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Title: The Party’s Over Author: CrimethInc. Date: March 16, 2016 Language: en Topics: democracy, politics, political parties Source: https://crimethinc.com/2016/03/16/feature-the-partys-over-beyond-politics-beyond-democracy
Nowadays, democracy rules the world. Communism is long dead, elections
are taking place even in Afghanistan and Iraq, and world leaders are
meeting to plan the “global community” we hear so much about. So why
isn’t everybody happy, finally? For that matter—why do so few of the
eligible voters in the United States, the world’s flagship democracy,
even bother to vote?
Could it be that democracy, long the catchword of every revolution and
rebellion, is simply not democratic enough? What could be the problem?
No, they can’t. Being President means occupying a position of
hierarchical power, just like being a billionaire: for every person who
is President, there have to be millions who are not. It’s no coincidence
that billionaires and Presidents tend to rub shoulders; both exist in a
privileged world off limits to the rest of us. Speaking of billionaires,
our economy isn’t exactly democratic—capitalism distributes resources in
absurdly unequal proportions, and you have to start with resources if
you’re ever going to get elected.
Even if it was true that anyone could grow up to be President, that
wouldn’t help the millions who inevitably don’t, who must still live in
the shadow of that power. This imbalance is intrinsic to the structure
of representative democracy, at the local level as much as at the top.
The professional politicians of a town council discuss municipal affairs
and pass ordinances all day without consulting the citizens of the town,
who have to be at work; when one of those ordinances displeases
citizens, they have to use what little leisure time they have to contest
it, and then they’re back at work again the next time the town council
meets. In theory, the citizens could elect a different town council from
the available pool of politicians and would-be politicians, but the
interests of politicians as a class always remain essentially at odds
with their own—besides, voting fraud, gerrymandering, and inane party
loyalty usually prevent them from going that far. Even in the unlikely
scenario that a whole new government was elected consisting of
firebrands intent on undoing the imbalance of power between politicians
and citizens, they would inevitably perpetuate it simply by accepting
roles in the system—for the political apparatus itself is the foundation
of that imbalance. To succeed in their objective, they would have to
dissolve the government and join the rest of the populace in
restructuring society from the roots up.
But even if there were no Presidents or town councils, democracy as we
know it would still be an impediment to freedom. Corruption, privilege,
and hierarchy aside, majority rule is not only inherently oppressive but
also paradoxically divisive and homogenizing at the same time.
If you ever found yourself in a vastly outnumbered minority, and the
majority voted that you had to give up something as necessary to your
life as water and air, would you comply? When it comes down to it, does
anyone really believe it makes sense to accept the authority of a group
simply on the grounds that they outnumber everyone else? We accept
majority rule because we do not believe it will threaten us—and those it
does threaten are already silenced before anyone can hear their
misgivings.
By confining political participation to the isolation of the voting
booth, the democratic system prevents people from learning how to wield
power and work out conflicts collectively.
The average self-professed law-abiding citizen does not consider himself
threatened by majority rule because, consciously or not, he conceives of
himself as having the power and moral authority of the majority: if not
in fact, by virtue of his being politically and socially “moderate,”
then in theory, because he believes everyone would be convinced by his
arguments if only he had the opportunity to present them. Majority-rule
democracy has always rested on the conviction that if all the facts were
known, everyone could be made to see that there is only one right course
of action—without this belief, it amounts to nothing more than the
dictatorship of the herd. But even if “the” facts could be made equally
clear to everyone, assuming such a thing were possible, people still
would have their individual perspectives and motivations and needs. We
need social and political structures that take this into account, in
which we are free from the mob rule of the majority as well as the
ascendancy of the privileged class.
Living under democratic rule teaches people to think in terms of
quantity, to focus more on public opinion than on what their consciences
tell them, to see themselves as powerless unless they are immersed in a
mass. The root of majority-rule democracy is competition: competition to
persuade everyone else to your position whether or not it is in their
best interest, competition to constitute a majority to wield power
before others outmaneuver you to do the same—and the losers (that is to
say, the minorities) be damned. At the same time, majority rule forces
those who wish for power to appeal to the lowest common denominator,
precipitating a race to the bottom that rewards the most bland,
superficial, and demagogic; under democracy, power itself comes to be
associated with conformity rather than individuality. And the more power
is concentrated in the hands of the majority, the less any individual
can do on her own, whether she is inside or outside that majority.
