Compromising between working delegates and full-time representation?

[Die Neue Zeit]

The main pro of working delegates is that there's less professional careerism sitting in the legislature. The first con is that, typically, the legislature doesn't meet in continuous session so has to hold the real government accountable, despite the rhetoric of the former combining legislative and executive-administrative power. The second con is the very concept of moonlighting legitimized by this model, in bourgeois terms having additional sources of income through businesses or unproductive public speeches.

The pros and cons of full-time representation are the exact opposite of the pros and cons above.

That being said, surely there must be a way to minimize professional careerism and to meet in continuous session, even if it means legitimizing moonlighting. What about frequently rotating teams of legislators, rotating monthly or even weekly?

[thefinalmarch]

oh god the bureaucracy of it all

Do you actually suppose any mass of revolutionary workers will ever even so much as acknowledge the existence of your proposals? I'd wager pretty much all the proposals we make today will never be listened to. If the working class puts forward similar ideas it will because they came to the conclusions independently and through struggle.

[Le Socialiste]

The main pro of working delegates is that there's less professional careerism sitting in the legislature. The first con is that, typically, the legislature doesn't meet in continuous session so has to hold the real government accountable, despite the rhetoric of the former combining legislative and executive-administrative power. The second con is the very concept of moonlighting legitimized by this model, in bourgeois terms having additional sources of income through businesses or unproductive public speeches.

The pros and cons of full-time representation are the exact opposite of the pros and cons above.

That being said, surely there must be a way to minimize professional careerism and to meet in continuous session, even if it means legitimizing moonlighting. What about frequently rotating teams of legislators, rotating monthly or even weekly?

Yeah, don't participate in it. There is little legitimate justification for the participation of the left in electioneering efforts in the hopes of winning seats in a bourgeois institution based on the inclusion and dominance of authoritarian and capitalistic interests. You do not grow class consciousness by engaging the very system that benefits from the division and disillusionment of the working-classes (especially when it's on the system's own terms). Such tactics reek of opportunism, and inevitably result in reformist practices. The only use a party based on the use and practice of revolutionary theory has is to raise class consciousness and arouse the workers to their struggle - all the while following a path that doesn't include the implementation of a bureaucratic party leadership and participation in bourgeois politics/elections.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The subject of this thread deals with council and delegation fetishes during the DOTP, though. :confused:

Very technically speaking, workers who derive income from going back to their workplaces while still having a council mandate are moonlighting.

[ckaihatsu]

It's seemed to me for awhile now that the whole *notion* of a funneled (ratioed) system of political representation is entirely *anachronistic* on simple technical grounds.

Just looking at RevLeft itself gives one pause and stirs the imagination for how the discussion board format could be used in real-world worker-driven situations to determine actual policy, as for the workplace, public utilities, etc.





Fuck all this -- in a former time of horse-drawn carriage rides to connect cities and workers' organizations, *okay*. But in our present-day period of phone-call number keypads, machine scanning of answer reply sheets, automated email response tallying, web forms, message boards, cell phone texting, etc., there's *zero* excuse to rely on *any* kind of bureaucratic "representatives" to serve as go-betweens between active policy and the will of the rank-and-file workers.


Consciousness, A Material Definition

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