Rats! e-book and a message from Assange

http://rats-nosnitch.com/

free e-book, pdf, or Kindle files

Rats is the work of ex-cops, lawyers, security experts, experienced activists, outlaws, former outlaws, trained interrogators, and more. In the hour or so it takes you to read their information, you'll gain a lifetime's worth of armor against snitches, informers, informants, agents provocateurs, narcs, finks, and similar vermin.

Almost counter intuitive to the above, but "democracies die behind closed doors...if we don't do something about it we all run the risk of losing the democracy we have treasured for so long" J Assange

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/11/29/exclusive_julian_assange_on_wikileaks_bradley

Alienated Inalienist

Posted by Erik

Lately I've been fascinated with some of David Ellerman's works on alienation. He has a blog here: www.blog.ellerman.org, and several websites. The one that originally caught my attention was abolish humanrentals.org, the basis of which is pretty much summed up below. In essence, humans can't be rented, just as they can't be sold, so 'democratically controlled' worker-owned cooperatives should be the standard. I'm not sure Ellerman also thinks 'cost should be the limit of price' or that workers should receive their 'full product,' but what he proposes seems agreeable enough to me, or at least how he approached this fundamental issue.

One of Ellerman's main critiques is that there has been a misframing of the "standard liberal coercion-versus-consent dichotomy" (http://www.blog.ellerman.org/2012/07/the-pons-asinorum-of-political-economic-theory/)

He posted his critique in brief here:

I have been struck by the narrowness of the spectrum between the right liberals (Deirdre's nice phrase) and the high liberals...One example is the most basic and almost defining misframing used by liberalism of the contrast between coercion and consent. Various shades of left-liberals, not to mention socialists, play an important social role of validating that misframing and then just taking the other side by arguing that, say, the employment relation is "really" coercive in various ways (all the way from the distribution of property to pee-breaks).

Yet political thinkers (particularly of civic republican bent) such as Quentin Skinner and Otto Gierke, have long been clear that since the sophisticated defense of most any form of autocracy has been that it is based on an implicit social contract (vouchsafed by the prescription of time)-- that the real division is between (1) consent to contracts of alienation (e.g., pactum subjectionis of Hobbes) that alienate/transfer the right of self-governance, and (2) consent to contracts which only delegate the exercise of that right to delegates, representatives, or trustees to be exercised in the name of the governed. That is the old translatio vs. concessio debate that seems to be intellectually "unavailable" across the liberal spectrum surveyed and remixed by Tomasi. And unavailable for a good reason.

The principal virtue of the consent versus coercion framing in modern debates is that it puts political democracy and the employment contract on the same side of the dichotomy that frames the debate. And hence the importance of "bleeding-heart" lefties that accept that misframing, and want to argue about trade unions and pee-breaks. Since even the dullest commentator knows that the employer is not the representative or delegate of the employees, the more telling framing of the debate would put political democracy and the human rental contract on opposite sides of the framing dichotomy--which is why that framing is "unavailable."

Fortunately there is a deeper tradition that descends from the Reformation and Enlightenment and that is based on inalienable rights arguments against the alienation contracts per se (not against their abuses). Alienation contracts such as the self-sale contract, the nondemocratic constitution, and the coverture marriage contract have all been outlawed in the western democracies (although there are liberal attempts to revive consent-based nondemocratic government in the idea of charter cities, "free cities," and seasteading). 

Only the self-rental contract remains, and that is why it is so interesting to see Tomasi and the assembled writers as sticking to the consent-coercion misframing, and ignoring the inalienable rights tradition that outlawed those three other alienation contracts.

^"standard liberal coercion-versus-consent dichotomy"

Ellerman suggests this instead: "The real issue: Alienation-versus-delegation for voluntary institutions":

also see: http://www.blog.ellerman.org/2010/03/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument-2/

I like this approach and most of his critiques* of "libertarians," although most of them miss and cross the bow of left libertarianism, and rightly fall onto right libertarianism, though some on the left end probably make the same mistake/misframing. (*see http://www.blog.ellerman.org/2012/06/listen-libertarians-part-i/)

Although I agree, at this point in time, my left-libertarian mindset lured me into seeing the following issues with Ellerman's reframing:

I have a concern similar to Matthew MacKenzie above(this was my comment on his post: http://www.blog.ellerman.org/2010/03/inalienable-rights-part-iii-a-litmus-test-for-liberalism/). You touched on my concern briefly when answering James. I’m having difficulty seeing how democracy is not alienation, and how the re-framing you suggest, while admirable, still falls short (http://www.blog.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ListenLibs2.jpg). I can see direct democracy or participatory democracy being less likely to alienate than representative democracy, but not immune to alienation– especially if the constitution/contract was not agreed to by one or more citizen/employee. Further, it seems voting is alienist as its often no more than renting because voting separates the will from the power to act and transfers it to someone else (renting representative(s), the state, or the public). In addition, to use your words “control exercised in the master’s own interests” is very suggestive of positive political theory and the idea that politicians are self-interested actors. For these reasons, democracy seems alienist (esp. representative democracy), and in my mind you need to add a few more boxes to your re-framing. maybe like this: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxtZ-hLgmVaVZlZIUjM1dXJDajQ/edit?pli=1

I [added] in brackets[ ] to Ellerman's eloquent and brief summary below of the main problem, which I tried to address in my edited version of his chart on the alienation-versus-delegation reframing.

