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Title: Process Under Socialism Author: Pëtr Kropotkin Date: 1887 Language: en Topics: socialism Source: The Nineteenth Century, 1887, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=408.
As to parliamentary rule, and representative government altogether, ...
It is becoming evident that it is merely stupid to elect a few men
[sic], and to entrust them with the task of making laws on all possible
subjects, of which subject most of them are utterly ignorant. It is
becoming understood that Majority rule is as defective as any other kind
of rule; and Humanity searches, and finds, new channels for resolving
the pending questions. The Postal Union did not elect an international
postal parliament in order to make laws for all postal organizations
adherent to the Union. The railways of Europe did not elect an
international railway parliament in order to regulate the running of the
trains and the partition of the income of international traffic; and the
Meteorological and Geological Societies of Europe did not elect either
meteorological or geological parliaments to plan polar stations, or to
establish a uniform subdivision of geological formations and uniform
coloration of geological maps. They proceeded by means of agreement. To
agree together they resorted to congresses; but while sending delegates
to their congresses, they did not elect MPs bons a tout faire; they did
not say to them, `Vote about everything you like -- we shall obey.' They
put questions and discussed them first themselves; then they sent
delegates acquainted with the special question to be discussed at the
congress, and they sent delegates -- not rulers. Their delegates
returned from the congress with no laws in their pockets, but with
proposals of agreements. Such is the way assumed now (the very old way,
too) for dealing with questions of public interest -- not the way of
law-making by means of a representative government. Representative
government has accomplished its historical mission; it has given a
mortal blow to Court-rule; and by its debates it has awakened public
interest in public questions. But, to see in it the government of the
future Socialist society, is to commit a gross error. Each economical
phase of life implies its own political phase; and it is impossible to
touch the very basis of the present economical life -- private property
-- without a corresponding change in the very basis of the political
organization. Life already shows in which direct the change will be
made. Not in increasing the powers of the State, but in resorting to
free organization and free federation in all those branches which are
now considered as attributes of the State.