As the Populist Party of America grows in size, we are faced with some challenging obstacles and difficult decisions to make regarding the future of the Party: i.e., What type of structure should be given to the Populist Party of America? Should we strive for a strong national organization? Or, contrarily, should we stress decentralization, choosing to focus on the development of state and local parties without any overbearing emphasis placed upon the integration of the various pockets of Populist America into a monolithic formation? Thus far, I have been exposed to two contrasting visions for the future organization of the Party, as it continues to grow in size.

There is an argument that maintains the necessity of an organization to possess some kind of integrated structure, which would include members who would participate in planning and problem solving. This managerial core would contribute to the development of different actionable plans that could later be introduced to the membership at large, providing some options that have already been delineated, from which the membership might select to adopt and implement as a Party platform. This proposal calling for the Party to possess a kernel, consisting of more active members, who would be inclined to offer centralized planning for the Party as a whole, stands in stark opposition to the other conception for the appropriate structuring of the Party, as it continues to expand.

This proposed design for the Party - which stands in opposition to proposals for centralization - would not provide for an organization with a centralized nervous system. Alternatively, the Party would be allowed to proliferated along lateral dimensions while failing to create an integrated hierarchy of offices.

To relate this ideology of decentralized politic to contemporary sociological literature, the jargon that has come into fashion, as a result of the studies upon the Informational Economy, which were initiated by Manuel Castells, uses the reference, Networked Politics, to designate instances of decentralized patterns of political praxis.

This new form of political mobilization often transcends the geographical boundaries imposed by states and governments. Furthermore, Networked Politics are understood as a by-product of what has been termed by Castells as Informationalism, which simply designates the technological paradigm underlying the expansion of Internet communicative infrastructures. However, the type of sociopolitical opposition that is formed through the networking of diverse agents and groups via the communication channels provided for by the Web - despite the transnational character of these network configurations - fails to negate the embodiment of geographical locality and the coalescence of interests among advocates who reside in physical proximity to one another; thus, allowing for embodied interaction.

This condition, where localized concerns are situated and understood in the context of larger geo-economic and geopolitical social forces, has been referenced under the neologism, glocalization. This concept fits in well with the social theoretical framework that has been introduced by Castells, who discards with the global democracy thesis propounded by Habermas and Rorty - which was founded upon the notion of a cosmopolitan culture - in favor of an understanding of the globalizing trends, facilitated by Informationalism, where multiculturalism will be preserved; only such cultural differences will become circumspect within a global forum of manifold cultural identities, who will participate in a world representational space in order to express their uniqueness as well as discover the peculiar attributes of others.

It is here, in the conception of glocalization, that I propose as a guiding post serving as an indication for the appropriate trajectory in which Populist America should transverse, as the Party enters into its future stages of development, as it continues to grow larger.

[Future installment: the concretization of glocalization in the praxes of Populist America]

Russell Cole

Tags: centralization, communications, community, decentralization, Global, government, National, politics, populist party, populist party america, Populist Party organizational structure, Social Change, society, third parties
Categories: Commentary, National, Global, Society, Populist Party, government, Decentralization, Politics, Third Parties, Social Change
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…while Centralization expands the Hegemony of a Provincial Interest’s impact upon the Whole

This brief essay is a response to the Populist Party’s recent publication of a compelling argument calling for the decentralization of political power found at the following URI:

http://www.populistamerica.com/populist__32

The reason I feel compelled to annotate in a modest form the contents of the polemic is the opposition within social theory to conceptualizations of power in Modern society that conceives of this dynamic in a manner opposed to the established Foucauldian paradigm.  Foucault, of course, argued through the observations rendered through his historical research that power was very much a dynamic that had become decentralized in nature assuming a form that is often analogized to a capillary distribution of its expansion.  As Foucault argues, the monarch has already been decapitated, and we need to reformulate our conceptualization of power in Modern society, accordingly, to reflect a networking of relations through which power is administered in local contexts through the disciplinary practices of institutions that lack an integrated reflexivity of itself, in its entirety; akin to conceptions of a centralized nervous system.  Foucault further contends that this decentralized modality of power has greater consequences with respect - not so much to its prohibitive measures upon agency - but in its productive capacities as it serves as mechanisms - administered through the practices of disciplinarians - in the active implantation of behavioral dispositions into the bodies of both the objects of its praxis as well as the subjects of its praxis.  By this, Foucault is indicating that subjectivity is formed from industrialization of the individual body into a positive modality of agency where the subject has been trained to seek cultivate itself into the form that has been prescribed to it through its intense exposure to the pedagogy, correction, disciplining, and regimentation, implemented through the expansion of the disciplinarian institutions that have come in Modern society to increasingly dominate all aspects of our existences.  In order to conceive of what Foucault is contending simply recalculate the extent of conformity demanded upon the Modern individual in developed societies as opposed to the lack of regulation upon the decisions of a savage.  Quite clearly, through the positive production of our identities in the incredibly complex matrix of modalities of existence constituted by the proliferation of the distribution of labor in all spheres of society - i.e., the economy, the polity, and, most significantly, the spaces falling within civil society - we have become saturated within the operations of power - which extend their reach through grammar school teachers; through psychiatrists and psychologists; through the corrective mechanisms of the Juvenile Justice System; through the psychobabble of Dr. Phil and Opera; all of which qualify as the appendages of power, circulating not simply in the domain of what we typically consider to be polity, but in the crevasses of all aspects of Modern life. 