In purporting to give everyone an opportunity to participate,
majority-rule democracy offers a perfect justification for repressing
those who don’t abide by its dictates: if they don’t like the
government, why don’t they go into politics themselves? And if they
don’t win at the game of building up a majority to wield power, didn’t
they get their chance? This is the same blame-the-victim reasoning used
to justify capitalism: if the dishwasher isn’t happy with his salary, he
should work harder so he too can own a restaurant chain. Sure, everyone
gets a chance to compete, however unequal—but what about those of us who
don’t want to compete, who never wanted power to be centralized in the
hands of a government in the first place? What if we don’t care to rule
or be ruled?
That’s what police are for—and courts and judges and prisons.
Consequently, political conflicts can be framed as disagreements between
people within the same economic classes, rather than between the classes
themselves.
Even if you don’t believe their purpose is to grind out nonconformity
wherever it appears, you have to acknowledge that legal institutions are
no substitute for fairness, mutual respect, and good will. The rule of
“just and equal law,” as fetishized by the stockholders and landlords
whose interests it protects, offers no guarantees against injustice; it
simply creates another arena of specialization, in which power and
responsibility are ceded to expensive lawyers and pompous judges. Rather
than serving to protect our communities and work out conflicts, this
arrangement ensures that our communities’ skills for conflict resolution
and self-defense atrophy—and that those whose profession it supposedly
is to discourage crime have a stake in it proliferating, since their
careers depend upon it.
Ironically, we are told that we need these institutions to protect the
rights of minorities—even though the implicit function of the courts is,
at best, to impose the legislation of the majority on the minority. In
actuality, a person is only able to use the courts to defend his rights
when he can bring sufficient force to bear upon them in a currency they
recognize; thanks to capitalism, only a minority can do this, so in a
roundabout way it turns out that, indeed, the courts exist to protect
the rights of at least a certain minority.
Justice cannot be established through the mere drawing up and
enforcement of laws; such laws can only institutionalize what is already
the rule in a society. Common sense and compassion are always preferable
to the enforcement of strict, impersonal regulations. Where the law is
the private province of an elite invested in its own perpetuation, the
sensible and compassionate are bound to end up as defendants; we need a
social system that fosters and rewards those qualities rather than blind
obedience and impassivity.
In contrast to forms of decision-making in which everyone’s needs
matter, the disempowerment of losers and out-groups is central to
democracy. It is well known that in ancient Athens, the “cradle of
democracy,” scarcely an eighth of the population was permitted to vote,
as women, foreigners, slaves, and others were excluded from citizenship.
This is generally regarded as an early kink that time has ironed out,
but one could also conclude that exclusion itself is the most essential
and abiding characteristic of democracy: millions who live in the United
States today are not permitted to vote either, and the distinctions
between citizen and non-citizen have not eroded significantly in 2500
years. Every bourgeois property owner can come up with a thousand
reasons why it isn’t practical to allow everyone who is affected to
share in decision making, just as no boss or bureaucrat would dream of
giving his employees an equal say in their workplace, but that doesn’t
make it any less exclusive. What if democracy arose in Greece not as a
step in Man’s Progress Towards Freedom, but as a way of keeping power
out of certain hands?
CAPITALISM + DEMOCRACY = ONE DOLLAR, ONE VOTE.
Democracy is the most sustainable way to maintain the division between
powerful and powerless because it gives the greatest possible number of
people incentive to defend that division.
That’s why the high-water mark of democracy—its current ascendancy
around the globe—corresponds with unprecedented inequalities in the
distribution of resources and power. Dictatorships are inherently
unstable: you can slaughter, imprison, and brainwash entire generations
and their children will invent the struggle for freedom anew. But
promise every man the opportunity to be a dictator, to be able to force
the “will of the majority” upon his fellows rather than work through
disagreements like a mature adult, and you can build a common front of
destructive self-interest against the cooperation and collectivity that
make individual freedom possible. All the better if there are even more
repressive dictatorships around to point to as “the” alternative, so you
can glorify all this in the rhetoric of liberty.