“Obedience to the employer [voter or state, and/or representative] is “counted” as “fulfilling” the contract [vote and/or constitution] on the part of the employee [state or voter, and/or representative], and the payment of wages [and provided services [perhaps from money taken by force]] counts as fulfilling the contract on the part of the employer [voter or state, and/or representative]. Thus both sides “fulfill” a voluntary contract [vote and/or constitution]. Then the institutionalized fraud of renting persons can parade upon the stage of human institutions as a normal voluntary contract vouchsafed by today’s secular clergy of [politicians,] economists, lawyers, and philosophers.”

I don't know that my edited reframing is entirely correct, but for the time being I'll assume that it is. All Power To All People!

Proudhon summed up one of the problems with the alienation of politics nicely: "democracy...exists fully only at the moment of elections and for the formation of legislative power. This moment once past, democracy retreats; it withdraws into itself again, and begins its anti-democratic work. It becomes AUTHORITY." see this older post in this blog for the rest of Proudhon's genius: the solution of social problem

Now if I could just fit Josiah Warren's 'cost is the limit of price' into my revision...

Thanks David!

Bad Religion- True North

Finally here...stoked as always

January 22nd...a painful wait for consumption. Talk about Pavlovian response, I can feel my brain salivating. I'm guessing we'll see another morsel in the coming weeks to stave off the hunger pangs.

Great to have plans for the 22nd.

http://www.punknews.org/article/49492/bad-religion-announce-first-single-talk-about-album-sound-and-details

Lyrics:

Everybody needs a slogan in their pocket or two
It never hurts to have a strategy you can go to

Sometimes I have no sense at all
As most flawed men are won't to do

Just say fuck you
Pavlovian rude
A menace too
Pay homage to
Your bad attitude

You can even get cerebral if you want to
Make a radical assessment that sticks like glue

Sometimes it takes no thought at all
The easiest thing to do

Is say fuck you
Pavlovian rude
A menace too
Pay homage to
Your bad attitude

The reaction it brings, just one of those things
Your friends might not want you around
If the impulse is right you might get in a fight
Even though you can't hold your ground
But all rest assured, sometimes just a word
Is the most satisfying sound

Sometimes it makes no sense at all
The easiest thing to do

Is say fuck you
Pavlovian rude

A menace too, pay homage to your bad attitude, just say fuck you . . .

The Solution of the Social Problem

from: robertgraham: proudhon-on-representative-democracy

excerpts from The Solution of the Social Problem, P-J. Proudhon 1848 critique of representative or parliamentary democracy

The “ideal republic” is “an organization that leaves all opinions and all activities free. In this republic, every citizen, by doing what he wishes and only what he wishes, participates directly in legislation and government, as he participates in the production and the circulation of wealth. Here, every citizen is king; for he has plenitude of power, he reigns and governs. The ideal republic is a positive anarchy. It is neither liberty subordinated to order, as in a constitutional monarchy, nor liberty imprisoned in order. It is liberty free from all its shackles, superstitions, prejudices, sophistries, usury, authority; it is reciprocal liberty and not limited liberty; liberty not the daughter but the mother of order.

Since the beginning of the world, since human tribes began to organize themselves into monarchies and republics, oscillating between the one idea and the other like wandering planets, mixing, combining in order to organize the most diverse elements into societies, overturning tribunes and thrones as a child upsets a house of cards, we have seen, at each political upheaval, the leaders of the movement invoke in more or less explicit terms the sovereignty of the People…

The problem of the sovereignty of the People is the fundamental problem of liberty, equality, and fraternity, the first principle of social organization. Governments and peoples have had no other goal, through all the storms of revolutions and diversions of politics, than to constitute this sovereignty. Each time that they have been diverted from this goal they have fallen into slavery and shame. With this in mind the Provisional Government has convened a National Assembly named by all citizens, without distinction as to wealth and capacity: universal suffrage seems to them to be the closest approach to expressing the People’s sovereignty.

Thus it is supposed first that the People can be consulted; second, that it can respond; third, that its will can be authentically ascertained: and finally that government founded upon the manifest will of the People is the only legitimate government.

In particular, such is the pretension of DEMOCRACY, which presents itself as the form of government which best translates the sovereignty of the People.

But, if I prove that democracy, just like monarchy, only symbolizes that sovereignty, that it does not respond to any of the questions raised by this idea, that it cannot, for example, either establish the authenticity of the actions attributed to the People or state what is the final goal of society: if I prove that democracy, far from being the most perfect of governments, is the negation of the sovereignty of the People and the origin of its ruin-it will be demonstrated, in fact and in right, that democracy is nothing more than a constitutional despotism, succeeding a different constitutional despotism, that it does not possess any scientific value, and that it must be seen solely as a preparation for the REPUBLIC, one and indivisible...


Here is a president or a directory, the personification, symbol, or fabrication of national sovereignty: the first power of the State.

Here are a chamber, two chambers-one the spokesman of conservative interests, the other of the instinct for development: the second power of the State.

