Socialist Democracy

What socialists have to say about democracy is inadequate. It is unclear, it is ambiguous oh, it does not make a lot of sense.

Albert describes democracy as a system where everybody impacted by a particular decision will participating and making that decision. (Parecon 40) There are a number of objections to that view. I am impacted by many decisions which I do not want to participate in: traffic tickets garbage collection, fixing potholes EtcThe garbage collectors should have a large say. The say of homeowners should be more moderate. Shuttling conflicts between the has already been written about. This Criterion for participation is clearly ambiguous. Take the example Albert uses in Parecon (40) of placing family pictures on my desk in a large office. Is it obvious that this only affect me if the office manager is really bent out of shape by my personal pictures. The extent to which some decision affects of a particular person depends very much on how strongly they feel about something. If I don't care a lot about those pictures but the office manager cares about there being nothing on anyone's desk except pens and paper, then it is he who is most strongly affected.But some people care excessively about something meaning by that that they are involved in a decision where they have no business being involved. Determining the degree to which someone is affected by a decision seems a very difficult and challenging effort.

Charles Mills in Towards a New Socialism" " political equality is equality of citizenship: that people should have equal input into and influence over the processes of government, which is usually taken to translate into the ideals of democracy . . . . for example voting rights ( one-person-one-vote] the freedom to run for office, and self-government through representative political rule. " It is not obvious to me that open " equal input" means the same thing as " one person one vote. " consider what " equal input " might mean: Making proposals, defending proposals on the basis of extensive technical knowledge, developing powerful critiques of proposals, explaining the context in which the current disagreement arises, raising a problem in the first place and persuading that it is a real and moreover pressing problem. All of those are forms of input but they have little to do with voting and certainly not with every person having one vote.Add true that the observation made by Beitz that people may have each one vote but the boats carry different Power for instance in the case of gerrymandering. Other situations are where I cast my vote in a group of 10 or in a group of hundred twenty million. 

How will this be different from capitalist democracy? One answered talks about open " socialist man " but that's answer is circular socialism and socialist democracy can exist only if human beings have already changed. But they can change only if there is already socialism, if the change has already taken place.

Democracy is pretty much what it is today but by changing the economic system namely giving everyone a voucher at Birth and reducing economic inequality the Dynamics of self-regarding voting will be different.

This is a particularly interesting topic. Socialist usually do not talk about the military and police in a socialist country. But will we not have to prepare to defend ourselves against other countries? The information is to say that in a socialist world there is going to be no war. Martin would defend that claim by saying that capitalism is the cause of wars and that one's we surrender of the practice of economic competition wars will be a matter of the past. Does history bear that out? Think, for instance, religious wars. What is there connection to capitalism?Here is a topic for further study.And what about the police? Once we have a socialist economy, will there be no more lawbreaking. If a Collective owns a number of triple-deckers in Worcester, will they be sure to take good care of their buildings, make sure the heat works in the winter and be quick in fixing the roof when it leaks? Will they not need some pressure to obey the relevant ordinances because doing so will decrease their income? Will they be generous in returning security deposits? Will they listen to tenant complaints even from querulous and often unreasonable tenants?What about taxes, attend meetings (e.g courts of law, talk to the school principle in your kid's school).Will there be illegitimate drug deals under socialism? Selling used cars as running well when they are about to die? See the Federalist Papers, Hamilton p.5 insists that government is necessary tyo protect liberty, for instance against foreign powers, but also against domestic threats by demagogues and tyrants. But in order to have a strong government, citizens need to give up some rights. We need to limit liberty in order to protect it. Here is one more dilemma.

Free speech is clearly very important to democracy. At the same time you need to be alive to fascist speech, to speech that's clearly hostile to democracy. If you will allow that sort of speech, you may very well have fascist candidates win . You may very well encourage terrorists to win adherents and have them commit acts of violence. Terrorist violence will, in turn, encourage anti-democratic measures in the population that feels threatened by terrorists.There is clearly a good deal to be said for kicking certain hardcore terrorists off Facebook as has happened recently. But it is not to be defended as a democratic move. Here is the second Dilemma of democracy.

