- includes a chamber constituted by grassroots and non-governmentalorganizations, whose collective voice is of equal or greater importance with thatof any geographically representative Congress.- whose role, in general, is not to single-handedly establish policy -or or compelcompliance with its self-shaped dictates, but (largely, mainly) to help develop theskills by which, and create the public environments in which, local and grassrootsgroups can resolve their differences and shape policies they find in their commoninterest.
L'etat c'est nous
Of course, like Rome or corporate capitalism, this humane or fusion sort of statecannot be built overnight. But it seems to me a genuine option, one that wouldavoid the dead end horns of (a) using repressive and bureaucratic means toreach a future ideal society where robust and diversity-embracing democracyblossoms, and (b) relying entirely on resource-poor and (often) politicallyimpotent citizen-based initiatives to offset (much less displace) institutions andorganizations whose vast wealth and power is matched only by their capacity tounleash greed and domination.Genuine, but not easy. Conceivable, approachable, but no rose garden.Fortunately, what George Benello once called working models do exist: thinkhere of Emilia-Romagna's blend of pro-active government intervention(supporting child care centers, building housing for workers, providing marketingand other technical asisstance to strengthen local enterprise) and a cooperativeflexible manufacturing network economy. Or the replications throughout thesoutheastern region of Brazil of the Porto Alegre participatory budget process,conceived and engineered by the Workers Party, whose candidate, Lula, hasfinally won election to the presidency of this country. (Would that these Italian andBrazilian initiatives were combined!) And of course, the World and RegionalSocial Forums provide cross-national examples of emerging horizontal alliances.Beyond these, much of what G. D. H. Cole wrote almost a century ago aboutguild socialism, with its multiplicity of associations selecting their own member-delegates rather than relying on political representatives, speaks to ways of getting beyond the dilemma's usual and narrow pair of suspects. So does JohnDewey's attack, in the work quoted above, on the traditional doctrine of exclusivenational sovereignty. And so do two very recent books Tom Atlee's
The Tao of Democracy
and Archon Fung and Erik Wright's,
Empowered Participatory Governance
, both of which concretely illuminate fresh forms of democraticgovernance that colonize the state in ways that begin at least to provideresources and influence to local and grassroots organizations.Of course we will all need to invent our own site-specific forms of robustdemocracy, but there is no shortage, given the above, of conceptual as well aspractical guideposts that can light our path.
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