I do not wish to construct a polemic in opposition to Foucault’s revolutionary reconceptualization of power; however, I do want to suggest that this description also involves the inculcation of a contrasting thematic quality, operating as an antinomy to the interpretation of the decentralized nature of power in Modern society.  It is through this expansion and rationalization of disciplinary control over the population that homogeneity is fostered, which is indexical as a subsidiary to centralization, that, in this case, does not involve a monarch, but the proliferation and imposition of a form of life upon the populace; tantamount to the descent of an “Iron Cage” upon humanity - the hyperbolically organized and regimented form of life associated with Modernity.  In fact, I would assert that this form of centralization is more insidious than suffering under the authority of the whimsicality of a despot, because it remains hidden, difficult to conceptualize.  Furthermore, this is not at all at odds with a Foucauldian theory of power in Modernity.  It is, rather, a specification of Foucault’s work, which he arguably makes himself, that attributes to power in Modern society the effect of producing sameness from what is originally composted with diversity and difference.  In order for the institutions in the Modern society to function, there must be adherence to protocol in order for there to be the predictability resulting in expectations of the behaviors of counterparts with whom we make transactions when operating under the auspices of the various organizations in which we assume capacities.  It is for this reason that the Populist Party’s adamantly advocated stance on the decentralization of governmentality is not only in order to protect and expand our freedoms, it is additionally compatible with the trends in contemporary social theory.  We call for decentralization in order for their to be space for social difference, which is a requisite for individual sovereignty and stylization.

Russell Cole

Tags: centralization, decentralization, foucault, modern society, populist party, power, society
Categories: Commentary, Society, Populist Party, Russell Cole's Blog, Decentralization, foucault
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The lexicon, democracy, has an etymology, which can be traced back to the Ancient Greek word for the mob, which is translated into our own language with its Roman alphabet into the term, demos. The term, demos, with the suffix typically attached to it, forms the referring expression, democracy; which we assert to be the rule of the citizens. It is the position of the Midwest Alliance that democracy is realized when the will of the Demos becomes the policy of the state. The intermediary devices that we currently have installed in American Empire’s political system are a device to mitigate the power of the Demos; the will of the people.

Furthermore, the distillation of the people’s expression of opinions concerning matters of state, which constitutes a quasi-republic, not a democracy, have been corrupted by elitist cronyism and the influence of special interests, which invest money into the campaign coffers of career politicians. We suffer from the rule of the provincial, which imposes its selfish head at the expense of the cosmopolitan interests of the Demos, the populace.

The Demos is not represented through this system of polity. Rather, it is provided with the illusory impression that it somehow affects the posture of the state through ceremonial occasions where each member of the demos is provided the opportunity to express himself or herself through the casting of a single vote for an individual, who indirectly, in theory, represents the individual in the affairs of state.

Let us recognize this pathetic ritual, which reinforces the collective representation of a democratic nation, as a device to propagate a false ideology. We do not live in a democracy, we live in Empire, which is controlled by a plutocracy that carefully manages the representation, the veneer, of an electoral system, which provides the Demos with preselected choices, which are the products of a complex system consisting of networking and cronyist quid pro quo.

This process, conducted among the elites, preselects those who will be our choices for representation in polity. The individuals presented to us are typically those with the most elitist alliances, as well as, those with the access to the necessary capital required to enter into the ceremonial pageantries of primaries. Following the series of ritualistic dramatic performances, one of the members of the power elite eventually assumes the role of Emperor; more commonly designated as President.

Our choices are made in advance, prior to our even becoming cognizant of candidates presented as electoral options. We live under the rule of single political party, because the ideological divergences between and among the assortment of individuals belonging to the elitist class are blown into consequential oblivion by the intersection of interests among the plutocracy of Empire, which consist of preserving their elevated status.

Therefore, the Power Elite is interested and defined by the following teleology, which gives shape to their primary project: The maintenance of the status quo.

Tags: american empire, centralization, democracy, direct democracy, foreign policy, localism, midwest populist party, politics, populist movement, power
Categories: Commentary, Global, Populist Party, Democracy, liberty, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Power, Politics, Third Parties, Empire, Direct Democracy
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