>>> Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> 03/31/00 04:26PM >>>
Ken Hanly wrote:
>On size of a state. I
>recall that Aristotle wanted to be able to call citizens to
>meetingsand have them able to show up. Didn't someone recently
>write about small being beautiful?
Actually, on this question, we have yet to progress beyond Aristotle, in thought and practice.
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CB: To advance beyond Aristotle and Madison, "The People" must be defined as ALL of the people. Popular sovereignty must be all power to all of the people , as a first principle. ( Madison, et al. , sort of had it in words - "We, the People", but not deeds) _________
Is democracy -- the rule of the many -- incompatible with any kind of mediation, representation, etc.? If so, only small town meetings of the Aristotelian kind could be truly democratic, and even then, there would be a problem of coordinating decisions made by different towns, which would inevitably introduce a form of mediation, representation, etc. In anarchism, there is a dream of pure direct democracy with _no_ mediation, which I don't think is compatible with modern industries and internationalism.
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CB: This is the Republican principle. Of course the people as a whole in a large population cannot practically self-govern. So, the Republican principle makes it more practical. With modern computer technology, we could vote as often as we shop ( well I don't shop that much). So, we could get much closer to direct democracy.
CB ______________