‘Democracy doesn’t come from the top, it comes from the bottom. Democracy is not what governments do, it’s what people do.’
- Howard Zinn
‘Salus populi suprema est lex.’ (The good of the people is the chief law.)
- Cicero — ‘De Legibus’.
‘One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.’
- Plato — ‘The Republic’.
‘Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.’
- Charles de Gaulle
My Dad and I usually watched the evening news together. From time to time Dad would shout something at the television. I made it a policy not to comment on these outbursts so that domestic harmony might be maintained. Besides which, Dad’s comments were often difficult to decipher. His politics remained a mystery.
Apart from the news, we tuned into one other programme on a regular basis — staying up late to see it. This was the BBC’s long-running political discussion show, ‘Question Time’. We sat with tea and biscuits as audiences fired questions at the panel, mostly made up of MP’s.
One very memorable and somewhat controversial episode of the show featured the leader of the British National Party, Nick Griffin. Inevitably questions about immigration were raised. Mr. Griffin gave a very tortured and convoluted explanation about his party’s policies. Dad seemed to be mesmerised — a biscuit half-way between plate and mouth — as the discussion continued. Then someone asked Mr. Griffin about his attitude towards homosexuality. This time his answer was a lot more personal and his feelings on this matter were palpable.
Thinking about the programme afterwards I wondered if Mr. Griffin would have been better to have spoken about immigrants the way he spoke about gays. This at least would have been honest and more genuine, even whilst his views would likely not please many of the audience.
The BNP has since been banned as a political party in the UK, but there are still plenty of right-wing organisations to take its place. Question Time continues to be criticised for the balance of guests it has on the programme.
When I was still a child my Dad and I used to watch a BBC documentary programme together — ‘Horizon’. My Dad was a man without affectations and would not have feigned interest in something just to please someone — even his son! So there was a genuine wonder of science and technology and an ongoing interest in politics. Words can be divisive and squaring our words with our thoughts and feelings is one of our greatest challenges as individuals and as societies. Openness though is surely a good first step. Dad’s words were often confusing, but he was blessed with an inquisitive mind.
Gandhi’s social sin of Politics without Principle is especially relevant to this chapter. It’s not that there aren’t a lot of principles around, the problem is how the principles relate, or don’t relate, to what actually gets done. We have touched on the notion that ideals can be too abstract and therefore difficult to apply in the real world. As such, a certain pragmatism is required. That is the careful balance that needs to be struck by governance. It is the same that we have identified for utopia.
For many of us our attitude to government can be somewhat complacent and as long as things run along relatively peacefully governments are apt to ignore the dark clouds gathering on the horizon. In order to have a quiet life, there will be little compromises — which someone has described as people getting together to decide to do the wrong thing! Vision and principle are ignored for what is described as ‘pragmatic’. But this is not pragmatism, it’s expediency. Genuine pragmatism keeps an eye on the future. Genuine pragmatism is principled. Perhaps the greatest threat is that there is no vision to a politics premised on expediency — that careful balance of pragmatism and idealism is thrown out the window in favour of what seems most popular or ‘useful’ at the time, often for the benefit of the careers or pockets of those in power. As such, it is easy for people to be disillusioned with politics and with politicians. And it is easy, as we sink ever deeper into our own Privatopias, to turn our backs on all such matters and just get on with trying to make the best for ourselves and our families, working the system to our own advantage. If politics is lacking in principle then it is tempting to cynically disregard principles in our own lives.
Parapolity
In the last chapter we looked at small-scale communities and the principle of subsidiarity, where decision-making is relevant to the people who will be directly affected by whatever policies are under consideration. This is the beginning of a participatory politics — for which I am using the term ‘Parapolity’ in this book. As I’ve suggested in the previous chapter, large-scale governance needs to be very much an extension of the small-scale community — the bottom-up politics. We noted in Chapter 4 that this type of governance system is one already proposed by some anarchist thinkers — the federations and assemblies of Proudhon, amongst others.1 The arrangements are along the lines of Sociocracy — with wider and wider circles dealing with broader policy decisions affecting larger numbers. The scale-up is not so difficult. Stephen Shalom has devised a structure of Parapolity that bears a remarkable similarity to Sociocracy.
Parapolity has different shades of meaning. For instance, it is sometimes used to describe a ‘peoples vote’ for particular decisions, as currently practised in Switzerland. This is known as direct democracy, but is not what I have in mind (although arguably referenda are a step in the right direction).
