Demarchy, "districts," pork barreling, and STV

[Die Neue Zeit]

A comrade wrote in Learning that "Proportionality and statistical representation based on lottery is opposed to delegative recall and "district"-rep election" and "Hypothetically, a delegate could be selected by vote or by lottery, as long as they fulfill their role of representing the smaller, more local body." I will leave aside the question of elections, assuming that the method of appointment throughout this e-mail is random selection.

He then asked if there is "a resolution between these two approaches to organization."

I am also inspired to flesh this out by another comrade's posts on handwritten voter petitions in Soviet elections. I said first that today's bourgeois states are instead for pork barrelling by 'representatives' - "Let us get your pork for you!" He said that pork barreling occurs also under STV:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/there-elections-soviet-t140285/index.html

Here's an idea floating around in my mind in an attempt to combine the two extremes:

1) There's no STV, but from such system society can pluck the multi-member constituency concept.
2) For statistical representation, each multi-member group must have at least 25-30 members.
3) From this, society can determine whether those randomly selected are to function as "representatives" or as "delegates," but in either case subject to recall.

To what extent does this go against proportionality, though? Pure nation-wide proportionality wouldn't be as conducive to pork barreling.

[Kotze]

Your url doesn't work. It looks like you forgot the last letter:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/there-elections-soviet-t140285/index.html


1) There's no STV, but from such system society can pluck the multi-member constituency concept.
2) For statistical representation, each multi-member group must have at least 25-30 members.
3) From this, society can determine whether those randomly selected are to function as "representatives" or as "delegates," but in either case subject to recall.

To what extent does this go against proportionality, though?My specific claim isn't that recall and proportionality together are impossible or recall and not storing information about individual voters, but you have conflicting goals if the combination is recall and proportionality and not storing information about voters. Though it's like with equal pay and productivity: Society is so far from the frontier where these goals contradict each other that you can have improvements in each aspect.

Adding to random sampling a recall mechanism that lets the majority remove people with minority opinions and then spins the wheel again allows the majority to change over time the whole sample towards what it wants. One might ask what's so bad about the majority determining the majority of people in the sample, but if the majority can replace everybody in the sample that reduces diversity and if a board is made of regionally separate (s)election processes like that, this might actually undermine the true majority within the whole due to gerrymander-like distortions.

To give a group of voters the power to replace representatives/delegates at least roughly in proportion to its size — while these groups are free to do that not just together with all other groups of voters, but at any time while the rest of the (s)elected group stays the same — requires that some information about the voters is stored, so an individual doesn't have an unlimited supply of opportunities to do that. But if the replacement mechanism is of the type that we spin the wheel again for specific reps/delegates, even putting a cap on how often a voter can participate in the removing and wheel-spinning thing won't change that this undermines proportionality. Because now people from one extreme end of the spectrum can remove reps/delegates from the other end, and fans of these reps/delegates can return the favour.

You can have proportionality and recall together if information is stored about voters. Example: Candidates run for election in official electoral coalititions, these coalitions consist of parties which in turn consist of currents, this relation is fixed and published at a set date before the election. (We could also have more nesting levels, but whatever.) Every voter marks a candidate. First, these marks are used to calculate the number of seats for each coalition, then the marks are used for distributing these seats within each coalition to the parties within it, and finally the marks are used to distribute the seats within each party to the currents within it.

Now, adding a recall mechanism that is entirely under the control of the majority of voters would undermine proportionality. If the information is stored which voter voted for which coalition and the right to replace reps in a coalition is limited to voters of that coalition, that's another story, but such mechanism is still not proportional within these coalitions. We can store for which party a voter voted or, more precisely, which current. The more information is stored about the voters, the more precisely we can be with assigning the right to replace certain people and the less the recall mechanism undermines proportionality.

There is also the possibility to elect groups of 3 or 5 via STV (or Range Voting with reweighting or Approval with reweighting) and then have a mechanism that requires a super-majority of voters to remove a rep (so big that we can infer those who liked the rep now don't like him anymore without tracking which voter voted for whom), and that then uses the old ballots from the last election to calculate the replacement, which doesn't undermine the proportionality of the method, but at a resolution of 3 or 5 seats there isn't much proportionality to begin with.