Here is a press, eloquent, disciplined, untiring, which each morning pours out in torrents millions of ideas which swarm in the millions of brains of the citizenry: the third power of the State.

The executive power is action, the chambers-deliberation, the press-opinion.

Which of these powers represents the people? Or else, if you say that it is the whole thing which represents the people, how is it that they do not all agree? Put royalty in place of the presidency, and it is the same thing: my criticisms apply equally to monarchy and democracy…


In principle then, I admit that the People exists, that it is sovereign, that it is predicated in the consciousness of the masses. But nothing yet has proven to me that it can perform an overt act of sovereignty, that an explicit revelation of the People is possible. For, in view of the dominance of prejudices, of the contradiction of ideas and interests, of the variability of opinion, and of the impulsiveness of the multitude, I shall always ask what establishes the authenticity and legitimacy of such a revelation-and this is what democracy cannot answer.

But, the democrats observe-not without reason-the People has never been suitably called to action. Never has it been able to demonstrate its will except for momentary flashes: the role it has played in history up to now has been completely subordinate. For the People to be able to speak its mind, it must be democratically consulted-that is, all citizens without distinction must participate, directly or indirectly, in the formation of the law. Now, this mode of democratic consultation has never been exercised in a coherent manner: the eternal conspiracy of the privileged has not permitted it. Princes, nobles and priests, military men, magistrates, teachers, scholars, artists, industrialists, merchants, financiers, proprietors, have always succeeded in breaking up the democratic Union, in changing the voice of the People into a voice of monopoly. Now that we possess the only true way of having the People speak, we shall likewise know what constitutes the authenticity and legitimacy of its word, and all your preceding objections vanish. The sincerity of the democratic regime will guarantee the solution to us…




One way or another, preponderant strength in government belongs to the men who have the preponderance of talent and fortune. From the first it has been evident that social reform will never come out of political reform, that on the contrary political reform must come out of social reform.

The illusion of democracy springs from that of constitutional monarchy’s example-claiming to organize Government by representative means. Neither the Revolution of July [1830] nor that of February [1848] has sufficed to illuminate this. What they always want is inequality of fortunes, delegation of sovereignty, and government by influential people. Instead of saying, as did Mr. Thiers, The king reigns and does not govern, democracy says, The People reigns and does not govern, which is to deny the Revolution…



Since, according to the ideology of the democrats, the People cannot govern itself and is forced to give itself to representatives who govern by delegation, while it retains the right of review, it is supposed that the People is quite capable at least of having itself represented, that it can be represented faithfully. Well! This hypothesis is utterly false; there is not and never can be legitimate representation of the People. All electoral systems are mechanisms for deceit: to know one is sufficient to pronounce the condemnation of all.

But who does not see that deputies thus elected apart from all special interests and groups, all considerations of places and persons, by dint of representing France, represent nothing; that they no longer are mandated representatives, but legislators set apart from the People; and that in place of a representative democracy we have an elective oligarchy, the middle term between democracy and royalty.


There, citizen reader, is where I want to bring you. From whatever aspect you consider democracy, you will always see it placed between two extremes each as contrary as the other to its own principle, condemned to oscillate between the absurd and the impossible, without ever being able to establish itself. Among a million equally arbitrary terms, the Provisional Government has acted like Mr. Guizot: it has preferred that which appeared to it to agree best with its democratic prejudices. Of representative truth, as of government of the People by the People, the Provisional Government has taken no account…

In order that the deputy represent his constituents, it is necessary that he represent all the ideas which have united to elect him.

But, with the electoral system, the deputy, the would-be legislator sent by the citizens to reconcile all ideas and all interests in the name of the People, always represents just one idea, one interest. The rest is excluded without pity. For who makes law in the elections? Who decides the choice of deputies? The majority, half plus one of the votes. From this it follows that half less one of the electors is not represented or is so in spite of itself, that of all the opinions that divide the citizens, one only, insofar as the deputy has an opinion, arrives at the legislature, and finally that the law, which should be the expression of the will of the People, is only the expression of half of the People.



The result is that in the theory of the democrats the problem consists of eliminating, by the mechanism of sham universal suffrage, all ideas save one which stir opinion, and to declare sovereign that which has the majority.

But, perhaps it will be said, the idea that fails in such an electoral body will triumph in another and, by this means, all ideas can be represented in the National Assembly.

When that is the case, you would have only put off the difficulty, for the question is to know how all these ideas, divergent and antagonistic, will concur on the law and be reconciled thereon.

Thus the Revolution, according to some, is only an accident, which should change nothing in the general order of society. According to others, the Revolution is social still more than political. How can such obviously incompatible claims be satisfied? How at the same time can there be given security for the bourgeoisie and guarantees for the proletariat? How will these contrary wishes and opposed inclinations come to be mixed together in a resulting community, in one universal law?


Democracy is so far from being able to resolve this difficulty that all its art, all its science is used to remove the obstacle. It makes appeals to the ballot box; the ballot box is simultaneously the level, the balance, the criterion of democracy. With the electoral ballot democracy eliminates men; with the legislative ballot, it eliminates ideas…

What! It is one vote that makes the representative, one vote that makes the law! With a question on which hangs the honour and health of the Republic, the citizens are divided into two equal factions. On the two sides they bring to bear the most serious reasoning, the weightiest authorities, the most positive facts. The nation is in doubt, the Assembly is in suspension. One representative, without discernible motive, passes from right to left and turns the balance; it is he who makes the law.