Parapolity can also be the federations and assemblies model — the bottom-up politics we began discussing in the last chapter. (This form of governance is sometimes described as ‘cellular’ or ‘associationalist’.) The federation model is where people are chosen by the small, local groups to serve in the next wider circle, and so on, right out to the largest circle of governance at national level. It is this bottom-up system of local councils, building to assemblies and parliaments that I am mainly taking to be the core of participatory politics in this book. Another form of Parapolity is where people are chosen by lot to serve in a Citizens’ Assembly or a People’s Parliament. This process is referred to as ‘sortition’. The two types of Parapolity, cellular and sortition — are sometimes collectively referred to as ‘deliberative democracy’.
So Parapolity is the system where, it is suggested, we can have governance by the many, without the difficulties that are often encountered by democracies. We saw in Chapter 4, that one issue with democracy is that if everyone has a direct vote then we may have a problem in ensuring that decisions are fully considered. We could add here the problem of there sometimes being a large number of people who have voted against a particular decision — who may indeed outnumber those who carry the decision, if more than two options are being considered. A further problem, touched on in Chapter 4, is the tyranny of the majority issue, where a majority vote for a really bad and harmful decision. To try to address these problems, in many countries we have representative democracies. The representatives can weigh up decisions and try to agree what the people might have chosen, had the people fully considered the questions in hand. Hopefully, therefore, a tyranny of the majority can be avoided. But then there is the problem of those who represent us making decisions without reference back to ourselves. These problems of democracy are the problems Parapolity hopes to address. In Parapolity everyone decides for everyone. Parapolity offers the opportunity for pragmatic governance that will give everyone a voice. Parapolity will especially give people the opportunity to engage with issues specific to their location. Using the terms in our commons chapter, Parapolity seeks to make governance a social commons — or perhaps it is better expressed by saying that a social commons is the means for creating governance. I don’t mean to imply that Parapolity is a perfect system of governance. Sometimes it will still result in poor choices, but with people directly involved, changes will be keenly felt. My hope is that this would result in bad choices being quickly put right.
Thomas Jefferson proposed: ‘Counties be divided into wards of such size that every citizen can attend, when called on, and act in person.’ He continues: ‘Making every citizen an acting member of government, and in the offices nearest and most interesting to him, will attach him by his strongest feelings to the independence of his county and its republican constitution.’ (Letter from Jefferson to Kercheval of 12th July 1816.)
John Stuart Mill was also a keen advocate of what we are describing as Parapolity. Without a share in public life, Mill wrote, the citizen, ‘never thinks of any collective interest, or any objects to be pursued jointly with others, but only in competition with them, and in some measure at their expense… A neighbour, not being an ally or an associate, since he is never engaged in any common undertaking for joint benefit, is therefore only a rival.’ The engaged citizen, by contrast, ‘is called upon… to weigh interests not his own; to be guided in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities… He is made to feel himself one of the public, and whatever is for their benefit is also to be for his benefit.’ (John Stuart Mill — Considerations on Representative Government.)
In this book I am making what is described as the proceduralist argument for Parapolity (see Chapter 4), in that I think that everyone having a voice counts as a necessary basis for true democracy, even if sometimes it may result in poor decisions. At the same time though — along the lines of anarchist federations and assemblies — this is in some measure a consequentialist position, as it is open to changing circumstances.
Parapolity — Scaling up from Neighbourhood to Nation
When we looked at community on a small scale we saw that there are ‘dominator hierarchies’ and there are ‘reciprocal hierarchies’. ‘Power Over’ is a dominator hierarchy. Power-With implies reciprocity. In the ongoing effort to govern ourselves sensibly, we need less of the former and more of the latter. We very much need reciprocal hierarchy. Whatever one’s views on the origins of power and hierarchy, these matters, I feel, need to be addressed. We cannot pretend that everyone already has an equal say — especially in terms of political equality. That is why systems like Sociocracy, and its extension to Parapolity, are so valuable. The structure of Sociocracy itself, and its broader application in Parapolity, helps protect against the more negative aspects of human nature that may erode our trust. Hierarchy is acknowledged, whilst everything is done to make sure that people do not exploit power and position to the detriment of others. There may well be a Nick Griffin, or someone like him, whose views are difficult for most of us to accept. The point of all the checks and balances built into Sociocracy and Parapolity is to avoid such people carrying large numbers of others with them, when, in fact, majorities would find some opinions unreasonable and unjust. But certainly, Nick Griffins would be heard — these, after all, are the voices of dissent. As we saw in the previous chapter, Sociocracy stresses the importance of dissent. The opportunity for dissent at all levels is critical. In Parapolity, the local levels seem to offer the greatest opportunity for dissent, but if the system performs well, it should carry outwards to the wider circles. So a concern can work its way through all levels and be fully discussed until it is resolved.