Now let’s suspend our misgivings about democracy long enough to consider
whether, if it were an effective means for people to share power over
their lives, it could be compatible with capitalism. In a democracy,
informed citizens are supposed to vote according to their enlightened
self-interest—but who controls the flow of information, if not wealthy
executives? They can’t help but skew their coverage according to their
class interests, and you can hardly blame them—the newspapers and
networks that didn’t flinch at alienating corporate advertisers were run
out of business long ago by competitors with fewer scruples.
Likewise, voting means choosing between options, according to which
possibilities seem most desirable—but who sets the options, who
establishes what is considered possible, who constructs desire itself
but the wealthy patriarchs of the political establishment, and their
nephews in advertising and public relations firms? In the United States,
the two-party system has reduced politics to choosing the lesser of two
identical evils, both of which answer to their funders before anyone
else. Sure, the parties differ over exactly how much to repress personal
freedoms or spend on bombs—but do we ever get to vote on who controls
“public” spaces such as shopping malls, or whether workers are entitled
to the full product of their labor, or any other question that could
seriously change the way we live? In such a state of affairs, the
essential function of the democratic process is to limit the appearance
of what is possible to the narrow spectrum debated by candidates for
office. This demoralizes dissidents and contributes to the general
impression that they are impotent utopians—when nothing is more utopian
than trusting representatives from the owning class to solve the
problems caused by their own dominance, and nothing more impotent than
accepting their political system as the only possible system.
Ultimately, the most transparent democratic political process will
always be trumped by economic matters such as property ownership. Even
if we could convene everyone, capitalists and convicts alike, in one
vast general assembly, what would prevent the same dynamics that rule
the marketplace from spilling over into that space? So long as resources
are unevenly distributed, the rich can always buy others’ votes: either
literally, or by promising them a piece of the pie, or else by means of
propaganda and intimidation. Intimidation may be oblique—“Those radicals
want to take away your hard-earned property”—or as overt as the bloody
gang wars that accompanied electoral campaigns in nineteenth century
America.
Thus, even at best, democracy can only serve its purported purpose if it
occurs among those who explicitly oppose capitalism and foreswear its
prizes—and in those circles, there are alternatives that make a lot more
sense than majority rule.
Freedom is a quality of activity, not a condition that exists in a
vacuum: it is a prize to be won daily, not a possession that can be kept
in the basement and taken out and polished up for parades. Freedom
cannot be given—the most you can hope is to free others from the forces
that prevent them from finding it themselves. Real freedom has nothing
to do with voting; being free doesn’t mean simply being able to choose
between options, but actively participating in establishing the options
in the first place.
If the freedom for which so many generations have fought and died is
best exemplified by a man in a voting booth checking a box on a ballot
before returning to work in an environment no more under his control
than it was before, then the heritage our emancipating forefathers and
suffragette grandmothers have left us is nothing but a sham substitute
for the liberty they sought.
For a better illustration of real freedom in action, look at the
musician in the act of improvising with her companions: in joyous,
seemingly effortless cooperation, they create a sonic and emotional
environment, transforming the world that in turn transforms them. Take
this model and extend it to every one of our interactions with each
other and you would have something qualitatively different from our
present system—a harmony in human relationships and activity. To get
there from here, we have to dispense with voting as the archetypal
expression of freedom and participation.
Representative democracy is a contradiction.
No one can represent your power and interests for you—you can only have
power by wielding it, you can only learn what your interests are by
getting involved. Politicians make careers out of claiming to represent
others, as if freedom and political power could be held by proxy; in
fact, they are a priest class that answers only to itself, and their
very existence is proof of our disenfranchisement.
Voting in elections is an expression of our powerlessness: it is an
admission that we can only approach the resources and capabilities of
our own society through the mediation of that priest caste. When we let
them prefabricate our options for us, we relinquish control of our
communities to these politicians in the same way that we have ceded
technology to engineers, health care to doctors, and control of our
living environments to city planners and private real estate developers.
We end up living in a world that is alien to us, even though our labor
has built it, for we have acted like sleepwalkers hypnotized by the
monopoly our leaders and specialists hold on setting the possibilities.
But we don’t have to simply choose between presidential candidates, soft
drink brands, television shows, and political ideologies. We can make
our own decisions as individuals and communities, we can make our own
delicious beverages and social structures and power, we can establish a
new society on the basis of freedom and cooperation.
