Bruce Leier wrote:
>
> Brad,
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Not being schooled in "Economics", I have
> come to see "capitalism" as just one form
> of human sociability:
>
> That is 1 way to look at it. However, I don't choose to socialize that way
> and those who do try to destroy those who choose other ways to socialize.
> That certainly isn't very sociable.
>
> All the "capitalists"
> "socialize" together, and the "medium"
> of their sociality is running what I
> consider to be the second, but more real government
> of the lands they live in.
>
> Insightful, but isn't there a need for consent of the governed?
In a certain sense, this is obviously true. The Weimar Republic
lost "the consent of the governed", didn't it? King Louis XVI
lost the consent of the governed, didn't he? Jim Jones (of
Guyana kool-aid fame...), however, apparently did not lose
the consent of the governed.
It looks kind of
"Darwinean" to me: If enough people ever decide
to vote with their feet or their paving stones or their
molotov coctails, then a government will fall. Sometimes
a Great Patriotic Leader and Savior of the Mother/Fatherland
(or, from a different perspective: a demagogue) can arouse
a mass hysteria (e.g., Hitler), and sometimes the
mass hysteria can arise by spontaneous combustion (like
grasshoppers transforming into a plague of locusts...).
We are the lemmings.
I fail to see how voting in depersonalized mass elections
constitutes "consent of the governed" in any honorific
sense, esp., e.g., when some of the governed give their
consent by being drafted to go fight in Vietnam instead of being
sent to jail (Oops! Sorry! That was 30 years ago --
it couled never even be thought of, much less
*happen* today!). On the other hand,
if I or someone who meant something
to me was running for office I definitely would vote, in
hopes of arousing some of that mass hysteria for myself
or said person about whom I am concerned ["O come, all ye
TV cameras!"]. I did vote
in the last Presidential election, largely to once
again convince myself how confusing the levers on the
voting machine are (I work with computer "graphical user
interfaces" to reproduce my individual and species
life (AKA "earn my living") --> it is a very bad user
interface to have a "Yes" vote indivated by a *red* ("Stop!/Don't!")
"X" ("Cross it out!")...)....
Democracy and representation seem to me to be incompatible,
since representation is by definition an alienation of
one's power of action (Kings and the Board of Directors of
Enron are representatives, too!). Representative government is not
demo-cracy (government by the people themselves in their
individual authchonous agencies) but rather representativ-ocracy.
Of course part of the ideological obfuscation of bourgeois
"democracy" is to make persons think that voting somehow
is meaningful and that it somehow is real governing, even
though, for every individual voter qua voter, if his or her
vote determines the outcome of the election, the election
cannot be fair.
The limit of 1 over n, as n grows ever larger, is *zero*.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
