Manifesto
After the establishment destroyed the Labour Party it became obvious that: The problem is representation. It is this that we must find a solution to, and to which I allude in the latter part of this text.
The Problem of Representation
Pre Plato's republic, democracy reached a crisis point where traditional Greek forum democracy became unwieldy due to sheer numbers and size, because the village meetings became town meetings, became city meetings, became City State meetings, where eventually members were more than a days journey from the seat of power and the numbers wanting to speak became too many to fit into a day session then a week, then a month, then a year, we all know how meetings drag on and on; and to where too much of peoples time was absorbed in politics, and only those with no work to do could speak.
Plato's solution to this, was an idea he took from Socrates and espoused in his book the Republic, a REPresentative of the PUBLIC government. The concept of areas or groups choosing one among them to be their delegate and wield their power on their behalf as their representative.
The Catch...
Only thing about the representative model is that it is inherently corrupting. And we have only one method to remove a corrupt delegate and that is an election once every 4/5 years. And where our choices of candidates are additionally constrained by, selections from well funded parties, who have an establishment, who having established their position must protect it from others so that they can see their vision of the world enacted to the exclusion of all others.
And thus we get wasted time on the politics of power, an inherently divisive, inefficient process, where the compromises and procedural tricks to maintain power, lead inevitably down a slippery slope to corruption, and the once visionary idealist becomes perverted from their beliefs and the tools of those who paid them their Millions, in board posts, to get them there.
While calling the visionary, ideals that they once espoused but were too hard for them to achieve; the stuff of unrealistic, immature dreamers of innocence, that they have now left behind in the new hard-headed pragmatic vision of the world, the tired, worn out excuse of every rundown, plastic politician everywhere.
And where the professional politicians, in it for the money, can quickly gain the dominant positions via Entryists methods, and control any political party. As we saw with the Labour Party.
Plato designed the republic to fail the public and serve the Oligarchs.
The rot started at the top with Plato who like Socrates came from the Oligarch class. And who wrote his book to have two meanings. First was The Bait, of a proposal for a republican model of democracy. Second was The Switch the underlying subtext of the Republic which was an instruction manual to his fellow "educated" establishment elite Oligarchs on how to subvert the representative model to acquire the power after it was created. It is a concept they quietly teach in Ox-bridge and other establishment elite college and school history courses around the world to this day, amazing how many politicians and senior civil servants studied history at Ox-bridge.
The Death of Democracy
And this is where we are today. Our democracy is little more than a shell, and like all republics before it, its economics falling to Neo-Feudalism and heading on a crash course to its own destruction, presided over by self declared emperors, galloping at social media fuelled high speed, to the inevitable fall of empire stage.
Defining the problem
Modern representative democracy is based on the 17th century idea that in order to convey our choices of the laws, taxation and central funding rules, that we wish to live by, we need to choose one among our community and send them on the back of a horse or mule or in a cart pulled by some draft animal on a journey of several days to then spend most of the year trying to put our view across in a notional capitol.
Representative democracy is fundamentally flawed in a plethora of ways:
- Not all of us in a geographical community have the same views
- Even the best orator and philosophical thinker cannot put forward the diverse views of such a community
- Ideas get lost in our communication to the representative and the representatives communication to parliament, it is just becomes a game of misunderstood whispers.
- Representatives are open to persuasion, both good and bad, even good persuasion, is bad representation as while the representative has been persuaded, it does not mean the originator of the idea would be.
- Representative Democracy creates elitist establishments who choose the candidates
- Representative Democracies establishment elites only accept the views of those who can get to the meetings, night shift workers, the disabled, parents with children or workers with a long commute need not apply, further ingraining establishment elite politics.
- Representative Democracy is incredibly slow and provides the most minimum of feedback
- Representative Democracy lacks formality, it just ends up being a howling match on the Parliament floor
- Representative Democracy is inexact, relying on instants of rabble rousing speech rather than careful analysis
- Representative Democracy is no longer representative, ask the people, look how many vote.
- Representative Democracy is passed its sell by date.
- It is now possible to replace Representative Democracy; Iceland as a nation showed the way and rewrote its constitution via a web forum.
What is the solution?
Violent revolution is not the best solution. And non Violence has a proven track record. It was effective when the wall fell. Vaclav Havel's velvet revolution worked. Peace, is usually better as Nelson Mandela finally proved. And in the end truth and reconciliation makes a more stable place for us all to live in. We need a transition party to be elected with that goal of moving us from the old fashioned representative democracy model, to a modern electronic direct democracy. I estimate it would take about three terms to complete the change.
