Democracy an unknown system of government

My comments on the discussion at Deliberation and Structure.

Democracy is defined by its axiomatic principles. These to be satisfied one must invent appropriate instruments. This has been and still is the problem. From the discussion that is going on I get the impression that the method of constructing a citizens’ assembly is the use of lot. This tells me, that those who use this method of constructing citizens’ assemblies have no idea about the workings of democracy. Citizens’ assemblies are formed by all citizens of certain age in a region, in a city, in a state, in a nation. Meanwhile, in order for the citizens’ assembly to be operational we segment the entire population into small groups. A citizens’ assembly for an organization is made up of all its members. If the organization is large then the citizens’ assembly is segmented into smaller once. In those assemblies the participants pinpoint problems concerning their living standards or problems of a different nature. Which problems and in what order are to be solved the participants of the citizens’ assembly vote. The solving of these problems is what we call the development program of the region. The approved problems are being assigned to an infrastructure or infrastructures for solving them in the best possible way. These infrastructures are constructed in certain ways so as to make sure that the problems will be solved within the set timetable and as agreed.

Consumerocracy to better the conditions of the free market

In previous articles, I have presented the reasons that do not allow today’s supposedly democratic regimes to stop the frantic course of unfair and provocative distribution of the wealth produced. In the series of those articles I also presented a peaceful way, through which non-democratic regimes can be transformed into democratic ones, whose existence is essential for a market to function free. These ideas are found in greater details in my book entitled A Therapy for Dying Democracies, published by Dorrance Publishing Co., which aim at braking the course of corrupt capitalism and thus gradually freeing the free market from the chains with which it has been enslaved over time.

An important intervention in many areas of business’ activity is, in my steadfast opinion, the use of a special type of public company, by which it is possible to transform the market, controlled by speculators and monopolies, into a free one. The specificity of this company is due to the fact that it must satisfy certain prerequisites, which derive from a fundamental axiomatic principle of democracy that recognizes equal state or power status to each citizen.

On the basis of this principle of democracy, what could be the case in the field of consumption? But of course the obvious one which I call: consumerocracy, similar in meaning to democracy, where consumers in the field of consumption have equal power status, regardless of the volume of purchases made by each consumer. That is, the same low prices of goods and equal opportunities for all, something that unfair competition does not provide.

To deal with profiteering, the special type of company is used, which intervenes in ways that allow the instrument-tool of consumerocracy to give its customers-consumers the notorious equal state status. One way, in which the company achieves this for its clients, is the full return of its net profits to its customers-consumers, provided that the initial capital invested for the establishment of this special type of company remains at market value constant.

The way to democracy: democratically operating political parties

Sortition as a concept and as a method of selecting members of a deliberative group has been in the headlines for some time now and the most important gain the followers of sortition have gotten from it it is that more people now know about its purpose and of its use, especially as being a potential alternative to election for selecting members of a board of an organization or of other institutional bodies, as is the case of legislative assemblies for local, regional and national level.

The purpose of its use up to now, as far as I know, has been to bring into the deliberations of existing governmental legislative assemblies more democracy. This remains to be seen, for this new approach has first to be accepted by the present systems of government, which are based on their main futures on those of republicanism, which at the same time are being called democracies, even though they do not have any connection to democracy. Unless some of the followers of sortition have it as part of their revolutionary program through which they plan to get to power, even though revolutions have been abandoned even by the Marxists, since the time of Hitler’s lesson on how to grab power with only just through elections.

It is though about time to give more attention to the peaceful ways, which can lead to power without any revolutions and without methods creating abnormal conditions in the present republican systems of government, for the purpose of democracy is not to divide but to unite the people. That is what my approach, presented by articles and comments in this blog and in a more expanded way in my book with the title: A Therapy for Dying Democracies intends to do. In my view this approach has several advantages over other approaches on matters concerning the quality of representation and the method of materializing peacefully the objective, which is to have at last democracy at work.

Quality of representation through sortition is assured using appropriate prerequisites

In my article Democracy through sortition I mentioned that sortition is a tool and not an end in itself. That means for sortition to work it needs to be subject to certain constrains. This condition is neglected by many followers of sortition and that creates a problem, at least in when trying to make a political system to operate democratically. One such problem is created, concerning quality of representation in a legislative body, like a parliament, when sortition neglects to take into consideration the use of prerequisites.

