Date: Sat, 28 Sep 1996 07:29:07 GMT
Subject: Re: Re: the state redux & socialism


Justin: 
 
I tend to agree with you on two of the major points at issue in the
discussion under this rubric: that the eventual transition to a communist
society will necessarily involve markets and democracy--both functioning in
the interest of the working population and in a way far more free,
effective, and universal than monopoly capitalism can dream of allowing.  
However (leaving economics aside for the nonce), 
I think your comments on law, parliaments, suffrage, political parties,
police (implying prisons), courts, etc.--in short, your treatment of the
transition epoch as maintaining a form of "liberal democracy"--is a
singularly unimaginative approach to the political institutions suitable
for a truly egalitarian and post-revolutionary society. 
 
The problem with these sorts of institutions is their alienating and
alienated nature: a part of society is set up as functionally separate and
privileged, at best carrying over bureaucratic and authoritarian habits
>from the previous order and at worst threatening to become centers for
reversion to "the old crap" as long as near-absolute abundance has not yet
been achieved.   Of course, this is easy to say, but I would have no right
to say it without at least suggesting an alternative. 
 
The most obvious alternative to liberal democracy is the old idea of direct
democracy--everyone is to participate with equal voice in the deliberative
process leading to decisions and in the decisive vote itself.  But this is
also, and just as obviously, unworkable in a society of three hundred
million adult (over the age of 13) citizens (a socialist federated north
america), let alone one of four billion citizens (a socialist world
federation).  And this is so irregardless of technology--even if everyone
could vote by computer on each issue (as indeed can be expected to be the
case), no meaningful deliberation involving so many people could take place
in a finite time of less than many millenia!   
 
So I would envisage, not classical direct democracy, but an entirely new
form of *directly representative democracy*.  This would be based on what,
in Plato's time, was recognized as the central institution of democracy:
selection of public officials by lot and for short periods of time.  Let me
imagine a way in this would be concretized. 
 
I assume a complex society, with a basic level of decent living assured for
all its members but still with a great (maybe even greater than now)
variety of social groups and strata, each with its own spectrum of
histories, attitudes, interests, even ideologies.  Decisions have to be
made for the whole society on questions that vitally involve the whole
society (for example, everything involving human colonization of outer
space, or everything involving treatment of the territorial unit as a
single ecological system, plus taxes and some sorts of more conventional
rule-making and priority-setting decisions).   
 
Under liberal democracy all such decisions would be made by a freely
elected parliament of professional (or at best semi-professional)
politicians elected on party lists and subject to recall by special
election.  What I envisage is very different.  Before a question is judged
ripe for social decision, there should be lengthy public discussion (in
which, as a matter of necessity, only a tiny self-selected portion of the
citizenry would participate, but of which everyone would be aware).  At
some point (perhaps on petition of a certain number of citizens) a
referendum would be held on whether to enter the next stage of the
decision-making process, selection of a deliberative body to formulate the
decision.  If a majority voted in favor,  a statistically representative
body (somewhere around one thousand people) would be chosen totally at
random 
to take part in a special-purpose council (a really supreme soviet!) whose
entire purpose would be to study, debate, deliberate, and ultimately
propose a decision by a majority representing some degree of consensus,
maybe three fifths.  The council would meet in a university-like setting
set aside for its work.  Its members would be relieved of all social or
familial obligations except for deliberation, and they would be permitted
no private business activity.   For a year they would be a body of
*disinterested* full-time legislators,  comparable in conscientiousness to
what a jury is supposed to be under our present system.  Their
deliberations would be totally open, broadcast worldwide.  At the end of
the year they would return to private life, and their proposal would be put
to referendum.  Again, a three-fifths majority would be required for
adoption.  If the proposal failed, the entire process could be repeated
until a consensus was reached.  
 
Other of the problems you raised could also receive radical solutions. 
Randomly chosen arbitration panels could replace courts and lawyers. 
Compulsion, and therefor an apparatus of criminal law, would probably still
be required for dangerous cases of anti-social behavior but prisons would
become places devoted to rehabilitation, and to ensure that this does not
become a mockery as it is under capitalism,  *everyone* professionally 
employed in the criminal justice system--judges, cops, prosecutors, defense
lawyers, guards, wardens--would be required to be confined for one week of
every year as an anonymous, ordinary, prisoner. 
 
Much more could be said, but [un]fortunately we have a *very* long time to
pursue this sort of discussion before any of it becomes politically
relevant.   
 
I look forward to seeing all comments. 
 
In solidarity, 
                           Shane Mage 
  
 
 
 


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