28.08.2025

Put politics in command

Comrades in Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party, especially branch activists, are busy debating various forms of representation. All have their advocates and supporters, not least sortition. Jack Conrad is neither an advocate nor a supporter

Using all manner of unofficial channels and platforms, members - actually proto-members - of Your Party (otherwise known as the Jeremy Corbyn Party or JCP) have been drawing up proposals, debating and taking sides over what sort of structure the nascent organisation requires. Understandably, particular attention is focused on the promised launch conference in November.

Rumour has it that Corbyn and his court circle are contemplating a conference/rally - say, filling the Albert Hall. Invitees, the great and good, MPs and councillors, trade union tops, current and former, well-known actors of stage and screen, chart-hitting musicians, Premier League footballers, celebrities of all kinds, will be arrayed in the front rows for TV and press cameras.

Meanwhile, sat at home with their PCs, laptops and smart phones, the atomised membership watch the star turns and spot the famous faces. More … they will be able to choose the leader, the party name, the rules, the code of conduct, etc. To save them getting bored by disputes over ‘minor details’ - and logging off - they will be given easy, prepackaged, ‘one, two or three’, options. Everything being carefully worded, slanted and orchestrated by Corbyn’s interim executive, centrally Karie Murphy (conference and events planning organiser).

That is what Zarah Sultana’s much vaunted OMOV Zoomocracy would amount to … fatally setting the pattern for the future?¹ Largely passive members get to vote on selected issues every once in a while, but - and this is the great virtue for the JCP’s elite - conferences and debates and blocs of leftwing delegates are sidelined or swamped in an avalanche of clicks.

OMOV appears as the epitome of democracy. We certainly support ‘one member, one vote’ for branch committees, conference delegates, etc. However, there were good reasons why the Blairites introduced OMOV by atomised members in Labour Party elections during the 1990s. It gave Tony Blair and his clique a “vice-like grip” and reduced annual conference to a “rubber stamp”.²

Doubtless comrade Sultana does not have the Blairite ascendancy as her model. More likely she takes inspiration from Spain’s Podemos (for a brief moment à la mode on the flotsam-and-jetsam left). As a ‘horizonalist’ organisation, its local circles exercise no effective power; however, all Podemos members get to vote online. The result is, though, thoroughly Blairite. It gave Pablo Iglesias Turrión a “vice-like grip” over an extraordinarily vertical organisation (well, from 2014 till his resignation in 2021). He became second deputy prime minister in 2020 and Podemos served as a left parliamentary prop for the ‘progressive’, pro-monarchy, pro-Nato, pro-capitalist government of Pedro Sánchez.

Fearing such an outcome - but surely also fearing the potential strength of the organised left - Max Shanly has drawn up detailed plans for a lottocracy at November’s founding conference³ … and in the case of Ed Griffiths there on in after that.⁴ We are told that RS21’s Marxist Unity Caucus backs a lottocracy too. Foolish, to put it mildly. Turkeys voting for Christmas.

Numbers

Instead of an OMOV Zoomocracy, where atomised members get to vote in a click plebiscite, comrades Griffiths, Shanly and co champion this or that version of sortition (either temporarily or permanently). Members are chosen at random and get to deliberate for a limited time span and then finally cast their deciding vote.

While both comrades have circulated their proposals far and wide, using social media, it surely has to be admitted that, in the last analysis, what they rely on, in terms of getting their pet project implemented, is persuading the shadowy interim executive - courtiers such as Karie Murphy, James Schneider and Amy Jackson - and, of course, Jeremy Corbyn himself. Effectively both comrades act, whatever their subjective intentions, as aspiring courtiers.

