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Casual Worker’s Manifesto

February 10, 2007 8:48 pm

The overly optimistic assessments of the economic conditions that are accompanying the communicative innovations associated with the Information Age; a transition to the Human State of Affairs precipitated by the digitalization of documents and the information they express; falls flat on the face when challenged with the empirical reality in which laborers now find themselves. The fastest growing demographic in American society are single females - working for the modest salary of $20,000 to $30,000 - who tend to relocate every 3 to 5 years.  I submit that the nomadic existence that is suffered by so many in the contemporary workforce - who go from job to job as contingent, contractual labor - is a direct consequence of the flattening of labor markets, which is, in turn, a manifestation of the expansion of digital communications.  As much as individuals enjoy the flexible working environments - a rhetorical device used to promote the casual workers labor market - I think that they would prefer to have access to medical coverage, not to mentioned a sustained expectation of a niche in the economy; a benefit that more and more Americans are finding to be in a state of scarcity. 
With this said, I will republish one of the most significant works that have been published on this site -yet, all too overlooked - by an Australian sociologist, who was influential in the original shaping of this Web design and content management project. The following is an extract from a contribution by Bill Templer:
“hard work, competition, motivation, self-reliance, flexibility, boldness, daringness, innovation and success…essential components of the entrepreneurial individual” (Kenny 1999 p. 54).
Great on the surface, but what of those people that don’t possess the education, skills and mindset to become entrepreneur’s? They get left behind! We are no longer creatures of the jungle where only the strong survive; we formed civilised society so that we could work together and help those that are weaker, slower and disadvantaged. Why? Because it is in our best interests and we will achieve a lot more together than alone!
This enterprise culture has manifested itself in Australian employment policies with the introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWA’s), the promotion of contract labour, a decrease in collective bargaining and an increase in casual labour. These policies are articulated as “providing flexibility and choice to Australian workers”, “everyone can be their own boss, while promoting economic growth for the great nation that is Australia.”
However, there are a few things that stand in the way of this growth, mainly the liability that is paying workers unnecessary benefits such as holiday pay, sick pay and overtime. But the one thing that provides the greatest obstacle to the implementation of these policies is a unified force of workers; together, we would never accept policies that hurt us, but alone, there is not much we can do.
We have to start making our collective voice heard, whether it be by joining a union or taking part in this forum, or dobbing in a dodgy boss [informing on a tricky boss]; We can fight for a fair go, for a decent share of the profits of our employers and for decent working conditions, But we must do it together. CASUAL WORKERS. UNITE!

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Categories: Commentary, Midwest, Economics, Labor, Farmers
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(Revised and more Readable): Introduction to study of Web facilitated communications and their Sociopolitical Possibilities

January 14, 2007 2:33 pm

Episteme 2.0

A study in the sociology of mass media and the sociology of social movements; both directed upon the emerging venue of mass communications, referenced as the World Wide Web, explor­ing the transformation of sociopolitical possibilities engendered by the proliferation of a represen­tational space that is largely free from institutional gate-keeping devices and a means of publicity that is easily accessible and obtainable by a vastly greater proportion of the population

Forward to Episteme 2.0

Abstract

The forward of the document will outline the scope of the study - including the relationships of the research to preexisting literature, also devoted to the subjects referenced in the content matter herein. In short, the executive summary will serve as a type of abstract. However, since the doc­ument object, abstract, is typically not included in the contents of manuscripts that purport to be more than articles, the deployment of the artifice, forward, is more appropriate in this context; a document object that entails many of the same significations; however, it allows for greater flexi­bility when it comes to the duration and specificity of the content.

Scope and Objectives

This document expresses an assessment of the prospects for the Human Condition in the emerging epoch termed by Castells as the Network Society. The study is not a foray into futurism; nor, does the document constitute a relapse into the absolutism1 of historicism, and the ideological dogma that it inspires. The document and its flow of contents explores a field of diverse possibilities that are hypothesized to exist and reside in the current social configuration - which, of course, is a material and ideological formation that has connections to the past; a pro­cess that currently instantiates a field of potential trajectories that, presumably, can be actualize through the way we orient and posture ourselves in the present in order to react and contend with the contingencies arising from our historical situated-ness; thus shaping the unfolding of the future in the most informed and equipped manner, according to the aesthetics2 most desirable.

