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Title: Democracy is Bankrupt Author: CrimethInc. Date: May 1, 2012 Language: en Topics: democracy Source: https://crimethinc.com/2012/05/01/democracy-is-bankrupt-vote-here-stickers
What happened to all the optimism of the last election season, all that
business about hope and change? For decades, we’ve pinned our hopes on
one candidate after another, but now it seems like people are finally
giving up on the whole charade. The only ones who still take it
seriously are the protesters playing democracy in the street.
Why has democracy failed us? Is it the Electoral College, voting
machines, gerrymandering—the sort of thing that could be remedied by
electoral reform? That wouldn’t explain why we’re still disappointed
with the results even when our favorite candidate gets in.
Is it corporate influence perverting politicians’ agendas and
controlling the media? Sure—but when power is distributed according to
who rakes in the most profit, that can’t help but affect politics. As
long as private property exists, the rich will always have more leverage
over our society, whether or not they can literally buy votes.
Is it just a matter of scale? Would the same procedures work if we only
practiced them at town hall meetings and general assemblies? Anybody who
has lived in a small town knows that while small-scale politics may be
more personal, that doesn’t keep them from being alienating. Likewise,
letting an arbitrarily constituted general assembly determine what you
can and can’t do feels even more ridiculous than getting bullied by cops
and tax collectors.
Maybe the problem has to do with democracy itself. Honestly, when has it
fully delivered on its promises? In ancient Athens, when women and
slaves were prohibited from participating? In the days of the Founding
Fathers, some of whom also owned slaves? Today, when everyone supposedly
has a say but self-determination feels further out of our hands than
ever?
We keep blaming specific politicians and political parties, as if it
were just a matter of personal failings. But any system that doesn’t
work unless the people using it are perfect is a bad system. What if
some politicians really do mean well, but there’s nothing they can do?
All the good intentions in the world won’t help if the structure is
broken.
So let’s try another question:
change our lives?
The answer is obvious: because our rulers have more control over our
lives than we do. But changing rulers isn’t going to fix that. Is
getting to choose the lesser of two evils really the best of all
possible worlds?
Imagine if we could have complete control over our own lives. That’s
something that will never appear on a ballot. What kind of decisions can
be made by voting—and what kind of structures does it take to impose
them?
Think about what goes on in the Pentagon and the Kremlin and the offices
of every town hall. Those day-to-day activities are the same under
Democrats as under Republicans; they’re not much different today than
they were a hundred years ago. Whoever happens to be operating it, the
machinery of the state imposes its own logic: administration, coercion,
control. Politicians promise us the world, but their job is to keep it
out of our hands—to govern it.
Our ancestors fought hard to overthrow the kings who ruled them. When
they finally succeeded, they kept the structures the kings had
established—the same ministries and courts and armies—imagining that
these could be run for the common good. But whoever is on the other side
of that apparatus—be it a king, a president, or an electorate—those on
the receiving end of governing experience the same thing. The laws,
administrators, and police of a democracy are just as impersonal and
coercive as the laws, administrators, and police of a dictatorship. The
problem is the institution of government itself, which keeps the
governed at a distance from their own power.
As Oscar Wilde put it, democracy is “the bludgeoning of the people by
the people for the people.” The essence of democracy is not just
collective participation in decision-making, but also the apparatus to
force decisions on everyone whether they voted for them or not. If we
make our ideal a miniature version of this—“direct democracy”—it will
never deliver the freedom we desire. We have to dream bigger, looking
back to how our ancestors did things before they were ruled by kings,
and around at all the parts of our lives that are still free from
top-down political control.
Let’s do away with representation; the gulf is always too wide between
what we would do ourselves and what is done in our name. Let’s do away
with the idea that there can only be one legitimate decision-making
body, one bottleneck through which all decisions must pass. Let’s build
new structures that promote autonomy and free association, making
decisions by consensus where we choose to come together and retaining
our independence otherwise. Freedom means nothing less.
Decentralizing power means that all of us can take our lives in our own
hands and realize our potential as we see fit. When our social
structures are voluntary, only the ones that are truly in everyone’s
best interest will persist. This might not be easy at first, but it
beats pandering to the fear-mongering of those who benefit from control
and hierarchy.
All this sounds great in theory, but doesn’t it leave us on the
sidelines? Maybe democracy is rotten to its core, but it’s the only game
in town. How can we have any influence in our society if we refuse to
participate?
Again, let’s ask this question the other way around. What incentive do
politicians have to grant us what we want if we only ask nicely?
Corporations will always have more money with which to buy them;
back-room deals will always be more appealing. The only way we can get
leverage on the ones who hold power is by threatening to take that power
away from them.
This has to mean more than shuffling back and forth between different
parties. When we build our own grassroots momentum, developing the
capability to make the changes we need directly, politicians are forced
to hurry to keep up with us, scrambling to grant our demands before they
lose legitimacy altogether. If we want to have leverage on the
government, the most effective way for those of us who aren’t
millionaires or party bureaucrats to do that is to bypass the
established channels and contest their authority. So the same principles
that could take us beyond democracy—direct action, mutual aid, liberty
and autonomy—are also the only ones that can help us wield any real
power while it persists.
Beggars can’t be choosers. When we only petition, we give up the power
to determine what the choices are in the first place. Let’s stop
reacting to our rulers and set our own agenda.