John Papworth writes:

Sorry indeed I cannot make Saturday's meeting. in reply to the paper by John Courtneidge,, I am ninety next year and in my long life I have had my bellyful of socialist proposals that involve giant political parties. If they come anywhere near electoral success they attract career freaks who will not hesitate to sacrifice any principles that involve endangering their power-seeking concerns.

Those concerns inevitably create conflicting interests between the leaders and the led, which is why the British Labour Party embraces the boardroom fascism in Brussels now poised to destroy what remains of democracy in Europe, albeit the majority of Labour members are strongly opposed. How will your proposals counter this?

My own conclusion is that modern politics and economics have become conducted on such a giant scale as to make electoral control by the people impossible. They are out of control. A mass democracy is an oxymoron. What is required is a structural transformation that lodges key power from the top in the hands of power manipulators to small communities (villages, urban parishes etc) worldwide so that we have government from the base up rather than from the top down.

National governments should only be concerned with national issues such as armaments, foreign affairs, international trade and so on. We need to create numerous independent councils for regional issues such as higher education, teacher training, police etc., each council composed of representatives of elected local community councils. This is not just opinionating, it is an urgently needed process to rescue our civilisation from total collapse. That country is governed best which is governed least.

So save all your socialism for convincing your local community of its validity; on a national level it involves much more government and simply becomes another brand of fascism. My latest book 'Village Democracy' attempts to elucidate.

I don't apologise for being contentious; we will get nowhere if we continue to immerse ourselves in out of date slogans about socialism, currency reform, equality and similar generalities which in practice create power structures that destroy democracy.

Have a good meeting. JOHN PAPWORTH.
14th April 2010.