Operational Context

For the purposes of this meta-brief - emanating from and referring back onto - the document at hand, I shall attempt to reduce the complexities, which can be derived from a thorough analysis of the current transformations that are refitting society, into two contrasting - although inter-related - patterns embodying thematic qualities; one, which I interpret positively; and, one which I interpret negatively.

Most salient to any considerations concerning the material conditions that are instantiated by the emergence of the Network Society and - to be more precise, referring to the circumstances found in American social formations - are the alterations in the economic institutions forming the rela­tionships between those who dictate the terms of employment and those who are obliged to acquiesce to those terms when procuring employment. The changes undergoing the form assumed by the relationships between firms and employees are significant to the point where is compelled to reconsider the analytics typically attached to the conception of elements - as the concept has been generally understood in the context of industrial capitalism. It is not a stretch to suggest that employment is a term that should be discontinued as a reference to the non-stan­dard terms of employment suffered by skilled laborers in the Informational economy. The socio-grammatical conventions forming the family resemblance of economic institutions that have been spawned by the material conditions in which agents and the aggregates - that they collectively form -who find themselves situated in the information economy - embody characteristics, render­ing them qualitatively unique exemplars of sociality. Therefore, the referring expression, virtual employment, will be used as a designator, when signifying instances of this social phenomenon, hence forth.

In order to provide definition to virtual employment, some extended remarks are necessary: The current economic condition - informational capitalism - in its most rudimentary dimensions, instantiates an input to output dynamic that has diverged from the traditional, industrial capitalist relational function, which assumed the form of raw materials transformed into commodities. The information economy - in opposition - can be understood - in the most generic of terms - as a mode of production that involves the input of information and the output of reorganized informa­tion; a construct, which can be referred to - for the sake of clarity - as knowledge. It is important, here, to mark a distinction between organization and reorganization, because the former applies to previous designs that exist prior to the latter’s inculcation.

In order to begin to understand this - what is the most basic of representations corresponding to the processes involved in informational capitalism - the precise nature of the function embedded within this relation needs further specification: Reorganization is a transformation that differs from the concrete functions found in industrial capitalism, constituting the mechanisms included in the operations performed upon the input - raw materials - in the sequences involved in the modes of production. The reorganization of information into a form of knowledge involves a transformation that cannot be routinized into the machinery of production - unless one is to reduce the available vocabulary to strictly materialist terminology - because the invention of the mode production qualifies as the production, itself. Therefore, keeping with the distinction declared between infor­mation and knowledge, as soon as knowledge has been produced, through the function implied in the input - output relationship of informational capitalism, the reorganized information - which has been transformed into knowledge - is reintegrated into the process as the input variable, and - once again - assumes the form of information. Consequentially, by definition, the mode of pro­duction cannot be mechanized because it would lack the properties qualifying as the connotative definition of production, as it is defined in the processes of informational capitalism; namely, the innovation of reorganized information; a definition that excludes standardized procedures, because such mechanics would entail the absence of innovation.

Stepping back from what has been analytically deposited thus far, some relationships between firms and the labor that firms employ become transparent: The modes of production can be understood as the persistent reorganization of the processes embedded in the modes of produc­tion, which constitutes the mode of production, per se; consequently, exacerbating the pace of de-skilling - a term that extends, most generally, to developments that render employees obso­lete - which creates volatility in the employer market. It should also be mentioned that the reorga­nization of data additionally includes the implementation of new grammatical schema deployed for purposes of structuring the classifications of document elements; the attributes of the docu­ment elements; and the possible values that the attributes can instantiate under varying - (although defined) - circumstances; because the procedure of implementing a new form of infor­mation technology necessitates the reorganization of the work flow processes utilized by an organization; thus, such a retrofitting constitutes the reorganization of information; specifically, the information - as it is defined and comes to be defined - within the work flow of the restructured social organization.

