>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.
>
>_________
>
>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.<<
Do you recall a guy by the name of Ben Seattle who used to post on an old Spoons-Marxism list often? I don't remember what you thought of his proposal, but it struck me as fanciful. I'm afraid that there is no easy technological solution -- be it computers, electoral systems, etc. -- to a practical problem of how to make democracy work with more than a handful of people. Self-government and representation must be reconciled with each other, and a step toward reconciliation, I think, doesn't lie in a dream of instant & perfect equality; we need a clear-sighted appraisal of where we stand, with all the divisions of labor built up by class society, sexism, racism, etc. Gramsci, for instance, values a Machiavellian approach, because of the latter's unsentimental call to size up what we are (or, more accurately, what we have become). Only by understanding what we are can we understand and make real the possibilities of what we can become.
***** The first element is that there really do exist rulers and ruled, leaders and led. The entire science and art of politics are based on this primordial and (given certain general conditions [i.e. under the conditions of class society]) irreducible fact. The origins of this fact are a problem apart, which will have to be studied separately (at least one could and should study how to minimise the fact and eliminate it, by altering certain conditions which can be identified as operating in this sense), but the fact remains that there do exist rulers and ruled, leaders and led. Given this fact, it will have to be considered how one can lead most effectively (given certain ends); hence how the leaders may best be prepared (and it is more precisely in this that the first stage of the art and science of politics consists); and how, on the other hand, one can know the lines of least resistance, or the most rational lines along which to proceed if one wishes to secure the obedience of the led or ruled. In the formation of leaders, one premise is fundamental: is it the intention that there should always be rulers and ruled, or is the objective to create the conditions in which this division is no longer necessary? In other words, is the initial premise the perpetual division of the human race, or the belief that this division is only an historical fact, corresponding to certain conditions? Yet it must be clearly understood that the division between rulers and ruled -- though in the last analysis it has its origin in a division between social groups -- is in fact, things being as they are, also to be found within the group itself, even where it is a socially homogenous one....
The principle once posed that there are leaders and led, rulers and ruled, it is true that parties have up till now been the most effective way of developing leaders and leadership. (Parties may present themselves under the most diverse names, even calling themselves the anti-party or the "negation of the parties"; in reality, even the so-called "individualists" are party men, only they would like to be "party chiefs" by the grace of God or the idiocy of those who follow them.)[30]
[30] The fascists often described their party as an "anti-party", and Mussolini liked to expatiate on his own "individualism." (Gramsci, _Prison Notebooks_, p. 144-146) *****
Throughout _Prison Notebooks_, Gramsci returns, again and again, to the question of hegemony, which is to say, leadership (of classes, parties, organic intellectuals, etc.). Gramsci contrasts leadership with domination; to the extent that leadership is *not* exercised explicitly, prudently, and democratically, domination comes to prevail in its stead. Why must we pose the question of leadership *honestly & explicitly*, instead of simply performing a fiction of equality where practical equality does not exist yet? Gramsci argues (as you can see above) that leaving the question implicit -- or worse yet, pretending that the question does not exist or has been already solved -- allows the unscrupulous to dominate the masses through covert means, even (especially?) in the name of fighting against privilege, hierarchy, etc. The "anti-party," for Gramsci, *is* the party of domination. One can't abolish the relation of the leaders and the led without first of all acknowledging that it *does* exist now.
Yoshie