ABSTRACT

This book is concerned with the political institutions and the legal framework necessary for a democratic socialism. I have pursued this theme over a number of years in a critical dialogue with Marxism and with liberal political theory. It may appear to be quixotic to pursue it as I do in the mid-1980s when there are so many immediate evils to be confronted - poverty and unemployment, racial oppres­ sion and its grim reflection of riot and murder. I see my critics very clearly and they fall into two different categories. I owe both of them an answer and they in turn need to think again and carefully about their own questions. To the renascent Labour centre all such theorizing is a diversion

from the essential task of winning the next election. Theorizing democratic socialism rather than sloganizing it, pursuing the argument into the radical political changes needed for a democratic socialist society, is not only diversionary but dangerous. It offers the Conservative enemy the dangerous radicalism it desperately needs in order to denounce Labour. The boat is always in danger of being rocked and there are always urgent and attainable reforms to be pursued after the next electoral victory. This is not to deny or to belittle the urgency of working for electoral victory today; far from it. It is simply to say that one must have a clear view - not a ‘ vision’ - of the attainable radical changes - not a utopia - that lie beyond the tunnel vision of the ‘next’ election. Without the political preparation for radical change, the series o f‘next' elections is infinite. Part of that preparation is political theorizing to convert socialism into a specific and practical political doctrine - changing it from an anti-capitalist economic theory and a set of values and political sentiments into an account of a new and superior constitution, of political institutions that permit both democratic accountability and efficient govern­ ment.