And this law, the expression of some bizarre will, is supposed to be the will of the People! It will be necessary for me to submit to it, defend it, even kill for it! By a parliamentary caprice I lose the most precious of my rights, I lose liberty! And the most sacred of my duties, the duty to resist tyranny by force, falls before the sovereign noggin of an imbecile!

Democracy is nothing but the tyranny of majorities, the most execrable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, nor on a nobility of blood, nor on the prerogatives of fortune: it has number as its base, and for a mask the name of the People…

If universal suffrage, the most complete manifestation of democracy, has won so many partisans, especially among the working classes, it is because it has always been presented on the basis of an appeal to men of talent, as well as to the good sense and morality of the masses. How often have they not brought out the offensive contrast of the speculator who becomes politically influential through plunder and the man of genius whom poverty has kept far away from the stage!…

In the end, we are all electors; we can choose the most worthy.

We can do more; we can follow them step by step in their legislative acts and their votes; we shall make them transmit our arguments and our documents; we shall indicate our will to them, and when we are discontented, we shall recall and dismiss them.

The choice of abilities, imperative mandate, permanent revocability-these are the most immediate and incontestable consequences of the electoral principle. It is the inevitable program of all democracy.

Now democracy, no more than constitutional monarchy, does not sustain such a deduction from its principle.

What democracy demands, like monarchy, is silent deputies who do not discuss, but vote; who, receiving the order from the Government, crush the opposition with their heavy and heavy witted battalions. These are passive creatures, I almost say satellites, whom the danger of a revolution does not intimidate, whose reason is not too rebellious, whose conscience does not recoil before anything arbitrary, before any proscription…

In every kind of government the deputy belongs to the powerful, not to the country… [It is required] that he be master of his vote, that is, to traffic in its sale, that the mandate have a specified term, of at least a year, during which the Government, in agreement with the deputies, does what it pleases and gives strength to the law through action by its own arbitrary will…

If monarchy is the hammer which crushes the People, democracy is the axe which divides it: the one and the other equally conclude in the death of liberty…

[ Because theorists] have taught that all power has its source in national sovereignty, it has valiantly been concluded best to make all citizens vote in one way or another, and that the majority of votes thus expressed adequately constitute the will of the People. They have brought us back to the practices of barbarians who, lacking rationality, proceeded by acclamation and election. They have taken a material symbol for the true formula of sovereignty. And they have said to the proletarians: When you vote, you shall be free, you shall be rich; you shall enact capital, product and wages; you shall, as another Moses did, make thrushes and manna fall from heaven; you shall become like gods, for you shall not work, or shall work so little that if you do work it shall be as nothing.

Whatever they do and whatever they say, universal suffrage, the testimony of discord, can only produce discord. And it is with this miserable idea, I am ashamed for my native land, that for seventeen years they have agitated the poor People! It is for this that bourgeoisie and workers have sung the “Marseillaise” in chorus at seventy political banquets and, after a revolution as glorious as it was legitimate, have abandoned themselves to a sect of doctrinaires! For six months the opposition deputies, like comedians on tour, travelled through the provinces, and for the fruit of their benefit performance what have they brought back to us, what? A scheme for land redistribution! It is under this schismatic flag that we have claimed to preserve the initiative of progress, to march at the forefront of nations in the conquest of liberty, to inaugurate harmony around the world! Yesterday, we regarded with pity the peoples who did not know as we have how to raise themselves to constitutional sublimity. Today, fallen a hundred times lower, we still are sorry for them, we shall go with a hundred thousand bayonets to make them partake with us of the benefits of democratic absolutism. And we are the great nation! Oh! Be quiet, and if you do not know how to do great things, or express great ideas, at least preserve common sense for us…

In monarchy, the acts of the Government are an unfolding of authority; in democracy they constitute authority. The authority which in monarchy is the principle of governmental action is the goal of government in democracy. The result is that democracy is fatally retrograde, and that it implies contradiction.

Let us place ourselves at the point of departure for democracy, at the moment of universal suffrage.

All citizens are equal, independent. Their egalitarian combination is the point of departure for power: it is power itself, in its highest form, in its plenitude.

By virtue of democratic principle, all citizens must participate in the formation of the law, in the government of the State, in the exercise of public functions, in the discussion of the budget, in the appointment of officials. All must be consulted and give their opinions on peace and war, treaties of commerce and alliance, colonial enterprises, works of public utility, the award of compensation, the infliction of penalties. Finally, all must pay their debt to their native land, as taxpayers, jurors, judges, and soldiers.

If things could happen in this way, the ideal of democracy would be attained. It would have a normal existence, developing directly in the sense of its principle, as do all things which have life and grow. It is thus that the acorn becomes an oak, and the embryo an animal; it is thus that geometry, astronomy, chemistry are the development to infinity of a small number of elements.

It is completely otherwise in democracy, which according to the authors exists fully only at the moment of elections and for the formation of legislative power. This moment once past, democracy retreats; it withdraws into itself again, and begins its anti-democratic work. It becomes AUTHORITY. Authority was the idol of Mr. Guizot; it is also that of the democrats.