Sometimes a candidate appears who says everything people have been
saying to each other for a long time—he seems to have appeared from
outside the world of politics, to really be one of us. By persuasively
critiquing the system within its own logic, he subtly persuades people
that the system can be reformed—that it could work, if only the right
people were in power. Thus a lot of energy that would have gone into
challenging the system itself is redirected into backing yet another
candidate for office, who inevitably fails to deliver.
But where do these candidates—and more importantly, their ideas and
momentum—come from? How do they rise into the spotlight? They only
receive so much attention because they are drawing on popular
sentiments; often, they are explicitly trying to divert energy from
existing grass-roots movements. So should we put our energy into
supporting them, or into building on the momentum that forced them to
take radical stances in the first place?
More frequently, we are terrorized into focusing on the electoral
spectacle by the prospect of being ruled by the worst possible
candidates. “What if he gets into power?” To think that things could get
even worse!
But the problem is that the government has so much power in the first
place—otherwise, it wouldn’t matter as much who held the reigns. So long
as this is the case, there will always be tyrants. This is why it is all
the more important that we put our energy into the lasting solution of
opposing the power of the state.
Consensus-based decision-making is already practiced around the globe,
from indigenous communities in Latin America and direct action groups in
Europe to organic farming cooperatives in Australia. In contrast to
representative democracy, the participants take part in the
decision-making process on an ongoing basis and exercise real control
over their daily lives. Unlike majority-rule democracy, consensus
process values the needs and concerns of each individual equally; if one
person is unhappy with a resolution, it is everyone’s responsibility to
find a new solution that is acceptable to all. Consensus-based
decision-making does not demand that any person accept others’ power
over her, though it does require that everybody consider everyone else’s
needs; what it loses in efficiency it makes up tenfold in freedom and
accountability. Instead of asking that people accept leaders or find
common cause by homogenizing themselves, proper consensus process
integrates everyone into a working whole while allowing each to retain
his or her own autonomy.
To be free, you must have control over your immediate surroundings and
the basic matters of your life. No one is more qualified than you are to
decide how you live; no one should be able to vote on what you do with
your time and your potential unless you invite them to. To claim these
privileges for yourself and respect them in others is to cultivate
autonomy.
REPRESENTATION ≠SELF-DETERMINATION
Autonomy is not to be confused with so-called independence: in
actuality, no one is independent, since our lives all depend on each
other.[1] The glamorization of self-sufficiency in competitive society
is an underhanded way to accuse those who will not exploit others of
being responsible for their own poverty; as such, it is one of the most
significant obstacles to building community.[2] In contrast to this
Western mirage, autonomy offers a free interdependence between people
who share consensus.
Autonomy is the antithesis of bureaucracy. There is nothing more
efficient than people acting on their own initiative as they see fit,
and nothing more inefficient than attempting to dictate everyone’s
actions from above—that is, unless your fundamental goal is to control
other people. Top-down coordination is only necessary when people must
be made to do something they would never do of their own accord;
likewise, obligatory uniformity, however horizontally it is imposed, can
only empower a group by disempowering the individuals who comprise it.
Consensus can be as repressive as democracy unless the participants
retain their autonomy.
Autonomous individuals can cooperate without agreeing on a shared
agenda, so long as everyone benefits from everyone else’s participation.
Groups that cooperate thus can contain conflicts and contradictions,
just as each of us does individually, and still empower the
participants. Let’s leave marching under a single flag to the military.
Finally, autonomy entails self-defense. Autonomous groups have a stake
in defending themselves against the encroachments of those who do not
recognize their right to self-determination, and in expanding the
territory of autonomy and consensus by doing everything in their power
to destroy coercive structures.
Independent autonomous groups can work together in federations without
any of them wielding authority. Such a structure sounds utopian, but it
can actually be quite practical and efficient. International mail
delivery and railway travel both work on this system, to name two
examples: while individual postal and transportation systems are
internally hierarchical, they all cooperate together to get mail or rail
passengers from one nation to another without an ultimate authority
being necessary at any point in the process. Similarly, individuals who
cannot agree enough to work together within one collective can still
coexist in separate groups. For this to work in the long run, of course,
we need to instill values of cooperation, consideration, and tolerance
in the coming generations—but that’s exactly what we are proposing, and
we can hardly do worse at this task than the partisans of capitalism and
hierarchy have.