Central to a democracy is voting on the part of citizens. The extent to which citizens vote wisely and in the interest of all the citizens depends on their knowledge of their own history, their understanding democracy, how well they understand and are informed about different candidates oh, and the extent to which they can see through fascist propaganda and recognize it for what it is. Important also is their dedication to democracy , their awareness racist tropes and their willingness to resist those.In order to have a well-educated electorate, you need to have an educational system that is carefully thought out who produce a citizenry that will resist anti-democratic and agitation and will be firm and its support for democracy.This would involve fine tuning of the educational system and what people are supposed to learn and how they are supposed to read their history which will go against Democratic impulses towards local control of schools giving parents a say in what their children are going to learn.Here is the third dilemma of democracy.

The Democratic impulse is to say that all important decisions should be made by the citizens. Whatever affect my life should be open to me to decide together with all the other people affected by a given decision. But if we take this literally I will spend my life in meetings. Some- in fact many--decisions I would be just as happy to leave to the city government , or the state, Etc. That means street cleaning , traffic tickets, water and gas, dog licenses and many other similar issues. I will give attention to those no one takes seriously such as the weeds in the pond.Here is another dilemma - how much time will I spend on these public issues is over against going to my kids soccer games or going to their schools, or going bowling or playing in the symphony. It is not obvious that there is a correct choice here. We cannot both have the convenience of government regulating all aspects of our lives and wanting to run our lives ourselves There are many: roads, garbage disposal, licenses for dogs, etc. marriage licenses. School finance. Who decides how much money will go to schools? Taxes: who sets the tax rate, assesses property and collects taxes, and gives special deals to the elderly? Citizens at large do not want to run that. They already have too many meetings to go to. Who makes the relevant decisions, hires more workers, makes sure there is money to pay them, organizes trainings. How to find people to do what no one wants to do? All citizens do a bit. Good idea. Who will organize that?

democratic action requires leadership.Someone needs to make sure that meetings are called, that someone runs the meeting, takes notes, etc. Someone must get the group to make an agenda, to follow certain agreed upon procedures.Someone must make sure that everyone does between meetings that they have agreed to do,Someone must speak for the group, keep the files.In groups where everyone is very active and involved in participation, the leader will be barely necessary but someone must take responsibility when most members have been mobilized and are fighting at the border. There are different ideas about what a socialist society might be like. There are the market socialist and there are different variety of those. One disagreement deals with the extent of the market. Some people look forward to a finance and labor market. (Roemer) Others wanted to Market only products. (Schwerickart). Then there are the Democratic planning people who regard Market socialism as anathema. Suppose capitalism has collapsed and there is now intense conflict between these different kinds of socialism. We will be optimistic and assume that no one is going to start using overt violence to decide this issue. The issue is to be decided democratically. We need someone who organized the meetings where this matter will be decided. We need people to run these meetings as well as the meetings that decide preliminaries: will decisions be made by votes, what system of voting shall we use? Here is an example of the leadership we will need and that raises questions about equal political power. There is at least work to be done about the role of and the need for leadership. Suppose a workgroup cannot come to agreement. Who will suggest mediation, call together a representative group of stakeholders?

Democracy as we usually practice at is beset by several internal contradictions. What we practice now under the heading of democracy will not work. Ranciere is interesting by pointing to exceptional conditions where democracy may be real or, as Todd May will have it, equality is active. There is some inside here that democracy where people truly run their own lives requires a very different degree of dedication and activity then we are usually willing to devote who self-government. There are few times when we are inspired to be truly active in governing ourselves.It is only then that democracy exists.Ranciere provides no arguments.According to Chalmers democratic moments are unpredictable and that presumably implies that there is not something to work up to it. They are curved because we make them over car but our Democratic moments cannot be planned. We cannot write a Democratic Manifesto.I am not convinced by that. I believe that there is an intelligible set of moves between our currently internally contradictory democracy that will be real.

About DemocracyThe standard picture of Democracy seems to assume that we know our own minds. Elab. But that is often not the case. See also Saward.See thegrossly erroneous choices people make. Can we still recommend Democracy. Churchill.The prevailing reality suggests that it matters what sorts of choices people are expected to make choosing a person, a general outlook,a specific policy. Some of these choices are capable of being rational, others less so.

Everyone says that socialism is democratic and participatory. See for instance Cliff's introduction to the book he edited. Many challenges are completely overlooked. Prevailing democracy is not acceptable. See Peter Barnes Capitalism 3.0 The basic principle is that no one gets coerced in a socialist society. What that means however is very unclear. The basic fact about politics is that there is a government which enforces rules. In a democracy those rules are made by the people who need to follow them. People govern themselves by making rules which they then will follow.But in a representative democracy as we know it, the citizens do not make the rules. People called "representatives" make the rules and they do this more or less under the influence of some of the citizens who vote for them. But the citizens themselves are very marginally involved in rulemaking.This is the crucial issue about socialist democracy because there no one is forced to follow the rules. The only rules everyone follows are rules they have approved of. How would that work? Talking about mediation is not sufficient. The government makes rules at an enormous speed. I cannot and I don't want to participate in formulating all of them or even a majority of them. Once again we get stuck in the place where I always get stuck. Perhaps the suggestions about associations could help here. Congress or the state legislature does not need to make rules about overland trucking because the associat of overland truckers will take care of that. But are they going to make rules which are in their interests or are they going to make rules which are in the best interest of everyone? Not an easy question to answer * * * * *The shortcomings are not to be blamed on "Human nature" but on the economic system and the actions that system encourages or, more often, demands from the patrticipants. In pursuit of maximum profits enterprises must try to influence government in any way they can. Comninel (?) points out that in capitalism enterprises compete with each other. As a part of this competition a. businesses try to bancrupt each other and b. they try to get special favors from the government. They use lob byists and campaign contributions for that.That mechanism would still remain in force with market socialism.The reply is government financed political campaigns. Suppose we have that lobbyists would be just that much more important.

People are not equally competent:they have more or less information, they think more or less ably. It is clearly not true that everyone should be able to decide in matters that affect her or him.What about matters that do not affect him--the children taken from their families at the border.We might say that everyone should be heard on matters affecting her or him. But what is the relation between being heard and being taken seriously? Very difficult. Most questions groups decide on involve expert knowledge. A number of questions need to be discussed about the selection of experts, what role thery have in the group. How can a group avail itself od expertise without giving the expert more power than other members. Experts are of different sorts. There are the people who have technical knowledge but there are also people who have been in the organization for a long time, people who know a whole lot about the procedures of the group or its history, people who can shoot down a proposal by a younger person by saying:" we tried this in 08 and it didn't work." The people at large are not equipped. In Plato's and sinilar schemes, the expert select the next generation. But that seems, at best, to be very unreliable.

voting--different flavorsmediationdeliberation One important example of equal participation in decision-making is agenda setting. If only some people participate in agenda-setting, they obviously have a considerably larger power over decision making processes and over the decisions that finally get made. People like Michael Albert don't see any difficulty here - we simply decide what the agenda should be. But of course there are easily cases where agenda items are controversial . And many situations members of the group will simply mention different points and they all are placed on the agenda and discussed may be in the order in which they were received or are discussed in what the group considers the order of importance. But suppose some people want to discuss limiting immigration While others regard even asking the question as quite reprehensible. They are willing to fight to keep this issue off the meeting's agenda. Dahl, for instance, insists that everyone participating in agenda-setting is an essential element of democracy. But that makes sense only if we have a mechanism for ensuring ourselves that agreement can be reached.

Everyone seems to agree that equality is an important aspect of democracy but what equality amounts to is not so clear. Usually people talk about everybody having one vote and the vote counting the same. but that, of course, is not nearly enough. Remember the story of voting in Afghanistan we're before voting, all the men in the village get together and discuss the issue. After a lengthy discussion the leader of the group that decides how everyone is going to vote and that is what they been do the next day. The leader of the group obviously has a lot more power then everyone else Walmart even though everyone is able to participate and perhaps is heard. But not everyone has the same decision-making power.

Michael Albert insist on that and, I think, rightly so. If people have very different sorts of jobs and Lead very different sorts of lives they become very different sorts of people and that will affect the extent to which they have political influence, political expertise and are therefore not equal.

There are going to be a lot of meetings. Oscar Wilde. Each will have fewer attendees.Suppose a decidion is made by 10%, by one person. Suppose no one shows up. Will the status quo stand, reaffirmed by present members of the group?

Democracy implies at least that everyone is allowed to speak, to raise issues, to make critical comments. But insofar as they are differences in power, insofar as there are leaders and followers there is a problem about leaders listening and taking very seriously what they heard. One question about democracy is just this: What kind of listening are leaders committed to?

Many versions of democracy assume that citizens have clear and unambiguous desires. First come the desires then come the democratic processes In which these desires are translated into political action. But in the real world these processes are very different. Most of the time, most voters have a very hazy notion of what it is they need and what they are looking for from their leaders. As Michael Saward are used it is the representative who makes suggestions about their needs and desires to the voters and they choose one of the sets of needs and desires presented to them. In the course of political dialogue needs and desires are formulated. This implies, of course, that voters may be mistaken about what they need. They do not really need a country without Jews or without African Americans. They need better wages and better jobs. They need respect from their leadership instead of being deceived into holding unproductive positions.

There is an inclination to claim that socialist society is not only formally or structurally different from capitalism one but that the different structures create different kinds of human beings. See the papers by Gintis and Rothenberg in the volume edited by Shalom. To create a socialist society therefore does not only involve creating different institutions but also to create a " new socialist man. " but that sort of thinking involves Us in an intractable Circle. A socialist society exists only wearing human beings have changed from what we are today. But that change only takes place in a socialist society and that's the change can only happen if people have already changed because without the change the society is not socialist. The change can only happen after it has already taken place. The circle is unavoidable Not to mention that the process of creating new types of human beings will take a number of generations. We will always be the capitalist people we are. Not to mention the question of why we are different from our fellow capitalist human beings who like things the way they are.

The common Criterion suggested is that everyone participate in decisions that affect them or their lives. But that, of course, raises more questions than it answers. How seriously does it need to affect us and what, in the world, does "affect" mean?

See for instance the introduction to the volume edited by Cliff DuRand. A lot of the problems have to do with people using the opportunities that present themselves 4 having more power then others, for instance having special expertise, or having been in the organization longer than anyone else. That pesents a problem as long as people are still trying to be more powerful than others. But here we run into people saying well in the new socialist society people are not going to want to be more powerful. And then we start talking about socialist character and " the new man" that Che Guevara talked about. But here we are in danger of circular reasoning. Socialism requires us to be better people but we can be better people unless we live in a socialist society and we are stuck.

Mediation resolves specific issues. Factions disagree more or less about every issue that comes up. Mediation does not resolve the problem of factions. Madison's solution does not work See book by Gastil ffor interesting example.

Markets are competitive. What is the role of competition in socialism?

Different kinds of competition:runners who train together. One runs just a bit aster to inspire the other.Team sports competition: It may be bitter and destructive; the winning team shouts and denigrates the other team. Or the competition may be good natured; the winners make sure to make the loosers feel good and give them pointers, etc. The question is: does competition harm the loser or not? Other kinds?