A structural fault in society owing to a design flaw in the electoral system

[Michael Allan]

Thanks for taking the time to comment, C.  I suggest we discuss your
points one at a time.  Which seems the most important, do you think?

M

conseo wrote:
> Hi Mike,
> 
> I'll quickly answer to the latest online version:
> 
> > An individual vote in an election has no meaningful effect in the objective 
> world, and no effect whatsoever on the official outcome of the election; 
> whether the vote is cast or not, the outcome is the same regardless.
> 
> This is a strong claim. In fact it already polarizes the audience. The main 
> problem you have to explain then is why the majority of people still vote if 
> the outcome is zero. Those who have voted for political concepts and believe 
> in some policies which have been implemented in the past will oppose you for 
> the very reasons of this policy. There are some societies like in Scandinavia 
> where the social welfare state definitely marks social progress and it is 
> driven by voted parties. 
> 
> > Beneath this fact lies a structural fault that emerges here and there in 
> society as a series of persistent discontinuities between facts and norms, or 
> contents and forms. 
> 
> This is an abstract conclusion, which is not bound to the first claim and you 
> have to elaborate that more as you do later. I don't think it helps clarify 
> your claim here in the second sentence, but rather confuses non-theoretical 
> readers.
> 
> > One rightly expects to be free because he lives in a democracy and has a 
> vote; but the truth is, he has no political freedom at all. I trace the 
> underlying cause of this fault to a technical design flaw in the electoral 
> system wherein the elector is physically separated from the ballot. This 
> separation removes the elector as voter (the active decider) from the social 
> means and product of decision, thereby rendering him individually 
> powerless.QCW
> 
> This is ok for an introduction.
> 
> > No electoral power exists in the vote itself, it exists purely in external  
> communication networks; although the votes are brought together to make a 
> result, the voters are not brought together as such to make a decision, 
> therefore no valid decision can be extracted from the result. In the 1700s and 
> 1800s, middle class society was able to partly overcome this flaw by engaging 
> in politically animated practices of decision formation and expression that, 
> even without the benefit of a concrete ballot, were nevetherless voter-like.
> 
> If you make historical claims, you have to narrow it down and reference your 
> sources. I don't know what you are really talking about. In the US there has 
> been the democratic party since the independence. In France after the 
> revolution there were different groups forming the democratic spectrum from 
> right to left, which gave the right/left terminology its basis. 
> 
> > This ad hoc practice of "abstract voting" enabled them to reconstitute 
> electoral power within the flourishing communication networks of the day.PPS
> 
> I don't understand what "abstract voting" means here. Develop your abstract 
> argument with an historical/social example showing the general dynamics and 
> social reasons for the change. I guess you are talking about private entities 
> like stock corporations, which practice some kind of democratic management by 
> owners? The concept of voting was not new, if you refer to a historical 
> development, can you quote where the historical background comes from? Even if 
> you keep it simple for normal readers to understand, it allows to argue much 
> better.
> 
> > As voting rights later expanded into the population, however, the franchise 
> came to include more people who lacked the personal or social means to engage 
> in abstract voting and make rational decisions of their own. Their cumulative 
> disengagement amounted to a power vacuum that coincided with the rise, after 
> 1867, of the modern party system in Great Britain. The modernized Liberal and 
> Conservative parties each responded by packaging its own ready-made decision, 
> thus reducing the input of the elector to a choice of which package to 
> consume. 
> 
> But Great Britain is different from all other countries in its system. What 
> was the social reason for mass parties and more interestingly how have they 
> been organized internally? Why? People know that parties have a fixed program, 
> I would leave it out unless it helps the argument. More interesting is why 
> parties formed at all. Because if they formed to realize a certain concept of 
> society, then this ready-made decision is the reason for their public support 
> and therefore their existence.
> 
> > The resulting transfer of power from the weaker members of the electorate to 
> the organized parties was the historical event that opened up the structural 
> fault. It opened between the two formal components of political liberty, 
> namely individual power and equality. 
> 
> I would reformulate it in individual freedom and equality as these have been 
> the liberal terms. But if it opened there, then it opened in the middle of 
> liberal ideology, where freedom and equality were revolutionary claims leading 
> to antagonisms. Many political studies of the 19th century have tried to find 
> a compromise for this problem, leading to all kind of utopian and formalist 
