Sunday, May 05, 2013

Democracy and ‘Dia-Logic’: Democratic Deliberation as a Dialectical Process


Dear Reader,

This blog-entry contains the
sixth part of my serialization, elsewhere, of the E.A.g.’s [Equitist Advocacy group's] “Way Forward” proposal, entitled  

Alternative to the Totalitarian, Humanocidal Self-Degeneration of Capitalism -- Political-Economic Democracy

 

with my own edits added to their text, for its improvement [improvement, at least, to my way of thinking!].

 

 

I have included it here because of its second sub-section, entitled --

Democracy and Dia-Logic:  Democratic Deliberation as a Dialectical Process.

 

-- because that sub-section offers a very interesting application of F.E.D. dialectics to the domain of <<polis>>-processes.




 

Here are the links to the original version --

http://equitism.org/Equitism/Equitism-entry.htm








Here's wishing a happy <<Cinco de Mayo>> to you all!



Regards,

Miguel 











Part 6. of 8. --

 
Alternative to the Totalitarian, Humanocidal Self-Degeneration of Capitalism -- Political-Economic Democracy.



The Emergence of a Fourth, Economic Branch of Econo-Political Democratic Social Governance, in Sustained Quadruple Power with the Earlier Three.

 

This ‘meta-model’ envisions the retention and conservation / transformation of the three traditional branches of political government, into a complex, conflictual, and conflicts-conserving unity of sustained quadruple-power with the new, economic-democratic fourth branch.

This constitutes a yet-further generalization of the stabilizing, conflicts-conserving, checks-and-balances-delivering complex unity of the earlier-emerged, three, political branches -- of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.

It also envisions the «aufheben» subordination, but not the absolute dissolution, of the capital-principle.

In this way, the capital-principle is expected to be blocked, by popular power, from any longer attempting to organize, and to subjugate, the social totality.

A higher and democratic, humanistic principle of social ordering supersedes Capital in that role:  the principle of Generalized Equity.

But the latter principle allows an ‘«aufheben»ed appropriation of the capital-principle -- e.g., the social mechanisms of price-competition and competition for customer-adherence, especially among Citizen Stewardship Equity, democratically self-managed producers cooperatives -- to persist in operation where it best orchestrates the ‘moment-ary’ hybridization -- the prevailing dialectical synthesis, or complex unity -- of human-genomic and human-‘phenomic’ human Nature, providing vitally needed economic checks and balances that monopoly and state-monopoly economic governance so devastatingly lack.

Through its dialectical synthesis of '''stakeholder democracy''' with workplace-based and community-based workers'-councils-like, grassroots, popular democracy, at the base of the Citizen Externality Equity Boards of Public Directors, and at the base of the 'enterprise-sovereign' Stewards' Assemblies of the mutually-competing Citizen Stewardship Equity cooperative enterprises, or 'socialized producers' cooperatives', the Equitarian Reform/Revolution is expected, by the Equitist Advocacy group, to create a new kind of non-state-capitalist 'entrepreneurial collectivism', or 'collective entrepreneurship', and a producer-/customer-service quality-rewarding, and a collective innovation rewarding, associated-producers' actual socialism, or 'Marxian Democracy'.



Democracy and Dia-Logic:  Democratic Deliberation as a Dialectical Process.

 

The plan of governance of the Global Association of Public Directors is designed to instantiate a principle of democratic self-governance of human organizations which we term Base-ocracy.

Human-social self-organization structures/processes of this kind are base-constructed, base checked-and-balanced, and base-controlled.

This plan, for example, requires that each voting member of each relatively wider-jurisdiction, or more-«Genos», more-Generic, or more-‘‘General’’’ Association be majority-plus-elected by the whole base of all of the [relatively speaking] more-«Species», more-Specific, or more-‘‘Special’’’ Associations, to one of which that member also belongs, and in which base that member must also remain active.

That member must remain active “in the trenches” — a participating member, in good standing with that member’s peers — in, with, and of that relatively more Special constituent Association, and/or of its base — in order to continue as an elected, voting member also of the more General Association — that is, in order to elected, mandated, and sustained in office in that more General Association [i.e., not recalled] by that base.

Each member of the more General Association must be at least majority-elected by, and, in writing, explicitly policy-mandated by, their more Special Association, or by the entire base.

Each such elected, mandated delegate to the more General Association is recallable, by majority-vote of the assembly of the members of their more Special Association, if their role in that more General Association is to represent the more Special Association of which they are also a member, or by the entire base, e.g., if they are elected “at large”, at any time, e.g., for violation(s) of their mandate.

All of this aims to ensure that the more-General Association reflects the true policy-«Genos» of the «Arithmos» constituted by the more-Special Associations as the «Monads» of their more-«Genos» Association — thus reflecting the true policy-totality of the whole.

