As indicated in my profile, my research is organised within
two programmes. The first focuses on the past, present and future of democracy.
The second focuses on the political history, historical sociology and political
economy of New Zealand since 1935 (although my research in this programme
occasionally goes back much earlier to Maori society prior to white settler
colonisation). My planned NZ focused research will be described in a separate
entry.
Within the democracy research programme, my most important
publication is my recent book: The History of Democracy ISBN
978-0-7453-3189-8, published by Pluto Press (London) in 2013. Translated
editions are forthcoming in China, Germany and Turkey.
The next book within this programme, which I am currently working
on, is entitled: The Future Socialist
Society. The title is inspired by, and borrowed with permission from, an
outstanding pamphlet by John Molyneux (available among other places in Arguments for Revolutionary Socialism,
Second Edition, Bookmarks, London, 1991, pp. 82-109).
This book addresses four key questions: What makes socialism
necessary? What makes socialism possible? What are likely to be the central
features of socialism beyond capitalism? What makes socialism desirable?
In response to these questions, it argues that the scale of
exploitation and inequality, recurring and increasingly global economic crises,
inter-state geopolitical rivalry and military conflict, global warming, and the
absence of substantive democracy within liberal democracies, underlines the
necessity of socialism.
The capitalist development of the productive forces,
historical progressiveness of liberal representative democracy, despite its
obvious limitations, and increasing size of the working class on a global
scale, makes socialism possible.
In order to identify what socialism beyond capitalism might
be like the book then turns to a consideration of the historical antecedents of
socialist participatory democracy, focusing on the aspects of democracy in a
future socialist society that will to varying degrees draw upon some of the
positive features of Athenian democracy, liberal representative democracy, and
historical attempts to create socialism such as the Paris Commune and Russian
Revolution.
Building upon the experience of previous attempts to create
participatory forms of democracy, including some of those that have taken place
more recently, the book describes the social, economic and political
arrangements that will be necessary if a socialist society is to be
qualitatively more egalitarian, libertarian, peaceful, democratic and
environmentally sustainable than advanced capitalist civilisation.
One of the most common objections to socialism is the
argument that all conceivable attempts to create socialism by revolutionary
means will inevitably degenerate into some kind of authoritarianism, especially
if the revolutionary government is forced to defend itself by military means.
This leads Bobbio, Held, and others to argue that socialism can only be created
within the institutional framework of representative democracy.
Against this view, I argue that there are likely to be a
series of constitutional protections and institutional mechanisms at the core
of a radically democratic workers’ state that will prevent the revolution from
degenerating into authoritarianism. Ultimately the real threat of
authoritarianism arises from the defenders of capitalism who support violent
counter-revolution. The best way to defend and foster liberty is to focus, in
theory and in practice, on the collective creation of a socialist society and
democratic system of government that transcends both capitalism and liberal
representative democracy.
Above all else, what makes socialism desirable is the
creative imagining, and actual possibility of collectively building, a world
that is more egalitarian, libertarian, democratic, peaceful, and environmentally
sustainable.
