Labour Party thinking was developed in its Social Justice and Efficiency policies report but did not link them to its Statement of Democratic Socialist Aims and Values. Professor Raymond Plant (Politics, Southampton University) argued in his Fabian Society pamphlet Citizenship, rights and socialism (No. 531. October 1988) ‘that democratic citizenship should be the key … that ... can provide a unifying framework within which policy can be elaborated and a link to Labour’s historical principles be maintained.’ (p.1)
He cites from Neil Kinnock’s preface to the
Statement: ‘We want a state where the collective contribution of the community
is used to advance individual freedom. Not just freedom in name, but freedom
that can be exercised in practice’. (p. 4)
He discusses why the New Right’s claim ‘that
social justice is not possible through government action and that the
distribution of resources is best left to the market … do not hold water
philosophically or practically.’ (p. 6) Given the size of welfare rights
support and the rise in homelessness that had occurred in the 1980s ‘to rely on
the market and a residual welfare state which seeks to provide only for an
absolute standard of need will not provide adequate resources for democratic
citizenship. Social justice is central to securing the basic goods of
citizenship not just to some but to all citizens as a right.’
‘If the basic goods of citizenship should be
available to all, they should be considered as matters of right and
entitlement.’ However, the range of rights cannot be ‘utterly open-ended’, as
it ‘devalues rights and over-extends the role of government so that the powers
which it needs to protect expanding rights actually become a major threat to
liberty.’(p.10)
Plant discusses
to ‘what extent should the rights of citizenship depend upon the
performance of obligations’. (p.14) ‘Clearly this issue raises a deep issue
again between the libertarian and the communitarian strands of socialism.’ The
latter sees ‘the community as having a right to insist on obligations as a
condition of some benefits of membership’, while the ‘libertarian’ will see
such ideas ‘as intolerably coercive.’
(p.15)
Plant then discusses citizenship and the market.
‘The idea of democratic citizenship is profoundly anti-capitalist: it embodies
the idea that individuals have a status and a worth to be backed by rights,
resources and opportunities which is not determined by their status in the
market and their economic value. Their underwriting of these rights of citizenship
requires collective action and politically guaranteed provision outside the
market.’ (p. 16)
However, ‘the economic market is a very useful and
indeed central instrument for securing socialist aims’ because of its ability
to distribute ‘a vast range of goods and services.’ The market has important
defects including concentrations of wealth, external effects of the environment
and self-interest. (p. 17-18)
Plant ends his discussion with:
‘In the context of community it is not the
function of public policy to try to create a specific form of community for the
whole of society …There are profound totalitarian dangers in that. Our natures
are too diverse to fit into a single pattern of life. We should, however, seek
the enable people to form and sustain, where they already exist, their own
forms of community which meet their needs. To do this we do need some general
community spirit to sustain collective provision, but this only needs to be
modest. The idea of community is beguiling but as a general idea and as a guide
to policy almost wholly indefinite. People create and sustain their own forms
of community, not to have them imposed upon them. Given the resources, a
society of citizens, rather than individuals or subjects would be able to form
their own communities as indeed they did in the early years of the socialist
movement.’ (p. 20)
Should
Neighbourhood Democracy Be Introduced? – Part. 4 From Local Administration To
Community Government 1988 follows
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