Returning to considerations conducted upon the nature of the relationships among firms and the labor they hirer, the conditions necessitating the augmentation of new labor become transient, reflecting the events in an organization’s state of affairs, where it must transition its ordering of information in order to reflect the evolving conditions of information technology. Therefore, the skills that are acquired when augmenting the labor capacities of the firm, as it transitions to a new state of information management.

In order to explain this theme through comparison, one can reference the present trends in Infor­mation Technology management, which now relies heavily on the implementation of virtual com­puting environments, in order to test software compatibility and to leverage available resources performed within spaces of productivity - that demand no institutional restructuring and fail to entail any necessary legacies, which might be incurred if the firm had originally adopted the workers as actual members of the institution; a relationship with the significance of manifesting all of the traditional definitions of expectations and obligations associated with employment.

The more sanguine of the two contrasting themes is the intellectual product of postmodern social theory - as well as, Castells, who might not necessarily fit within this rubric - who have argued for the acknowledgment of an emerging social condition resulting from the proliferation of digitally encoded communicative technologies - the virtual spaces of representation they entail - and the existential freedom to stylize one’s persona provided for within the digital matrix from which virtu­alism manifest - subsidiaries to Informationalism can be summarized under the slogan, re-enchantment.

The allusion to Weber, in this context, is appropriate, since there there is an empirically contingent subject to processes of confirmation juncture between two states that can be marked as qualitatively distinct from one another, through reference to the following contrasting characteristics: First off, the emphasis placed upon innovation - or creativity - calls for organizational environments structured according to flexibility, allowing for production to occur when inspiration precipitates insight, leading to innovation; a state that offer definition to production in the context of informational capitalism. Industrialism, on the other hand, prioritizes scheduling and efficiency, providing for the synchronization of events - performed by machines and their human appendages. Industrial Capitalism required the orderly sequencing of events in order to successfully enact it processes constituting the modes of pro­duction. Such an organization calls for the regimentation of social activity reflecting a synchronous layout of stages included in the operations through which output was generated.

It is too soon to fully address this topic in the context of the document object - executive summary - belonging to the document structure. Nevertheless, since the reference - to which the following brief remarks point - is transparently ostensible, it can be mentioned, without too much disrup­tion, that the flow of time in the Informational Economy instantiates different schematic qualities. In fact, the flow of time can be bannered under: an asynchronous dimension to the relations among digital objects and the relationships they intermediate during interactions among social counterparts. This state of affairs, in the of electronic interchange, through which transactions occur, exchanging information, need not be sequential, and, therefore, the forms of reciprocity that transpire can include objects that are not defined by any linear processed ordering of events. In other words, communications can address data objects in a recursive fashion; an aspect of the distant immediacy that characterizes the flow of events that occur in the virtual spaces engendered by the expansion of Internet infrastructures; or, what can be referred to, using Castells’ terminology, as Informationalism; the technological paradigm related to a pattern of productivity that is defined by exemplars constituting digitized communications.

Returning to the persona that is cultivated and constructed agents assuming a presence within the milieu of the digital matrix - a social object that can be Self stylized in the context of virtual interactions with greater plasticity, options, and allowance of revisions - the existential liberties attributable to the digital matrix are related to the condition in which interactions take place: The digital matrix instantiates a field of agents that interact with one another in a disembodied state. As a result, the physical attributes that entail ascription to a particular social identity are - often in the digital matrix - stripped from the communicative affair, allowing agents to bend their identities and play in the engagements while assuming the identity and role of statuses that they might be barred from in real - according to the traditional sense - interactions. One might liken this hyper-reality to the condition that is typically referred to - in the context of social theory - as carnival.

Associated with the breakdown of social barriers in the spaces, constituting virtual reality, is the more recent development typically designated as Web 2.0. Now is not the place to elaborate in dept upon this complicated empirical phenomenon and the properties that should be extrapo­lated for instances of Web 2.0 when constructing a corresponding analytic. However, with respect to its relevancy to the state of carnival attributed to many virtual spaces of interaction, it should be remarked that Web 2.0 similarly negates many of the semiotic devices - extant in real spaces - whose conventional interpretation by social agents leads to the labeling of ascribed - although sometimes assumed - social identities. In the context of the interactions occurring within instances of Web 2.0, the negation of many real cultural attributes results in a leveling of the stratifications that mark real social processes of knowledge production. Web 2.0 - the most rec­ognizable exemplar of which is probably the popular Wikipedia - democratize the production of knowledge, rendering the representational spaces in which externalizations of proposed versions of knowledge find publicity.