Sortition was used in the first democracy in ancient Athens, in order to select, from teams of volunteers, 500 parliamentarians for a term of one year, 50 from each of the 10 districts with equal population. The prerequisites for one to be selected through sortition as a member of parliament in a district were: He had to be a Greek, a member of a district, 30 years of age and older among others. The question may arise as to whether these prerequisites were sufficient in order for the representation to be, concerning its quality, sufficiently appropriate. The operation of that parliament started around 509 B.C. and for more than half a century the parliamentarians, while working all year around, were not paid for their services. So the members of a district that were working for a living, even if they wanted to be among those in the teams of volunteers, it was, objectively, not possible and there were many of them. Another difficulty for the citizens to participate was the distance to Athens from the place they lived, which to many of them was a major obstacle. In any case the fact is that, even in the first democracy, prerequisites were used!

Through Sortition to democracy

Sortition is a tool and not an end in itself. For that matter democracy, a super tool, is not an end in itself either. What is an end in itself is the welfare of all, not of the few, nor of the many, but for all people in a community, in a region, in a nation, in the planet. This can only be achieved if the well-known axiomatic principles of democracy can be satisfied. Having this always in our mind we will avoid into falling into a dogmatic trap, into which Adam Smith and his followers or Marx and his followers fell.

The introduction of sortition with constraints to politics was done by the ancient Greeks in Athens, around 509 B.C., for the purpose of serving the first democratic system of government instituted by Klisthenis. That first experiment of democracy was partially successful, mainly because sortition was used to select political officers. What prevented it from succeeding in all of its objectives were the workings of the citizens’ assembly.

The objective of using sortition in politics is to obtain assemblies of political officers that will be free from any dependence, especially the type of dependence that is a result of collusion or corruption. On the basis that the tool of election, always, produces collusion and corruption, if we really are for democracy, the option is one that of sortition with appropriate constraints. The use of constraints is necessary in order for the process to be completed successfully and thus for those noble objectives of democracy to become a reality. The constraints come in the form of prerequisites which have to be satisfied by those who will be allotted for the assembly.

Today in most of the countries of the planet political parties is the basis of all political activities. So, if we want to make a peaceful transition from today’s so called democracies to real democracies, we have to start with what we have. The first job we all have to do is obtain, eventually, political parties that will be freed from all the types of cliques that dance with collusion and corruption, so as to operate democratically. This can be achieved by using an appropriate sortition process, instead of elections, for selecting the members of all the party organs. This constitutes a major step towards democracy, which will bring more people to party activities which now stay out of them because of the operations of the cliques. A development of this type will further enhance the quality of representation, which will be also reflected in assemblies like parliaments and city hall councils. Changes of this sort in party operations need no constitutional changes for them to proceed. Political parties may not like this idea, but they may be forced to follow once new parties start appearing with these new democratic face. More details on this can be found in my book A Therapy for Dying Democracies, published by Dorrance Publishing Co., USA.

The problem with an election

Election is a tool and not an end in itself. It was first used by the Latins around 500 B.C. under the republican system of government. It is used today to elect political and other type of officers. The thinking behind its use is that it expresses the wishes of the majority of the people and therefore it is considered, from time immemorial, to be a democratic action. In fact the tool named election is considered to be synonymous with the word democracy. You use elections to select officers of any kind? Then you have democracy. It is difficult for one to have an objection to a process like this, if it is free of any kind of interference. But even so, as the result is being interpreted, the process does suffer from the syndrome of the tyranny of the majority.

At this point we have to answer the question: can the election process be free of interference? The answer, on the basis of the up to date experience, is: Never! No matter what precautions one may invent in order to take interference out of the electoral process at the end no one succeeds. The political candidate has as an objective to be elected and the voter or voters of all kinds have as an objective to benefit in some way, or to profit, to exploit, or to control the officer’s future actions because of his need to be reelected. The voter may be a simple citizen who wants to benefit just himself not all citizens. He may be a business man, a company, a syndicate, and much more badly an enemy of the nation!

The interference, sooner or later, is, objectively, produced. Collusion and many times corruption, as well, go always hand in hand with the election. It is a couple that never gets divorced. There is a possibility that this may happen and that is the case when the nation enjoys the benefits provided by a truly democratic state. Even then this will not happen immediately after democracy sets in, because it will take a lot of time and effort for the values of the members of the whole society to change from values that have been promoted for centuries by the axiomatic principle: everybody for himself to values where the priority of all members of the society is the good for all, not the few, not the many but for all. For the same reason all the different types of citizens’ assemblies of our days face the same problem. What we need to have is a cultured society, whose characteristic trait is the humane stand of life, which only democracy can provide.

I find it difficult to believe that the citizens of the world prefer to have a type of democracy in which collusion and corruption dominate its vital business, which is the wellbeing of all citizens and that is the reason I am optimistic that with effort the change will come.