No maps, no manuals: retrieving radical republicanism, restoring popular sovereignty

Colonel Rainsborough's Plaque, St.Mary's Church, Putney. Flickr/Jim Linwood. Some rights reserved.Britain’s Labour party today is facing
one of its most extreme challenges, and at the same time one of its greatest
opportunities. Can it grasp this extraordinary moment, reforming itself into a
broad-based popular movement that can also successfully enter the national
institutions of the state? Earlier this summer, at a conference devoted to
restoring republicanism’s radical tradition (co-convened with Stuart White and
Bruno Leipold), a number of us were able to discuss just why this radical
heritage still matters – never more so, it now appears, than in September 2015.

The reason is that republicanism
recaptures exactly what we have lost and wish to regain in our own political
organising, giving a national horizon to our endeavours, and also explains how
it might be most practicably done. We now confront a constant corrosion of
individual and collective freedoms, all hard-won long ago: loss of protections
for the vulnerable and poor at home and abroad; disenchantment and
disempowerment in people’s sense of how they are governed and how they control
their own lives; the confusion over whether it is possible to overcome the
lethal power of entrenched special interests, especially the coercive ‘global
governance’ of international bodies, along with the international financial
regimes of banking and large multinational corporations; the insistent
encroachment on individual liberties and public space by the invasive yet
distant hand of government; the justified contempt for electoral politics of
large swathes of youth; above all, the pervasive doubt as to whether tangible
change is really possible – and if so how it can be achieved in today’s
circumstances, where institutions have become so powerful and people so small.

Remembering
republicanism

Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Jean-Baptiste Farochon, Louvre. Wikicommons/ Jastrow. Some rights reserved.The universality of our common aims can be found in a set of
collective understandings about and practices of democratic freedom that have
fallen into disuse and are rarely (if ever) discussed today. Republicanism
brings into sharp focus an articulation of common freedoms strived for under
extremely varying political conditions, in different times and places, with the
shared commonality of facing unequal odds.

Another way of describing this is the
customs and practices of bringing about, or retrieving, lost popular
sovereignty – where every human is sovereign, and free. Put most simply,
popular sovereignty is the foundational principle of a just political society:
that people are the source of all power and legitimacy, and therefore that all
laws and institutions created should be the reflection and outcome of their
will.

This constant location of power and
authority in people themselves, not in the state or even its national
institutions, is what can be seen to make these very institutions breathe, take
life, and have force. The principle of popular sovereignty, when applied, means
that the decisions of any national body are made through its people’s
determining, and with their consent. In this way, their general will and its
expression is understood as the basis for all legitimate collective political
arrangements, structures, laws, strategies and policies.

Popular sovereignty has been expressed
in different types of political arrangements, structures and
institutionalisations. Historically, these expressions have taken
liberal-democratic, revolutionary, socialist, and national liberation movement
forms. Its revolutionary expressions have a rich heritage and tradition across
the world; equally, socialist frameworks of popular sovereignty have a vibrant
history in Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Arab world and Europe. In
liberal-democratic systems of governance, the sophisticated electoral systems
and bureaucratisations that slowly emerged were designed to capture the
workings of popular sovereignty, and its foundational heritage can still be
seen in some of the trappings and common language of modern democracies, which
claim to govern in the name of ‘the people’.

These substantively different forms
nevertheless possess common features. Popular sovereignty rests, in all these
models, on two conditions: that the populace participate in its institutional
workings, and that they recognise the political structures that emerge from
their will – and in which they play a role – as being representative of them as
a people. Through a set of philosophically grounded practices, republicanism is
rooted in a common history with people who took up the same mission: to somehow
solve both the individual and collective desire to live free. The tracing of these common histories
furnishes us with a deep reservoir of customs and practices that are worth
exploring in light of our current concerns. 

Through a set of
philosophically grounded practices, republicanism is rooted in a common history
with people who took up the same mission: to somehow solve both the individual
and collective desire to live free. 

Popular sovereignty is usually defined
as a legal status, an abstract idea, a political principle. But it is also a
tradition of practice and skills, something that is passed on between
generations in what is an increasingly enigmatic craft – a now almost secret
but once vast and public guild. The mystery of the precise methods used to
bring about the unlikely phenomena that is radical republican change only adds
to current disillusionment. This gap of knowledge, understanding and experience
between generations touches young people across the world: the skills and
artistry that could take on the governance structures that overwhelm them
today, and do so in a way that might take hold, seem to have vanished into
smoke.

Republicanism – with its guiding
principles of freedom, fraternity, equality and popular sovereignty,
hand-in-hand with the extraordinary practices devised to achieve them –
represented the most decisive challenge to the ordering of the international
system of states between the second half of the eighteenth century and the end
of the twentieth. Distinctive in certain features from contemporary
Anglo-American republican theory, republicanism as a living movement has a
doctrine with a large number of practices associated with it that are designed
specifically to confront much larger, better equipped structural forces. So
this tradition provides the grammar of an innovatory language that is used for
a particular kind of mobilising: national in scope and offering useful
guidelines, rules, principles and lessons from the past.

