By the people...

G’s new wife, R, says, rather out of the blue, that if you don’t vote, you can’t complain.

I know that she doesn’t realise that because I am not a citizen I cannot vote anyway. She doesn’t mean me personally. She is making a general point, although why I don’t know. We had been talking about Australian politics, yes, but rather about the figures involved than the system on the whole.

But, I said to her, what if what you are complaining about is the system of voting itself?

Because I do. Most Western nations are ruled by factions of a mercantilist class that does not represent the people it governs. I was reminded of this in reading Reefer madness, Eric Schlosser’s book about the American underground economy. In it, he points out that you can be sentenced to longer for possession of marijuana in some states than you would be for murder. How many of us would agree that smoking a joint is a worse crime than topping your neighbour? A majority? Anything like one.

Each three, four years we get to choose which of a couple of factions gets to rule the place for three, four years. Yes, we can vote for a minor party, but the system is structured, mostly because of its control of the media and the way power is apportioned, so that minor parties struggle to get anywhere near a share of power.

The winning faction claims a mandate to do whatever it chooses. It doesn’t usually choose to do things that people want. No. More often it chooses to do things that prevent people from doing what they want. This mandate can be based on very shaky ground, democratically. In the UK, perhaps 60% of the eligible population voted last time (I don’t know the exact figure). Of them, maybe 40% voted Labour. Maths fiends will be well ahead of me and will have worked out that this means only 24% of the population, a bare quarter, actually supported the party in power. (The coercive system in Australia gives the winners a more convincing mandate, somewhere in the mid-40s.) A quarter! Three quarters of the population either didn’t want Blair to rule or were not impressed enough either way to bother voting.

What is clear is that he does not govern in the name of the majority.

What is even clearer is that those that did vote for him did not vote for everything that he does. Nowhere was it suggested that a vote for Labour would entail an invasion of a foreign country. I don’t remember being asked whether I approved new repressive laws. If I had been, I would have said no, actually, the lack of rights we have now is already sufficiently worrying for you not to remove any more, cheers for asking.

What would I suggest to replace it? (Because of course we must have suggestions for replacing what there is – as R points out, it’s no good whining if you don’t have good suggestions for replacing what there is; bollocks, of course – I might have a very good idea of what’s rubbish and absolutely none about what would be good, but that doesn’t make it untrue that what’s rubbish is rubbish.)

Well, even though I think most people are politically illiterate and too blindly prejudiced to be trusted not to fuck the place up without even giving it a second's thought, I do believe that anyone who takes democracy seriously must trust the people. I think we should vote on lists of proposed programmes and that the government should be nothing but the functionaries who put them into action. (Okay, I have slightly more detailed ideas than that, because I can almost feel the "yes, but how would it all be paid for" coming.) There are of course fears that the majority would vote for the death sentence and other unsavoury things of which I don't approve, but two things have to be taken into consideration. One, who says that my idea of what's right should prevail? I know that's a bit revolutionary for most liberals, who feel that their personal feelings of righteousness outweigh any considerations of consensus or even the will of the majority. Two, politicans' role in my system would be much more as persuaders. Convince people not to hang criminals. Educate them. I believe strongly that if you are right, you can be seen to be right. I refuse to have so little faith in people that I must assume they are fundamentally not to be trusted with the direction of their own lives. Here's the key for me: let people have the power. Devolve to the lowest feasible level. The individual for choices that affect the individual alone (since when was it actually the state's, or anyone else's, business that Joe Blow smokes pot; even if it were true that he is endangering himself, why might he not be permitted to endanger himself?); the community for choices that affect the community; the city for the city...

People do not play an active part in politics because they cannot see how to change things. This is largely because they cannot, of course. They are mostly passive in the political process. We have "representatives", but we do not feel they represent us. This is because at every level they make decisions we do not mandate them to make.

We should be having meetings in every street, in every suburb, in every town. We should yea or nay the whole shebang. We should have voices that are heard, not votes that simply empower people we do not trust to do things we do not want done.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:44 am