As with Sociocracy, Parapolity might take small circles of local interest — the street, neighbourhood and town — and carry them outwards to the wider circles of governance. The wider circles of Parapolity would be answerable to their grass roots, in a way that is very much more transparent and reliable than our current systems of elected officials. I am suggesting therefore that it is the grass-roots level of neighbourhoods, streets and communities that would decide on the appointments to the wider circles of town, county, region and nation. If no-one shows up for a neighbourhood meeting, the next wider circle of governance will decide things for them. Some people will be chosen from neighbourhoods to represent at the next level up (next wider circle) and so on. The hope is that this will be on the basis of a proven competence at the more local level — in other words, those who take up positions in wider circles of, say, town, region or nation, will have shown their ability on the more local scales. So, in some ways, there is an element of meritocracy to this proposal, but hopefully without the drawbacks that we discussed in Chapter 4. We could say that the ‘meritocracy’ is on the basis of a proven competence and not some arbitrary measure of intelligence, or indeed, personal charm.
We saw, in the last chapter, concerns over the awkward individual who may disrupt the neighbourhood meeting with petty concerns. Annoying as this would be, at least it is not going to have any major impact on people’s lives. A neighbourhood would really be about voluntary co-operation, so we also have the opportunity to walk away. As we move to the wider circles of government however, the concerns become more serious. To a certain extent, it would be ordinary people who would be making the important decisions about things that affect everyone. All of this brings us back to the issue of trust. Can we trust ordinary people any more or less than we currently trust politicians to carry out the big tasks of government for us? Some have suggested this is not possible. By contrast, James Fishkin (When the People Speak) provides strong arguments that deliberative democracy and Parapolity genuinely is effective at allowing ordinary people to understand arguments and move towards making informed choices. Meanwhile Chantal Mouffe sees the whole process as worthwhile and effective, even if there is an element of dissent.2
One of the concerns raised in the Introduction is the polarising of politics. Hearing dissent carefully and fully is a way to avoid polarisation, not to stir it up. If we are mature enough, and we have the correct systems in place, then all opinions can be voiced, heard and responded to. With the checks and balances of a good system there is a greater level of responsibility and accountability. I suggest that a nation that adopts Parapolity would be a better place to live because it would allow all opinions to be examined in a clear light.
Government, in its current form, is very much an institution and as such, prey to the problems of hierarchies that become fossilised with time and can be sickly and deadening structures of embedded power. Parapolity would hope to avoid this impasse. So electing people from our grass-roots neighbourhood councils and just letting them get on with it is not enough. As we scale up, from neighbourhoods and streets, to towns and regions of cities, the decision-making and administration necessarily becomes more complex. All of this, of course, ceases to be an occasional voluntary meeting between neighbours and starts to become part-time and full-time employment for the participants. As with our current systems then, the Parapolity becomes the legislature, but there remains the need for administrative and executive branches, to implement decisions (the ‘assemblies’ aspect of the anarchists’ federations and assemblies). So the wider levels of Parapolity have an ‘executive’ arm, responsible for carrying out the day to day implementation of the decisions that are made. There is a layering of decision-making — from the local to the national — and there is some kind of bureaucracy — administrative and executive staff that carries out the decisions of the legislature. Within the offices of government itself then, there is the need for the types of sociocratic structures we discussed in the last chapter. The Parapolity is only for the legislative decisions. The assemblies of the executive and judicial powers (in the UK, the civil service and the courts) remain separate, and indeed become more clearly defined. The work of the executive and judiciary is mainly functional — the decision-making is largely with the legislative Parapolity. However, as no-one is above the law, the judiciary would still have the power to oppose decisions of a Parapolity if, for instance, they were contrary to international law or the country’s constitution. After A.C. Grayling (The Good State) another suggestion is an independent institution (we might say assembly) that will assess the performance of the governance body (the legislative Parapolity, or whatever) and ensure adherence to a code of conduct and to the nation’s constitution. All of this is aimed at preventing governance becoming institutionalised — to keep it evolving and pro-active as it deals with real people and real situations.
If we can keep a sensible conversation going, then below is set out the federation of federations we might achieve, along the lines of Stephen Shalom’s system, referred to above. Similar proposals were made some time back by David Hume, in his essay, The Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth. The reader will see that despite only seven levels of governance, the number of people represented quickly stack up to staggering proportions. Even the smallest numbers result in more households than the roughly 2.5 billion world total estimated at the time of writing:
Neighbourhood — 20 to 40 households.
Community/Village — 20 to 40 neighbourhoods — 400 to 1,600 households.
Town/District — 20 to 40 communities — 8,000 to 64,000 households.
