bodies, whether in the private or not-for-profit sectors, are run by unelected boards, subject to little if any scrutiny and able to hide behind commercial confidentiality when asked to account for their actions. On an international level the 2008 crisis has shown a willingness by the world elites and markets to ditch democratically elected governments in favour of technocrats, as happened in Greece and Italy. This is not an unexpected by-product of the neoliberal project but is one of its central tenets. The neoliberal project is profoundly suspicious of democratic control2, seeing action through the state as a less efficient mechanism of resource allocation than the market and also subject to influence by vested interests. A leading neoliberal theorist, Hayek saw democracy not as a principle but as ‘...essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom’ and as such it was not to be fetishised3. In contrast, David Harvey argues neoliberals prefer ‘governance by experts and elites’4. Harvey identifies a contradiction at the heart of the neoliberal project, between the individual’s freedom to choose and the rights of individuals to form collectives (e.g. trade unions or anti-privatisation campaigns), which may ultimately challenge the neoliberal process. ‘This creates the paradox of intense state interventions and government by elites and experts’ in a world where the state is supposed not to be interventionist’5. It is into this context that Roper’s new book provides an important analysis and source of ideas on how the world could be different. This is not an abstract utopian treaty but a materialist analysis of the demo-
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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