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Technically, they don’t.
But that is certainly not the whole story, indeed, it could be very misleading.
(FA = Free Association, a technical term as I use it, referring to organizations most easily described as modelled after the organizational traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous.)
The basic problem in politics is that politics purports to be, in the modern context, organization of the people; yet the structures used in politics result in oligarchical control and loss of full democracy.
Oligarchical control is here not used as a perjorative term. It is simply a description. Oligarchy may be appropriate under some circumstances. However, it is my thesis that full democracy is more powerful, that, properly designed and implemented, it makes a people strong. In my view, the relative success of the “West” is due to the degree of democracy which exists there. Which is also, in my view, quite limited and dangerously defective. But it is still stronger than blatant dictatorship and oligarchical control that is oppressive beyond limits.
Now, many people have noticed that what is missing is an organization of the people, and many have attempted to form such organizations. However, the communication and control structures which have been used have been largely structures inherited from royalist or strong-leader traditions. And, so, even though these organizations started as an attempt to organize the people, presumably for the benefit of the people, they ended up either failing utterly or, what may have been worse, succeeding in overthrowing prior governments, replacing the old set of oligarchs with a new one. Parties were organized top-down, for discipline, considered necessary to succeed, and, of course, did not simply fade away as had been predicted.
People who hold power only rarely give it up voluntarily. (They will believe that they know better than others what is best for the people, so anyone attempting to replace them must either be dangerously insane or an enemy of the people.)
Bottom line: attempts to change the system by employing the system are doomed to reproducing the system with new faces.
The FA/DP concept is to organize the people, not in opposition to the system, but outside it. FAs don’t take controversial positions, they neither endorse nor oppose any causes.
What good are they, then?
You might as well ask, “What good is an open mind?”
FAs do facilitate communication. That’s really almost all they do. Once people can communicate effectively and efficiently, they can organize as needed whatever activities need to be undertaken independently of the FA.
Again, this comes from Alcoholics Anonymous. AA groups never own property, and starting a treatement center involves not only owning property, but also, perhaps, employing or supporting some method of treatment which might be controversial. So what do they do? Those members of AA who want to do it, simply form an independent association, formal or informal, to take on the task. They can structure this independent organization however they like. AA will not endorse it, but the individual members are completely free to endorse it, contribute to it, work for it, talk about it, represent it if authorized, etc.
The members met through AA.
There is a new political party forming, composed of dissidents from the Libertarian Party, a minor party in the U.S. which is probably number three or four in terms of votes it gets in elections. The party is called the Bostoni Tea Party. Jan Kok has been active in the Libertarian Party, and is participating in the formation of the new party, but significant for our discussion here, he is also forming another organization called the Boston Tea Free Association.
The Boston Tea Party is a traditional political party. Well, not entirely traditional, but it will run candidates for office, presumably, it has a platform. It takes positions. The Boston Tea Free Association won’t do any of these things. However, I think, members of the BTP will be encouraged to join the BTFA. What happens if they do?
Well, right off, the BTFA is a DP organization. As such, it will create, if the members use it, a communications structure that is immune to top-down control. In AA, “Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern.” The function of the BTFA has a number of aspects:
(1) It exists to advise the BTP leadership through deliberation and DP polls. (2) It exists to advise its members regarding political action, not by taking an organizational position, but by developing consensus and expressing that consensus back to its members, through the DP structure. (That is, members are advised by people they have chosen as trustworthy, not merely by some position developed as a majority view, or as a view of “leaders,” which is how traditional parties function.) (3) It is a way for people not members of the BTP to connect with the BTP. BTFA members can be in opposition to the BTP. Thus a path is created for the BTP to grow beyond its initial doctrinal and membership limitations. The BTP can choose to change or not; but if it chooses to ignore a developing consensus, well, it is simply turning away from power, which, in that context, would be beneficial to society. We don’t want parties gaining power which will ignore a social consensus. That’s dictatorship, really, even if it satisfies the technical requirements of an allegedly democratic structure. Such as by having enough votes on the Supreme Court to basically define and implement a desired election result, combined with a gutless opposition not willing to raise the serious constitutional question of a Supreme Court making a blantantly political decision based on outcome rather than the law itself…. ahem….
If the people are organized, there is no power that can resist them. Indeed, organization of the people is quite dangerous, if the organizational structure is such that it can be hijacked by ideologues, fanatics, special interests, or other parasites.
This is why I am so interested in seeing DP implemented, at first, in an FA context. DP is a general organization method, and it certainly has potential governmental applications, but I’d much prefer seeing it used in a relatively fail-safe environment. I propose FAs as that environment.
Plus, I suspect, FA/DP organizations have the potential to make changes in governmental structures unnecessary. After all, if one has minimal democracy in government, and the people are organized, they can simply elect those whom they trust to positions of power; and should those people be corrupted, they can quickly detect this and remove them. Even massive election fraud cannot withstand the people directly organized, even with far less effective organization than we forsee for FA/DP organizations.
It is not necessary for everyone to sign on to this plan, it is not necessary for even a majority to sign on. All that is needed, really, is for a few people to begin functioning this way. If the theory is correct, those small organizations will be successful, and they will grow and be imitated.
And this is the trick: if, say, liberals form an FA/DP organization and dominate it (not by control, but simply by percentage of membership), and conservatives see that this organization is growing, threatening them, they would be quite likely to adopt the structure. And the message is the structure. Because FA/DP organizations don’t have an organizational bias, if there were a “liberal” FA/DP organization and a “conservative” one, there would be nothing, really, to prevent them from merging and seeking consensus. FA/DP organizations, structurally, encourage consensus because with consensus, effort is not wasted in opposition. If caucus A wants to advance cause A, and caucus B opposes it, they are each free to form political action organizations for their respective purposes, collect money, organize volunteers, and so forth. But their net effect will be reduced because their actions will be opposite in direction. If, instead, they can find some kind of compromise or consensus that both groups can support, their power is amplified, not reduced.
How rapidly this would cause the traditions of opposition and conflict to change, I can’t predict. But FA/DP will create forces in that direction, and will make such change possible.
As to software for DP, certainly this will be useful. I’m trying to avoid making it necessary, making it the foundation of the organization; that is the cart before the horse. DP can be implemented with a minimum of software, even special-purpose proxy can be done this way, simply by creating proxy lists and allowing people to analyze them in their own ways. Decentralizing analysis is yet another protection against fraud, though the FA context is the strongest protection.
An open proxy list, anyone can check. And anyone can take an open voting record and analyze it to expand it by proxy representation. These are only polls, in FAs, they do not result — except for organizational decisions, which are minimal in FAs — in the application of power. Polls are reported by anyone, using analytical methods that they choose. If they suspect that a set of proxies are fraudulent, they can discount them, even without investigating them directly.
But it would be useful, I’d suggest, to consider a list of possible functions of a DP tool, starting with the simplest. Instead of trying to come up with at complete system, with all the bells and whistles and possible features.
I’ve been working with assumptions of open assignment of proxies and open voting, as it is in Town Meeting government. But some might want secrecy, and DP systems with some level of secrecy are possible. Note, however, that with secrecy comes risk of fraud that cannot easily be detected.
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