County/City — 20 to 40 towns/districts — 160,000 to 2,560,000 households.
Region — 20 to 40 counties — 3,200,000 to 102,400,000 households.
Nation — 5 to 10 regions — 16,000,000 to 1,024,000,000 households.
World — 200 countries — 3,200,000,000 to 204,800,000,000 households.
All this is not without precedence. Richard Sennet (Building and Dwelling) tells of a system from Brazil:
‘An early example of an open urban network occurred in Porto Alegre in Brazil, home to participatory budgeting — a bottom-up way of distributing economic resources… The process began in loose neighbourhood assemblies which debated how to spend money on school, health clinics and local infrastructure. Access at this level was totally open. The data, never perfect, was organised so it could be debated. Conflicts between neighbourhoods were dealt with by elected representatives who had to report back to their neighbourhoods. The system flourished for about twenty years, before becoming somewhat squashed by top-down power, but even more by the shear scale of people wanting to be included as the city grew.’ (See also, Erik Olin Wright and Archon Fung — Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance.)
People’s Parliaments and Citizens’ Assemblies
In the foregoing discussion, we have looked at one version of Parapolity. The system discussed was a follow-on from the ideas of Sociocracy, with ever-widening circles of governance covering wider areas of geography and larger populations. We could loosely describe this as a system of federations, as alluded to in this and earlier chapters — and, as we noted above — this type of governance is sometimes known as cellular or associationalist democracy. The circle at the national level, could be regarded as one form of People’s Parliament.
Sortition is the basis of another form of People’s Parliament and for Citizens’ Assemblies. In a Citizens’ Assembly, (sometimes referred to as a ‘mini-public’) ordinary citizens are selected by lot and invited to meet together over a specified period of time to deliberate over a specific issue. The method has been used extensively, in many countries, although it is often just to gauge the response of the electorate to a particular issue, which will then be further debated and legislated by a more usual form of elected government. A first step towards a more inclusive government therefore, might be for elected governments to be obliged to take the decisions of Citizens’ Assemblies as legally binding.
Where a Citizens’ Assembly sits for a longer duration, say perhaps a year or two, then it is performing more like a government and deliberating over a wider range of issues. Sometimes, this more established form of Citizen’s Assembly is also referred to as a People’s Parliament. So, as described above, these are the two possible types of alternative parliament. One type is the ‘federation’, or cellular type — where members are elected via the grass-roots, neighbourhood, town, and county levels. The further type of People’s Parliament is the sortition type, where members are chosen directly from the general population, by lot. Citizens’ Assemblies are, in a way, the stepping stone to this second type of People’s Parliament. (See, in particular, Kevin O’Leary — Saving Democracy and James Fishkin — Democracy When the People are Thinking and When the People Speak.) Rousseau thought that because serving in the government should be a duty rather than a privilege, then choosing our representatives by lot is the only fair way to give us democracy. The process of sortition itself — and the original meaning of ‘republican’, from res publica, of the people — refers back to the ancient Greek principle of choosing members of the agora by lot to serve for a term (although women and slaves were still excluded, so we would not want to accept it wholesale).
I want to stress again, at this point in our discussions, that all the forms of polity that we have been examining in this chapter and the previous chapter are only suggestions. The very first issue that needs to be addressed, before any new form of governance is adopted, is why we do not have a say in what type of government we have in the first place. It might be, in trying to answer that question, people will want to stay with exactly the system they have now, and we will be touching on this possibility in later chapters. But just to have that choice, in the first instance, is something that most of us, in almost every country in the world, have never been allowed. I think this must make us stop and think exactly what freedom, choice, equality, justice and fairness mean when this remains the case.
Parecon
Much of today’s economics just pre-supposes a market economy, where we ‘consumers’ have wishes that guide our purchases — everything reduced to commodity. The aim of the economy is to achieve ‘productive efficiency’ and ‘allocation efficiency’, so we produce the right amount of stuff and we distribute it efficiently to the people that want it. This sounds reasonable, until we step back and realise that these two mechanisms are based on wants rather than needs. No matter how crazy the wants, someone will produce to satisfy them. Meanwhile those with pressing needs may not have those needs satisfied if they do not have the money to buy the goods. The purpose of the economy is to achieve a state where no-one could be made better off without making someone else worse off. This aim is referred to as the ‘Pareto Criterion’ after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto. Many economists suggest that a market economy is the best way to achieve the Pareto Criterion. It is difficult to believe, however, that anyone seriously thinks the Pareto Criterion is satisfied by the present state of the world. For one thing, some economists point out that even an extremely unjust distribution of resources could qualify as ‘Pareto optimum’. Sometimes ‘Pareto efficient’ is used as an alternative term, but this is really no better. The profligate lifestyle of Western nations has destroyed the lives of millions in poorer nations and is on track to destroy millions more. So the market economy is very successful within the bounds of consumption and production, provided wider considerations are downplayed or ignored. An alternative might be to look at the economists’ choice phrase, ‘opportunity cost’ and apply it to whole societies and nations, rather than just to individuals. Instead, the market, based on individual needs, tends to take over. We may echo Lionel Jospin’s words, ‘Yes to the market economy, no to the market society’. (see Chapter 7 for more on opportunity cost.) In a similar vein, we might ask if the problem is not so much with the market economy itself as with who is running the markets.