The emergence of the episteme, Web 2.0, signifies an area of considerable concern for the anal­ysis expressed in this document, due to the possibilities it incurs for sociopolitical movements that have been traditionally marginalized, preventing insurgents challenging the duopoly of the legitimate American sociopolitical infrastructure from achieving only the most modest forms of success. The existing literature pertaining to this topic is sparse. However, two references to sociological subject matters - incidentally related to the problem described in the earlier proposi­tions forming this paragraph - are worthy of mention and will be treated somewhat extensively in the chapters and sections that follow: The agricultural reform movement of the latter part of the 19th Century - referred to as the People’s Party, or Populist Party - achieved substantial reforms; mostly consisting of democratizing more directly some of the electoral processes on a Constitu­tional level. Most significantly, the movement brought about the popular election of Senators.

More germane to the interests of this paper, however, are the unconventional tactics employed - to certain extents - by the movement in order to actualize some of the conditions defined by its teleology. The formation of collectivities in response to the inaccessibility of capital - a circum­stance attributed to the Gold Standard3 of currency evaluation, which had consequences for farmers, preventing them access to necessary sources insurance against the risks involved in the production of agricultural commodities. Specifically, the inclusion of this historical narrative contributes to a theme that appears to be emerging in the sociology of social movements, which has taken a detour from the stock of knowledge - comprising its long established conventional wisdom, which presumed the success of social movements to be the consequent of antecedents including the networking resources though which the movement could affect the decision-making of elites responsible for the formation and administration of public policy - in order to come to terms with developments in Latin America. Although the abandonment of the macro-oriented pol­icy strategies characterizing the neoliberal ideology of global consortium, such as the World Monetary Fund, in pursuit of local, organic initiatives certainly is a recognizable factor operative in the dynamics culminating into the mass electoral mobilization, which lead to the usurpations of legitimate sociolopolitical power by populist socialist movements in Latin America, the ability of the successful social movements to opportunize off of the Social Capital produced by activism conducted at the local level - identically - cannot be ignored4. The social movements - and this might be considered an attribute belonging to the connotative definition expressed in the sociological analytics of social movements - of course, were not social formations with the degrees of institutionalization needed to qualify them as organizations - in the sociological sense of the word - although they certainly did and continue to possess a form of organization - rather, the associations5 among agents contributing to these movements constitute - if anything - instances of networking, which, in these instances, transcended nation-states and their geo­graphical parameters.

In terms of this document, what is of primary significance, is the scope of the extension of the refitted understanding of the conditions that can lead to the success of social movements that lack the networking resources with elites who assume positions of authority in the sociopolitical structures of the legitimate apparatuses of a state. Specifically, in the context of the American state, do the virtual spaces - allowing for the formation of virtual communities - similarly generate the Social Capital necessary to spawn the degree of social mobilization necessary for populist insurrections to achieve success; a state defined by the actualization of the conditions defined in the social movement’s teleology.

The problem, as defined in this document, is relevant to the current activities typically referred to as Net-roots Activism6; a form of networking conducted through the communicative possibilities precipitated by the growth of Informationalism.

Strategy Employed

The problem - can third party sociopolitical movements in the United State exploit the current transformations taking place and reorganizing the representational spaces available for obtaining the publicity associated with mass media - is addressed through empirical studies, con­sisting of ethnographic field research conducted upon two instances of third party sociopolitical movements: a state Green Party in the Midwest and the Populist Party of America, (located, as a headquarters, in Las Angeles California). Both cases involved what has come to be referred to as virtual ethnography.

Tactics

Although the methodological specification of ethnographic research was originally conceived as grounded theory, the immersion in the virtual spaces of the Internet and their state of disembod­ied communications, led to the adoption of exploratory testing, which has been taken up by oth­ers involved in the investigation of this relatively new area of sociological research.