In fact it is not true, in any democracy, that all citizens participate in the formation of the law: that prerogative is reserved for the representatives.

It is not true that they deliberate on all public affairs, domestic and foreign: this is the perquisite, not even of the representatives, but of the ministers. Citizens discuss affairs, ministers alone deliberate them.

It is not true that each citizen fulfills a public function: those functions which do not produce marketable goods must be reduced as much as possible. By their nature public functions exclude the vast majority of citizens…

It is not true that citizens participate in the nomination of officials; moreover this participation is as impossible as the preceding one, since it would result in creating anarchy in the bad sense of the word. It is power which names its subordinates, sometimes according to its own arbitrary will, sometimes according to certain conditions for appointment or promotion, the order and discipline of officials and centralization requiring that it be thus…

Finally, it is not true that all citizens participate in justice and in war: as judges and officers, most are eliminated; as jurors and simple soldiers all abstain as much as they can. In a word, hierarchy in government being the primary condition of government, democracy is a chimera.

The reason that authors give for this merits our study. They say the People is outside the state because it does not know how to govern itself, and when it does know, it cannot do it.

EVERYBODY CANNOT COMMAND AND GOVERN AT THE SAME TIME; it is necessary that the authority belong solely to some who exercise it in the name of and through the delegation of all.

Ignorance or impotence, according to democratic theory the People is incapable of governing itself: democracy, like monarchy, after having posed as its principle the sovereignty of the People, ends with a declaration of the incapacity of the People!

This is what is meant by the democrats, who once in the government dream only of consolidating and strengthening the authority in their hands. Thus it was understood by the multitude, who threw themselves upon the doors of the City Hall, demanding government jobs, money, work, credit, bread! And there indeed is our nation, monarchist to its very marrow, idolizing power, deprived of individual energy and republican initiative, accustomed to expect everything from authority, to do nothing except through authority! When monarchy does not come to us from on high, as it did formerly, or on the field of battle, as in 1800, or in the folds of a charter, as in 1814 or 1830, we proclaim it in the public square, between two barricades, in electoral assembly, or at a patriotic banquet. Drink to the health of the People and the multitude will crown you!


excerpts from The Solution of the Social Problem, 1848 critique of representative or parliamentary democracy

Proudhon Oeuvres completes de P-J. Proudhon (Paris: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie., 1867-70). VI, 1-87. Translation, pp. 35-40, 42-44, 46-58, 60, 62-67.

Democratic Failures- Take 2

posted by Erik

In an earlier post I lambasted "Democracy" mainly on the grounds that its coercive, or an enemy of liberty in the Lockean sense of violating the normative claim of the "respect" principle, i.e. the consent theory. I think "d"emocracy, or direct democracy, is preferred to representative Democracy.

Below are some other issues I didn't address in the other post, and a viable solution.

Democratic Failure

1. Rational ignorance— uninformed voters (due to the 'cost' of acquiring information); result: opportunistic rent-seeking lobbyism
2. Rational irrationality— buying low-cost beliefs instead of rationalism (intellectual apathy, self-interested bias, coherence bias, social bonding bias); result: the potential for systemic bias (systemic shift in an outcome) where 'feel good' and 'actually good' are at odds
3. Groupthink— perhaps missing alternative solutions in favor of harmony with a social group
4. Misinformed voters
5. Incompletely informed voters— voting based on shortcut information
6. Expressive voting— voting to express (sometimes systemic) beliefs
7. Majority desires can be in conflict (Voter's paradox)
8. The best collective outcome may conflict with the best individual outcome (Prisoner's Dilemma/ Voter's paradox)
9. Public interest may conflict with the interests of elected officials (public choice theory/positive political theory)
10. Outcome may be lose-lose (zero-sum)
11. One  vote changes nothing (in a large voting poll) unless it breaks a tie (in that sense then vote for who you really want for the greatest satisfaction)
12. Affluence correlates to political Influence (Martin Gilens)
13. Anonymity and perceived small impacts (#10) may cause people to vote spitefully, or hastily
14. Choice is often framed as dichotomy (a captive market ratcheting attention to the “choice”)
15. Results are typically binary— yes vs. no, all or nothing
16. Disenfranchisement— ineffective votes that don’t produce desires outcomes
17. Voting is rooting for your team, but it doesn't put you in the game.

Other political and democratic issues:

• Rent-seeking— obtaining economic rent(production cost vs. sale price) via politics to influence policy instead of actually producing wealth, i.e. rentier politics
• Monopoly rent-seeking— price gouging due to exclusivity: quotas, subsidies, copyright, tariff protection
• Lobbying— due to the listed democratic failures lobbying tends to siphon a large pool of money into a small pot of interest (see#12 as well)
• Democracy can result in mutual coercion similar to gang violence (earlier post)
• The will of voters can be tyrannical
• Autonomy is forfeited to an outside power
• Casting a vote casts away the will, it is no longer yours— your right to decide, to act, is now in the hands of others, not yours
• What begins as self-management, or direction by ballot, ends as being managed

also see this post: the-solution-of-social-problem

Solutions or alternatives to democracy? I won't entertain monarchy, oligarchy, autocracy etc., and admit that it’s hard to maximize liberty in large groups without some form of democracy. Its not impossible though. Proudhon suggests this:

The “ideal republic” is “an organization that leaves all opinions and all activities free. In this republic, every citizen, by doing what he wishes and only what he wishes, participates directly in legislation and government, as he participates in the production and the circulation of wealth. Here, every citizen is king; for he has plenitude of power, he reigns and governs. The ideal republic is a positive anarchy. It is neither liberty subordinated to order, as in a constitutional monarchy, nor liberty imprisoned in order. It is liberty free from all its shackles, superstitions, prejudices, sophistries, usury, authority; it is reciprocal liberty and not limited liberty; liberty not the daughter but the mother of order.” JP Proudhon‘s 1848 pamphlet, The Solution of the Social Problem

The question is how can we avoid the pitfalls of democracy discussed above (and in the earlier post)? We can't. We can soften them, but the ills will remain. There are two other options: consensus, and contracts. Democracy is the third best means, but its dangerous. I’m partial to Jeffersonian democratic-republicanism, but a step closer to the individualism of Benjamin Tucker, and Proudhon. I don’t think liberty is safe by way of representative democracy and centralized power.

A State monopoly breeds privilege, the power to trump individual liberty/autonomy, and as noted earlier a range of systemic issues in the means of that power: the vote itself, and the separation of actor and director once the acting begins. Furthermore, being that humans are by nature self-interested actors (see#9 above) there is little hope that putting power in the hands of a representative will reap rewards for the so-called directors/voters sitting at home with interests different than those acting in government.

How do we “self-manage” interactions on a larger scale, i.e. society? How do we have a more horizontal framework? How do we balance individual and collective sovereignty when they can be at odds? The freedom to abstain? The freedom to withdraw from outcomes that impact the individual that must suffer them? How do we limit oppression, exploitation, and domination? We have four options to play with to address these questions: 1. submit to the will of others (slave), 2. subject others to your will (authority), 3. socialize (associate), 4. mix and match 1, 2, 3 (vote). 1 and 2 are obviously related. Representative democracy is 4, 2, 1, with little 3 other than casting a ballot. Direct democracy is 4 and 3, and less 2, 1. Consensus is 3 (not immune to 1, 2). Contract is 3 (not immune to 1, 2).

No human system trying to balance freedom, or equality in freedom, will be without fault and defection, but to institute a centralized system with authority/hierarchy as the centerpiece will produce just that for the masses. Likewise, the masses are not going to make things better by returning the favor and imposing their will from the bottom onto others either.

In lieu of representative democracy, one answer is in combining direct-democracy components like participatory democracy and consensus democracy (both terms seem to be oxymoronic) with anarchism (libertarian consensus and contracts). In a direct-democracy, everyone involved has a direct say in the choices that might affect them, but not necessarily a means to escape democratic decisions they don’t wish to suffer. However, they are less likely to suffer if they are directly involved in the decision process. Here’s what combing anarchism and direct democracy would look like: a) anarchism: balanced power, therefore no power, no exploitation, no hierarchy, no representation, in essence consensus or voluntary cooperation, the non-aggression principle, and self-management with b) some horizontal direct-democracy.

What does combining direct-democracy and anarchy look like in more detail? A republic of voluntary cooperation, and polycentric order. (see this: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3D82D71342FF00E5) First let me say that some anarchists will cringe at my attempt to relate or combine the two. Regardless, as you will see, this model is much more anarchism than democracy. What follows is a rudimentary libertarian model of large scale social interaction. It begins with the individual, autonomous and sovereign (anarchism). Lets call this individual a citizen/cell. They form (associate), if they consent (anarchism), “collectives” or “syndicates” of self-management (anarchism) at the workplace, and maybe their community. The syndicate/collective, like a bodily organ, is made of individuals/cells/citizens that interact (associate) to perform a common function or task. These syndicates/organs work together (associate) as a collection of organs, or an organ system/“(con)federation” when needed. Therefore, we could say federalism, BUT it lacks a central Authority, so its still anarchism. A delegate (or several) is elected (democracy) or selected (by lottery) from each syndicate to form the federation. The delegate is a 'representative,' but they can be INSTANTLY (direct-democracy) fired or replaced if they fail to carry out any function/mandate (binding instructions) of the syndicate. In addition, the delegate is also a citizen, not a career politician in a bureaucracy of centralized power. Their actions can be instantly revoked if they breach the contract/mandate. The delegate is not a leader, not a manager, but a delegate brought to life to see that the mandate/function of the organ and organ system is carried out. In this sense the federalism is still majoritarian, but does not ask that cells or organs submit if they feel a function is not in their interest. Neither will it always stop its function in your rejection. It’s not perfect, just better than government, and better than a representative Leviathan. The organ system temporarily comes to life as an organism when needed, preforms its function, and then dies as the danger of causing harm is too great if allowed to live too long, as noted by Arthur Silber:

"Any individual who rises to the national political level is, of necessity and by definition, committed to the authoritarian-corporatist state. The current system will not allow anyone to be elected from either of the two major parties who is determined to dismantle even one part of that system...if you vote for almost any of the candidates for national office -- you're voting for murder. You're voting for torture. You're voting for criminal war. You're voting for the growing surveillance state. Is that what you choose to do? Is that what you choose to support?"

