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(a) HOW TO TRANSLATE "THE WORKERS' WILL" INTO SOCIALISM ?
The unanswerable argument which 'reactionaries' like Hobbes and Burke have posed to 'pure' democrats like Rousseau and the Levellers is that the direct expression of the 'will of the people' is impossible. Without the institutions and organisation to translate 'will' into practice direct democracy becomes anarchy in practice and thus remains forever an idealist slogan. However, because there is a dialectical relation between society and the Government which regulates it, not every Government need be absolutist or a dictatorship. In Britain the Government and the ruling class have always kept their hold over the society to a minimum - they have concentrated on the essential functions of formalising and administering institutions which the society itself has already developed to ensure its survival and development. This amounts to holding the ring - i.e. doing the minimum necessary to ensure that anarchy does not break out while allowing the social forces room to develop themselves through conflict - indeed forcing them to do so by refusing to govern by lawgiving. This makes very good sense from the point of view of the survival of the ruling class. No decisions are taken by the Government which do not reflect conscious developments in the society. Instead of giving conscious expressions to social needs, the Government formalises an already conscious development. Thus, there is no reason for revolt or rebellion as the ruling class is never out of step with the society. It also means that the ruling class's welfare is dependent on the ability of the society itself to survive and develop. This means that the forces in the society: the working class as the producers of wealth; the bourgeoisie as the owners and organisers of wealth; the production process itself; the ideology of the society interact with only the minimum of stability and order imposed by the state with the consent of the classes. Out of this interaction comes the institutions and evolution of the society. It is certainly not the most efficient or scientific way of impelling a society forward. However, it has proved that it is the most durable way and also the way which subjects the ruling class to the least risk of destruction. (Destruction however is not to be confused with change. For there is no doubt that the British ruling class has changed radically not only in its style of living but also in its 'historical perspective'. Those socialists who still see the ruling class and the Conservatives as aristocratic etc are advised to turn back to the beginning of this article and start again.)
The arguments put forward by the ruling class against democratic reform at the end of the l8th century to 1832 were not disagreement in principle, but were their judgment that to allow the masses (at this period the working class was still not a majority of the population. Small commodity producers - not a peasantry subordinate to landlords - still were an economic and political force) a direct voice - i.e. to express their will directly - was incompatible with stability and order. The French Revolution proved them right beyond a doubt. The masses were incapable in France of establishing the political institutions to allow the society to survive and develop. However, while in France the reaction against this failure of the people's will established an absolutist state, in Britain the ground was being prepared for the expression of the people's will through the self-development of the people within the existing institutions. Precisely because those institutions did not derive their substance from legislation or truth from above but from the expression of the social forces themselves, was this possible.