Deliverables

Review and comparison of these two empirical subject domains has led to insights concerning the fertility of virtual communities for the cultivation of Social Capital. Additionally - through my participation in the Populist Party of America, which evolved into a commitment where I was responsible for consultation on organizational matters pertaining to communicative strategies intended for the advancement of the Populist Party’s agenda - I have been afforded the opportu­nity to test hypotheses concerning the successful application of the communicative devices pro­vided by Internet infrastructures.

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Categories: Commentary, Midwest, Economics, Society, Populist Party, government, Russell Cole's Blog, Web 2.0, Politics, Third Parties, Labor, Farmers, Direct Democracy, Social Change, Media, Sociology, History
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No More Due Process in Ohio?

November 16, 2006 9:36 pm

An Article by:

Susan Hutson

Ohio – a state consisting of 21 electoral votes – declares a law that essentially negates the Constitutional Right guaranteeing Due Process.

On September 1, 2006, Ohio’s Attorney General, Jim Petro, and others, including Senator Mike DeWine and other House Representatives, advocated the adoption of an Ohio law, which allows for a person to be classified as a sex offender, and, subsequently, be subjected to government monitoring as well as public humiliation – and, indeed, the possible object of retaliation by vigilantes - via the person’s picture and a name on a Website; all of which can occur without the individual ever being convicted of a crime.

This law has been coined The World’s Worst Idea Ever. People – never convicted of a sex offense – can still end up on a publicly available sex-offender registry provided for by various state agencies belonging to the State of Ohio. The law is, apparently, designed in order to provide for the publication of sex-offenders’ identities, even if the statute of limitations - amended to the criminal statutes – has transpired. It is peculiar that the State Legislature of Ohio would put forth such an initiative, which cuts at the core of Constitutional Liberties, when all that was needed was a modification to the current statutes on the books – prohibiting sexual abuses – that protracts the statute of limitations qualifying these types of criminal offenses and the terms under which they can be prosecuted.

Most alarmingly, apparently, the only indication that someone has committed a sexual offense, allowing for a person to be legally deemed as a sex-offender is an acknowledgement or judgment of punitive or compensatory responsibilities transpiring in a civil action against the party that will, subsequently, be legally defined as a sex-offender.

Editor’s Notes: The aforementioned legislation appears to have been motivated by a deal struck between the State of Ohio and the Catholic Church, where the Church can maintain its one strike and your safe but two strikes and you are out policy while, contemporaneously, providing for some safeguards against future sexual abuses – a provision compelled upon the Church by the State of Ohio – by virtue of the liturgical civil defendants’ classifications as a sex-offenders.

I think it is absurd to pass such legislation when all that needs to be done with respect to this matter is allowing for the extension of the statute of limitations in these types of crimes.

The protraction of time allowed for prosecuting sex-offenders is clearly more sensible than allowing a potentially vindictive individual – acting from motivations of mere spite; emotions not resulting from sexual victimhood – essentially ruin an individual’s reputation and livelihood through recourse to a Constitutional subterfuge, consisting of a civil adjudication – which involve the lofty presumption of innocence; nor, the burden placed upon the plaintiffs, requiring them to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

For purposes of a hypothetical, consider the following: An embittered member of a former romantic relationship pursues – through the unconstitutional legislation described above – revenge in such a profound form that it essentially strips away every life opportunity to which the afflicted individual would normally have had access, if not for an imposed, publicly declared label of a sex-offender.

The upset ex-lover could cause the other to be forbidden from seeing their children (without a liaison); the vindictive party could cause the other to lose their job; he or she could cause the subject of the accusations to be compelled to move, if living within 1,000 ft. of a school (by way the crow flies); and the individual, operating out of vengeful motivations, could inflict insufferable emotional trauma.

In addition, this law would allow an actually convicted offender, or predator, to strike a deal with the prosecution, where he or she falsely attributes guilt to another individual, causing that individual to be bestowed with a prodigious burden, necessitating the practice indefinite practice of stigma management, resulting from his or her affliction with the labeled of a sex-offender.