The above scenario scratches the surface of society without a State. It does not address legal, defense, and other issues of social order. It also does not address those that wish for succession in lieu of participating. Although I am not an unabashed fan of Murray Rothbard (a capitalist reframed by Brad Spangler as a "stimergic socialist"), he makes a few good points about a society without a state here: link. Another springboard is here and here.

Speaking of choice, below is the contract we never consented to, but are held to live under in the United States:

I, signature not required, agree to the following terms of this social contract between the United States Government and myself:

1. I will own no land. If property taxes are not paid, although the land is paid in full, the land will be confiscated and returned to the State.
2. To pay for the land I can't own, or the land I rent, the State will permit me to work. Some stipulations apply, as determined by the State.
3. I will apply for a State identification number to aid in tracking my work income.
4. I will surrender a percentage of my income as determined by the State
5. I will not be able to dictate the allocation of the money I surrender.
6. I will not receive a refund for State waste or misallocation of the money I surrender.
7.  The only drugs I will consume are those permitted by the State.
8. Sexual activities are limited to certain State mandates.
9. State laws trump religious law.
10. I can speak freely within the limits to be determined by the State.
11. The State is not liable for the follies and inadequacies of government officials.
12. The State is not liable if it fails to protect my property or person.
13. I agree that the State may hold me fully liable if I fail to abide by the above terms.
14. I will forfeit my rights and liberty to the State if asked.
15. The terms of this contract are subject to change without my permission and/or beyond my ability to negotiate.

here is another round of other arguments: http://americancynic.net/log/2012/11/01/why_i_dont_vote.html
also see this post: the-solution-of-social-problem

Social-ism

The Soviet Union Versus Socialism

Noam Chomsky
Our Generation, Spring/Summer, 1986 http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htm

When the world's two great propaganda systems agree on some doctrine, it requires some intellectual effort to escape its shackles. One such doctrine is that the society created by Lenin and Trotsky and molded further by Stalin and his successors has some relation to socialism in some meaningful or historically accurate sense of this concept. In fact, if there is a relation, it is the relation of contradiction.
It is clear enough why both major propaganda systems insist upon this fantasy. Since its origins, the Soviet State has attempted to harness the energies of its own population and oppressed people elsewhere in the service of the men who took advantage of the popular ferment in Russia in 1917 to seize State power. One major ideological weapon employed to this end has been the claim that the State managers are leading their own society and the world towards the socialist ideal; an impossibility, as any socialist -- surely any serious Marxist -- should have understood at once (many did), and a lie of mammoth proportions as history has revealed since the earliest days of the Bolshevik regime. The taskmasters have attempted to gain legitimacy and support by exploiting the aura of socialist ideals and the respect that is rightly accorded them, to conceal their own ritual practice as they destroyed every vestige of socialism.

As for the world's second major propaganda system, association of socialism with the Soviet Union and its clients serves as a powerful ideological weapon to enforce conformity and obedience to the State capitalist institutions, to ensure that the necessity to rent oneself to the owners and managers of these institutions will be regarded as virtually a natural law, the only alternative to the 'socialist' dungeon.

The Soviet leadership thus portrays itself as socialist to protect its right to wield the club, and Western ideologists adopt the same pretense in order to forestall the threat of a more free and just society. This joint attack on socialism has been highly effective in undermining it in the modern period.

One may take note of another device used effectively by State capitalist ideologists in their service to existing power and privilege. The ritual denunciation of the so-called 'socialist' States is replete with distortions and often outright lies. Nothing is easier than to denounce the official enemy and to attribute to it any crime: there is no need to be burdened by the demands of evidence or logic as one marches in the parade. Critics of Western violence and atrocities often try to set the record straight, recognizing the criminal atrocities and repression that exist while exposing the tales that are concocted in the service of Western violence. With predictable regularity, these steps are at once interpreted as apologetics for the empire of evil and its minions. Thus the crucial Right to Lie in the Service of the State is preserved, and the critique of State violence and atrocities is undermined.

It is also worth noting the great appeal of Leninist doctrine to the modern intelligentsia in periods of conflict and upheaval. This doctrine affords the 'radical intellectuals' the right to hold State power and to impose the harsh rule of the 'Red Bureaucracy,' the 'new class,' in the terms of Bakunin's prescient analysis a century ago. As in the Bonapartist State denounced by Marx, they become the 'State priests,' and "parasitical excrescence upon civil society" that rules it with an iron hand.

In periods when there is little challenge to State capitalist institutions, the same fundamental commitments lead the 'new class' to serve as State managers and ideologists, "beating the people with the people's stick," in Bakunin's words. It is small wonder that intellectuals find the transition from 'revolutionary Communism' to 'celebration of the West' such an easy one, replaying a script that has evolved from tragedy to farce over the past half century. In essence, all that has changed is the assessment of where power lies. Lenin¹s dictum that "socialism is nothing but state capitalist monopoly made to benefit the whole people," who must of course trust the benevolence of their leaders, expresses the perversion of 'socialism' to the needs of the State priests, and allows us to comprehend the rapid transition between positions that superficially seem diametric opposites, but in fact are quite close.