What is the goal of this "Transition Party"
I was discussing with several experts in the field of IT, ideas that others and myself have for transition party.
The party needs to start by looking at electronic democracy internally to prevent factionalism we have all seen recently what the representative model of democracy did to the Labour Party and what it has been doing Britain for at least 5 decades since the emergence of anti social Thatcherism. And more importantly this party needs to do this to end the establishment bias in everything from parliament to the media and education and business.
It is a vote winner because it makes the voter the agent of change and will enable the party to pull in all those who feel disenfranchised by the old fashioned representative model.
This is the 21st Century; age of the World Wide Web, we have X/Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Computer Forums, let us be honest we don't need representatives to speak for us any more, we can speak for ourselves. That is what we were doing in comments sections of on-line news media until their advertising masters ordered them to shut down the uppity oiks that were taling about change. On TikTok, Facebook and X/Twitter people are crying out to be heard but we need to formalise it, and give it real power, rather than it just being a talking shop where the representatives skim off the one liners to use as spin and ferment division to exploit for votes. The questions is how do we move to that form of democracy smoothly without major disruption.
First of all let us be honest. In this age of the internet, social media and electronic identity; the idea that your finances and tax is private and sacrosanct, is about as real as a chocolate fire-guard. See what happened to Cameron and his offshore accounts, that has been happening more and more often. So the idea of keeping things private and secret is stupid at best and at worst promotes elitism and a false sense of security. As Mark Zuckerberg inventor of Facebook said "PRIVACY IS DEAD!"
So we have to be open and stand for what we believe in and come up with a form of democracy that can work in the modern era.
Here is a suggested methodology using a computer forum that should be trialled in the running of the Transition Party, as both a test of the concept and to bring in new members from voters who we all know feel disfranchised by the current system.
I honestly think it would allow the party to repair our broken society after the divisions of Brexit I think that direct democracy would appeal to all those disenfranchised left supporters as well as Greens and Liberal Democrats and would even pull in anti big government Tories and Reform party members.
A Manifesto for Electronic Democracy:
We start with a computer forum, one that is off the shelf, perhaps we trial a number of them. We trial the concept in the Transition Party, we allow anyone to see it but only Transition Members can write and reply in it, this acts to bring in more members, enlarging the Transition Party:
It could look something like this:
A) Laws can be set by starting a forum thread,
B) Accounts can be secured by chip and pin and block-chain technology, if it is good enough for our banks and money it is more than good enough to verify our democracy. It is cheap established technology that people are already used to.
For the Transition Party trial of the concept and for administration of the Transition Party:
i) We could use the Bank of Dave or Nationwide Building Society to do this.
ii) The Transition Party membership card can be a membership account from which members party dues are paid or through which donations can be made, it separates members personal bank accounts from their party financing, and allows the party to easily comply with party financing regulations and accounting.
iii) An Additional benefit; the Bank, as the Transition party bank would have its financial position strengthened by additional account members.
C) For a national system, a national account number, such as your national insurance number or a separate bank account with any bank could be used, we already have some systems that work this way, this would be far more efficient and verifiable than the current system of the electoral role.
D) A law or debate is started by posting a new thread.
E) Laws require a voting thread people have a single vote linked to their ID.
F) Participants can add to the proposed text of the law.
G) Participants can register an interest and vote on the law and its variations of text simple thumbs up or thumbs down that is already used in multiple social media systems, at any stage members can change their view and vote on it throughout the year as it is debated and they are convinced by the arguments of others.
H) We keep a second chamber to refine laws and act as a barrier to the tyranny of the majority and or hasty decisions but with major differences,
I) It too should be virtual
J) The peers can come from several sources and a mix something like this might work:
i) 40% jury selected from registered voters, If they can vote to imprison some one they can vote on our laws
ii) 35% selected and conscripted from the so called great and the good,
iii) 25% selected by lobby groups such as the police, military, doctors, educators,
K) All to be paid minimum wage but with a forum set bonus for 4 years of service perhaps in the way of a pension for good service to the state.
L) After a year each whole Law can be finalised and voted through both houses and in a ceremony at the end of the political year, each law can have its votes counted.
M) Keep a head of state, voted president, or inherited monarch, have them sign the laws in to existence at the end of year ceremony, and you still need someone to pin medals on people, wave to the crowds, help with tourism etc.
This is just the seed of an idea.
I wrote this as a dynamic document designed to trigger debate, on how real Democracy can be re-achieved. Please pass it on to those you know to add their thoughts and make a real democracy happen.