Do Ohioans need to have a legal document signed by everyone they know that contains a “Hold Harmless” clause, stating that the individuals with whom they have intimate relations are not being forced into sexual acts or being assaulted in a form that constitutes a sex-offence?

In order to protect one’s self from the potential retribution from a vindictive ex-lover seeking revenge through recourse to this Unconstitutional law, it, most likely, would be in everyone’s best interests in Ohio to take such safeguards.

Editor’s Notes: “Hell hast no furry like a woman’s scorn.”

Are the people who conceived of this law from this country, and do they understand America’s tradition of Due Process?

Have they considered that we are still supposed to have a Constitution? Is the legislature in the State of Ohio inept?

Should there be a major overhaul of the people who are running this state? Why has this new law been kept under the covers?

Shouldn’t everyone know they could be a target of harassment and are labeled with this?

Ohio is a very politically corrupt state, as you may well know. I once knew a woman living in Ohio, who had been set up by a disgruntled U.S. Postal Inspector, and was denied Due Process. Needless to say, nobody cared. The Inspector lied to police dispatch and said the woman was suicidal. The police went to the dark back door of the house and the Inspector met them there. When the woman came to the door, the police grabbed her and pulled her out. After the woman was put into the cruiser, the inspector entered the cruiser with the police congregating at another a distance away, and the inspector knocker her out. She was sent to jail without a mug shot and the next morning the Inspector with his business card showing he was an attorney, posed as her attorney, and told the judge to send her to a mental hospital. No Due Process! Nobody cared!

What would you do, if you fall victim to one of these constitutionally subversive provisions provided for in this legislation?

You do have an opportunity 6 years later to ask a judge to have your name removed from the list. Six years after potentially losing your children, job, financial standing, home, and respect of other members of your community, etc.

Please push for your state to protect the Right of Due Process and not allow such a horrible loss to the legal process, which once protected Americans! What is next?

Will a person be implanted with a biometric chip without their knowledge or approval?

Editor’s Notes: Will we begin to implant chips in former sex offenders, in order to guard against them committing future sexual assaults? What if the current policies in Ohio persist, allowing for people to be legally defined – without any protection or recourse provided by Due Process – as sex-offenders? A person only the subject of civil accusations might suffer the same fate as a criminally convicted person - (and I certainly do not endorse implanting a chip transmitting a serialized identification, for the purposes of tracking and surveillance, into anyone).

More ominously, programs are already being introduced to implant these tracking devices into the flesh of infants; a proposal, which would ultimately lead to surveillance by agencies operating in the sphere of law enforcement, that is being promoted under the pretense of providing a means to identify the locations of missing children. The reason I have included these remarks, pertaining to biometric chips, is that they are all interrelated. The implementation of one of these affronts to our privacies and liberties can be used to enhance government or corporate surveillance of our activities in other scenarios; such is the case with the implanted bar code chips and the endless punitions endured by those who have been convicted as sex-offenders.

Furthermore, considering the blurred distinctions between criminality and civil responsibilities, currently taking form in Ohio, we all need to be concerned for our own personhood’s, whether we possess sexual aversions or not. For this reason, we need to challenge any infringement upon the rights we, as a people, have procured, because an assault upon any person’s liberties and rights in this society can have ramifications for all of us.

R Cole

Let’s get rid of the substandard politicians!

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Categories: Commentary, Midwest, liberty, constitution, bill of rights, government, Legislation, Ohio
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Call for Papers

October 2, 2006 9:11 pm

An impregnated, but hopefully not inflated, Call for Papers from the Populist Party of America and its affiliate, the Midwest Alliance of Populist America:

The Midwest Alliance of Populist America - a regional affiliate of the Populist Party of America - is now accepting submissions for consideration for inclusion in a new publication dedicated toward exploring Populist issues concerning the Midwest of the United States. The publication will be an electronic journal published on a monthly basis and disseminated through two modalities of distribution: posting on the Populist America Web domain; and direct electronic mailing to subscribers of the Populist America Newsletter.

