FOR several years now there has been a resurgence of socialism and a subsequent political main-streaming of progressive radicalism.
This is probably best exemplified by the phenomenon of an actually socialist-led Labour Party in the UK, democratic socialists within the Democratic Party in the US, Syriza in Greece and of course Podemos in Spain.

And in light of this trend, it is worth understanding not only what kind of society it is that we are all trying to build but whether the systems we are using to try and build it are capable of doing the job. For me the question is, whether the ‘state’ in the ‘free-market democracy’ model, is fundamentally capable of delivering a society built on compassion, freedom, equality, and sustainability or is it simply not fit for purpose?

In 1918, when the sociologist Max Weber was asked what is a state, he answered that it is a “human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”

This, as I understand it, means that the state is a minority within a wider population that argues that it and it alone has the right to use violence.

A few years later in 1931, educator and philosopher John Dewey wrote: “As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.”

To put it another way, while the political system is fundamentally beholden to the wealthy elite, acting within the system approved by the political establishment will have little if any impact on the true nature of power in society.