By Gwydion M. Williams

• Parliaments of the rich, for a rich minority
• Elections as a path to Civil War
• Humans are not natural democrats or natural sharers

Parliaments of the rich, for a rich minority

England has been parliamentary since the 14^th century.  But only in 1688 was it settled that the monarch could not rule without a parliament.

This was still something quite different from democracy.  Reform in 1832 of a unified British-Isles House of Commons gave the vote to about one in seven adult males.  The Upper Middle Class, and a few of the richer among the middling middle class.  Only in the 1880s was voting extended to a male majority.  (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/40-britain/665-2/).  And in the wider British Empire, only white males ever got significant electoral power in regional assemblies.  Assemblies still subordinate to the Imperial Parliament, which is what British America had rebelled against.

That Imperial Parliament didn’t actually exclude the small number of non-white males then living in Britain.  Roman Catholics might vote but not be elected as MPs until 1829: many historians doubt it could have been done after the extension of power to an English middle class that was mostly hostile to Catholics.  And Jews who would not convert could not be MPs till 1858.

Also remember that the House of Commons had to balance its wishes against the House of Lords, which often included the Prime Minister.  From 1721 to 1900, 18 Prime Ministers were peers of the realm and 16 were members of the House of Commons.  Many from the Commons went to the Lords after stepping down, but only Benjamin Disraeli had an additional term as a Lord.

The last was Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, whose final term ended in 1902.  Sir Alec Douglas Hume served briefly after resigning his peerage and getting elected after a helpful Tory stood down in a safe seat.  Curiously, this was only possible because Tony Benn had got the law changed to go on serving as an MP when he inherited a peerage.  Politics then were different, with jokes about him being ‘the reluctant peer’.

This history gets forgotten.  Our politicians and pundits treat Competitive Parliamentarianism as compulsory for all states from any civilisation.  It is hardly ever recognised as an originally undemocratic system.  One that was only slowly changed to include the bulk of the population.

And democratic voting does not in practice mean parliaments doing what the majority want.  A majority in Britain and the USA want the rich to pay more taxes, and certainly never wanted the rich to be paying lower rates of tax.  In the USA, a majority want gun control: but it does not happen.

In Britain, movements towards democracy centre themselves on the House of Commons and voting rights.  It was not the only possible route.  Presbyterianism had a nested set of elected bodies, with congregations choosing their elders and those elders choosing more senior authorities.  It dominated Scotland until the Protestant religion declined, and was for a time strong in England.  It also reminded me of the Soviet system of indirect elections of committees and higher committees.  

In its inclusion of guidance by the elderly and pious, Presbyterianism was also similar to Iran,  Which does however have direct elections for their President and Parliament, though Western media avoid mentioning this.

All sorts of different things could have happened just in Britain.  So it is foolish to demand that the rest of the world copy us.

Elections as a path to Civil War

Competitive Parliamentarianism works when the differences between electable parties are not seen as worth dying for.  So it failed in the USA, which says ‘Congress’ for something like the English system.  The southern slave-owning states felt they had a right to secede, and the north fought a long and costly war to suppress this.  But note that neither side felt that African-Americans were fit to vote, any more than they would accept women as responsible adults until 1918.  It was just that slavery was seen as degrading to both owner and owned, as indeed it generally was.  (https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/m-articles-by-topic/52-usa/both-sides-were-racist-in-the-us-civil-war/.)  

In the 20^th century, British parliamentarianism failed in Northern Ireland, precisely because Irish Unity and a state with a Roman Catholic majority was seen as an issue worth dying to prevent, or worth dying to achieve.  It remains in limbo, with a system of enforced power sharing.  Non sectarian British parties do not put up candidates in Northern Ireland.

Party politics led to the secession of what was once East Pakistan, as it had earlier split British India between the domains of the Congress Party and the Muslim League.  

It split Sri Lanka, with the regional Tamil minority being crushed by the Sinhalese majority.  They then got aggressive with a small unoffending Muslim minority.  

Hostility to Muslims is a growing aspect of party politics in the Republic of India, which also uses an ambiguous law to jail anyone who dares speak of even peaceful secession of any part of the Republic of India.  The ruling BJP protects the unfair share of income taken by the rich by getting ordinary Hindus worried about cruelty to cows and about Muslims taking their women. 

Yugoslavia was mostly seen a model country under Tito’s tolerant Communist Party.  Competition in open elections got each of the nationalities convinced that one or more of the rest were oppressing or exploiting them.  The much-admired practice of training the whole population in irregular warfare showed that it had an inherent dark side.

To cap it all, I’ve written at length about how an initially mild split in Ukraine was widened between those in the east who saw themselves as kin to Russians, and those in the west who blamed Russia for their eclipse after the Mongols took Kiev in the year 1240.  And who conveniently overlooked that what’s now East Ukraine was a conquest by Moscow of what had been Ottoman slave-raiding territory, and which was never part of Kievan Rus.  (https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Pro-Russian-Ukrainians-Ignored-by-the-West.)  

Humans are not natural democrats or natural sharers

Though I call myself a Post-Leninist Marxist, one major thing I disagree with is the label Primitive Communism.  It is indeed true that humans began as tribes without private property, classes, or a state.  But tribes also did not recognise other tribes as properly human or as having the same rights.  Engels does indeed mention this in his famous book, but in my view does not think it through.

I’d see the original condition as Family Collectivism.  The family shares, and can occasionally admit outsiders to the family – needful especially to prevent inbreeding.  Food is basic and there are fights for food-yielding territory, for hunting, farming, or fishing.  We see the same in many animals, including chimps.

My view is that when humans began organising into units larger than tribes, Family Collectivism easily slid into a fractured society with class inequality.  The idea of a common citizenship comes much later.  It was common to have several categories of citizenship, based on a mix of wealth and ancestry.  Very much the case with the Roman Republic, where the voting system gave a huge advantage to the rich.  (https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Rome-s-Undemocratic-Republic.)  When Rousseau called himself a Citizen of Geneva, he was claiming membership of the highest of several categories of male inhabitant.  And may in fact have lost it as a wanderer after accepting charity from the Roman Catholic church.

It was also the case that most civilisations did not suppose that democracy could exist for anything larger than a city.  The normal assumption was a ruling family that had somehow inherited merit and had a right to rule.  This still applies in much of the world.

Meantime China is very content with a system where everyone has a vote, but only the Communist Party has a significant role in translating those votes and wishes into actual politics.  I’d say it represents their wishes at least as well as the Indian equivalent ever did.  The current elected governments of India are worryingly far from what liberals were expecting from Competitive Parliamentarianism.

An earlier version of this article appeared as a blog: https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Competitive-Parliamentarianism-Isn-t-Essential-for-Democracy.  Many other blogs I’ve done are listed by topic: https://gwydionmadawc.com/my-blogs/.