Thoughts on Power
“I do think we need a new system…but I don’t know what the answers are to do that. A lot of the way that we currently practice power feels tokenistic. For example once a petition gets over a certain amount of signatures it is debated in parliament but this is kind of meaningless. It’s not really changing anything.”
Introduction
The Labour Party was formed to give organisational expression to the power created by working people coming together to demand a more equal society. Forged in the aftermath of the industrial revolution, it was a political response to the emerging exploitative economic model of capitalism. Its purpose was to fight inequality by channelling the collective power of people. Creating new forms of power by convening the collective is a defining feature of our movement. Labour has a long tradition of building power; from the cooperatives to community organising, our movement has over time developed many long-established forms and practices which help groups to build and share power. In Labour we don’t just hold power over people, we build it together. We don’t just do things to people, we do things with them. At the deepest level this is what differentiates us from a One Nation Tory paternalism.
In Labour’s recent history, particularly in government, we have too often neglected this “power building” part of our movement. Too often we have prioritised the need to purely redistribute resources to mitigate the worst harms of our system rather than to challenge the underlying power structures that perpetuate inequality in its broadest sense. We are content to negotiate with existing power systems than to convene and create new ones. Yet, when so many injustices come back to an inherent inequality of power in our workplaces, our economy and in our politics; it is a subject that can no longer be ignored.
Now is the time to act. We are living through an era of rapid technological change which is impacting how we live, work and communicate. It has led new economic models emerging including what Roberto Unger has termed the “knowledge economy” in which the power of human labour increases as creativity, imagination and innovation is unlocked through new digital structures that facilitate collaboration and the sharing of knowledge leading ultimately to new forms of collective production. Indeed, Unger argues that to progress we must end the current confinement of this form of economic organisation and democratise our economy more broadly, ending the existing economic power structures.
Yet this economic shift has a necessary political equivalent as technology is also affecting how we relate to each other in the political sphere, at once both challenging and further entrenching existing hierarchies and power. The technology writer Clay Shirky argues that with the rise of social media we are witnessing a revolution in mass communications, similar to the one that was heralded by the introduction of the printing press in the 15th century. For Shirky the near ubiquity of the smartphone and the consequential rise of social media is providing us with the tools to participate, collaborate and create. In his view, this has led to a move away from a broadcasting model, where channels of communication are one way and controlled by institutions (for example TV and printing) towards more participative forms and media (online forums and videos). Rather than just passively consuming media, we now have the tools and technology to co-create in an unprecedented way. We are no longer content to simply sit back and consume — instead, we expect to be collaborators, participators and creators. This rise in participation is having political consequences as more people expect and are enabled to collaborate and thus inevitably to build new forms of power.
Technology is creating new political online spaces and tools which we can use to create power and organise. Suddenly a group of people that might once have organised in a pub or a community hall are organising on WhatsApp groups or Facebook groups. It has facilitated the exchange of information beyond central control. A single tweet condemning a hiring practice or calling out harassment can spread across nations. This builds new forms of consciousness and solidarity as we become more aware of our shared experiences, leading to new groups, identities and politics forming.
This age of participation is expressing itself in many forms. From the creation of Wikipedia where the pursuit of building shared knowledge traverses boundaries, countries and cultures to the emergence of new forms of community power building in places like Wigan, Preston and Barking and Dagenham. At every level people are creating, participating and as a result making new power for themselves. This is a phenomenon which will continue with or without Parliament or our older structures taking any notice.
As Neal Lawson in the Compass explains in 45 degree politics explains:
“A new society is starting to emerge from the bottom up, facilitated by new digital technologies, that have the potential to deliver greater equality and democracy because they are built around flatter and more universal networks that allow everyone to know, speak, share and organise at the press of a button — all at, or near, zero marginal cost. As such, this networked society will facilitate new forms of solidarity and agency, based on active citizenship, through the continual practice of negotiating and building a future collectively”
It is vital that our existing institutions and architecture of power engage with these emerging forms of power and practice. In Lawson’s words we must focus on “the potential meeting point of bottom-up emerging activity and top-down state support — the diagonal faultline through which a new society can and must emerge. This line is the place for a truly new politics… [here] new forms of collaborative action … light up the sky like fireworks and we see a glimpse of the good society ahead of us… these initiatives can’t be sustained or systematised and so we return to darkness. This is where we need the state — to help resource, legitimise and regulate in favour of these emerging collaborative and socially responsible organisations”.
As Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms argue in their book New Power our society must learn to channel these “new power” forces and understand how they can help to update our existing political institutions and perhaps create new ones. This is an urgent priority as our older structures are becoming increasingly questioned due to complete breakdown of trust in the establishment. From the financial crash in 2008, to the expenses scandal in 2009 to the phonehacking in 2011, to the child grooming revelations in 2012; all these revelations have one after the other conspired towards breaking faith in the establishment leading to a rise in distrust fueled by conspiracy theories and fake news. While these structures desperately need reform they also guarantee many of the pillars of our democracy, human rights, justice and law. While they are questioned, unresponsive and found wanting, darker more sinister forms of power are emerging. Indeed viewed in a certain light, the increasingly popular conspiracy theories such as Qanon could be seen as a framework for participation and an expression of this new form of powerbuilding in opposition to institutions.
A shallow and divisive populism is on the rise as our society becomes more divided than ever. The companies that control our social media platforms become evermore powerful in the absence of any form of regulation or democratic governance limiting our power and affecting our relationships to each other in ways that we cannot fully comprehend yet. Economic power is flowing to global elites and corporations as workers rights and pay are increasingly degraded and weakened.
Power is shifting, moving and being fundamentally transformed so the question of power, who has it and how we create it, can no longer be ignored. Politics is a process by which we decide how we live together and share resources and power. In light of these paradigmatic shifts, a new politics needs to be built which renegotiates the relationship between power and people. How can we renegotiate this? What principles should this renegotiation rest upon? How can we update our instruments and architecture of power for a new age? How might we create new ones?
Much work on this emerging agenda and form of politics has been done across our movement. What follows are our collective attempts to distil six propositions for how people are empowered, examples of how they operate and an attempt to try and understand how their application could build a different kind of future and society in which power is shared more equally.
Proposition 1 — People are empowered when they have space to organise