The psychohistorical model/idealization of the ‘‘dialogic’’’ dialectic of deliberation within each such relatively-Special Association, as within its next-more-General Association, can be represented as follows, distilling manifold psychohistorical field observations of such human-social processes.

When a session of policy dialogue, or policy deliberation, opens -- preparatory to a decision, or collective ‘‘‘act’’’, of the Association, as collective subject -- the first person to speak may set forth a ‘‘thesis’’’ — or ‘‘hypothesis’’’ — as to the ‘‘‘sense of the whole’’’ Association; as to what policy/action its majority+ will support, and should therefore adopt.

That thesis, in those [rare] instances where the initial speaker captures, in this opening statement, an expression of the full view, ‘‘‘truth’’’, and intent of all of the members of the Association as of that moment in their history, that is an acceptable such expression to them, and in their ongoing self-/mutual-development; a thesis thus acceptable to all members of the Association, would also be the uni-thesis — or ‘‘dialectical synthesis’’’ — of the views of that Association, on the issue under deliberation, as of that moment in the [psycho]history of that Association.

The test of such an expression is that it be followed by silence, or by explicit expressions of assent -- in the absence of further contra-thesis expression, and thence by unanimous consent and adoption by the Association.

However, typically, the first voice is unable to know, encompass, and express the views of the Association in its totality.

The work of dialogue and deliberation — the work of dialectic by the Association — is needed, required, and necessary, for the Association to discover/forge its own explicit self-knowledge, and self-expression, of its own truth for the psychohistorical ‘‘‘moment’’’ and issue at hand, taking into account the new information about its own state, and about the state of the world in which it inheres, that is continually emergent, due to the continual ontological dynamics, and  onto-dynamasis, of that world, up to that ‘‘‘moment’’’ — i.e., taking into account the relevant / ‘‘‘moment-ary state of the totality’’’.  
Remaining deep, class, or class-like, divisions within the Association may, of course, prevent, the achievement of uni-thesis unanimity, requiring resort to adjudication by the [elected] Tribunals for Externality Equity required in the enabling legislation of The Equitarian Reform/Revolution.  
Typically, the formulation expressed by the first speaker excludes part of that truth, at least in the minds of other members of the Association.

That statement — because of its incompleteness[es], provokes a statement in response, by, e.g., the second to speak.

This second policy-proposal assertion is contra-thesis to the initial ‘‘thesis’’’.

Further speakers may clarify/elaborate that contra-thesis.

Or, the third speaker may attempt to unite the mutually-supplementary content of the first ‘‘thesis’’’ and of the first contra-thesis, in a first uni-thesis.

Or, a speaker subsequent to the third voice will typically attempt this.

That first uni-thesis will typically still strike many members of the Association as insufficient, provoking their expression of yet a second contra-thesis, and so on.

This dialogue-icdialectic will continue to self-iterate and spiral upward, building / «bildung» the explicit self-knowledge, and situation-knowledge, of the assembly, until a speaker is able to achieve a final synthesis, a final uni-thesisformulation, even if final only for that psychohistorical moment — an ‘nth uni-thesisthat ‘‘‘provokes’’’ only silence, and/or assent and adoption, instead of inciting an ‘(n+1)st contra-thesis — on the part of the rest of the Association.

The person who is able to formulate the ‘‘‘moment-ary absolute’’’, or temporarily silencing uni-thesis, during deliberations on the updated mandate for a given more-Special Association’s delegate to the next-more-General Association, may be one of the natural candidates to stand for election, by the whole base of that more-Special Association, for serving in the role of that delegate.

The person, the Association-member, able to conceive, know, express, and thus achieve the ‘‘synthesis’’’ of a given ‘‘‘momenta-ary’’’, more-Special Association mandate, tends to vary from moment to moment, and from crisis to crisis.

To the extent that private-capitalist Boards of Directors actually embody the “one share of capital equity stock, one vote” capital equity principle of shareholder democracy, of stockholder democracy, of ‘‘‘capital-owner/-contributor democracy/voting’’’, of ‘‘‘voting power in proportion to the capital-value contributed’’’, or of internality equity— rather than honoring that principle only “in the breach” — then the structure/process of Board Committee and Sub-Committee <<praxis>> will approximate such a dialectic/dialogic process/structure, given a certain degree of class-homogeneity within the capital-owning class.

That approximation will be biased and distorted by the inequalities of influence and voting-power — reflecting their differential capital-equity capital-value contributions and ownership shares — among the various stockholder directors, some of whom may represent the interests of the core plutocracy, “lording over” their middle and lower capitalist, fellow-class underlings, plus by the influence of the “insider-director” cronies, “appointed” from internal senior management.























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