The question is what tradeoff you want to make and I decided to be in favour of big proportional groups for many decisions, and to drop recall wherever there are big proportional groups.

[RED DAVE]

1) There's no STV, but from such system society can pluck the multi-member constituency concept.
2) For statistical representation, each multi-member group must have at least 25-30 members.
3) From this, society can determine whether those randomly selected are to function as "representatives" or as "delegates," but in either case subject to recall.
Does this or anything else in the post it's a part of have anything to do with revolutionary workers democracy? It reads like the kind of crap that professiors assign to Poly Sci 101 classes: "Design your own social system."

RED DAVE

[Dimentio]

Does this or anything else in the post it's a part of have anything to do with revolutionary workers democracy? It reads like the kind of crap that professiors assign to Poly Sci 101 classes: "Design your own social system."

RED DAVE

Well, systems needs details to function too.

[Die Neue Zeit]

My specific claim isn't that recall and proportionality together are impossible or recall and not storing information about individual voters, but you have conflicting goals if the combination is recall and proportionality and not storing information about voters.

Crap. I didn't address secrecy at all either in my OP or in my programmatic commentary. Then again, most left programs don't do so, either.


To give a group of voters the power to replace representatives/delegates at least roughly in proportion to its size — while these groups are free to do that not just together with all other groups of voters, but at any time while the rest of the (s)elected group stays the same — requires that some information about the voters is stored, so an individual doesn't have an unlimited supply of opportunities to do that.

I've got no problems there.


The question is what tradeoff you want to make and I decided to be in favour of big proportional groups for many decisions, and to drop recall wherever there are big proportional groups.

To be fair, I did say "immediate recall from any of multiple avenues, especially in cases of abuse of office." The key words are "any of multiple avenues" and "abuse," so the intent is not to promote recall abuse. Your scenario of recall is the basic cookie-cutter popular recall, not including sovereign commoner juries sanctioning representatives who violate popular legislation, lower representative bodies, political parties themselves, and so on.

Beyond party-list PR, this is the first time I've thought about the interplay of proportionality vs. districts and certain other features in electoral systems within a demarchic framework.

[RED DAVE]

Does this or anything else in the post it's a part of have anything to do with revolutionary workers democracy? It reads like the kind of crap that professiors assign to Poly Sci 101 classes: "Design your own social system."
Well, systems needs details to function too.Yes, they do. And little or nothing that we fantasize about has anything to do with such details.

The essential "detail" is revolutionary workers democracy. DNZ has no concept of this as demonstrated by this and other posts of his elsewhere.

RED DAVE

[syndicat]

The essential "detail" is revolutionary workers democracy.

okay, what is this? i would take it that the basic unit is the assembly of workers in the place where they work. direct, participatory democracy.

and then the election of delegates. the idea is to replace "representative democracy" (as in the state) with "direct democracy plus delegative democracy". but that still leaves unanswered how the delegates are kept accountable to the base in the assemblies.

but don't talk to me about "soviets". those were only an indigenous product in the Russian revolution of 1905, and then revived by the parties in various forms in 1917. in 1917 they were not always so democratic.

other situations of a workers revolution or near revolution saw different kinds of organizations of workers power develop. such as the assemblies and factory councils in Italy in 1919-20 and in Spain 1936-37. in the Spanish revolution there were also regional worker delegate congresses (in one region). there weren't Russian style soviets in either situation.

[Jose Gracchus]

How did they differ from Russian-style soviets?