Learning
from our republican history

This rich, elaborate and complex
political tradition provides, in its manifest workings, the methods and tools
to rejuvenate the public realm today, if one could only know precisely which
lessons to take from it. Recent works on the history of republicanism have
retrieved patterns of associational practices, illustrating the important
reality that it was republicans who created republics – not the republics that
went on to create republicans. Sequentially, the creation of the citizen comes
well before any democratic state can appear; their talents, commitments,
political artistry and achievements are prerequisites for a republic that is
truly free, and is able to maintain that freedom against the constantly developing
power of elites. Sequentially, the creation of the citizen comes well before
any democratic state can appear; their talents, commitments, political artistry
and achievements are prerequisites for a republic that is truly free, and is
able to maintain that freedom against the constantly developing power of
elites.

This may appear counterintuitive. But
if we look at Britain, for example, history demonstrates that attempts at
making the transition from absolute monarchy to democracy were neither spontaneous,
nor granted by the state. Instead, they were won by a number of different
actors over arduous centuries of struggle and enfranchisement, and the reforms
were both shaped and established by those who organised to make the demand for
them.

Contemporary understandings of
politics, however, train the eye to look first at the state and only then at
the relationship of people to it. This view, Hobbesian and deeply
anti-democratic in nature, constantly locates sovereignty inside the state. It
becomes the locus of power, and its people, instead, belong to it. The central
point here is the extent to which modern liberal democracies have become
‘Hobbesian’ through their obsession with fear and security, their
prioritisation of order over justice, and their handing over of power and rule
to unaccountable groups, both public and private. 

On the other hand, republicans see the
state as belonging to the people, and that the life and wellbeing of the
country exists within the individual and collective freedoms of its people and
in their relations to each other. Understood in this manner, republicanism
comes to life again: a body politic whose very purpose is creating and
preserving freedom for each and for all, not a limited search for the
establishment of a democratic state, nor the enfranchisement of individual
rights and liberties against the inevitable encroachments of the modern state
(whose absolute perogative to make decisions of this nature, however, seems to
be accepted).

If the common starting point is those
citizens and their unknown collective work, then it is this earlier story which
holds the practical lessons of how to create public freedom, and once it is
won, how to maintain it. This tradition of republicanism is therefore both
radical and familiar at the same time. It captures a way of living freely that
people sometimes experience, and constantly seek to experience, in their own
personal lives.

Yet its customs, so intrinsic to its
philosophy, have not been passed on to the current generation. They have no
signposts, maps or manuals to show how the freedoms they seek are to be won.
With only the dusty remnants of popular sovereignty remaining today in an
institutional democracy of the most formal kind, the emptiness of its promise
of freedom is evident in any national institution or parliament. The great
historical secret has not been handed on to the next generation, for they have
been told the battle has been won – or worse, that there never was one.

Pessimism and individualism: defining
our political void

Third Volume of a 1727 edition of Plutarch's Lives printed by Jacob Tonson. Wikicommons/ S Whitehead.Some rights reserved.As a result, when they are actually
confronted with democratic renewal, progressive intellectuals and politicians
regularly declare themselves to be perplexed about the nature of what they are
witnessing. The central point here is the extent to which modern liberal democracies have become ‘Hobbesian’ through their obsession with fear and security, their prioritisation of order over justice, and their handing over of power and rule to unaccountable groups, both public and private.

By the time Barack Obama ran for the
primary of the US Democratic party in 2008 – unleashing such a remarkable surge
of civic engagement among a huge range of actors and associations – political
analysts, academics and avowed democrats had already concluded that this type
of large-scale progressive mobilisation was, in America at least, utterly dead.
And over a few weeks this summer, hundreds of thousands of people (mostly young
and not-so-far left) joined Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign for leader of the Labour
party, simultaneously horrifying and baffling those who had spent decades
wondering where democratic engagement had disappeared to, and mourning its
loss.

There is no contemporary political
lexicon with which to appreciate these classic moments, trace their
extraordinary lineage, or to understand what they mean, how they are
engendered, or how they can be maintained in the face of institutionalised
opposition.

There are a multitude of reasons,
which have taken hold on the public imagination in a number of ways, for this void
at the heart of contemporary politics. For a start, most intellectual
frameworks are derived from a generation of university courses in postcolonial
and cultural studies, discourses of post-nationalism, human rights and global
governance, international conflict and its resolution. Even the most
‘democratic’ political theory possesses a concept of ‘civil society’ in which
political engagement is reduced to ‘community organising’ (where a ruling elite
continues to command their foot soldiers within a stultifying hierarchy, who
remain forever perceived as soldiers, never sovereign citizens).