> solutions.
> The liberal revolutions of that time freed up the individual property from 
> feudal barriers. But if private property is the foundation of the new society 
> then equality cannot be against private property, which was the material 
> driving force behind the revolutions. Both in the US and in France the 
> revolution were driven by farmers which saw equality in owning their property 
> and the revolution gave it to them. The basis of society was private property 
> and the belief that liberal rights give everybody the private property 
> necessary to enjoy these freedoms. 
> The liberal solution is formal equal rights, but real inequality. The 
> resulting democratic systems ensured a society based on private property. And 
> private property is the same no matter who the owner is. In that sense it is 
> emancipating. But if private property is the basis for human rights and 
> freedom, then the state is only a superficial institution guaranteeing the 
> development of private businesses. From a liberal pov the state has little to 
> decide and may not touch the basis of liberal society, which is private 
> property. But if the true freedom of society lies in private property, then 
> democracy applied to the state is alienated anyway. The division of the voter 
> from the ballot is only logical from a liberal pov, because government is not 
> meant to intervene in any private individual rights even if these private 
> properties are larger than the government. Allowing to replace public 
> management (government) every few years is all that is necessary for a private 
> business owner. Too much democracy/equality is a thread to private property.
> 
> You just claim that it is a design error. But technical designs don't drive 
> societies. While it might sound compelling that they couldn't do what we do in 
> analogue ways, something like the general assembly would have been possible at 
> any time. This doesn't disqualify your formal analysis, but I think we can 
> improve it if we understand the historical reasons and where we have to focus 
> to create new forms for new social institutions.
> 
> > These two components were torn apart for lack of any structural binding in 
> society.
> 
> Exactly, but you have to make that concrete imo. See prev. point.
> 
> > Society is well equipped to handle the various forms of inter-personal or 
> mass communication in which electoral power alone exists, but it lacks any 
> concomitant support of equality. The ballot itself formalizes equality, but 
> only internal to the electoral system; its structural strength cannot be 
> realized unless it is externalized and personally bound to the elector. 
> 
> For this to work the state as we know it in the liberal sense would have to be 
> abandoned and a new totality of consent has to be introduced. See also above. 
> Instead of private property the guarantee for individual freedom has to come 
> out of this new process. If individual freedom is lost then consent is not of 
> interest any more. So we have to progress in both directions to enable a 
> consent based process. Better collective management guaranteeing more 
> individual freedoms. The problem is bigger than the tying of vote and voter.
> 
> Instead of continuity in private ownership and decisions new institutions have 
> to form which can manage social reproduction without private property 
> directly. Private property is the negation of collective assets as the 
> medieval/feudal commons.
> 
> > With that as a foundation, society could have provided electoral services on 
> the basis of form rather than content;
> 
> I assume you mean form in the sense of *non*-distinction between voter and 
> vote and content as the party-program. But socially the program was an 
> expression of classes forming these parties. So while the form does not fit 
> the content of consent based society, it was designed for the society it has 
> been applied to. This doesn't mean that it was designed with the majority of 
> people in mind, but for the liberal prototype of a business owner. 
> 
> > services in support of decision making as opposed to a one-size-fits-all 
> consumption. Ordinary competition among service providers would then be 
> sufficient to ensure that all electors regardless of personal and social means 
> had access to their share of constitutional power and its associated 
> opportunities. 
> 
> That is a technical solution in the voting system. I am interested more in the 
> problem how society changes if we create forms for new social organisation. If 
> you talk about that with the occupy movement and the general assembly in mind, 
> you might be able to work out some shared analysis/vision on how consent based 
> action can be implemented. For example: How do you run a certain 
> infrastructure service based on consent? We don't need the answer, but maybe 
> the flaw you see can be better mapped in the collective question of our time. 
> How to reach a consent-based sustainable future?
> 
> > It was only ever a technical design flaw that precluded this development in 
> the first place, and brought us instead to the present situation where the 
> organized parties make the decisions and exercise the rightful power and 
> political freedom that were intended for the citizens.
> 
> See above why this sounds naive from a sociological pov imo. 
> 
> conseo