[RED DAVE]

okay, what is this? i would take it that the basic unit is the assembly of workers in the place where they work. direct, participatory democracy.Right.


and then the election of delegates. the idea is to replace "representative democracy" (as in the state) with "direct democracy plus delegative democracy". but that still leaves unanswered how the delegates are kept accountable to the base in the assemblies.Delegates are kept accountable through reports, recall, constant consultation, political education: the whole gamut of revolutionary democracy. You have an incredibly static, bureaucratic view of revolutionary government.


but don't talk to me about "soviets".Why not? Too democratic, left-wing and revolutionary for you?


those were only an indigenous product in the Russian revolution of 1905, and then revived by the parties in various forms in 1917. in 1917 they were not always so democratic.Soviets are the generic term for rank-and-file organizations, based primarily in the workplaces, which are the basis for working class control of the government.


other situations of a workers revolution or near revolution saw different kinds of organizations of workers power develop. such as the assemblies and factory councils in Italy in 1919-20 and in Spain 1936-37. in the Spanish revolution there were also regional worker delegate congresses (in one region). there weren't Russian style soviets in either situation.Who gives a fuck? In France in '68, the nascent proletarian organizations were called Comites de Base.

The point is working class control of the economy from below. Anything else is bullshit.

RED DAVE

[syndicat]

Dave, i think you're completely clueless about the conditions necessary for a mass socialist direction in the working class to arise in the future. It can't simply do to engage in handwaving and say, "Oh, we'll work that out when the time comes." If there is no discussion among ordinary people about how they envision socialism, how can they develop a socialist program? What will happen, in that case, is that a few people "in the know", a vanguardist group, will waltz in and manipulate to get their favored solution accepted. Since you're a Leninist I don't expect you to appreciate this problem. But the end result of Leninism is a bureaucratic class dominated regime.

because of the doleful legacy of the Marxist-Leninist regimes, it's necessary to be clearer about exactly what we have in mind. Leninists like you tend to think that handwaving about "workers control" is enough. it is woefully inadequate. it's necessary to provide enough info to show a viable and workable socialism worth fighting for, that actually empowers the working class, instead of subordinating workers to a new boss class.

You talk about "workers control" but that slogan has little content. It was used by Lenin to refer to merely "checking and surveillance" of management. Not elimmination of the management hierarchy, which he was opposed to the dismantling of. "Workers control" has been used by social democrat types to mean things like job enrichment schemes or even just a strong union.


Delegates are kept accountable through reports, recall, constant consultation, political education: the whole gamut of revolutionary democracy. You have an incredibly static, bureaucratic view of revolutionary government.

you're babbling (or confusing me with DNZ). what is it about my view that is "static" or "bureaucratic"? if you have arguments, let's hear them. otherwise you're just tossing around disparaging remarks with no justification.

me:
but don't talk to me about "soviets".


you:
Why not? Too democratic, left-wing and revolutionary for you?


you're being a prick. my objection is just the opposite. If you were to read "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution" by Pete Rachleff, you'd find that the main soviets in the Russian revolution in St Petersburg and Moscow were set up on the initiative of politicians of the Menshevik Party. They formed the Exec Comm in advance and then sent out a call for election of delgates. Power was centralized in the Exec Comm and the delegate plenaries were treated as mere rubber stamps.

Is that your idea of "workers democracy"? If so, it shows you're a vanguardist who is preoccupied with top down party control.

Not all soviets were run that way. In "Kronstadt 1917-21" Israel Getzler gives a very concrete, well researched picture of the Kronstadt soviet. It was run in a highly democratic way, with delegates not only elected by the base assemblies in the workplaces and ships, but those assemblies met weekly, kept a constant vigilance about their delegates, and the delegates themselves were not a rubber stampe but debated and decided the issues directly themselves. the Exec Comm was just there to ensure decisions were carried out. But the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were never the majority in Kronstadt in 1917. the dominant political tendency was an alliance of libertarian socialist groups (syndicalists and maximalists).

But even if this kind of soviet is highly democratic and supportable...by me anyway...it was not typical of most soviets controlled by the Marxist parties, and it leaves out non-workers having a say. (Women would have been under-represented in that era.) This is why there also needs to be neighborhood assemblies as well.

Marx said in "The Civil War in France" that the Commune had illustrated the future of a workers government. in that case, however, the delegates were elected from the "sections" -- the neighborhood assemblies, which played an important role in 1871 as they had in the revolution of 1789-94. so why can't neighborhood assemblies be part of the revolutionary working class governance system?


