> Carrol,
> Oh. And the alternative to participatory democracy? [1]
> I think we are either talking about "representative
> democracy," [2] which strikes me as also being dominated by
> egomaniacs or "dictatorship," which certainly is,
[1] I don't know. That is something which has to be worked out in the very early stages of any new progressive (or revolutionary) movement in the U.S. -- Which is one of the reasons I so dislike discussions focusing on "what socialism should be," when there are immense theoretical/practical questions (without current solutions) that face us in the rather immediate future.
[2] No, I mean "participatory democracy" as it actually operated in the movement in the 60s. It meant leadership was always informal, based mostly on who could speak most articulately, and while a mastery of rhetoric and the knowledge to support it is all very fine, it is not a very good organizing principle. I find it most interesting that for the most part intelligent revolutionaries make the best reformists (this is an aspect of Lenin's writing in the first decade of the century), and that the most elitist organizational forms almost always come about in the name of the struggle against elitism. As ultimately undemocratic as representative democracy is, it is probably not as bad as what has gone under the name of participatory democracy. And I think adherents of it should develop concretely their relationship to the "actual existing participatory democracy" in the U.S. movement, just as in the past socialists were asked to established their relationship to the "actually existing socialism" of the FSU.
Carrol