Beyond Liberal Democracy

Abstract

In this paper I shall be concerned more with objections raised by liberal democrats to the possibility of a socialist democracy than with socialist criticisms of liberal democracy. The latter are well known, though no less valid for that, and will be merely touched on in what follows. The former still await convincing reply. Ultimately they can only be answered by history itself. Unlike liberal democracy, which is variously established in practice, there are no convincing examples of socialist democracy to point to as models, except for some relatively short-lived moments of transition, or as interstices in wider non-democratic structures. While these can serve as prefigurations, they still have to be shown to be generalisable, across both time and space: to be sustainable in routine as well as revolutionary times, and for whole societies not just elements within them. This can only be conclusively demonstrated in practice. A precondition for such practice, however, is that enough people should seriously believe in its possibility. Socialist democracy cannot therefore simply be theorised ex post facto; it has to be anticipated and defended in the present.