One should note, this does not qualify as an academic journal, due its failure to conform with the ritualized processes of peer review. However, the absence of the homogenizing effects of peer review - which essentially amounts to the reinforcement of the lowest common denominator belonging to the respective discipline, allows the contributor the existential freedom to innovate himself or herself though the stylization of both the submission’s contents and the rhetorical devices deployed to make the argument convincing.

Although any document format will be accepted - other than texts that are formatted into images - we encourage you to either use XHTML with CSS or Rich Text Format. Additionally, please include a brief biographical description as well as an E-mail address that can be used to contact you. If published, you can typically expect 50 to 150 letters in reaction from those who were exposed to your work.

Please send your submission to russellcole@populistamerica.com (for Midwest Submissions), or mboldin@populistamerica.com (for PopulistAmerica.com submissions). If your work is published, it will be licensed under a Creative Commons, and you will be free to use your work for purposes of publicizing it in different venues as long as you give reference to its original membership in one of the publications under the control of the Populist Party of America.

*****************************************************************************************

Background on the Midwest Alliance and the Populist Party of America:

The Populist Party of America is a third party political establishment - Federally registered - that advocates direct democratic reform in the United States. Direct democracy is a theory of governance that finds its inspiration in the form of polity practiced by the Ancient Athenians, who established a robust, egalitarian form of decision-making - in the context of the narrowly defined extension of citizenship - determining the adoption and implementation of public policy. Citizens of the Polis would collect in order to form an assemblage, where deliberations, involving public dialog, could take place; a modality of political discourse that would culminate in a majority rules vote - referendum - which determined whether a policy proposal would be adopted or discarded. Interestingly, the Assembly afforded any member the opportunity to address his counterparts. The only determining factor for whom could acquire the pulpit was the extent of the rhetorical skills possessed by the individual, who desired to orate his position regarding the affairs of the state.

Although this model of political organization was far from perfect according to our own contemporary standards, which we might anachronistically apply to the Athenians when rendering an assessment of the social justice instantiated by their political system; an evaluative process that would no doubt result in criticisms regarding the limited scope of citizenship in Athenian society; a condition that precluded women and slaves from engaging in the affairs of state, or, for that matter, social intercourse outside the sphere of domesticity, altogether.

Nevertheless, a rehabilitation of the concept, democracy - an exercise that would direct our attention to the etymology of democracy, which is situated in the Ancient Athenian Polis - continues to provide a heuristic benefit. We would subsequently be armed with an alternative conceptualization of democracy to juxtapose with the form of Liberal Representative Democracy - which many contend to be a contradiction in terms - that we so often, as Americans, ethnocentrically espouse as the only appropriate sociopolitical configuration for a society that desires to assume a developed, advanced status; a condition actualized through processes of social maturation.

This American discourse, which pronounces a universalistic conception of freedom and democracy in terms reflecting its own provincial embodiment can be interpreted according to a discursive pattern that runs in contradistinction to the prototypical expressions emanating from the American sociopolitical establishment: America’s insistence of Liberal Democracy as the manifestation of the positive normative qualities of humanity is merely a metropolitan discourse that defines the subjugated nations of neo-Liberal Empire according to their conformity or lack of conformity with the mandates imposed by the provincial economic interests of Empire.

By and large, the current understanding of democracy pervasive in America when juxtaposed to a properly rehabilitated conception of democracy has little in common with the Athenian form democratic political praxis. Furthermore, since political discourse within America tends to neglect to consider - even remotely - methods and recommendations by which to enhance democracy in America, since it is generally presumed that America has already achieved a state that embodies democracy in its highest possible development, a comparison with an alternative archetype of democracy will, perhaps, engender critical reflection that holds the neo-Liberal democratic nation-state to standards other than the ones it has defined for itself.

With all of this said, the Midwest Alliance of the Populist Party of America invites you to submit articles that address the subject of democracy - and the form it should properly assume - in the context of the American sociopolitical configuration both in the present and throughout its history.

regards,

Russell Cole

russellcole@populistamerica.com

Coordinator of the Midwest Populist Party

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Categories: Commentary, Midwest, National, Populist Party, Democracy, constitution, government, Russell Cole's Blog, self-governance, Politics, Direct Democracy
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