Comrade Shanly argues that for the outcome of November’s conference to have “any democratically [sic] legitimacy”, it must be “representative of the near 800,000 people who have registered an interest in the party by signing up to its mailing list”. Comrade Griffiths provides the populist spin. Lottocracy means, he says,

giving up the idea that political decisions should in general be taken by the people who are ‘best’ at taking them (because they are the most popular, or the best educated, or the richest, or the mouthiest, or anything else). A random sample is statistically representative of the whole membership. Subject to some not-too-big margin of error, it will vote the same way as the whole membership would - if there were a way of getting everybody in the room and letting them debate the question together.⁵

Logistically, sortition is more than feasible. My understanding is that to represent 800,000 people with a confidence level of 95%, albeit with a ±5% margin of error, all you need do is randomly select 384 of them.⁶ So you do not need to fill the Albert Hall. No, instead crowdfund, book a discounted conference hall, book discounted coach and train tickets, book discounted hotel rooms … and let them come to their decisions (comrade Shanly has thought it all through and provides all manner of wonderful details).

My bet, however, is that if this happened (not impossible) Jeremy Corbyn, and crucially his courtiers, along with their carefully chosen experts, would provide the agenda, plenty of helpful advice and, if need be, give a strong-arm steer.

Incidentally, with sortition, especially under present-day, historically determined circumstances, this is practically unavoidable. Letting each 384 randomly selected individuals draw up their own version of the party programme and rules and then choosing between them would be a recipe for years of impossible wrangling. Letting 384 randomly selected individuals debate and vote upon 384 different versions clause by clause would take more than a lifetime. Even if they only have a severely limited range of options before them, there is every chance of utterly contradictory and unworkable results. In the real world there would have to be a ready-made version of the party programme and rules drawn up well in advance by a committee of experts.

Reasoning

Likely some will be unwilling, or unable, to serve as one of the 384, so alternatives would have to be chosen. Frankly, a minor problem that can be easily overcome. What seems pretty certain, though, is that, while there is a good chance of a tiny handful of the organised left finding themselves amongst the 384, it would, as a whole, find itself utterly marginalised (my calculation is based on giving the organised left groups 10,000 out of the 800,000 sign-up figure).

The reasoning is as follows: the statistical probability of any one person being selected is 384/800,000 = 0.00048. With 10,000 we arrive at 0.0125 = 1.25%. Hence the expected number in a random sample of 384 is 384×0.0125 = 4.8. So, on average, about five comrades from the organised left would find themselves included amongst the 384 decision-makers.⁷

A tiny number which is a big problem for a communist militant such as myself … and any serious comrade on the left for that matter. We positively want to see the clash of competing left programmes, resolutions, factional blocs and rival leadership slates along the lines witnessed at the last, Chicago, convention of the Democratic Socialists of America.⁸ That happened because of the STV election of branch delegates … exactly what we advocate. What matters after all, is actively lifting the political culture of the vanguard ... and thereby actively lifting the political culture of the average. Passively representing the average lowers the general political culture (which is today, the vanguard included, appallingly low).

Yes, comrade Shanly has made the call for “organising around the democratic maximum programme of a Party Republic/British DSA”. Something we very much welcome … if by that he means a minimum-maximum Marxist programme and fighting for a mass Communist Party. However, in practice, his advocacy of sortition for November’s founding conference sells the pass to those who want a Bonapartist Party/British Podemos. Remember, comrade Max: “Form is function, and function is form. The two are intrinsically linked, the ends are the means, and the means are the ends.”⁹

Prefiguration

Not that we are against sortition as a matter of principle. Far from it. When it comes to juries and ‘guilty’/‘not guilty’ verdicts, sortition is something to defend … and extend. Infinitely better than a cobwebbed, gouty old judge, who by professional training is committed to handing out savage sentences and interpreting the law according to the books.¹⁰

Twelve randomly selected men and women good and true are not tied to the letter of the law. After hearing the evidence, conferring - if necessary at considerable length - they finally pass judgement over one of their equals. The legal advice of the bench can be, and often is, defied. Certainly juries are more likely to bring in ‘not guilty’ verdicts than judge-only trials in political cases, such as climate crisis protests. No wonder the right, not least Sir Keir’s ghastly government, wants to roll back, restrict or axe jury trials.

