Direct (prolaterate) democracy impractical?

[Comrade Samuel]

Recenly while debating with my republican friend he started a rant on how communism is where the government runs and owns everything and there is no democracy or free will, obviously I said that is the exact opposite communism is where there is no government and everything is run by the people through direct (prolaterate) democracy. He said that it a modern world where everybody could be connected with things such as the internet it would be impossible for people to remain secluded within their own little communities and that direct democracy is only practicle for small groups so representative (bourgeois) democracy would be needed to put in place a judicial system to deal with crimes committed on a world wide scale because a small concil formed by the people sure couldent thus a central government with "representative democracy" would be nessicary for anything resembling communism to ever work even if hypothicly everything else he thought is wrong with it was magically fixed. To nut shell it: "Not only is representative democracy needed to keep people under control no matter where they are but it does it in a non-convaluted simple way."

All I could really say is "who's for a big government now you or me?" but also that I dident question the validity of his point despite the slight self contradiction.

So I ask you revleft: people in 2012 are constantly connected through things such as the Internet, when glorious communism is finally achieved what could stop people from conspireing against it without the use of a big government that doesent represent the people?

[Lolumad273]

Perhaps it is a bit idealistic, but I don't believe it would be in anyone's interest to conspire against it. Except, of course, the former bourgeois; they would be too few in number to impact anything. They'd be like us, talking on an internet forum...

[Anarcho-Brocialist]

Why do people assert Communism comes with a big government? We don't need a government, the proletariat can govern themselves better than any government could hope to. The state, no matter the adjective placed before it, holds her interests before those of the people.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I don't see where the contradiction is. The proletariat should control their surplus at their workplace direct democratically, or more specifically workers becoming their own board of directors that meet 2 to three times a year, name the enterprises goals, and select the communist subsumed subservient (non-surplus producing) class positions. Then the workers should every 2 to three times a year rotatingly select one of their colleagues to go to the national workers council to plan production and represent them. I don't see the contradiction between direct democracy and representative democracy.

[Q]

The question of scale is indeed a real issue which cannot be satisfactory resolved with a council system.

Say you have a neighbourhood council. On this level everyone is still welcome to participate, to decide about neighbourhood issues. Then you get to the city level and, logically, not everyone in a city can participate on this level. Thus you need delegations. A representative or representatives for a neighbourhood is/are chosen by that neighbourhood and they can be recalled if they do not act in the interests of that neighbourhood.

All is fine and well up to here.

Now comes the issue: How do you represent on a bigger scale? The traditional solution is to let a city council elect representatives fora regional or provincional council. Let a regional council elect representatives for a national or state council. Let a national council elect representatives for a continental or global council.

The problem here is: Say you disagree with your representative or your representative is incompetent or corrupt. How do you get rid of him if he is part of the national council? You effectively can't as you have to cross several hurdles on a city and regional level. The problem only gets worse if you go to a bigger scale.

But say it does work as intended and we really have proper representation of all the localities. Then you enter a new problem: You get a situation where interests for the larger good are sacrificed for that of the locality. Think environmental issues or energy issues (such as an energy reservoir).

I think the most elegant solution to genuine democracy is Athenian democracy, or demarchy. The concept of demarchy seems difficult, but is actually quite simple and revolves around a few key concepts:
1. All positions are not elected but selected by lottery, much like juries are formed in the US judiciary system.
2. All positions are not filled by a single person (like ministers, etc) but by a group of people that statistically represent the collective.
3. All positions have a high turnover rate, time between selections shouldn't be longer than a year.

This has several implications:
1. Since the positions that are filled are statistically representative of the collective, we can genuinely state that "the people are in power" (dēmos and kratos, the two Greek words making up "democracy").
2. Since everyone "governs and is governed in turns", this requires an rather high level of general education among the whole party membership and, since the party-movement seeks to replace society by a new one, indeed the whole working class. Educational societies are not just a nice feature of alternative culture, but an essential component.
3. It also implies a party-movement of genuine mass proportions. Indeed, such a model can only work on a massive scale. It is not said that the left, if it was to unite, could already implement demarchy in all aspects. Indeed, as you put it, in the beginning we would probably need a brand of "enlightened moderators".
4. In extension to the last two points: Demarchy is the concrete link between the party-movement and the society of the future. The party-movement represents the politically conscious part of our class that wants to take power and if it doesn't consist of the majority of the working class outright, the majority has to be sympathetic to this project.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Why do people assert Communism comes with a big government? We don't need a government, the proletariat can govern themselves better than any government could hope to. The state, no matter the adjective placed before it, holds her interests before those of the people.

But the goal for the transition period to a stateless, money less and classless society, communism, should be to have a workers state in which "everyone becomes a 'bureaucrat' and therefore no one can become a bureaucrat" (Lenin). Anyway this DoP transition to a communist society should be as speedily as possible, because without world revolution communism is an impossibility.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

The question of scale is indeed a real issue which cannot be satisfactory resolved with a council system.

