Die Neue Zeit
13th November 2009, 15:25
The original formulation of the UK Militant's Enabling Act was for the Labour party to nationalize the top such and such companies after obtaining some parliamentary majority. A lot of criticism has been made that this is reformist, so I'll approach this from another angle.
Would this enabling act still be reformist if the core of the Enabling Act had been different so as to emphasize at least the following (a la Paris Commune - I'll leave aside the question of demarchy vs. "elect all officials" republicanism)?
1) Scrapping the judiciary altogether and make sovereign the commoner jury;
2) Combination of legislative and executive-administrative functions;
3) Elimination of all formal or de facto public office disqualifications due to non-ownership of non-possessive property or, more generally, of wealth (the wording thus allowing for disenfranchisement of the bourgeoisie);
4) Public office occupants’ standards of living to be at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers ("average skilled workers' wage" among other measures);
5) Immediate recall for all public offices in cases of abuse of office, with term limits;
6) Capping the normal workweek to a defined participatory-democratic maximum without loss of pay or benefits;
7) Full, lawsuit-enforced freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association for ordinary people, even within the military (for soldiers' right to strike and to recall and perhaps even elect officers), free especially from anti-employment reprisals, police interference such as from agents provocateurs, and formal political disenfranchisement;
8) Expansion of the ability to bear arms and to general self-defense towards enabling the formation of people’s militias based on free training, especially in connection with class-strugglist association, and also free from police interference such as from agents provocateurs;
9) Full independence of the mass media from concentrated private ownership and control by first means of workplace democracy over mandated balance of content in news and media production, heavy appropriation of economic rent in the broadcast spectrum, unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for independent mass media cooperative startups – especially at more local levels, for purposes of media decentralization – and anti-inheritance transformation of all the relevant mass media properties under private ownership into cooperative property;
10) Immediate suppression of the state debt;
11) Establishment of a financial monopoly without any private ownership or private control whatsoever;
12) Implementation of confiscatory, despotic measures against all capital flight of wealth, whether such wealth belongs to economic rebels on the domestic front or to foreign profiteers;
13) "Abolition of property in land and application of all [economic] rents of land to public purposes"; and
14) Various other economic measures.
Would this enabling act still be reformist if the core of the Enabling Act had been different so as to emphasize at least the following (a la Paris Commune - I'll leave aside the question of demarchy vs. "elect all officials" republicanism)?
1) Scrapping the judiciary altogether and make sovereign the commoner jury;
2) Combination of legislative and executive-administrative functions;
3) Elimination of all formal or de facto public office disqualifications due to non-ownership of non-possessive property or, more generally, of wealth (the wording thus allowing for disenfranchisement of the bourgeoisie);
4) Public office occupants’ standards of living to be at or slightly lower than the median equivalent for professional and other skilled workers ("average skilled workers' wage" among other measures);
5) Immediate recall for all public offices in cases of abuse of office, with term limits;
6) Capping the normal workweek to a defined participatory-democratic maximum without loss of pay or benefits;
7) Full, lawsuit-enforced freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association for ordinary people, even within the military (for soldiers' right to strike and to recall and perhaps even elect officers), free especially from anti-employment reprisals, police interference such as from agents provocateurs, and formal political disenfranchisement;
8) Expansion of the ability to bear arms and to general self-defense towards enabling the formation of people’s militias based on free training, especially in connection with class-strugglist association, and also free from police interference such as from agents provocateurs;
9) Full independence of the mass media from concentrated private ownership and control by first means of workplace democracy over mandated balance of content in news and media production, heavy appropriation of economic rent in the broadcast spectrum, unconditional economic assistance (both technical and financial) for independent mass media cooperative startups – especially at more local levels, for purposes of media decentralization – and anti-inheritance transformation of all the relevant mass media properties under private ownership into cooperative property;
10) Immediate suppression of the state debt;
11) Establishment of a financial monopoly without any private ownership or private control whatsoever;
12) Implementation of confiscatory, despotic measures against all capital flight of wealth, whether such wealth belongs to economic rebels on the domestic front or to foreign profiteers;
13) "Abolition of property in land and application of all [economic] rents of land to public purposes"; and
14) Various other economic measures.