A possible solution to leadership failure is clear: Scrap elections and replace them with democratic lotteries. In place of elected officials would be, as the ancient Greeks envisioned, Ho Boulomenous, or “anyone who wishes.”
Instead of electing rich, polished politicians who are tied to special interests, we should be getting the masses to govern. They want to replace the entire legislature with ordinary people, selected at random in the same way we choose jackpot winners.
Wonder if this would work? I mean jurors are chosen randomly (in the USA anyway). I’m not involved in US politics, but it did get me thinking that there are a lot of problems with politics in general, and politicians. With a random process we’d also end up rotating these people like banks do for bank managers to ensure there is no entrenchment and working around the system. Can it be worse than is already happening in some countries? Clearly “elected officials” have not been shining brightly around the world.
mate just do democratic centralism like the soviets did, or cuba still does. 5 levels or so of offices, starting from communal all the way to national. In, say, the USA it would look like township, county, state, federal. With such a system it’s entirely possible to have neighbourhood elections, or regroup some states together. People vote for the level higher up, so citizens vote for their communal representatives. They have to give accounts to their constituents and can be recalled at any time by popular vote. Here’s the kicker: you can’t present yourself as a candidate, someone has to vouch for you, and you don’t vote for who you want but who you don’t want. We keep going in rounds until there’s only one candidate left, and then we decide if we want this candidate too. If we don’t, we start over again with new people. You only get a standard sheet of paper to present yourself and you can’t make any promises, since your goal is to represent the will of the people and as a cadre, guide them towards better democracy (while taking their wishes into account). No campaign funds, no outlandish promises you’ll never keep, no corporate interests.
This will also require representation at work and socialism. Unions will represent trades and will work the same way. They will have their own sphere of government, distinct from the political side above, but also linked since you as a person are a worker and a citizen, and so is everyone else. Since it’s a socialist economy at this point (this would never happen in capitalism because democracy as we live it was created by the bourgeoisie, and they would be fools to put a stop to it willingly), it actually strengthens unions and work – there is no more tug-of-war between workers and boss, and so unions can be democratic.
A random list is essentially a roll of the dice. It’s saying luck will govern us better than we can govern ourselves. We can govern ourselves just fine, because politics is a human invention and so is society – therefore humans should be able to navigate it. The problem we have is the whole system, and politics are but a reflection of the mode of production.
Interesting point about the unions and yes true democracy was invented way back in a different world… interesting how we cling to it, but also probably because it’s better the devil you know than the one you don’t ;-)