John Clarke, former major organizer for the defunct organization Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) recently posted on Facebook the following:
I’m writing an article on the assault on democratic rights that is very much in evidence at the moment. Donald Trump’s name will certainly come up. I use the term ‘democratic rights’ rather than ‘democracy’ and for a good reason.The systems of political representation that exist in liberal democracies are actually reconfigured versions of arrangements that provided representation only for men of property but that were modified to a limited degree to allow for universal suffrage. This was done reluctantly and under great pressure but it is still very much a flawed ruling class version of ‘democracy.’Our democratic rights are a different matter. They are the rights working class people have won in struggle. In part, we have ensured that rights that flowed from the concept of liberty advanced during the bourgeois revolutions were extended to working-class people. The right to vote in elections, along with rights of assembly and expression fall into this category. However, some of our rights have actually been achieved by placing limits on the rights of our enemies.The ‘radical’ governing bodies of the French Revolution condemned attempts to unionize and collectively bargain with employers as an assault on the ‘rights of man.’ Many workers’ rights were forced from capitalist states, even though they actually went up against the supposed rights of the exploiters to enter into ‘free and fair’ agreements with individual workers.We are not fighting to defend their ‘democracy’ but to replace it with a participatory system of political representation that is extended to those realms of economic decision making that are presently left in the hands of capitalist property owners. As we take up this fight, we defend the hard pressed democratic rights we have forced from this system so that we can build our struggle to overturn it.
Although Clarke is certainly correct to note the very limited nature of democracy in political democracy, he seems to underplay the extent to which universal suffrage formed a major part of working-class struggle.
He also seems to idealize the aims of workers. For example, he states, from the above:
The ‘radical’ governing bodies of the French Revolution condemned attempts to unionize and collectively bargain with employers as an assault on the ‘rights of man.’ Many workers’ rights were forced from capitalist states, even though they actually went up against the supposed rights of the exploiters to enter into ‘free and fair’ agreements with individual workers.
Workers should certainly defend the right to choose their own unions and to bargain collectively–but without the idealization of such processes (see for example The Canadian Labour Congress’s Idealization of the Collective-Bargaining Process). Clarke simply ignores such idealization and thereby reinforces such idealization; his silence over the issue corresponds to the silence of union reps and the so-called radical left over the issue.
Why Clarke’s silence over such a vital issue? Indeed, the radical left here in Toronto have generally remained silent over the issue. Why is that? Does such silence serve the interests of the working class?
The Abolitionary 