Monday, November 17, 2003

"Rebuilding Iraq: The Problem of Democracy", Benjamin R. Barber

"Rebuilding Iraq: The Problem of Democracy", Opinion Editorials by Benjamin R. Barber

I was asked yesterday whether Dean listens to his supporters. The facile answer is that a politician who doesn't seek the opinion of his constituents cannot appeal to them, and cannot win their support.

But is that really listening? Is polling and focus-grouping part of a democratic conversation or part of the problem facing American democracy? Is the transmission of group interests through representative elites, statistical inductions, and the media's poorly focused lens, valid ways for our democratic representatives to listen to us? Are these tools and the brief, reductive act of voting enough to sustain a vital democracy?

No. No more than our marketization of Iraq will aid in sustaining an Iraqi democracy.

These techniques are poor substitutes for real consultation; outliers are ignored, subtlety is lost, self-interest laces their use and interpretion, and the media serves the bottom line not the commonweal. But is there an alternative? Many will idealistically claim that the internet has come just in time to save our democracy. But making sense of the cacophanous, uncontrolled, explosively creative net is like attempting to herd a swarm of angry bees.

While it may be true that the majority of American's are now on the net, just being 'on the internet' does not guarantee you an equal voice on it. The net favors the young and adaptable, the wealthly and educated, over-representing their views and interests, while disfavoring the poor, the elderly, and the less educated. We can't simply rely on new technology to "fix" our problems. Especially one that, for all it's openess, is still discriminatory in so many ways.

There are more question marks than periods in this post. I don't think there are any facile answers to the question I've been asked. I invite readers to suggest thier own answers. Moving closer to a democratic dialogue requires more than a blind faith in a mediating technology. Democracy was designed to reduce complexity as much as possible. Our votes are blunt instruments of political consent. Yet this is the tradition and social institution which is the sine qua non of our democracy. Surely that is part of the problem?

Perhaps the answer lies in building a cultural tradition and institution which incorporates much more information than a vote, and which places our voices at the center of the democratic process without mediation or interpolation. Traditions and institutions claim our alliegence, our time, and our attention. Nothing short of a cultural change which makes it routine and expected that citizens spend more time on, and give more attention to, matters of "politics" can result in placing our unmediated voices nearer the center of power.

Such direct democracy was a dream of Mary Parker Follett at the turn of the last century. Perhaps we may find that the kind of reforms she dreamed of, but which ultimately dissolved away, leaving only ideas and inspiration behind, can now be sustained and fashioned into a vital and permanent traditions with the facilitation of new technology.

As Benjamin Barber rightly claims, democracy is a project built from the ground up, never the top down. If such a tradition and institution emerges, it will come FROM us, not given TO us. It will make the lowly more powerful, and the high less so. As such, it will be a struggle to preserve the existence of this new thing against ceasless assault. It will threaten the wealth and power of many, and incur their wrath as never before.

Witness the ceaseless assault on an small company that threatened the wealth and privilege of but a single, fairly small industry: Napster. I'll be surprised if this new thing survives; the more effective it becomes, the stronger the assault will become. Keep your eyes peeled; where the lawsuits are filed, and the bills of attainder are targeted, there lies the seeds of change.

So, back to the question, "Does Dean listen to his supporters?" More than any other candidate, is the best I can claim. His campaign is simply different than that of other candidates. By way of experiment, I attended meetups of other candidates earlier in the season. Invariably, the supporters of other candidates were given nothing much to do except talk and go home. Dean's supporters were converted to volunteers and given self-directed tasks to carry out long before there was a single staffer on the ground. Dean got a significant boost from trusting supporters to do whatever they felt was right to support his campaign and bring his message to others.

Is that listening? Not really. It is trust. Trusting citizens to be politically active and responsible for themselves in a way which other campaigns, stuck in the mold of corporate management, cannot bring themselves to emulate. So, I would say that Dean trusts his supporters more than any other candidate. It's different, it's powerful, and it's very promising.

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