The terminology of political and social discourse is vague and imprecise, and constantly debased by the contributions of ideologists of one or another stripe. Still, these terms have at least some residue of meaning. Since its origins, socialism has meant the liberation of working people from exploitation. As the Marxist theoretician Anton Pannekoek observed, "this goal is not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie," but can only be "realized by the workers themselves being master over production." Mastery over production by the producers is the essence of socialism, and means to achieve this end have regularly been devised in periods of revolutionary struggle, against the bitter opposition of the traditional ruling classes and the 'revolutionary intellectuals' guided by the common principles of Leninism and Western managerialism, as adapted to changing circumstances. But the essential element of the socialist ideal remains: to convert the means of production into the property of freely associated producers and thus the social property of people who have liberated themselves from exploitation by their master, as a fundamental step towards a broader realm of human freedom.

The Leninist intelligentsia have a different agenda. They fit Marx's description of the 'conspirators' who "pre-empt the developing revolutionary process" and distort it to their ends of domination; "Hence their deepest disdain for the more theoretical enlightenment of the workers about their class interests," which include the overthrow of the Red Bureaucracy and the creation of mechanisms of democratic control over production and social life. For the Leninist, the masses must be strictly disciplined, while the socialist will struggle to achieve a social order in which discipline "will become superfluous" as the freely associated producers "work for their own accord" (Marx). Libertarian socialism, furthermore, does not limit its aims to democratic control by producers over production, but seeks to abolish all forms of domination and hierarchy in every aspect of social and personal life, an unending struggle, since progress in achieving a more just society will lead to new insight and understanding of forms of oppression that may be concealed in traditional practice and consciousness.

The Leninist antagonism to the most essential features of socialism was evident from the very start. In revolutionary Russia, Soviets and factory committees developed as instruments of struggle and liberation, with many flaws, but with a rich potential. Lenin and Trotsky, upon assuming power, immediately devoted themselves to destroying the liberatory potential of these instruments, establishing the rule of the Party, in practice its Central Committee and its Maximal Leaders -- exactly as Trotsky had predicted years earlier, as Rosa Luxembourg and other left Marxists warned at the time, and as the anarchists had always understood. Not only the masses, but even the Party must be subject to "vigilant control from above," so Trotsky held as he made the transition from revolutionary intellectual to State priest. Before seizing State power, the Bolshevik leadership adopted much of the rhetoric of people who were engaged in the revolutionary struggle from below, but their true commitments were quite different. This was evident before and became crystal clear as they assumed State power in October 1917.

A historian sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, E.H. Carr, writes that "the spontaneous inclination of the workers to organize factory committees and to intervene in the management of the factories was inevitably encourage by a revolution with led the workers to believe that the productive machinery of the country belonged to them and could be operated by them at their own discretion and to their own advantage" (my emphasis). For the workers, as one anarchist delegate said, "The Factory committees were cells of the future... They, not the State, should now administer."

But the State priests knew better, and moved at once to destroy the factory committees and to reduce the Soviets to organs of their rule. On November 3, Lenin announced in a "Draft Decree on Workers' Control" that delegates elected to exercise such control were to be "answerable to the State for the maintenance of the strictest order and discipline and for the protection of property." As the year ended, Lenin noted that "we passed from workers' control to the creation of the Supreme Council of National Economy," which was to "replace, absorb and supersede the machinery of workers' control" (Carr). "The very idea of socialism is embodied in the concept of workers' control," one Menshevik trade unionist lamented; the Bolshevik leadership expressed the same lament in action, by demolishing the very idea of socialism.

Soon Lenin was to decree that the leadership must assume "dictatorial powers" over the workers, who must accept "unquestioning submission to a single will" and "in the interests of socialism," must "unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process." As Lenin and Trotsky proceeded with the militarization of labour, the transformation of the society into a labour army submitted to their single will, Lenin explained that subordination of the worker to "individual authority" is "the system which more than any other assures the best utilization of human resources" -- or as Robert McNamara expressed the same idea, "vital decision-making...must remain at the top...the real threat to democracy comes not from overmanagement, but from undermanagement"; "if it is not reason that rules man, then man falls short of his potential," and management is nothing other than the rule of reason, which keeps us free. At the same time, 'factionalism' -- i.e., any modicum of free expression and organization -- was destroyed "in the interests of socialism," as the term was redefined for their purposes by Lenin and Trotsky, who proceeded to create the basic proto-fascist structures converted by Stalin into one of the horrors of the modern age.1

Failure to understand the intense hostility to socialism on the part of the Leninist intelligentsia (with roots in Marx, no doubt), and corresponding misunderstanding of the Leninist model, has had a devastating impact on the struggle for a more decent society and a livable world in the West, and not only there. It is necessary to find a way to save the socialist ideal from its enemies in both of the world's major centres of power, from those who will always seek to be the State priests and social managers, destroying freedom in the name of liberation.

1 On the early destruction of socialism by Lenin and Trotsky, see Maurice Brinton, The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control. Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1978, and Peter Rachleff, Radical America, Nov. 1974, among much other work.

I like Chomsky, but still think he fails on several fronts as Roderick Long's great critique of Chomsky points out: http://c4ss.org/content/1659

The Power Elite and The Revolving Door

thanks to The Prime Directive for noting this: