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<div>Hi there</div>
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<div>I was at Climate Camp yesterday, and attended the CRD meeting. Thanks James for getting this set up. Some of the thoughts set out below came to me from the session. James could you please make sure it gets to the new people who put their names down for subscription. Thanks :-)</div>
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<div>I think we also need to focus on the question of <em>superstructure. </em>Meaning, the political and economic structure(s) in which decisions about taxation, expenditure, lending and all-important priorities/desired outcomes (and therefore use of resources) actually get made. In short, who gets to make the laws and commercial decisions, and who doesn't, and how humanity and the biosphere benefit, or lose out as a result. </div>
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<div>If we have a clear sense of how the present superstructure (including the hoarding of land which it encourages by not taxing land owners) creates conditions for more poverty, exploitation and environmental degradation (not to mention a host of other social problems) then perhaps we can begin to develop a strong critique of the current order. But also we can start designing a viable alternative. Just to reiterate, what I am talking about here is not a redesign of the present constitution, but rather a programme that allows a new order to start rising, alongside the old one and with public support. A recognisable, organised yet decentralised democratic 'other' to state-corporate globalisation. Again, what I think this comes down to is a question of <em>values and sovereignty</em>. </div>
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<div>Superstructure most obviously relates to the latter, but indirectly I think it also helps to shape the former. </div>
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<div>Examples of what I mean by superstructure: the centralisation of political and economic power in the twin hands of the Bank of England and Westminster (plus their 'local' authority stooges), an overemphasis on representative rather than direct democracy and the ongoing extension of this centralisation to the EU and other transnational bodies. But also: the hegemony of the corporate world (as sole providers of goods, services and employment). </div>
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<div>These corporate-state centralising superstructural forces all increase the distance between political - economic sovereignty and ordinary folk, or civil society. And they encourage an ever greater reliance on large, impersonal (and soley profit driven) institutions. All this relates to sovereignty, but the forces also affect our values, making us uber-competitive, atomised and alienated from one another, and from our own labour and from the natural world ('divide and rule'). What can we get out of each other? And because the mainstream media and all the creative types that go with it are in cahoots with the same forces, they also make us slaves to advertising, celebrity etc. While it might strive to educate some of us (to succeed in this competitive, self-interested paradigm) at the same time it infantilises us.</div>
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<div>What we need is a movement that puts at its core aim the antidote to this centralisation and corporatisation of the human world. An programme for a real opportunity, for civil society, to create its own way of doing things , its own sovereignty. Values come second here, in part because that part of the world we call 'civil society' already has mostly good (ie 'civil') values. Civil society is that part of society which is naturally community and ecologically minded, but also, being that part of the world that lobbies against state and market based interests, it also seeks power. What it doesn't have is a recognisable place close to all of us (ie in yours and in my, and in every neighbourhood) for it to operate. Churches and mosques and other community centres are all very well, but they are often sectarian by their very nature, and all of them lack real political power, which is to say sovereignty. But civil society is non-sectarian, the desire to create good social relations among all beings, and the will to political power. </div>
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<div>So, it (we, the people on this list and throughout the world of global social movements) have all the attributes of a revolutionary post-capitalist / real democracy movement, yet we lack a recognisable place to do our business, in the neighbourhoods of the world. And if it can't do business in the place where we the people live, we can't practice new, visible forms of democratic decision making, except on an ad hoc basis. Nor can we start to emit the kind of values that transform the world in a joined up way. Lacking neighbourhood space, and a joined up-ness outside of single issue campaigns we lack the ability to transform globalisation along democratic and ecological lines. We are love without power, which to coin a phrase of Martin Luther King, is anaemic. </div>
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<div>The other side of this coin (power without love) is what we've got in the present superstructure, which is tyranny. </div>
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<div>So, with all this in mind, in terms of superstructure, for the new politics (whether of the party, network or direction action campaign variety) to start us off I'd like to propose one, basic principle - a modest proposal if you like - around which a sea-change in <em>values and sovereignty</em> could actually take place. </div>
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<div>Which is: instead of the usual debate about state vs private provision, we should set our stall out as being for the <em>local provision</em> of services, both private and public, including governance. The true heir to the third way. For me this is the 'Clause 4' necessary in any new, democratic movement, as it relates to the power to take control of the means of production, culturally, economically, spiritually, neighbourhood by neighbourhood and from the ground up. We need to build a movement around this simple idea, and win power so that it can become a reality. Once that happens, to the extent that a genuine civil society steps into the constitutional space helps create, and stays true to the vision of a democratic, earth friendly, mutually supportive and non-violent society, all the shittiest traditions in our world will fall away, much as weeds are sometimes burned by a farmer. Such is the power of love.</div>
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<div>Folks I know it is only a modest manifesto proposal, but it is i think, if properly understood in the sense that it is being put forward, radical enough for all the possibilties for new social relations, human health, newly enhanced productivity, ecological sensitivity, and an end to a great deal of waste to take their rightful place in the world. </div>
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<div>Thoughts anyone?</div>
<div>Mark </div></div>