Tag: Political Architecture

The Political Architecture of Democratic Libertarian Socialism, Part 3

by Charles M Rupert, posted in Charles Matthew Rupert, Philosophy, Political Economy, Politics

In this third part of my series on the political architecture of democratic libertarian socialism, I hope to articulate and resolve some practical questions. It would be impossible to nail down every question or even all the important theoretical and pragmatic questions in this short work, but addressing a few should provide enough of a sketch that my readers should glimpse an image of the final portrait.

So far I have argued that a libertarian socialist democracy would require organizing its populations into small deliberative bodies of a hundred or fewer people. These political communities would form the basic democratic units, be responsible for the legislative decision-making at all scales of politics, elect representatives to govern and report the activity of government back to them, and finally demarcate particular zones of enforcement of laws at different scales in the form of jurisdictions.

This is all well and good in theory, but how does it work in reality. Obviously, there is no way to inductively determine the best procedures on all counts. However, we may abductively suggest some procedures that would keep with our libertarian socialist ideals. The first question we must address would be, who counts? We have already determined that individuals do not count by themselves as political units and that the smallest democratic unit is the community. But the community is made up of a certain number of individuals. So, who counts as an individual? It might be tempting to say everyone, but this is misleading. Do we mean newborn children? Invalids? The insane? Criminals? “Everyone” may be an unwise policy. I think, what we want are humans of a certain age, who have not demonstrated a tendency to abuse others, and are in reasonably good mental health. But what age? What kind of abuse? What good mental health?

The concern with children is two-fold. First, at what point have they become wise enough to direct their own affairs and partially the affairs of others, and second, this being a voluntary political architecture, how do they affirm the rules they live under. As children have the prevailing tendency to become adults, so do they have the tendency to go from not counting to counting or to put it another way, from being mere persons in a jurisdiction to citizens of a community in that jurisdiction. Whatever the education process a community chooses, political education must be mandatory for the health of a democratic society. Children should be involved at every level of the deliberative process, even if they are denied a voice and a vote until a mature age. Their participation should evolve in stages. Perhaps, say, at ten they watch the younger children, and at fifteen they begin to be allowed to speak to their communities about what they think on certain matters. At age twenty, I imagine, they would become full members with all the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship.

The hegemonic aspect of any dominate political architecture would seem to overcome the voluntary nature of individual affirmation. We can’t restart the whole system every year for the sake of children’s voluntary affirmation. However, we might incorporate a revolutionary element in the laws themselves, which would allow them to require periodic reaffirmation, say once every five, ten, twenty-five, or one hundred years. Laws that are basically universally accepted would only need a reaffirmation vote every hundred years, and the vote total could be lower for affirmations. Were as lower order laws may need to be affirmed more frequently. If a law is ever not affirmed it would be considered repealed.

Criminals offer a different challenge. Having forsaken the laws of the society they are proven untrustworthy in politics. Yet they too deserve a voice. The question of how to treat criminals is also two-fold: first, punitive and second, rehabilitative. To be stripped of your voice and your vote in a truly democratic society is to be stripped of your right to self-government, and so your autonomy. You become a pawn at the whims of others, and is a strong, although not an extreme, form of punishment. It seems a fitting and sufficient punishment that lawbreakers lose their power to be lawmakers. On the other hand, the punishment must not be permanent or even long-lasting, for, without recourse to restoration, criminals would quickly become a permanent underclass of non-political citizens; such people are easily exploited and if the interests serve the majority, criminals can be easily created. This punishment is the only punishment criminals should receive. The prohibition on voting must be finite for every crime and last no longer than the rehabilitative element. Also, it should be noted that the vote of the criminal is neither cast nor counted. It would be unfair to let their community count them as though they voted.

What remains of criminal elements should be handled in a rehabilitative and restorative manner. The goal of the former is to prevent repeat offense while the goal of the latter is to restore to the victim what can be restored. Obviously, there are limits on both of these, but the goal of a criminal justice system must be the bringing back of both the criminal and the victim. This prevents turning the criminal justice system into a defacto slave system for society justified by the fact that these people are lawbreakers. Therefore the state has a vested interest in not allowing convicted criminals to work for any reason. The guaranteed income established by the principles of libertarian socialism would suffice to meet their needs, but no labor can be extracted from them voluntarily while they are under the authority of the justice system and any labor arrangement entered into involuntarily amounts to a form of slavery.

Finally, the sick and invalid present us with dangerous political waters to navigate. Be sure here, I do not mean removing voting rights from disabled persons. What I have in mind here is more or less permanently incapacitated. Anyone who can communicate in any manner is capable of casting a vote and so ought to be allowed. Surely those who cannot speak out for themselves simply won’t, but should their votes still count? Does a community have the right to count citizens who for health reasons cannot represent their own interests? I think not. The greater danger here is that of exploitation of the “votes” of the invalid would give a minority undue legislative power. Now, how a vote is counted can be determined by the community, a nod or a thumbs up or a spoken word or even blinking twice might all count. This would hopefully clamp down on the desire to have people removed from the rolls as invalids while keeping their political power for the community.

Mental health may represent the greatest hazard. The other question is what about those who are so mentally gone that they cannot think rationally. I’m disinclined to restrict their vote unless they are incapable of joining a community. This community standard, the ability to interact with others is crucial to a free and democratic society. Those who are a danger to themselves and others or simply incapable of communicating intelligibly, must not count politically. At any point, if they can join a community then obviously their vote would count the same as any other person.

After knowing who counts, we need to establish the process whereby votes determine laws in this political architecture. The basic unit of democracy is the community and not the individual. Thus, laws should be elected by the number of communities that approve them in a given jurisdiction, but we need to also understand how votes are counted. One problem our distinction between individuals who are not democratic units and communities that are is that we must determine if individual voices are being silenced by the political architecture itself. I do not mean here that voices are being silenced by other individuals in the community, but that the method of counting votes is somehow unfair, e.g. gerrymandering in current election systems.

Let us take the following example as illustrative of the potential problems that would need to be addressed: Image three communities, where community A has 100 members, community B has 50 members and community C has 40 members. Further, imagine that the municipality has split on an issue. These three communities are the deciding vote. Let’s say that A rejects the motion but B and C favor it. If we count votes by the smallest democratic unit, then the motion passes, in this case, two to one. But if we count by individuals we can see that the motion doesn’t pass, 100 to 90. How we decide to count votes then will determine the outcome in this case.

The problem with counting votes per community, as we see above, is that communities vary in size, and it would be disenfranchising to the number of individuals inside a larger community to have their votes equaled to those in a smaller community. This is similar to the problem with the electoral college in the contemporary United States. The easy solution would be to count community votes as either for or against but give them the relative strength of the total membership of the community’s individuals. In the above example, the motion would not have passed because there would have been 100 votes against but only 90 for. Inside each community, the total votes of the community would be up for grabs. If community A voted 49 for and 51 against, while community B voted 49 for and 1 against and community C voted 39 for and 1 against, the result would be 100 against and 90 for, and this despite the individual votes being 53 against and 137 for. This is because communities are the basic unit of democracy, and so they speak univocally. However, the communities strength is relative to their numbers. 

But what of those who don’t want to participate? We have incentivized them, yes, but should we force them? Well, one more addition to the political architecture will ensure their participation whether or not they are actually there: every vote of the membership is counted, whether or not you cast your vote or not. For example, let’s say a community of seventy members votes 38 for to 22 against on a measure. The measure will get seventy votes for it, even though only sixty actual votes were cast. The community has spoken and that “community” speaks with the voice of seventy people.

Requiring communities to speak with one voice will occasionally cause doubtless disenfranchising to some voters. However, this disenfranchisement does something positive for society as a whole by avoiding a particularly thorny “prisoner’s dilemma”. How do you encourage participation among everyone, which is vital to the supposedly voluntary nature of this political architecture? Those who show up to communities where the votes are determined univocally, make decisions for all in the community, but only those in the arena of community politics will get to decide for others. This action level is anarchistic. Those who choose not to participate by not attending or abstaining from voting are in reality allowing the other members of their community to cast their vote for them. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, as long as an individual understands that that is what they are doing, and it establishes the universal affirmation of legislation required by libertarian principles.

This creates an interest in people to participate if they want their actual opinions heard. Showing up allows for the exchange of information, fosters discussion and debate, encourages seeing other perspectives, and a host of other deliberative goods. Were votes to be counted individually, as in a pure democracy, then there would be no need to deliberate with one’s political peers, and one could make all political decisions in isolation, forming idiosyncratic opinions, bereft of relationship knowledge. In short, it would be to make individuals the basic unit of democracy, which I have already argued is not possible. This point is worth hammering on. The individual is incapable of rendering a judgment about the society outside the context of their group. They simply can’t understand their own needs or the responsibilities of others, and so could not make good judgments about political issues. The community helps to spread those subjective prejudices out, force them into open dialogue, and then and only then allows a univocal decision. The univocal decision is necessary to put the individual in a place to participate. Democracies work best, indeed, they only work at all, when the overwhelming majority of the citizens participate.

That said, the disenfranchisement is a problem, however, it can be slightly mitigated in two ways. The first mitigating circumstance has already been established for other reasons previously: our political architecture does not require a mere majority vote to carry the day, it requires a supermajority significant enough to overcome most objections to ensure victory. In the above example, 55% approval would be required to pass the law, so that if the numbers were reversed and community A was for the measure while B and C were against it (assuming these three communities made up the total municipality) the measure would not pass. This is the conservative aspect of government, preserving freedom and ensuring a great deal of voluntary support at high scales.

A second mitigating circumstance is possible if we set a minimum on the number of members a community could have. I have previously suggested that the number of members in a community be capped at one hundred, but perhaps I should make a few modifications. First, let me ask if a minimum number is necessary? The real reason for the discord between the three communities in the above example is their relative sizes. This example was chosen precisely to bring out this peculiarity. The feeling that one’s vote doesn’t count comes as a reflection of the scale of the arena, so that difference between the highest and lowest possible membership reflects the number of voters whose voice can be discounted. For example, were the minimum members in a community two and the maximum one hundred, then it would be possible for a form of democratic gerrymandering where groups split to form separate communities in order to have their way. In general, there is nothing wrong with this, but its effect must be limited by creating relative equality between all communities, in other words, we need to set a minimum and maximum that are relatively close together. This should help to minimize the damage in communities, the only place where such division between univocal decisions and numeric strength is allowed. Pragmatically, I would recommend a minimum of fifty members and then change our maximum from one hundred down to ninety-nine, so that upon the addition of a hundredth member, the group splits into two separate communities of fifty. With these numbers, the largest number of individuals that could be disenfranchised at the most actionable level would be forty-nine.

Now scaling up, the only thing that changes is the required percentage of the population to pass the measure and the number of communities participating in the vote. We might ask what if no one in the whole community votes, then that community has simply abstained. Communities themselves can, of course, set quorums if they wish to abstain, so that if less than half of the community members vote, the result is abstinence. This is their right as the basic democratic unit. And there are of course other hurdles to overcome; most notably, how do we get from here to there. Whatever transition we might take, it will be chaotic and anxiety-provoking. I’m not sure there is a right answer here. But I have faith that such a thing may be managed by the numerous talented persons who make up this world.

In the next part of this series, I will go beyond the legislative and explore some of the issues of practical governance this political architecture must deal with.

The Political Architecture of Democratic Libertarian Socialism, Part 2

by Charles M Rupert, posted in Charles Matthew Rupert, Philosophy, Political Economy, Politics

In the first part of this series, I developed the idea that a democratic libertarian socialist political architecture would be necessarily voluntary, deliberative, consist of political units of fewer than one hundred individuals, and would require representatives to scale up. At the end of part 1, I listed some potential problems with this scaling process. I break these problems into two main types: the jurisdiction problem and the representation problem. In this second part of the series, I will address these two problems.

The Jurisdiction Problem

The question of jurisdiction centers on the freedom of individuals to conduct their lives as they see fit. If all individuals have the right to live as they like and any two individuals disagree, by what process can a decision between them be made? This being a democratic libertarian socialist state, as opposed to an anarchist one, the right to retain private property is still a viable option for settling disputes, as long as the conditions of use and labor that justify exclusion are met. Private property then successfully solves the problem and given the two conditions of use and guaranteed income we avoid exploitation through it. The decision goes to the owner on principle, in fact, that is what it means to be an owner, you get to decide how and when a thing is used.

The problem persists in joint property and in public property, however. We must ask how people set rules about, for example, littering on a public street, without violating the rights of the individuals who did not explicitly agree not to litter on that street? Voluntary society seems highly susceptible to collapse into petty sovereignties. A principle of jurisdiction could solve this problem, but this must include some amount of tyranny. It is my hope that we can devise a jurisdictional principle that would mitigate the tyrannical effect to the greatest extent possible so that people would voluntarily agree to subject themselves to the rule of others out of respect for the autonomy of those others and so preserve their own autonomy in their own sphere.

Jurisdiction, as it is generally construed, concerns what relationships count as politically relevant enough that people have the right to create rules in their sphere of action with the effect of restricting the freedoms of those who enter it. At base, we need to know what makes an association of people a body politic empowered to self-govern. Is a relationship between enemies politically relevant? What about business partners? Or geographically distant close friends? The answer is that they all could be, but none necessarily are. Such categories of identity and relationships are too subjective to be useful here and should be replaced with spheres of action. As the individual must be in touch with their own interests they must be in touch with the interests of those who make up their basic democratic unit as well. Their decisions will impact that unit more than any other units. Therefore, those who have the greatest chance for proximal interaction have the greatest concern with each other’s behaviors. Alternative forms of interaction are all less effective. Interactions through media, for example, are always shaped by the media itself and thus constitute a less direct, less effective, and so less politically relevant form of relationship. Political relationships need to be local enough to present direct physical interaction, but not necessarily externally defined. A geographic feature, such as a river or a mountain range, might well divide one political area from another, but this should be because the feature genuinely affects the locality of the individuals who inhabit the body. The building of a bridge or a tunnel could effectively change the political jurisdiction. So, while it may be possible for a community to straddle opposite sides of the globe, it’s very, very unlikely; and even if it is the case, it is more unlikely still that so greatly separated peoples should remain a small scale political unity for long.

Whether a person inhabits a place or is merely visiting is an important question. Those who set down roots seem entitled to a say in that sphere of action, precisely because it is theirs, but those who are just there for a weekend, don’t. Caution must be exercised at this point in any government claiming to be a voluntary association, as a rule affects all (persons), not just those who decided upon it (citizens). If the citizens of a given area enact a biased rule that favors themselves over minorities and non-citizens, this is the worst tyranny and is easily accomplished despite a principle of equality before the law. This tyranny is simply unacceptable and must be mitigated in the name of a just society. James Madison dealt with this problem of faction by allowing larger spheres of action to supersede lower ones. We see this in the United States when the constitution makes lower laws void. A city cannot, for example, enact slavery statues because it is illegal at a larger sphere of action. Madison’s solution, however, suffers the major drawback that each sphere is governed by representatives and it becomes all too easy for wealthy and powerful factions to capture the higher spheres for themselves. Something that Madison thought would be highly improbable.

PA_CONGRESSIONAL_DISTRICTS-768x458.jpg

Although locality makes up an important part of the basis for determining jurisdiction, it is also not limited to a specific externally marked domain. Political boundaries at the scale of the community are nearly fluid and correspond neatly to the areas directly inhabited by their members. This is the most voluntary form of government. It is at the municipal level that the need for defined jurisdiction covering spaces not privately owned enters the political architecture. These public and quasi-public spaces cover areas frequented by the members of several communities but not necessarily wholly bound inside their combined private property. In other words, the laws of a community apply only to the members of the community themselves, they have no jurisdiction beyond the community members and their property. The community is purely voluntary and as close to completely anarchist (at least for adults) as possible. Municipalities, on the other hand, govern several communities at once. The bounds of the municipality must somehow designate which communities are a part of the municipality for terms of voting and where the laws set down by these collective communities are applied. This is the first scale at which laws must be written down and publicly posted and where the law applies beyond the citizens of the jurisdiction. The municipality is the smallest unit of government and law and most likely sphere for tyranny. It is also the most flexible, allowing for the greatest diversity of relationships and laws, biases, and individuality. As with Madison, every scale above the municipality works similarly and each one’s laws would bind the ones below it so that a county that forbids a thing binds all municipalities in that county to forbid it as well.

Here is precisely were democratic libertarian socialist values clash with anarchist ones. For this is where voluntary agreement first begins to drift off. To see this, let’s ask the question: must all who enter a municipality be bound by the laws of the municipality, whether or not they are members of it? Let us say that the members of a municipality unanimously decide to forbid the spitting of chewing gum on the sidewalk. Let us further say that you are a visitor to this municipality who did not and would not have the opportunity to vote on this particular issue. Must you follow the rules of the municipality and not spit your gum on the sidewalk despite having never agreed to this rule? This example highlights a clash of values in libertarianism itself. Does one group, when imposing its rules on its sphere of action, have the right to impose those rules on non-members of the group in their territory? Libertarianism places a value on the voluntary agreement to rules in order to be legitimate but at the same time allows people the freedom to set their own rules. The solution to this apparent paradox is recognizing that all visitors have agreed to the rules establishing how laws get passed in each place and that inherent in that agreement is the agreement to respect the laws set down by others in their own jurisdictions. In other words, like Madison’s solution, there is an agreement at a higher scale which supersedes the lower disagreement. The problem with this solution, as with Madison’s, is that of capture which allows political tyranny. 

To prevent capture, I offer a two-part solution. First, individuals must have both a jurisdiction of their own and at the same time alternatives jurisdictions to enter should they wholly disagree with the rules they are subject to. If one is a visitor, one is free to simply not visit. However, for citizens, relocation offers less of a solution. As a citizen, one has a voice in a given jurisdiction, and could simply try to prevent laws. One might not always be able to escape the biases of a group through the vote though, and if one resides in the area, getting up and leaving, while an option, is not always economically advantageous or feasible. Fleeing a jurisdiction is easily accomplished at the community scale where it most likely would not even involve a move. But higher scales bring increasingly greater difficulties to this method of preserving one’s liberty.

This is the reason we need a second part to this solution: higher percentages of popular support must be required to establish a law at larger scales. Rather than force people to relocate to communities that are ideologically homogeneous, we could instead raise the bar for passing laws in correlation with the scale of the jurisdiction it would affect. The goal would be to equally allow groups to create laws governing conduct in their spheres of action and at the same time protect dissent. As stated above, a biased community rule is easily escapable by simply changing communities if you so strongly disagree. A higher order law, however, is more difficult and so should require greater assent to pass. And so on, with each scale up requiring more affirmation. The ability of the large jurisdictions to supersede the lower ones would still have the desired effect as Madison envisioned. However, the ability to capture the larger spheres of action would become increasingly difficult, since the percentage required to secure a decision would change in inverse proportion to the scale of its effect. 

Practically, we might imagine that at the smallest level, the community, a simple majority is all that is required to pass a rule. At the highest level, universally, we might require something extreme, like the assent of 95% of the population, to pass this entirely inescapable legislation. The scales between would be higher or lower accordingly. A municipality could require only 55% of its population to affirm a law before it passes, whereas a county may require 60%, a territory 65%, a district 70%, a nation 75%, and hemisphere of the globe 80%. This architecture will result in the majority of laws existing at the smallest scales of government and thus applying only to a few people; at the bottom, only those who voted for them. Only overwhelmingly agreed upon laws would exist at the greatest scales. This is the best that can be done for dissident without allowing minority dictatorship over the majority population.

This solution, however, presents a further challenge. What happens to a person who dissents from the social order? What happens to the minority vote? And while we’re at it, how does one become a community member? These questions are all related to the idea of who counts, which I’ll deal with later, but for right now, let me focus on what recourse persons have in a system they disagree with. The problem is more concrete if we take any social norm that is rather one-sided as an example. Genocide might be an easy one.  What would happen if you lived in a community who condoned genocide even though you reject it? Well, first you could leave the community. All individuals are political beings, and so all individuals must belong to a community. But you are free to choose your community to some extent. If you choose to leave a community, it would be necessary for you to be accepted by another. However, it can never be acceptable for a community to eject one of its members. Members may leave voluntarily or die, but they must not be removed. The ability to leave allows members who do not wish to live under certain laws the freedom to take refuge elsewhere. At the municipal level and above, this may involve physical relocation. The costs of which will have to be weighed against the strength of the individual’s beliefs. But we can very quickly see that the greater the scale, the more implausible this “freedom” becomes, and it is indubitably the case that without the actual opportunity for leaving no freedom exists.

It seems clear that any democratic libertarian socialist political architecture must be directly democratic at some point. The above assumes a directly democratic legislature, although not a directly democratic executive or judicial government. Dissent is healthy and should not be immediately suppressed, but at the same time, a large majority has a right to live how they choose and not under the anarchist tyranny of the minority veto. This compromise between our respective interests seems to offer us the best of these mutually exclusive positions.

Before we move on, I want to say a word on what a community can do to discipline its members for non-compliance. There will always be those who are disruptive and whose disruptions are either apolitical or simply criminal. For example, one may remain in a community and break the law merely to do so. Given that other avenues for dissent are available this member of the community is simply breaking the rules to break the rules. This is no less tyranny than usurping a political system to disenfranchising others or seizing power. The obvious manner for stopping such activity is to expressly forbid it by law and treat offenders in the customary manner, whatever form that takes. But if the behavior does not quite constitute a violation of the law, for example, something both disrespectful and disruptive but still within the bounds of political speech, the community must take care not to ostracize the member(s). However, they do not have to listen. A de facto excommunication may be acceptable whereas de jure excommunication is not. As long as the member is still allowed to speak and still allowed to vote and have their vote counted, a community is free to ignore them.

The Representation Problem

I want to return now to the issue of representation. In the first part of this series, I showed how the mere inclusion of representatives endangers the entire political architecture of democracy making it a de facto oligarchy or monarchy. What we need to prevent this is to devise an architecture that would not allow unauthorized power to slide into the representative’s hands. The first thing we have to do is understand exactly what the role of representatives is in a truly democratic government. So, let’s begin by recalling that the need for representatives doesn’t enter the picture until the scale of the municipality. As I said, communities are basic democratic units, anarchist in nature, and so do not require an internal representative. Thus, we only need representation to organized political bodies beyond our communities, viz. municipalities, counties, territories, districts, nations and universal. Representatives then are charged with carrying out the community’s bidding in its relations to other communities and relating the desires of other communities to the represented community.

We still face the problem of where the community may not be able to determine their own “bidding” explicitly or charge in a direct and personal manner their representative with the task of carrying it out. At the same time, the “representative” may just carry out their own bidding in the name of the community they represent. Ensuring the link between the will of the group and its representative is our task. To do this will require more–not less–political architecture. It would be instructive to revisit the separation of powers theory, represented by the branches of government, viz. the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. I argued above that it is the communities themselves, as the basic units of democracy, that should legislate directly. Let me add here that the communities should act as legislators at all scales of politics. This is important for representation because it takes away the power of the representative to volunteer their constituency’s voice or sell their vote without consent.

This locus of the legislative action in the community is essential to democracy. Legislative power cannot be delegated without changing the political architecture from democracy to something else. The representative’s role in wielding legislative power should be limited to functionary duties, e.g. preparing language, conducting votes, entering decisions, codifying laws, etc. Perhaps representatives may decide which laws to vote on and at what time, but such legislative authority should mark the utmost extreme end of their power to influence legislation. This is all that can be done to satisfy Edmund Burke’s admonition that representatives exercise their individual conscience rather than mindlessly following the uninformed opinions of their constituents. It is the legislative branch of government that belongs to the people and must remain directly with the people if the polity is to be considered democratic. 

edmund_burke_1050x700.jpg
Edmund Burke

However, this is not true of executive and judicial power. These important roles can be delegated with particular structuring, so that a small minority may perform the function of governing, but do so without ruling. The role of representatives in government should then be largely limited to overseeing executive and judicial functions, such as the hiring and firing of administrators and judges and making of policy respecting the administration of law, but never, under any circumstances, the enactment or repeal of law itself.

Another duty of representatives is maintaining the flow of information. It is perhaps the most vital role of representatives to act as the eyes and ears of a community so that it may confront the issues of the day from an informed position. Obviously, information may come from other sources, but representatives, as they act in higher and higher scales, have access to the most direct information available. In other words, it is not just the role of the representative to serve as the voice of the represented, but as the voice of the government to the represented, empowering them with the information they need to make good decisions. They are an important pivot point between a community and all the greater scales of politics. The worst representatives will hide information from their constituents in an attempt to manipulate the situation how they think it ought to be handled. Trustworthiness will, therefore, be the most vital characteristic to consider in the election of a community’s representative. To guard against manipulation, a democratic architecture should require that all government activities be public.

How should representatives be selected at each scale? There are various schools of thought on this, but I favor election at the smallest scales. Each community should elect, with a simple majority vote, it’s representative to a municipal council. Each municipal councilor should elect, at the determination of the community they represent, their representatives to the county council. Beyond the county level, it’s hard to know who to trust. All candidates desire power as no one runs for offices who do not. However, a solution is available if we simply remove elections at this point. The territorial council and beyond could all be appointed by the drawing of lots from the pool of current county councilors in good standing.

Why introduce a chance here? Precisely because it checks overwhelming political ambition. We can still ensure that we are getting good people into office by additionally requiring that only those who have been elected to a county council more than one time are eligible for higher offices. We can also restrict the term of office to a single six-year period; along with the prohibition on being selected for more than one term at any particular appointed scale. Those representatives who are elected should be reelected frequently, say every two years, but could, of course, serve many terms up to some reasonable limit; say, a maximum of six terms. This will assure us that even if some rather bad apples get into positions of power, they needn’t be suffered indefinitely. Additionally, a list of impeachable offenses should be made into law that would allow the recall of anyone who abused their position. And any representative, even an appointed one should be recallable by their represented lower scale. Appointments would have a voluntary component, no one would be forced to serve and may resign at any time. And the vacancies could easily be filled by another round of elections or selections.

In its most abstract terms, the representatives of the communities serve as their surrogate in the daily administration of self-government.

In part three, I will attempt to flesh out the bare bones of this political architecture by exploring some of the more pragmatic considerations democratic libertarian socialism must confront.

The Political Architecture of Democratic Libertarian Socialism, Part 1

by Charles M Rupert, posted in Charles Matthew Rupert, Philosophy, Politics, Social Responsibility

Introduction

In this series of posts, I will discuss aspects of political architecture consistent with democratic libertarian socialism. My purpose is to attempt to rationally plan a functioning democracy in relation to libertarian socialist ideals. This is counter to most libertarian socialism which is generally understood to be anarchist. What I will not be doing in this series is arguing why democratic libertarian socialism is superior to anarchist libertarian socialism. Neither will I be making the argument for libertarian socialism as a socio-economic system which I have done numerously elsewhere in different ways on this blog; e.g. here, here, here, and here. Also, see my prize-winning essay on the subject.

To keep with libertarian ideology, the structure I plan will be a limited state, voluntarily justified in the places it is coercive, and run on principle and law. The goal is to protect each other from the abuse of power that comes with a community by structuring the power, through principles, in such a manner that it cannot be overwhelmingly coopted. See my post on the different kinds of political discourse in philosophy for a more about the goal of political architectures.

The point of this post is not to decide on a method of political activity, nor to find a method of resolving political disputes, but merely to ask how do we best organize ourselves into political structures as to maintain relative economic equality and liberty. I want to ignore the battle between monarchy and democracy, loosely defined, as over and done with; democracy I hold to be the clear favorite. However, democracy by its very nature comes in a multitude of configurations; from indirect republics, plutocracies, and aristocracies to more direct tribal democracy, congregations, contractual alliances and–at the bottom–simple friendships between individuals. The division I just drew stands in need of explanation, for the former represent larger forms of democracy, scaled all the way up as it were; while the latter tend to represent the smaller forms scaled down to the deliberative decision-making of individuals. Both scales have their positives and negatives. The large scale allows for mass action that generates truly miraculous feats, irrespective of whether those feats are right or wrong. The problem is that it is very hard to get decisiveness out of such a large body of people, that is to say, the greater the capacity for mass action, the lower the possibility for univocal agreement. The opposite is just the case with the smaller democratic forms. Here we see that mass action is limited by the smaller populations, but at the same time, a greater possibility for explicitly-voluntary concord among the members is still achievable. This is the nature of the dilemma for a political architecture of democracy. How best to organize a political population so that the best of both scales is preserved?

First, we must ask, is it even possible? No doubt there must be some form that maximizes the best of both scales even if it doesn’t completely resolve the issue. Every form of state even paying lip-service to the idea of democracy, like fascism, observes the rule that power is legitimated by the people. What is questionable about there highly authoritarian forms of democracy is whether or not the structure is in fact legitimated by the people. The test for the level of democratic influence is well known to political science: are the laws and decisions of the government in step with the opinions of the people at large, some larger association within the populace, or with an elite minority? On this scale, few if any real democracies exist in the world. Most republics can be defined by which association they serve. For example, the United State is plutocratic because the legislature, executive, and judicial branches of the government are more likely to enact policy following the desires of the wealthy than the general public, see the study here. My goal is to find a form that would be genuinely democratic. That is, where the policies of government closely represented the desires of the general public.

I will generally skip over a history of political forms and assume you have a working knowledge of past regimes. However, I feel compelled to speak briefly of the form known as a “republic”. This form is interesting because, in my opinion, it is a hybrid between monarchy and democracy.  Republics attempt to solve the same stability problem we are. The republican solution is to preserve attributes of a monarchy inside a democracy. One way it does this is by limiting who “counts” in the population generally and the citizenry specifically. By reducing the number of decision-makers, either by explicitly forbidding certain populations access to public affairs or by diminishing the effect of their influence or by structuring certain domains of political discourse to a select group or single “head” or some combination of all these, republics reduce the instability of a mass of decision-makers. Limiting the decision-making capacity for the majority, (to voting for representatives, for example), or relegating it to minor and insignificant decisions (e.g. voting on the occasional ballot measure) are the most common method of republics. They work by paying homage to democracy while giving the real decision-making powers to an elite few or one. Over time, the need to pay homage to the people wanes and there is a tendency for this type of government to go from a de facto monarchy or oligarchy to an explicit monarchy. Think of the Roman Republic and its civil strife that lead to the formation of an autocratic Emporer. For our purposes then, a republic of any form is not a genuinely democratic option. I seek a stable form of democracy, not a tacit form of monarchy.

Deliberative Democracy

To form a democracy it is necessary that a forum for the full expression of every individual’s political concerns exists and that every individual has a turn to speak and be heard by their political peers. This I will call the short definition of deliberative democracy. Deliberative in this respect meaning simply a democracy where people come to talk to work out their respective political issues. Deliberation is essential for democracy for two reasons: (1) it is by definition voluntary and (2) it forces a recognition of the actual political issues confronting individuals and communities. Bounding the deliberative aspect of democracy effectively eliminates participation by its citizenry. This makes any action the state takes involuntary action on the part of those who either could not participate or were limited in their ability to participate. Similarly, no individual can rationally decide matters they have not had a chance to hear argued, neither could they empower a representative to do so on their behalf. Representation, even plenipotentiary representation, is possible in a democracy. However, it is not something someone can simply empower another to do without a specific outcome in mind. How could you represent my interests, if I don’t know what is going on or what would be best for me? I don’t want to digress too far down this path, except to say that representation is a necessity to large scale democracy, but without the opportunity for all individuals to confront the issues of the day, in both a direct and personal way, representation is illegitimate.

What often happens in republics is elected “representatives” are empowered with the entire decision-making capacity of their constituents, i.e. they do not represent the people so much as they replace them as though they were the only citizens of a democracy. This is oligarchy and the first step on the inevitable road back to monarchy; once the relationship between the representative and the represented has been usurped, so that the representative no longer needs any input from the represented to make decisions, then all “representation” has ceased, and the so-called representative has become an independent lord of their constituency (a member of the house of lords) and a patrician among plebians (senator of the Republic).

founding-fathers-declaration-of-independence.jpg

Let’s consider the notion of scale more closely.  Here we should ask, what is the smallest unit of a political entity? Prima facie, the obvious answer would be the individual, but a little reflection reveals that the answer is flawed. The problem with the individual is that decisiveness and action collapse and become one and the same. Individuals, barring mental disease, are considered the master of themselves precisely because there is nothing political about them. In fact, the appeal of monarchy resides in its utilization this natural apoliticality to make decisions for everyone, which are then applied through authority or force over them. We see again on the individual level that the problem of political architecture is decision versus action. How are things to be decided (e.g. by whom?) and how much action is going to be brought to bear (i.e. how many individuals will be involved)? The greater the action; the greater the power, but the decision is how that power will be utilized and towards what. Monarchy is appealing precisely because so much power can be brought to bear so single-mindedly! This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the monarch that utilizes the full power of the population for their own self-aggrandizement is what we call a tyrant.

The individual’s apolitical nature means that a single individual cannot be the smallest unit of a polity. I would argue then that the smallest unit must be the individual as he or she stands in relation to others. The pair may be the smallest political unit then. A pair of friends, of lovers, parents, or children; even of bitter enemies are all examples of the smallest political unit. There is an effect of the pair that we can see continuing in larger and larger scales, up to a point. This effect is a need to work together toward some end.  Even among enemies, there is a shared desire to eliminate the rivalry, albeit mostly following the strategy of eliminating the rival. Nevertheless, the end of the rivalry would bring about the end of the relationship as enemies and at the same time the end of the political unit. Thus, we could say that all political units are relationships between two or more individuals. We can see these relationships do not change as we scale them up, at first anyway. There is hardly a difference between two rivals and three or a team of six and a team of seven. But this direct relationship doesn’t scale up like that forever, and this is again owning to natural conditions. There are important differences between a company of seventeen and a company of seventeen million. In the latter, the “company” will hardly be able to recognize each other, and it is unlikely that a direct and personal relationship will exist between all the members as it would for the company of seventeen.

So here we have our first two architectural principles: political units begin with relationships and so require at least two individuals and these relationships cannot scale up beyond a certain point. I leave it to science to determine that point, and I highly suspect that it would vary with the individuals and cultures. A group of people with excellent memories, for example, might be able to maintain a direct and personal relationship with everyone else at a higher population than a group of people with faulty memories. That said, I feel we should put some rough number to this point that is generally manageable for an average human being. For the sake of mathematical ease, I’m going to say one hundred is the threshold of direct and personal political relationships for the sake of the scaling problem. Essentially, I’m suggesting that under a hundred individuals most groups could manage their own affairs through direct democracy, without the need for written laws, procedures, representation, or much political architecture at all. This is the threshold of anarchism. Talking and relying on each other would be all that it would take to resolve nearly all of the group’s problems. So, let us call this anarchist unit of one hundred or fewer, the basic unit of democracy. My goal is to introduce political architecture so that these units can combine and scale upwards with similar stability, all the way up to the incorporation of humanity as a whole.

The Scaling Problem

My guess would be that each democratic unit would require a representative in the next scale up. So, let’s call this basic democratic unit a “community”, we might imagine a municipality that consisted of representatives from each community of one hundred or fewer individuals. But again, we encounter the same scaling problem. Fifty community representatives could all know each other and function as a community of representatives, but fifty thousand would just lead us back to the same instability we saw before. The obvious solution then is to repeat the same process again and limit “municipalities” to groups of one hundred community representatives. And so forth, we might see this same scale repeat so that a “county” consists of the representatives of a hundred municipalities, a “territory” of a hundred counties, a “district” of a hundred territories, a “nation” of a hundred districts, and “world” of a hundred nations. But there is a problem with this model, several in fact.

One problem is that each scale up removes the representative from those they officially represent. Another problem is who elects these representatives or who are these representatives ultimately accountable to? How does information flow in both directions in this system?  And there is the problem of jurisdiction, how are laws geographically applied? What if I want to be part of a “community” made up of individuals spread across the globe? We may not even have the same political concerns. Another problem involves the politicization of other forms of human distinction, such as race, class, gender, age, etc.  Doesn’t a demographic identity, say black males aged twenty to thirty in the southern United States, have shared political needs that form a kind of quasi-relationship even if no direct and personal relationship exists between them? All these problems point to the fact that our political architecture requires more than simply scaling representation up at the threshold of direct relationships. It’s not enough to have direct democracy at all scales and that each scale is likely to require its own unique design.

In the next part, I will address these problems as I paint a picture of how representation may be managed on a rising scale.

The Philosophy of Politics

by Charles M Rupert, posted in Charles Matthew Rupert, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics

Politics is a broad term. It is often used to describe everything from being an asshole on the internet to being a statesman and nation founder. It is denigrated and revered, usually at the same time. This post is my attempt to create some clarity around the question: what is politics? I do not want to give a hackneyed definition, such as a litany of the term’s historical development or a cross-reference of modern usages of the term. What I want to do is identify and explore the different ways people talk about politics, so that we can perhaps begin to understand when we are talking about different things that all fit loosely under the umbrella of politics.

To this end, I conceive of four approaches to politics that I feel need to be sketched out. Listing them from the most abstract to the most concrete, we have: “the political”, “political architecture”, “politics”, and finally “realpolitik”. The four share a concern for group identity, shared ideology, group direction, shared responsibility, and group action. But each takes a particular concern as paramount. I should be understood that all four of these ways of talking about politics are necessary at particular times and all are vital to a culture of flourishing political debate. All four must see their particular concerns addressed in order for a society to resolve an issue. To solve a political problem in three of the four ways is not to solve it at all. Hopefully, this will be clearer after I introduce the differences between them in greater detail.

The Political

By far the most abstract is a sort of metaphysics of politics; the concept of the political as Carl Schmitt saw it. Its primary focus is on how to create and maintain group unity. Imagine a Maslowian hierarchy of political needs, the political is the base. It is the formation of a group, who counts as its members, who are responsible for its duties, who are the beneficiaries of its privileges, but most importantly can the group maintain itself in its given formation? i.e. is it able to cohere? Schmitt elaborated the primary action of the political as determining the friend/enemy distinction. It is the establishment of an “us” by the identification of a “them” which we are not and do not like. Us and those like us, are friends and those unlike us are enemies. This relationship is primary and will determine how we treat others in our sphere of influence.

For example, what is the role of poor blacks in the USA? Are they really citizens? Do we (white America) have an obligation to treat them as citizens, that is to treat them just like us? Are they accretions upon the body politic? Enemies, who may be used for labor and discarded? What we say and what we do will be partially determined by whether or not we really consider them just like us?

Schmitt’s distinction is but one way to affect unity, others included shared economic benefit, shared culture/language, simple homeostasis, and—on small scales—kinship (and possibility others). There are many ways group identity can form and dissolve, but at the base, without group identity, there are no more political questions to even ask. To call a group of people a society, of any kind, is to assume the kind of political connection discussed under the concept of the political.

Political Architecture

The second most abstract topic of political discussion is what I have termed political architecture; which we might define as the organization and arrangement of power structures and institutions in a given society. The focus of political architecture is largely on how to effectively and efficiently deploy the power that comes from “group effort”. The many battles over the “rationality” of politics, from Carl Schmitt to Michael Oakeshott, fall under this category. Political architecture deals in terms of democracy, monarchy, aristocracy, and anarchy. Its terms are those of organization and arrangement, law and principle, government and property. As well as terms of design, such as the separation of powers, the nature of sovereignty, how to affect the popular will, and much more. This is the realm of order, harmony, stability, and security.

By far the most important question of political architecture is striking the balance between liberty and equality. Always with an eye to the necessity of maintaining group cohesion, a political architecture cannot go too far afield in either direction. We cannot even conceive of a polity where there are but one abusive tyrant and a whole mightly population of abused subjects. This is because such an arrangement is unstable, it will tip over into chaos, despite the many horrors chaos brings. 

The goal of political architecture is to establish the minimum number of institutions to effect relative and fair equality. The “minimum number” preserves freedom, while the institutions protect the equality vital to group cohesion. All the grand schemes of political arrangement and political economy are attempts to find the balance in whatever situation a group of people happens to find themselves. It is important to note that, no one solution is right for all situations and so political arrangments and political economies, to remain stable would change with the situation.

Politics

The third most abstract is what we could call politics proper, i.e. the traditional idea of politics, as it was held by the ancients. This type of politics deals with the human condition, the current situation, economic need, justice, balancing the needs of the people, and much, much more. The primary focus in standard politics is deciding where to direct our group resources and energy and when, where, how, and—most importantly—why to use the power of group unity, including the institutions that harness and focus that power. This includes the creation and enforcement of policy, the allocation of resources, declaring and fighting wars, and the settlement of inter-member disputes. It always has an eye towards the maintenance of unity, but its concerns are particular and practical, unlike the general and theoretical concerns of political architecture. 

Realpolitik

The least abstract, or most “real” approach to politics, goes by the label realpolitik. This approach focuses on the effective use of the existing power structures to achieve desired ends among the rival choices of politics proper. This is the aspect of politics that is the most disreputable and deals with the strategies of sub-unities or factions to attain control of the power of group effort and use it to better their own situation. The strategic maneuvering of realpolitik is limited only by the prevailing political architecture and the constant pressure to retain group unity. When unity fails, it’s always factional strife behind the dissolution.

The goal of realpolitik is managing logistics. How do we actually get the job done? The proverb of the mice who decided to hang a bell around the cat’s neck but cannot decide on who will attempt the feat is a question of realpolitik. The best-laid plans of a presidential candidate mean nothing if they lose the election. Winning elections then are just as important as making decisions, if that is what the political architecture calls for. This, of course, brings up the ugly business of gaming politics: gerrymandering, suppressing votes or buying them, and much, much more. This also includes the political and economic viability of enforcing the ideals and decisions of the other forms of political conversation.

All four approaches impact others and affect them in particular and limited ways. Some can be used to delimit and control others to some extent, but all four are always present and necessary in every polity. There is a strong relationship between the political and politics proper, and between political architecture and realpolitik. The former pair creates unity and maintains it in a real, concrete way. The latter pair prevents abuse of unity while managing to get needs met and actions accomplished.

The political and political architecture constitutes the realm of political theory or political philosophy, as they form the primary assumptions upon which all other political decisions are based. These two deal with the possible and the impossible. Politics and realpolitik are better informed by political science as they deal in the observable world of the probable and the improbable. Let me reiterate that there is no conflict between these aspects, merely different goals.

Beyond all four aspects lies the realm of ethics, in two distinct senses. First as virtue ethics, which instills in the individual the skills and abilities to get along well in a given political arrangement and culture, and then pure ethics, including the ethics of care, which hope to determine individual actions about what is to be done in the concrete situation. Ethics are not politics, but they do relate to it because they form the preconditions and boundaries of politics. Ethics is to politics as wood is to a table. A table is made from some substance, but the essential “tableness” of the table has nothing to do with which particular substance that it is formed from. Ethics then can disagree with our politics, that is the two can be in discord so that realities do not match ideals, or they may try to agree with political consideration so that either the individual or the polity itself must be changed into harmony. This is because all forms of ethics deal with the individual and politics deal with groups.