Soviets are the generic term for rank-and-file organizations, based primarily in the workplaces, which are the basis for working class control of the government.

maybe in your sectarian universe, not in mine.

me:
other situations of a workers revolution or near revolution saw different kinds of organizations of workers power develop. such as the assemblies and factory councils in Italy in 1919-20 and in Spain 1936-37. in the Spanish revolution there were also regional worker delegate congresses (in one region). there weren't Russian style soviets in either situation.

you:



Who gives a fuck? In France in '68, the nascent proletarian organizations were called Comites de Base.

The point is working class control of the economy from below. Anything else is bullshit.


"bullshit" is a good tag for what you say here.

Despite your professed interest in "workers control" you appear to not "give a fuck" over the forms it has taken.

The reason that I referred to the other forms of worker organization formed in a situation where they were striving for actual power is because it shows that the Russian soviets have not in fact been a universally followed model. in fact they were peculiarly Russian.

the revolutionary program of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism in 1936 wasn't for Russian-style soviets but regional and national worker congresses of delegates elected from worker assemblies, plus neighborhood and village assemblies of residents (free municipalities), plus economic and defense coordinating councils (committees) made up of delegates from the assemblies

it's necessary to have both participatory democratic institutions of people as workers and as residents and consumers. this is necessary in order to have participatory planning where people as consumers negotiate with people as workers. trying to force all decisions into one big soviet meeting can't be the basis of a rational and effective self-managed socialist economy.

[RED DAVE]

Dave, i think you're completely clueless about the conditions necessary for a mass socialist direction in the working class to arise in the future. It can't simply do to engage in handwaving and say, "Oh, we'll work that out when the time comes." If there is no discussion among ordinary people about how they envision socialism, how can they develop a socialist program? What will happen, in that case, is that a few people "in the know", a vanguardist group, will waltz in and manipulate to get their favored solution accepted. Since you're a Leninist I don't expect you to appreciate this problem. But the end result of Leninism is a bureaucratic class dominated regime.If you think that wading my way through the turgid neologisms of DNZ are "discussion among ordinary people about how they envision socialism," you and I, at the moment, are in different universes at the time.


because of the doleful legacy of the Marxist-Leninist regimes, it's necessary to be clearer about exactly what we have in mind.Abstractly, I agree. However, I would prefer to discuss this with someone who has some experience with the working class and who doesn't have a fondness for dictators.


Leninists like you tend to think that handwaving about "workers control" is enough. it is woefully inadequate.I am not engaging in handwaving; however, I am not going to waste my time with utopian, bureaucratic fantasies.


it's necessary to provide enough info to show a viable and workable socialism worth fighting for, that actually empowers the working class, instead of subordinating workers to a new boss class.I agree, but it's also necessary not to bullshit or fantasize.


You talk about "workers control" but that slogan has little content.What part of "workers control" don't you understand?


It was used by Lenin to refer to merely "checking and surveillance" of management. Not elimmination of the management hierarchy, which he was opposed to the dismantling of. "Workers control" has been used by social democrat types to mean things like job enrichment schemes or even just a strong union.All true and exactly the kind of crap DNZ is drawn to. Do you really think that's what I'm interested in?


[Y]ou're babbling (or confusing me with DNZ). what is it about my view that is "static" or "bureaucratic"? if you have arguments, let's hear them. otherwise you're just tossing around disparaging remarks with no justification.You're right there. I was actually confusing you with DNZ.


[Y]ou're being a prick. my objection is just the opposite. If you were to read "Soviets and Factory Committees in the Russian Revolution" by Pete Rachleff, you'd find that the main soviets in the Russian revolution in St Petersburg and Moscow were set up on the initiative of politicians of the Menshevik Party. They formed the Exec Comm in advance and then sent out a call for election of delgates. Power was centralized in the Exec Comm and the delegate plenaries were treated as mere rubber stamps.Again, I was thinking about DNZ.


Is that your idea of "workers democracy"? If so, it shows you're a vanguardist who is preoccupied with top down party control.Stop setting up a strawman. I think you know my approach better.