Autonomy necessitates that you act for yourself: that rather than
waiting for requests to pass through the established channels only to
bog down in paperwork and endless negotiations, establish your own
channels instead. This is called direct action. If you want hungry
people to have food to eat, don’t just give money to a bureaucratic
charity organization—find out where food is going to waste, collect it,
and share. If you want affordable housing, don’t try to get the town
council to pass a bill—that will take years, while people sleep outside
every night; take over abandoned buildings, open them up to the public,
and organize groups to defend them when the thugs of the absentee
landlords show up. If you want corporations to have less power, don’t
petition the politicians they bought to put limits on their own
masters—take that power from them yourself. Don’t buy their products,
don’t work for them, sabotage their billboards and offices, prevent
their meetings from taking place and their merchandise from being
delivered. They use similar tactics to exert their power over you,
too—it only looks valid because they bought up the laws and values of
your society long before you were born.
Don’t wait for permission or leadership from some outside authority,
don’t beg some higher power to organize your life for you. Take the
initiative!
In a social arrangement that is truly in the best interest of each
participating individual, the threat of exclusion should be enough to
discourage most destructive or disrespectful behavior. Even when it is
impossible to avoid, exclusion is certainly a more humanitarian approach
than prisons and executions, which corrupt police and judges as much as
they embitter criminals. Those who refuse to respect others’ needs, who
will not integrate themselves into any community, may find themselves
banished from social life—but that is still better than exile in the
mental ward or on death row, two of the possibilities awaiting such
people today. Violence should only be used by communities in
self-defense, not with the smug sense of entitlement with which it is
applied by our present injustice system. Unfortunately, in a world
governed by force, autonomous consensus-based groups are likely to find
themselves at odds with those who do not abide by cooperative or
tolerant values; they must be careful not to lose those values
themselves in the process of defending them.
Serious disagreements within communities can be solved in many cases by
reorganizing or subdividing groups. Often individuals who can’t get
along in one social configuration have more success cooperating in
another setting or as members of parallel communities. If consensus
cannot be reached within a group, that group can split into smaller
groups that can achieve it internally—such a thing may be inconvenient
and frustrating, but it is better than group decisions ultimately being
made by force by those who have the most power. As with individuals and
society, so with different collectives: if the benefits of working
together outweigh the frustrations, that should be incentive enough for
people to sort out their differences. Even drastically dissimilar
communities still have it in their best interest to coexist peacefully,
and must somehow negotiate ways to achieve this…
…that’s the most difficult part, of course. But we’re not talking about
just another social system here, we’re talking about a total
transformation of human relations—for it will take nothing less to solve
the problems our species faces today. Let’s not kid ourselves—until we
can achieve this, the violence and strife inherent in conflict-based
relations will continue to intensify, and no law or system will be able
to protect us. In consensus-based structures, there are no fake
solutions, no ways to suppress conflict without resolving it; those who
participate in them must learn to coexist without coercion and
submission.
Whoever they vote for, we are ungovernable!
The first precious grains of this new world can be found in your
friendships and love affairs whenever they are free from power dynamics,
whenever cooperation occurs naturally. Imagine those moments expanded to
the scale of our entire society—that’s the life that waits beyond
democracy.
It may feel like we are separated from that world by an uncrossable
chasm, but the wonderful thing about consensus and autonomy is that you
don’t have to wait for the government to vote for them—you can practice
them right now with the people around you. Put into practice, the
virtues of this way of living are clear. Form your own autonomous group,
answering to no power but your own, and chase down freedom for
yourselves, if your representatives will not do it for you—since they
cannot do it for you.
Three wolves and six goats are discussing what to have for dinner. One
courageous goat makes an impassioned case: “We should put it to a vote!”
The other goats fear for his life, but surprisingly, the wolves
acquiesce. But when everyone is preparing to vote, the wolves take three
of the goats aside.
“Vote with us to make the other three goats dinner,” they threaten.
“Otherwise, vote or no vote, we’ll eat you.”
The other three goats are shocked by the outcome of the election: a
majority, including their comrades, has voted for them to be killed and
eaten. They protest in outrage and terror, but the goat who first
suggested the vote rebukes them: “Be thankful you live in a democracy!
At least we got to have a say in this!”
[1] “Western man fills his closet with groceries and calls himself
self-sufficient.” -Mohandas Gandhi
[2] The politicians’ myth of “welfare mothers” snatching hardworking
citizens’ rightful earnings, for example, divides individuals who might
otherwise form cooperative groups with no use for politicians.