The clamour of critiques from every
intellectual field and corner offer a bleak view of political change both
domestically and internationally. Some of the most pervasive of both
libertarian and left philosophies seem designed merely to demonstrate the
nature and size of the problem. One asserts that any organisational structure
above the narrowly local or parochial is coercive; the next that coercive power
lies in all and any structure of civic and political organisation. And these
analyses of the size of the problem are equalled only by the pessimism
surrounding the possibility of altering the enormous structural bureaucracies
that are with us, it seems, forever.

Recent attempts to achieve such change
have only calcified this view: the massed crowds of the Arab spring faced with
the might of superpower-backed armies; Barack Obama entering the White House
alone to face the full force of special interests; the biggest demonstration in
British history, against this country invading another, proving unable to stop
its own elected leaders – all seem to give proof of the foolishness of even
trying against such odds. all seem to give proof of the foolishness of even
trying against such odds.

Possessing neither theoretical nor
empirical knowledge of precisely how collective liberties were previously won
and maintained, today’s political culture offers us instead a grim series of
competing analyses of what has been lost. Entirely negative in its cumulative
effects, the identity of what was once valued is fought over right across the
political spectrum, the losses denounced, and blame apportioned to those
individuals, groups and institutions who have robbed us of them.

Reflecting the individualism that
drives these structural understandings, our loss of freedom is conceived as a
personal loss, since we
now see any sort of collective freedom, from the left to the right, as some
form of tyranny. The intellectual frameworks furnished to cope with this dark
landscape encourage a further withdrawal from a toxic public sphere, an
inevitable turning away from a political realm that, once understood in this
way, can deceive us no longer. This fatalism is common: those who have tried to
achieve progress through an individualist liberal view of human rights (along
with those of a more radical orientation) through campaigns, petitions and
protests have seen them fizzle away: after an initial flurry of activity, they
seem to run up against an immovable wall.

Filling
the void: how republican traditions speak to our present challenges

Reflecting the individualism that drives these structural understandings, our loss of freedom is conceived as a personal loss,Any account that aspires to transcend
this extremely narrow intellectual and political base must persuasively
overcome these negative visions. Republicanism is the one that did so in the
past, and does so today. Yet how can individuals who are no longer part of a
grand movement or historical moment, learn and pass on a precious craft gained
from a united endeavour which held meaning only in its time and place?

The first place to look is Britain,
which has its own deep reservoir of republican practices and customs, local in
design and national in scale, which over the centuries have successfully
generated far-reaching mobilisational movements both inside and outside of
national institutions. Specific methods from the rich organising traditions of
these progressive, labour and union movements can be fruitfully drawn upon –
there is no need to rely on imported organising models, conceived entirely for
a Back of the Yards, non-union underclass of interwar America.

Indeed, the best use of this flat
organisational style is in single-issue campaigns. One beautiful example is the
(now strangely silent) ‘Strangers into Citizens’ campaign to enfranchise
refugees and undocumented workers: its generosity of spirit evokes a common
humanity and the virtues of inclusion of the dispossessed. The most interesting
feature of Britain’s own organisational heritage (unlike imports designed for
another task, another time, another arena) is that they hold real meaning and
proven effectiveness. Understanding how they worked in the past, however, can
only be done using the forgotten vocabulary of popular sovereignty.

This framework imparts other useful
and concrete practices beyond the mechanics of institutional design. One
republican practice with a long tradition in mobilising is the use of exemplars
to generate an awakening around acts for the common good. Possessing a long
history, it can be seen in its Enlightenment form drawing on Plutarch’s
discussion of the virtues and their purpose, expanded by Rousseau and others in
questions of how to restore popular sovereignty, but seen most of all in the
everyday discussion, publications and practices of generations of republicans
across the world.

The republican discussion here is not
whether to be good (to become a virtuous person) but instead how to do it (to
practise the virtues for the common good). The aim is not the self-improvement
of a private morality but the creation of the means to manifest public acts of
freedom for the benefit of all, which being witnessed themselves generate like
practices. Practising the virtues for public happiness necessitates a
dedication formed through engagement and craft, carried out with intent and
knowledge of precisely what you are doing and why, where one’s contribution can
have the desired public effect: to build directly towards restoring lost
popular sovereignty to all.

Accordingly, instead of yet another
elegiac glimpse at a nobler but unreachable past, republicanism performs the
practical work we need to answer today’s problems. By reconceptualising and
recontextualising the challenges we now face – seeing them instead as the
challenge of restoring popular sovereignty – the basic political concepts which
democracy was entirely dependent upon, when it was first fashioned, are
restored. These direct lessons from those who served the public good for ‘the
happiness of all’ return our most valuable of collectively owned traditions,
democracy, into the hands of those who wish to experience it for themselves.

 

This article appears
in issue 22.2 of Juncture, IPPR’s quarterly journal of
politics and ideas. Warm thanks for permission to republish.