Say you have a neighbourhood council. On this level everyone is still welcome to participate, to decide about neighbourhood issues. Then you get to the city level and, logically, not everyone in a city can participate on this level. Thus you need delegations. A representative or representatives for a neighbourhood is/are chosen by that neighbourhood and they can be recalled if they do not act in the interests of that neighbourhood.

All is fine and well up to here.

Now comes the issue: How do you represent on a bigger scale? The traditional solution is to let a city council elect representatives fora regional or provincional council. Let a regional council elect representatives for a national or state council. Let a national council elect representatives for a continental or global council.

The problem here is: Say you disagree with your representative or your representative is incompetent or corrupt. How do you get rid of him if he is part of the national council? You effectively can't as you have to cross several hurdles on a city and regional level. The problem only gets worse if you go to a bigger scale.

But say it does work as intended and we really have proper representation of all the localities. Then you enter a new problem: You get a situation where interests for the larger good are sacrificed for that of the locality. Think environmental issues or energy issues (such as an energy reservoir).

I think the most elegant solution to genuine democracy is Athenian democracy, or demarchy. The concept of demarchy seems difficult, but is actually quite simple and revolves around a few key concepts:
1. All positions are not elected but selected by lottery, much like juries are formed in the US judiciary system.
2. All positions are not filled by a single person (like ministers, etc) but by a group of people that statistically represent the collective.
3. All positions have a high turnover rate, time between selections shouldn't be longer than a year.

This has several implications:
1. Since the positions that are filled are statistically representative of the collective, we can genuinely state that "the people are in power" (dēmos and kratos, the two Greek words making up "democracy").
2. Since everyone "governs and is governed in turns", this requires an rather high level of general education among the whole party membership and, since the party-movement seeks to replace society by a new one, indeed the whole working class. Educational societies are not just a nice feature of alternative culture, but an essential component.
3. It also implies a party-movement of genuine mass proportions. Indeed, such a model can only work on a massive scale. It is not said that the left, if it was to unite, could already implement demarchy in all aspects. Indeed, as you put it, in the beginning we would probably need a brand of "enlightened moderators".
4. In extension to the last two points: Demarchy is the concrete link between the party-movement and the society of the future. The party-movement represents the politically conscious part of our class that wants to take power and if it doesn't consist of the majority of the working class outright, the majority has to be sympathetic to this project.

I guess this sounds good for the non-economic but political councils. Rotation is truly key to all social positions, most important i think. But for the economic councils there really should only be one national council in which the representatives of each enterprise are present; voted locally and direct democratic by their enterprise's colleagues and rotated at every board meeting every few months. Of course also immediate recall is important along with equal pay to the average worker and frequent social position rotation.

[Revolution starts with U]

And here I was thinking the internet, with its real time instant connectivity, makes direct democracy easier...

[ckaihatsu]

The question of scale is indeed a real issue which cannot be satisfactory resolved with a council system.


Agreed.





Say you have a neighbourhood council. On this level everyone is still welcome to participate, to decide about neighbourhood issues.


From a proletarian perspective the very composition of councils on a *neighborhood* basis is problematic, since a neighborhood does not necessarily represent a unit of production like a factory -- it probably *doesn't*, actually, if it's strictly residential.





Then you get to the city level and, logically, not everyone in a city can participate on this level.


The 'city level', as well, is also an arbitrary geographic construction in relation to actual productivity. I think we should avoid a continuation of using bourgeois constructs in discussing potential revolutionary vehicles.





Thus you need delegations. A representative or representatives for a neighbourhood is/are chosen by that neighbourhood and they can be recalled if they do not act in the interests of that neighbourhood.


This notion of representation is questionable as well -- it's presumptuous to say that political discussions and decision-making at all levels concurrently would be too far-reaching and unwieldy for the regular person / worker to engage in, in additional to their regular day-to-day work and responsibilities.

In fact, my understanding is that this kind of political involvement is the very *definition* of what a revolution is about. We should not be clinging to outmoded political methodologies that only hold back the proletariat from direct participation in matters at all levels.


tinyurl.com/ckaihatsu-concise-communism

[Jimmie Higgins]

Why do people assert Communism comes with a big government? We don't need a government, the proletariat can govern themselves better than any government could hope to. The state, no matter the adjective placed before it, holds her interests before those of the people.What are a state's interests outside the context of society as a whole? How could states have come into being if their interests are completely autonomous from other forces within the society?

But you're right that communism doesn't need a big government, it doesn't need a state because there are no class differences. Capitalism (and other class societies) need a state to organize all of society, the whole population, around a set of interests and social agreements (dictated/forced or negotiated or in a coalition of social forces).

I quote I like to use against right-wing US libertarians comes from Marx talking about the Paris Commune getting rid of the military establishment and "officialdom": “The Paris Commune made that watchword of the bourgeois revolution - cheap government - into a reality.” As Lenin notes, Marx argued that each successive capitalist revolution (as capitalism matured) ended up creating a stronger more centralized state. This happened with the successive French Revolutions and in the changes in the US from the articles of confederation to the constitution and then the much more modern and powerful post-Civil War state.

So this whole argument of communism = "big state" is just layer apon layer of obfuscation and misdirection - not helped at all by the regimes that claimed to be communist.