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| OPINION | Sunday, 27 April 2008 Why I am a libertarian socialist Evarist Bartolo Universal participation is our best guarantee of an energetic and prosperous society. Social equality is crucial, but it is potentially very dangerous if not coupled with liberty, particularly associational liberty. Equality in servitude does nothing for democracy. If anything it paves the way for tyrannical government, manipulating civil society for ends of its own choosing and undermining the potential of individuals as agents of social change.
When, on the other hand, equality exists side by side with free political association, it empowers people. It invigorates democracy. It creates a politics of presence, where the people are at home with democracy and democracy is at home with the people. I think that equality and liberty are the necessary prerequisites for a healthy and vibrant democracy. If I am elected as leader of the Malta Labour Party, I will ensure that equality does not mean equality in silence. To be truly equal, we must also be equally free. I had a very Catholic upbringing and as a teenager I was already teaching the Bible to younger children. I was very active in the Legion of Mary, Catholic Action and the Young Christian Workers. When I went to University I discovered a new world and started reading voraciously the works of Marx, Lenin and Mao Tse Tung, but I was also attracted to the works of the anarchist Bakunin. The Soviet Union and its brand of undemocratic state socialism did not appeal to me. Later on I turned to the works of Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer,Albert Luthuli and Martin Luther King. After graduating from University in 1975 I spent more than a year in Sicily working with an anti-Mafia activist Danilo Dolci, who had also been inspired by the non-violent political activism of Gandhi. I define myself as a reformist libertarian socialist, identified by British Labour politician Peter Hain as a “bottom-up vision of socialism, with anarchists at the revolutionary end and democratic socialists [such as Hain himself] at its reformist end”; as opposed to state socialism with Marxist-Leninists at the revolutionary end and social democrats at the reformist end. While many varieties of socialism emphasise the role of the state or political party in promoting state control and social engineering, libertarian socialists place their hopes in grassroots organizations, citizens’ assemblies, and other non-bureaucratic and decentralised means of action. In the way I have done politics for the last 16 years I have put my philosophy into practice both in decisions I have taken as a minister, and in proposals I have put forward in various areas. As Minister of Education I gave every individual state school its own budget and more power to run itself. I delegated all my power to the Monitoring Board of the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language Schools. When it came to designing a new curriculum I started a wide consultation process. Even primary and secondary school students had a say in the kind of school they wanted. Teachers and heads of schools also had a vital input in the process. As minister for sports I moved fast to transfer public land to many football, water polo and sports associations to be able to run themselves better. I believe we should now change these contracts to enable them to go to banks and raise loans on the property we gave them so that they can do a better job taking care of thousands of our children and young people. Had I become Minister for Tourism after the recent elections I would have transferred funds from the Malta Tourism Authority to a new Gozitan set-up, for Gozitan tourism operators to manage their own tourism promotion directly. I would have done the same for a Tourism Management Committee in St Paul’s Bay and in the south of Malta. I think divesting government of excessive power and investing it in civil society is the way forward for a more open and democratic society. Any comments? |
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Managing editor Saviour Balzan | Tel. ++356 21382741 | Fax: ++356 21385075 | Email
Managing editor Saviour Balzan | Tel. ++356 21382741 | Fax: ++356 21385075 | Email