Not all soviets were run that way. In "Kronstadt 1917-21" Israel Getzler gives a very concrete, well researched picture of the Kronstadt soviet. It was run in a highly democratic way, with delegates not only elected by the base assemblies in the workplaces and ships, but those assemblies met weekly, kept a constant vigilance about their delegates, and the delegates themselves were not a rubber stampe but debated and decided the issues directly themselves. the Exec Comm was just there to ensure decisions were carried out. But the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were never the majority in Kronstadt in 1917. the dominant political tendency was an alliance of libertarian socialist groups (syndicalists and maximalists).Cool.


But even if this kind of soviet is highly democratic and supportable...by me anyway...it was not typical of most soviets controlled by the Marxist parties, and it leaves out non-workers having a say. (Women would have been under-represented in that era.) This is why there also needs to be neighborhood assemblies as well.I am, based on my own political experience, very dubious about neighborhood committees. Neighborhood committees can only be viable in the presence fo workers control of the workplaces.

The bug up my ass about community or nighborhood organization is the fact that many tendencies, whose involvement in the working class is dubious at best, use that thing kind of work to avoid engagement with the working class.


Marx said in "The Civil War in France" that the Commune had illustrated the future of a workers government. in that case, however, the delegates were elected from the "sections" -- the neighborhood assemblies, which played an important role in 1871 as they had in the revolution of 1789-94. so why can't neighborhood assemblies be part of the revolutionary working class governance system?Remember that at the time of the Commune, large-scale industry was just beginning. I reiterate that I have no problem with community or neighborhood representation, per se, but many tendencies use it as a substitute for workplace organizing.


Despite your professed interest in "workers control" you appear to not "give a fuck" over the forms it has taken.I have no problem with any form tghat workes control takes. What I have trouble with is bureaucratic fantasies by people who have no real commitment to the working class.


The reason that I referred to the other forms of worker organization formed in a situation where they were striving for actual power is because it shows that the Russian soviets have not in fact been a universally followed model. in fact they were peculiarly Russian.

the revolutionary program of Spanish anarcho-syndicalism in 1936 wasn't for Russian-style soviets but regional and national worker congresses of delegates elected from worker assemblies, plus neighborhood and village assemblies of residents (free municipalities), plus economic and defense coordinating councils (committees) made up of delegates from the assembliesNo problem here.


it's necessary to have both participatory democratic institutions of people as workers and as residents and consumers. this is necessary in order to have participatory planning where people as consumers negotiate with people as workers. trying to force all decisions into one big soviet meeting can't be the basis of a rational and effective self-managed socialist economy.Again, I think that all this will be worked out in practice, and speculation, in the absence of practice, by people with a taste for dictatorship, is a lot of hot air.

RED DAVE

[Dimentio]

Syndicat has a point.

If you neglect to discuss the forms and shapes of the way to organise even a local revolutionary committee, the risk is that the dominant faction will simply step in and establish control.

[RED DAVE]

Syndicat has a point.

If you neglect to discuss the forms and shapes of the way to organise even a local revolutionary committee, the risk is that the dominant faction will simply step in and establish control.All true, but no form or shape can subtsitute for revolutionary democracy in the fullest sense of the word or for revolutionary politics.

The main thrust of my antipathy is actually aimed at DNZ who seems to be an inveterate lover of dictatorships (and not of the proletariat).

RED DAVE

[syndicat]

i generally share Dave's opinion of DNZ, so, once it's clear Dave seems to have been getting me confused with DNZ, not really much of a problem here. the main difference seems to be the issue that Dimentio highlighted.

[Die Neue Zeit]

DNZ has no concept of this as demonstrated by this and other posts of his elsewhere.


However, I would prefer to discuss this with someone who has some experience with the working class and who doesn't have a fondness for dictators.

[...]

Again, I think that all this will be worked out in practice, and speculation, in the absence of practice, by people with a taste for dictatorship, is a lot of hot air.

This thread isn't about an objective analysis of or substantiated normative conclusion on peasant patrimonialism. :glare: