Towards Direct, Horizontal, Participatory Democracy

 

A critique against democracy is often 1. A straw man 2. A critique of democracy minus dimensions that make democracy coherent or 3. A critique of democracy plus something that should not be. Pro democracy worldviews rarely claim democracy as sufficient; such worldviews either claim democracy is needed or desirable for that which should be. Here are three necessary but insufficient dimensions to democracy that round it out to give democracy coherence. Such principles are 1. Direct Democracy 2. Horizontality and 3. Participatory democracy. Note the large amount of redundancy these principles have but also the distinctions that they have. When in gestalt with each other, those three  principles can help to make democracy more coherent.

1. Direct Democracy

Direct democracy is based on direct collective decisions between people. On an institutional level, direct democracy is rooted in the idea that policy making power should be retained on the lowest level; rather than voting on rulers or representative policy makers, direct democracy prescribes that people should decide on policies directly. Under direct democracy, policy making power is retained within assemblies of people, and decisions are made directly by collectives and individuals.

 

2.Horizontality

Horizontality is rooted in an anti hierarchical or a non hierarchical practice. For democracy to be horizontal, the means and ends of democracy (as well as the form and content of democracy) cannot be rooted in ruling class relations or other forms of hierarchical rule. This means that decisions made are not about how to wield arbitrary or authoritarian power above people, but how to arrive at decisions with people in collective settings. For democracy to be horizontal, it is important that hierarchical relations are thoroughly ruled out by horizontalist structure, bylaws, terms of practice, and culture to give the form of democracy a good living content. Horizontality is rooted in a formal equality of decision making power, and rooted in universalist equality (in the sense that if all relevant variables are equivalent there ought be no double standards in regards to the minimum treatment of persons). Direct democracy is retained within horizontal democracy, but horizontal democracy implies rules and a culture in favor of free egalitarian relations and against hierarchical form and content. Developmental direct democracy requires that democratic forms are not used for an election of a ruling strata or arbitrary and authoritarian rule.

3. Participatory Democracy

Participatory democracy implies participatory relations bounded by the participatory relations of others. Participatory democracy is rooted in an active form of collective and individual volition, where deliberation, decision making, and implementation are agreed to freely by active participants. Decisions made in regards to that which affects the whole of a collective ought to be decisions made by the collective as a whole through decisions bounded by non hierarchical boundaries and the implementation of such decisions ought to be done on a voluntary basis. Such relations are bounded by collective and individual free agreement and disagreement. Furthermore, participatory democracy implies freedom of, from and within associations (including the means of freedom of, from, and within associations) bounded by the freedoms of others. Within the most minimal standards of society, which should be rooted in non hierarchical rights and duties, all relations should be based on free volition. The rules and duties that ought to exist are precisely the kind of rules and duties in harmony with participatory and horizontal relations.

The dimensions above are insufficient dimensions to make democracy coherent; other dimensions include everything from an educated populace, to federalism, to ecology, to a coherent non hierarchical constitution, to restorative and transformative justice, to liberatory technology, to face-to-face deliberation at the heart of decision making processes, to abolishing the commodity form, to abolishing racism and kinshipism and patriarchal relations, to a living content that enables democracy to develop (and cultural dimensions that give rise to that content), etc. However, when looking at the kind of democratic forms being prescribed by libertarian socialists, it is important to actually look at the forms being advocated. Whatever one thinks of horizontal, direct, participatory democracy, such a form is not identical to bourgeoisie republics, and democracy is even retained in affinity group structures (often fetishized by anti democratic anarchists). Many disagreements with democracy by some anarchists are indeed definitional rather than substantial, and many of those disagreements accept bourgeois definitions of democracy on their own terms.

Democracy is often conflated with republican forms of governance. However, direct democracy can be distinguished from republican forms of governance, for direct democracy is a form of collective decision making without a ruling class of policy makers, whereas the most democratic of republics are rooted in electing a political ruling strata over and above the population. Liberal Republics, although more democratic than a monarchy (for example), qualitatively negate developmental horizontal relations implied in coherent democratic forms. The history of democracy goes back to collective decisions without ruling classes and contains such radically different modes of existence such as 1. Band societies 2. Village life 3. City life. From Catal Huyuk to Rojava, from Shinmin to the Free territory, from the CNT/FAI to the IWW, there are many ways that democracy can function. The only way for us to make formal collective decisions together without ruling classes or strata is through some kind of democracy. If a good society ought to at least make some formal collective decisions, and if a good society ought not have hierarchy, then democracy is a necessary part of the good social relations.

 

Notes in regards to Communalism vs Anti Civ

The whitewashing of civilization as white has far more to do with Richard Spencer’s fascist ideology than history. Civilization started in Sumer and Africa. It was not initially a product of Europe. Europe inherited civilization from the cradle of civilization. Racism is a product of relatively recent history and not a transhistorical phenomenon–despite kinshipism and many kinds of xenophobia going back to pre civilization times along with various other forms of ingroup-outgrouping prior to the construction of race. Claiming civilization as mere European imperialism is inaccurate and a denial of thousands of years of history.

Some of civilization’s defining features are 1. villages, towns, and cities (communes) 2. going beyond kinship lines in sustained ways beyond periodic interactions. 3. a degree of sophisticated technology beyond the stone age. Civilization and the development of cities (communes) existed prior to the development of states and nation states. The process of civilization has not been a one sided kind of linear progress. As Murray Bookchin points out in The Ecology of Freedom, the development of civilization has been janus-faced and infused with a history of hierarchy and a history of freedom. However, there is nothing in the defining features of what entails civilization that is necessarily hierarchical. One can recognize the liberatory aspects of the development of civilization–and the potentially liberatory aspects– without justifying or being in any way in favor of hierarchical civilization. Being for specific kinds of civilization does not entail being for civilization of any kind. It is also important for civilization to learn a lot from non-civilized relations; for despite the kinshipism that existed–and the lack of sophisticated technology to extend volition with– there are many internally egalitarian relations that we need to learn from and bring into the future.

 

Clearly European Imperial States, rulers, and imperial aspects of culture defined themselves as “bringing civilization to the uncivilized”. Anti-civ worldviews buy into that Eurocentric narrative despite the fact that civilization often existed in many places conquered by imperial European states including the so called new world. European Imperial States and the emerging capitalist class were going against the second defining feature of civilization that I mentioned above by institutionalizing racialized double standards to get cheap labor as they intentionally plundered and killed people–at home and abroad– through accumulation by dispossession and normal capitalist accumulation.  

 

Deep ecology and anarcho-primitivism are worldviews that have been thoroughly discredited. Despite the fact that they exist–mainly in PNW anarchist milieus– they lost the debate decades ago for anyone who wants to look into it. Recently such worldviews have disguised themselves by calling themselves anti-civilization. Such a turn is not too novel, for deep green and primitivist ideology has been doing that for a while. But hardly anyone admits to being a deep ecologist or a primitivist these days; it is much more trendy and socially acceptable to disguise such worldviews anti civ or green anarchy–despite green “anarchy” being something initially started by red and black “anarchy”.

 

By framing the narrative as civilization vs anti-civilization, anti-civ theorists then look to hierarchical civilization and paint civilization without adjectives as hierarchical civilization. Such a worldview is ahistorical, one sided, and anti dialectical because it does not sufficiently look at the history and potentiality of freedom within civilization. Anti-civ theorists often claim that anyone who thinks that any kind of civilization should exist are people who must be in favor of colonization, imperialism, and ecocide or processes that will lead to the above. But there is nothing in civilization in and of itself that sufficiently necessitates such dimensions of civilization. Many anarcho primitivists and deep ecologists use a line of argument that conflates cities with hierarchies–when cities are not necessarily hierarchical– as the primitivists and deep ecologists propose a worldview that is 1. against the means of history and science 2. against modern medicine in any form 3. against the building of cities and the transformation of raw material into artifice (usually beyond the stone age) 4. using such artifice to free us from labor and toil and to extend our volitions 5. and against communes. and 6. in consequence would lead to the killing of people on the scale of billions; beyond what any atrocity in world history has ever caused human beings.

 

By switching the debate from whether or not people are 1.  pro cities/communes of some kind 2. pro going beyond kinship relations and 3. pro technology beyond the stone age to whether one is pro imperialism and conquest, such an anti-civ position tries to attain the moral high ground while dislocating the roots of social problems from hierarchy and placing them onto cities without adjectives. Such an anti-civilization worldview is thoroughly anti anarchistic in various regards, seeing roots of problems in cities moreso than in hierarchies. It is one thing to have reservations about the word civilization given the way that the word has been used, but rejecting the substance of the minimal defining aspects of civilization (as sketched out above) is to do something entirely different. Supporting civilization with particular adjectives–such as libertarian socialist adjectives– is not equivalent to supporting hierarchical civilization. Defining civilization as hierarchical obscures the history of early villages, towns, and cities, and  tendencies towards more freedom within civilization, egalitarian voluntary projects in the context of cities throughout history, and projects such as The Paris Commune, The Free Territory, anarchocommunist Shinmin, anarchosyndicalist Spain, EZLN, Rojava, and cooperative and communal organizations.

 

When engaging an argument such as civilization vs anti-civilization, going into what people mean by different definitions is important to clarify what substantial agreements and disagreements are between interlocutors. In a kind of counter-intuitive way, when issues of definitions are not gone into and dealt with the disagreements about definitions often take center stage of a dialogue or debate. Sometimes the disagreements are definitional and other times the disagreements are substantial. Finding this out can allow people to then focus on what the substantial disagreements are regardless of how people are defining terms subjectively (and even regardless of the social definitions of such words as important as the social definitions of words are). Sometimes the framing of anti-civ is an obscure stand in for a broadly anti hierarchical analysis–defining civilization as hierarchical forms thereof– but very often is used to hide the same old deep ecology and anarcho primitivism that has been thoroughly destroyed in the realm of debate to the point where such worldviews are embarrassing to publicly hold.