this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024
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Councils are made up of interest groups of the population. There are communal councils, work councils of coops, housing councils, garden councils, consumer councils, etc.
Attendance is not mandatory, put highly encouragen through the social structure surrounding these councils. My worker's council cohorts are my friends, my goworkers, etc.
Big decisions are decided on via federation. E.g. every communal council sends of delegates to regional council, which sends delegates to a national council, and so on.
The difference to parliamentary representation is the type of delegation: Representatives have what you call a "free mandate": they only are subject to their own conscience (and the law, of course). If I vote for a representative for their strong stance against puppy butchering, they're free to butcher as many puppies as they like, once they are elected.
Compare that with an imperative mandate (which social anarchists propose): Your position as a delegate depends on you carrying out the will of the body that elected you. If you defy that imperative, you lose your position as a delegate.
IMO that free mandate is a good thing. Sometimes people need to adapt to changing circumstances. Like for example, if a government was reducing healthcare funding and then a pandemic broke out, I'd want them to make a snap decision. And most people don't want to have to participate in all aspects of governing. We elect people to represent us.
Again, everything you're describing is workable within representative democracy and that's significantly less of a hassle for the average person. You claim the state is alienating but then advocate for everyone to feel social pressure to participate in these councils? That sounds miserable.
You're just reinventing government but in a form where it's less efficient, more annoying, and can't get things done. The current system is so much better than what you're describing I can't fathom how someone could see it any other way. Especially as things scale up. Again, imagine if New York was operated in the way you're describing. You think millions of people are going to just harmoniously self-govern? No. That's why we elect municipal and higher levels of government to make decisions for us. And yeah they have a free mandate but they also have another election coming up, so if people don't like what they do they can elect someone else next time.
Why do you think that those changing circumstances can't be handled in a federated manner?
I'm using the proper definition of alienation.
Free mandates make the system succeptible to lobbyism/corruption. The current system is so great that we're currently in the process of eliminating our foundation of life on the planet.
I don't think that people will be annoyed by a council system. If they are, they can abstain. But IMHO, the reason people are so fed up with politics is their lack of agency. People are in general very interested inspolitics as long as it concerns them and they have agency. Councils should alleviate both of those issues.
Why not? Remember that the sa?e thing was basically said of the peasantry in feudal times: that people are incapable of being in control of politics. There's no reason to suggest that the current system is the best it can get.
4 years or longer is one hell of a lot of time to screw things up. If you're only participating in democracy once every four years, that's not much of a democracy. And don't gst me started on the lack of democracy in economics.
I really hope you understand why that isn't at all the same thing. In one case it was people advocating for authority derived from the people rather than from birthright. Here you are just advocating for power derived from more people and with less structure. But both systems still derive their power from the people. I'm not talking about flawed democracies like The US. But the idealized concept of a representative democracy. It works just fine.
People won't harmoniously self govern because human nature creeps in. Tribalism happens. Nazis happen. COVID deniers happen. Lynch mobs happen. Mob rule is rule by the basest human instincts, and that isn't pretty. Humans are not fundamentally righteous, especially not when operating in groups. Not everyone agrees on what the social contract should be, and that's exactly why it's helpful to have rules that govern how people need to conduct themselves in a society. Obviously not everyone agrees with those rules all the time, but the fundamental idea of having rules at all is still valuable.
Most people don't want to have to take such an active role in public policy, and are perfectly happy to delegate to someone else. We all have issues with how our representatives actually do their jobs, but those problems are fixable within the current systems. And since the system you're describing only works if everyone is onboard, it's never going to happen. Most people don't want anarchy, they want structure.
Again, what you're describing sounds basically like jury duty; having to uproot my actual daily life in order to go be part of a meeting with literally a million people (the population of my city) over basic public services. People get bogged down in details all the time. I don't want to listen to a million people bikeshedding.
So much of what you're describing is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And for a system which, to be frank, sounds monumentally inefficient, impractical, unpleasant, and alienating, especially at larger scales.
The current system of liberal democracy is still mainly driven by economic interests, i.e. the interests of capitalists. This is not an issue that can be elected away, no matter how great your electoral system is, since the influence of the industry on the politicians is way too high and they are way too protected from repercussions for corrupt behavior. This isn't only the case in the US, but also in all of Europe and basically in every other liberal so-called democracy.
I'm not advocating for a system with less structure, far from it. The system I'm proposing is more decentralized, yes. But hierarchical power structures always need to filter information from complex systems, reducing complexity to be legible to the people in power. This creates inefficiencies and leads to people being treated unfairly. A decentralized approach to governance is way more able to manage the complexities of complex social structures.
In what way is the power derived from the people? Did the people give active consent to the system? When did that happen? Or are the people rather coerced in participating in a system they have nothing but the most shallow say in? Hell, you probably spend a huge chunk of your wake hours working at a company where you have exactly nil democratic say in. How is a society, where the economy isn't managed democratically even considered a democracy?
I am so tired of that old platitude about "human nature". Notice how Nazis have almost always used liberal democracy to seize power? You can still see it today with fascist leaders in the US, Italy, Russia, Hungary, and probably soon enough: at least two other European countries (my bet is on Austria and France). There has been no Nazi seizure of power in a council-based democracy.
You should either supply some scientific evidence about "human instincts", or you should update your outdated view of humanity. Thomas Hobbes was wrong. The leviathan isn't real. Humanity has the potential to be caring and nurturing or to be greedy and violent. The environment and circumstances that surround a human has more impact on their behavior than some fairy tale of "human nature". Social contract theory is bogus. It's not a contract if I never consented and I don't have the realistic option to not consent. It's nothing but a philosophical parlor trick to justify the violent status quo.
I (and no other anarchist) ever claimed that anarchism means "no rules". It means no institutionalized social hierarchies. You can still have rules that are agreed upon by a group where no one is above the other. This is how the majority of human interactions work. It's not illegal to adhere to the rules of a board game on board game night. I don't give you a present on your birthday because my boss told me to do so. There are myriads of examples where humans spontaneously cooperate and follow mutually agreed upon rules without the need of an authority enforcing those rules.
And even if humanity is greedy "by nature": Shouldn't we avoid building societal institutions where a minority of people have power to reduce the rights of the majority? Or where a minority of people has the power to keep me from having the things I need to survive? Anarchism is a strategy to mitigate people's greed for money and power, by giving their peers the power of keeping them in check. Our current system took a few people and functionally turned them into gods: Compare the power a McDonald's toilet scrubber has and compare it to the power Elon Musk has. The power differential is greater than that of pharaos and slaves in ancient egyptian times.
I disagree. People in general are very interested in politics if two conditions are present: It affects them and they experience agency. If it doesn't affect them, they won't care and a lack of agency is frustrating. I promise you: pick the most politically apathetic person you know and ask them about a policy that affects them and they'll show you how much they care about it and probably also their frustration about their lack of agency.
I disagree
How did you come to that conclusion? I disagree
Anarchy is structure. It's actually an antifragile structure. This video explains what I mean in an understandable way
Not what I'm advocating for. First: I said federation several times. So there will be councils for maintenance, school councils, work councils, parks and recreational councils, etc. If you don't feel like attending one of the councils: then don't. Also, delegation is still a thing with councils. If the trash is picked up on time, because the people delegated for maintenance do a good job, you won't need to be bothered by it (unless you have a system in your community where you're supposed to do your part for trash pickup).
I consider the "million people" argument as a strawman from now on, ok?
Defending the status quo is both the easiest and boringest task in the world.