Mass demand for direct democracy

May 14, 2001

Anybody who, in this day and age, promotes the delegate system in the electoral process as being more modern and further advanced than the "one-man-one-vote" approach has to be a dinosaur.

The only ideal, the most fundamental demand, of all humanity from time immemorial has and always will be that "every cook, every Jack and every Jill must govern", and every damn dog must have a say.

It may not have always been expressed in those exact terms but the masses of people all over the world have always, at key moments, at precise junctures in their social development, demonstrated their intentions and deep desire for direct democracy. Even if the appropriate "articulation" of this demand may not have had political prominence.

And someone like myself would then argue that if the appropriate articulation of the necessity for forms of direct democracy was not politically prominent, it was because what was objectively possible at the given juncture did not allow for such an articulation. That is what is meant philosophically by the phrase "an idea whose time has come".

If the objective conditions are not yet sufficiently ripe, then "the idea" remains an "utopian dream" without scientific basis to ground into reality and "the idea" would not yet be fully and clearly articulated as part of general consciousness.

What then are the objective conditions that allowed for the coming into being of the "delegate system" or "representative democracy" as idea, and similarly, what are the conditions necessary for "one-man-one-vote" or "direct democracy"?

The level of development of all societies without exception is predicated on how much these societies prove able to free their members from the day-to-day requirements of survival and reproduction and allow them leisure time to engage their minds in social, cultural and political/civic pursuits.

It is the quality of such pursuits and the quantum of individuals and/or percentages of the various social groupings freed for such engagements that make the difference. The quality and quantum of the intelligentsia and the role they play in triggering all of society to see who they are and to comprehend the possibilities at any given stage.

It is at that specific point in the development of a society when the intelligentsia is marginal and information is the preserve of a very limited few that "representative democracy" in quite various but limited forms could be the only reality, given the fact that the huge bulk of society was still caught up in their survival mechanisms.

It would take the emergence of a system of mass production of commodities that would take humanity away from the brink of constant scarcity and into the new realm of surpluses which, in turn, would create the objective basis for an age of enlightenment. Leisure and pursuits of the mind would then become more generalised.

The structures of "parliaments" (talk shops), "political parties" and "trade unions" would then take the representative democratic process to a much higher level. The delegate system as a means of expediting the will of the many in their annual or biennial mass membership conventions would become the order of the day.

But as time went by, even this form outlived its usefulness as more and more people acquired skills and specialised training within the production process and the service sectors, as formalised education became the norm for all and the professional middle groups multiplied a thousandfold.

The delegates in their fixed councils and committees have now been found wanting. Particularly so as they in time established relationships between themselves and the maximum leaders or leaderships that tended to become "incestuous" at the expense of genuine representation of the masses in convention.

In addition, new developments take place today with such speed that delegates are constantly forced to take positions without consultation with the mass. Expediency, of course, is always the excuse for the general abuse of the process and the disempowerment of the mass.

Today, in this globalised world, where information technology is the prime commodity and is accessible to 75 per cent of the entire population of the planet, the reverse will be the case. The general demand and political tendency will be for direct mass democracy. There will be no compromise on this.

How can anyone maintain that it is easier to compromise the integrity of the "one-man-one-vote" than it is to compromise the "delegate system" and that the delegate system is more faithful to structure?

There is a serious flaw in such a conception. The flaw is this: it is not the structures themselves that enrich the spirit of democracy, it is the self-activity, the fact of people acting on their own behalf constantly, which creates the enrichment. The delegate system removes "activity" from the base itself and places it elsewhere.

It is necessary to recall the words of Fr Henry Charles in the debate on the pros and cons of a foreign administrator for the local Catholic Church: "There are times in church history when there came demands for organisational fidelity and a return to structure but persons matter more than structures; the vitality which drives renewal is never the child of structure. Structures are needed, but they are only instrumental, they convert and save no one...".

The crux of the matter is the spirit of activity. Structures without the spirit of activity, in other words, form without content, reduce people to being "dried-out old bones". Those who fail to understand that do so at their own peril. Listen and listen well:

Until there is no power other than or above the masses of people organised to the very last person in their communities and work sites, there will be struggle for freedom.