Looking back to the ancient world, communists can have a definite admiration for the peasant-citizen lottocracy of Athens. Following the 508-07 BCE revolution, decision-making in the polis was vested in the large, randomly selected, popular assembly (the Ekklesia).¹¹ Meetings were held in the Agora, then the Pnyx. Usually around 6,000 attended (a daily allowance was paid). A 1:5 or a 1:10 citizen ratio depending on the total census count.

True, the bulk of the population were excluded: women, slaves and resident foreigners. True, aristocratic orators took the lead in debates. True, Athenian democracy rested on extracting tribute from the imperialist exploitation of nearby colonies and allied (vassal) states. Nonetheless, in this past, there is, perhaps, something of the future. CLR James wrote his 1956 essay, ‘Every cook can govern’, with exactly that in mind.¹² So maybe under fully developed communism, where everyone does their civic duty and everyone takes their Buggins’ turn in the administration of things, elections can be dispensed with and sortition will become the ruling principle. That said, English juries elect a foreman and the Athenian assembly elected nine presidents to preside over proceedings and roles requiring particular expert knowledge, eg, military commanders, were likewise subject to election (and, if need be, recall).

Comrade Shanly rightly stresses that any working class party should be rooted not “in the blind trust of or the slavish loyalty to the self-appointed few, but the democracy of the many”. Good politics and, by the way, good rhetoric too. What follows is not bad in terms of style either. However, this time the politics are questionable:

It is thus of supreme importance, above all else, that such a party reflects in its structures, practices and modes of behaviour not the society it developed inside of, but the society it aspires to build. It must practise what it preaches, for all involved to believe that socialism demands democracy, precisely because democracy demands socialism.

In other words, he is making a case for prefiguration. There can, of course, be an element of that in our political practice: eg, ‘from each according to their abilities’. But we should frankly admit the severe limits. We operate within capitalist society and that means doing capitalist things like raising money, paying bills and taking into account existing laws.

With that in mind, there is, to say the least, the possibility that the state might decide to declare us illegal under the Terrorism Act 2000. For the sake of the argument, we then move our core leadership team abroad and operate underground. Surely that would curb our ability to practice the democracy that we preach. Eg, instead of branch secretaries being elected from below, they might have to be appointed from above.

What really is of “supreme importance” though, whether we are legal or illegal, is being free to combat the ideological influences that are inevitably generated by living within capitalist society: social-imperialism, reformism, centrism, etc. Towards that end communists join the battle of ideas - something, if it is to be effective, that needs our best writers, our best conference speakers, our best educators, our best organisers. To suggest otherwise is to disarm our side and thereby play into the hands of our class enemies.

1. Novara Media July 28 2025.↩︎

2. A Seldon and D Kavanagh (eds) The Blair effect 2001-5 Cambridge 2005, p115.↩︎

3. medium.com/@maxshanly/born-for-life-or-marked-for-death-a12d87220e42.↩︎

4. x.com/EdmundGriffiths/status/1956426422509088993.↩︎

5. Ibid.↩︎

6. www.calculator.net/sample-size-calculator.html.↩︎

7. Calculation courtesy of Yassamine Mather. My maths are rather primitive, to say the least.↩︎

8. See comrade Revmira’s Online Communist Forum talk, August 24 2025: ‘Report from the MUG delegation’: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVdF7tcLCKw.↩︎

9. medium.com/@maxshanly/born-for-life-or-marked-for-death-a12d87220e42.↩︎

10. To paraphrase George Orwell - see S Orwell and I Angus (eds) ‘The lion and the unicorn’ The collected essays, journalism and letters of George Orwell Vol 2, Harmondsworth 1970, pp81-83.↩︎

11. See J Ober The Athenian revolution: essays on ancient Greek democracy and political theory Princeton NJ 1996.↩︎

12. www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/works/1956/06/every-cook.htm.↩︎