Die Neue Zeit
24th April 2011, 08:07
Value in electing certain leading (party) positions? [Demarchy discussion] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/value-electing-certain-t144804/index.html?t=144804)
Questions for Demarchists (http://www.revleft.com/vb/questions-demarchists-t152645/index.html)
Practical Issues and Revisiting the Party Question (on party democracy) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/practical-issues-and-t150581/index.html)
Although the position of "party" President has been rehabilitated by Hugo Chavez in the form of presidency over the entire party and not just the executive committee, this position is still elected by a party congress. When the ADAV was founded, Ferdinand Lassalle insisted that the President of the party should be elected by membership-wide referendum and not by the founding congress. I was partially wrong in my "Value in electing" statement below:
In addition to discussing programmatic and other public policy issues, party congresses could decide each time whether to have a charismatic party President in the first place, and then elect the charismatic candidate. The party Presidency would be subject to recall or dissolution only by the congress. To give this "future workers dictator" some strongman's teeth (but not all teeth), the party Presidency might have to have simple-majority veto power, not over the executive organs as a whole but rather over the standing leadership clique in those organs (i.e., "those around him"). Ironically, this could boost the authority of that clique, if it's small enough.
A standing leadership clique comprised of a quintet (five officials) or a sextet (six officials) but not a septet, octet, or novenary like Stalin had in the post-war years - among whom would be the General Secretary and the Co-Chairmen - could work with the party President such that every standing leadership decision is passed by a two-thirds majority amongst the six or seven officials (whether including the party President or over the "strong" presidential veto).
Can modern technology, Handivote, etc. be used to replace the party congress in elect any Presidential exception to the rule of random selection?
The next question deals with stratified sampling:
As much as possible, the party should adopt a mixture of probability and non-probability sampling methods as a replacement for elections to its councils and bureaus. Below are applications of various sampling methods to party organization:
1) Quota sampling could be used for gender or for cooperation between tendencies, platforms, and currents in an editorial organ. That organ might require some number of class-strugglist anarchists or rather pro-party anarcho-syndicalists, some number of participatory socialists, some number of market socialists, and of course some number of revolutionary-centrists. This would go a long way towards ensuring that key political positions are not censored from the party press.
2) Cluster sampling would be inherent in geographically lower party organizations. Nobody from the Middle East would be selected at random to lead a South American organization.
3) Probability-proportional-to-size sampling could be used to measure the relative strength of the tendencies, platforms, and currents in certain organs. This would solve the political problems associated historically with the slate system on the left, which according to one Pat Byrne is supposed to “recommend a list that consciously includes a good balance of talents and personalities in practice […] has allowed leaders to secure their continuous re-election along with a body of like-minded and loyal followers.”
4) [B]Once more, stratified sampling could be used to filter based on specialized knowledge, past or present experience in key occupations (job slots), but it could also be used to filter based on more basic criteria like mere duration of voting membership.
Are there any viable alternatives to worker-class organization re. specialized knowledge, past or present experience, other competencies and qualifications, etc. especially within a random selection framework... other than compiling nomenclatures or lists of key jobs in the party-movement apparatus "to be filled by politically reliable and professionally competent personnel" (Moshe Lewin), accompanying "procedures of selecting personnel for jobs of responsibility," and then - sort of in reverse - filling leading collective bodies of the party-movement on the basis of institutional relationships / holding key jobs elsewhere / job slots (so-and-so a party-movement citizen is a member of that same party-movement's Central Workers Council not because of charisma, general competence determined earlier in the nomenclature process, etc. but because of holding another party-movement position)?
["Lassalleanism" and "Stalinism" are deliberately in quotation marks.]
Questions for Demarchists (http://www.revleft.com/vb/questions-demarchists-t152645/index.html)
Practical Issues and Revisiting the Party Question (on party democracy) (http://www.revleft.com/vb/practical-issues-and-t150581/index.html)
Although the position of "party" President has been rehabilitated by Hugo Chavez in the form of presidency over the entire party and not just the executive committee, this position is still elected by a party congress. When the ADAV was founded, Ferdinand Lassalle insisted that the President of the party should be elected by membership-wide referendum and not by the founding congress. I was partially wrong in my "Value in electing" statement below:
In addition to discussing programmatic and other public policy issues, party congresses could decide each time whether to have a charismatic party President in the first place, and then elect the charismatic candidate. The party Presidency would be subject to recall or dissolution only by the congress. To give this "future workers dictator" some strongman's teeth (but not all teeth), the party Presidency might have to have simple-majority veto power, not over the executive organs as a whole but rather over the standing leadership clique in those organs (i.e., "those around him"). Ironically, this could boost the authority of that clique, if it's small enough.
A standing leadership clique comprised of a quintet (five officials) or a sextet (six officials) but not a septet, octet, or novenary like Stalin had in the post-war years - among whom would be the General Secretary and the Co-Chairmen - could work with the party President such that every standing leadership decision is passed by a two-thirds majority amongst the six or seven officials (whether including the party President or over the "strong" presidential veto).
Can modern technology, Handivote, etc. be used to replace the party congress in elect any Presidential exception to the rule of random selection?
The next question deals with stratified sampling:
As much as possible, the party should adopt a mixture of probability and non-probability sampling methods as a replacement for elections to its councils and bureaus. Below are applications of various sampling methods to party organization:
1) Quota sampling could be used for gender or for cooperation between tendencies, platforms, and currents in an editorial organ. That organ might require some number of class-strugglist anarchists or rather pro-party anarcho-syndicalists, some number of participatory socialists, some number of market socialists, and of course some number of revolutionary-centrists. This would go a long way towards ensuring that key political positions are not censored from the party press.
2) Cluster sampling would be inherent in geographically lower party organizations. Nobody from the Middle East would be selected at random to lead a South American organization.
3) Probability-proportional-to-size sampling could be used to measure the relative strength of the tendencies, platforms, and currents in certain organs. This would solve the political problems associated historically with the slate system on the left, which according to one Pat Byrne is supposed to “recommend a list that consciously includes a good balance of talents and personalities in practice […] has allowed leaders to secure their continuous re-election along with a body of like-minded and loyal followers.”
4) [B]Once more, stratified sampling could be used to filter based on specialized knowledge, past or present experience in key occupations (job slots), but it could also be used to filter based on more basic criteria like mere duration of voting membership.
Are there any viable alternatives to worker-class organization re. specialized knowledge, past or present experience, other competencies and qualifications, etc. especially within a random selection framework... other than compiling nomenclatures or lists of key jobs in the party-movement apparatus "to be filled by politically reliable and professionally competent personnel" (Moshe Lewin), accompanying "procedures of selecting personnel for jobs of responsibility," and then - sort of in reverse - filling leading collective bodies of the party-movement on the basis of institutional relationships / holding key jobs elsewhere / job slots (so-and-so a party-movement citizen is a member of that same party-movement's Central Workers Council not because of charisma, general competence determined earlier in the nomenclature process, etc. but because of holding another party-movement position)?
["Lassalleanism" and "Stalinism" are deliberately in quotation marks.]