Well I agree with that, after all it is in the interests of capital to allow some degree of popular democratic participation, not just to keep people happy but as a basis for limited political reforms to be built into the system. But at the same time I'd argue that there is already a major concession they've had to make to protect the system at large, one that we fought very hard for and shouldn't just be dismissed as utterly worthless. Which is the same view I have of trade union leaders, of course capital needs them to enforce labour discipline and act as a pressure valve, but that's a state of affairs they only reluctantly accepted after hundreds of years of struggle, and ideally what they'd like to be able to do without that layer of trade union leaders and be able to enforce labour discipline without their help. Which is actually what we're seeing now, the un-incorporation of the trade unions, trying to get back to how things used to be before they had to make some small accommodations. I think that's a bit part of what neo-liberalism is about, and that although you're clearly right on a lot of things your perspective on this is probably more suited to the pre-Thatcher/Reagan era. I don't think you can say that the union have that kind of leverage today, I mean look at the USA where only 6% of the private sector labour force is unionised, the conditions don't really call for union leaders to play that sort of role any more.
I'm not arguing for a parliamentary road to socialism what I'm saying is when you're fighting a battle you need to fight it on all fronts, including within the constitutional political system. Thanks to the Chartists and Suffragettes we've got an opportunity to make a fight on that front, and we should do so, but the danger comes when people think that political change can only be achieved exclusively by parliamentary and constitutional means. Labourism, in other words. There has to be some kind of pressure internal to the established structures and externally too, working in concert as much as possible.