The alternative to a market economy is often described as a ‘planned economy’ or a command economy. One form of planned economy, referred to as ‘participatory economics’ — or Parecon — takes up some of the methods described above in Sociocracy and Parapolity and applies them to the more administrative and executive tasks of production and distribution within society. Michael Albert, the activist who has arguably done the most to promote Parecon, has described its potential workings. Albert’s books, Parecon, Practical Utopia, and Realising Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism, provide excellent detail.
Albert to some extent assumes that there has been a significant change to the political system in order to allow Parecon to be fully adopted. He seems fully supportive of a Parapolity along the lines of Stephen Shalom’s ideas, but pre-empts the decision to implement the planned economy. I think this takes away from the style of governance we would have under a Parapolity. If people really are to decide then the very first decision to make is whether we actually want a participatory politics at all, and if so, in what form. Then the Parapolity has to decide if it wants a Parecon. It might stick with a market economy or try to introduce Parecon gradually. I think a gradual implementation of an alternative economic model is possible and indeed desirable. We could, for instance, start with the large infrastructure projects where the political decisions are generally much more prevalent than market forces. Why is it that government can decide on deployment of nuclear weapons in our country without us even having a say (except by voting for a political party that either opposes or accepts them)? Why can we not be fully involved in decisions over airports, the power grid, the use of fossil fuels, new railways? It is then only a small step towards decisions about planning policies, house design, car design and food supply. If we are happy with the results of Parecon, and see it working out in society, then we may well choose to extend the process. As business changes to more sociocratic and co-operative principles and Parecon determines with local businesses what goods and services are provided, capitalism is not so much overthrown as simply changed over time until it is unrecognisable. The point I’m trying to make here is that it is not a straight choice between markets or a planned economy — capitalism as it stands or no capitalism at all. If we are given the opportunity, we can choose to do things differently and see what works.
Left and Right
We have not, thus far, had much to say about our various political alternatives being either left-wing or right-wing. Arguably, for the UK and America, the mainstream parties are all very much in the centre ground, and all seem supportive of continuing with capitalism and continuing with market economies. All stress the importance of the economy to the prosperity of society and have less concern with the cultural and social aspects of society, which perhaps they view as being mostly outwith their domain (although they may pay lip serve to the importance of community and culture in their manifesto promises).
Having looked at anarchist principles in particular in Chapter 4, we might conclude that the ideas discussed so far are more of the left than of the right. But, and from the above, we might also conclude that these ideas are a long way from what is currently on offer from, say, Britain’s Labour Party or America’s Democrats. The left, it could be argued, is out of touch, if not actually somewhat contemptuous, of the ordinary folk that their efforts are supposedly aimed to help. The concern is something raised by activist Matthew Arnold, whom we discussed above. There is an entertaining Youtube clip (actually just audio) of Arnold speaking about a college campus in a small American town dominated by its allegiance to sports. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-1_8NZ2At8) The college has a leftist movement of about 300 people. Arnold asks if any have been to a sports game. Only three. Arnold describes a large sports bar in the town — the ideal place, he suggests, to meet people and discuss ideas about how to help ordinary folks. The suggestion goes down like a lead balloon. In a similar vein, Graham Greene long ago suggested that the motivation of the intellectual left is actually a hatred of the rich rather than compassion for the poor. Politicians on the right meanwhile seem to be pursuing what is described as a ‘neo-liberal’ agenda. Neo-liberalism seeks for freedom from government’s interference with all aspects of our lives (although weirdly this seems to lead to more bureaucracy, not less). Neo-liberalism seems actually contradictory to the ideas of conservatism and republicanism, so both our left-wing and right-wing political parties seem to be conflicted. The right seems to be increasingly ‘populist’ and especially with regard to nationalism. This is a worrying trend, in opposition to the left’s traditional championing of internationalism. The basic dichotomy is between the right-wing demand for freedom and the left-wing demand for equality. We will p