Direct Democracy: The Change Towards Holistic Politics

Direct Democracy:

The Change Towards Holistic Politics

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Michalis Lianos is an academic and a social and political theorist. Originally from Greece, he has taught in Britain and France, and conducted research in the areas of law-and-society, sociopolitical change and conflict.

©2022 Michalis Lianos

Foreword

Political manifestos often come as lists of accusations and plans for conflict. But a time may come when the most radical revolutions will peacefully happen as we acknowledge the limitations of our species. That will allow us to understand how we may live together without making each other suffer.

The very nature of political power is changing. We understand that our planet is not inexhaustible and that putting some among us in charge – no matter how capable or well-intended – does not lead to the same outcome as when we are all engaged in the process. Being directly involved in decisions changes how we think about ourselves and others.

The demand for direct democracy increases. People want to be taken into account and not to be taken for granted. Conflicting ideologies meet over the distrust of elites and the request for bottom-up governance. Even those who are in favour of authoritarian political modes support participation, which, like all paradoxes, should be read as a strong sign of our times.

We need to move towards direct democracy without letting our oppositions stop us. This is a real political challenge. To do so, we must abandon the structures and institutions that have an interest in-building opposing blocks and then representing them. We need to take power at the individual level and deal with our oppositions and disagreements issue-by-issue instead of handing in a block permission via voting for people who will decide according to the interests of their political parties.

Holistic Politics is a culture, an attitude between citizens. The term refers to examining our relations in a holistic way, i.e., as a whole. It implies a state of mind that deals in a direct democratic manner with our differences, and even our conflicts. Knowing each time that something is the real outcome of our collective will, builds trust, tolerance and respect for difference. For a violent species that has dominated all others, this is the way forward.

This is an open manifesto for building direct democracy. A step towards a culture that will allow us to move away from concentrations of power that get their own life and often turn us into resources for their own purposes. Political organisation is the key to social trust and social trust the key to a happy collective life. Debate, competition or conflict cannot get us there. We need to organise and turn to our existence as simple, everyday citizens who keep their hunger for power at bay. Remaining simple is complicated, that is why we need a holistic political approach.

Naturally, this manifesto is dedicated to those who do not need to be coerced into change. Those who would happily drop their advantages in order to live in a more just world, where everyone has a place and no one is allowed to influence collective life more than his or her small personal share. We all have met one or two of these rare people who not only live but also let others live. Their mark is a critical distance from their own interests and an interest in bringing out the best in others. We can organise in a way that lets us follow their example.

Michalis Lianos, Paris 2022

Question marks and deadlocks

The holistic political approach is an answer to the main deadlocks in democracy.

How can we collectively rank the political priorities we disagree over in order of importance?

How do we prevent power being concentrated and used for the benefit of certain groups and classes in society?

How can we achieve social equality while we are individually competition-oriented?

How should we deal, as a society, with the fact that we do not all have the same skills and strengths?

Can a political system constantly adjust so as to apply the sameprinciples in different circumstances?

Can a political system constantly adjust so as to apply the same principles in different circumstances?

Table of Contents

Foreword

Question marks and deadlocks

PART ONE: PRINCIPLES

A. What holistic politics is and why it is useful to us

A.1 Equal and free access to power

A.2 Overall objectives and ranked priorities

A.3 Ideology and practice

A.4 Questions and answers

A.5 The majority principle in Holistic Politics

A.6 Continuous immersion in society

B. Motivation, politics and ‘progress’

B.1 Socialism, applied and unapplied

B.2 The economy as a social value

B.3 The market and the economy

B.4 Entrepreneurship

B.5 A eulogy of failure

B.6 Diversity

B.7 Social coexistence

B.8 Security

C. Equality

C.1 Equal opportunities are not equality

C.2 Equality as the conscious distribution of success

C.3 Exploiting ‘equality of difficulty’

C.4 Foreigners

C.5 Cultural differences and discrimination

C.6 Geopolitics

C.7 What should ‘progress’ and ‘development’ mean today?

C.8 Power and leadership

D. Values

D.1 Uncoupling authority, prestige and power from income and wealth

D.2 Symbolic competition

E. Present and Future

E.1 Liberal parliamentary democracy is an antiquated political system

E.2 Existing policies

E.3 The problem of political parties

F. Some Practical Guidelines

F.1 Some probable applications

F.2 The loose structure of a holistic political system

PART TWO: ACTION

G. System of governance

G.1 Representation and administration

G.2 Political power

G.2.a Continuous voting network

G.2.b Continuous voting: limits and priorities

G.2.c Local and regional vote

G.2.d The Social Assembly

G.2.e Social Assembly Secretariats

G.2.f The Parity Assembly

G.2.g. Regional Secretariats

G.2.h Elected positions

G.3 Administration

G.3.a Administration in the Public Sector

G.3.b Administration in the Private Sector

G.3.c Coordinating Council

G.3.d Penalties

G.3.e Crisis management

G.4 Auditing

G.4.a Investigation

G.4.b Ongoing auditing

G.4.c Court judgments

G.4.d The penal system

G.4.e Other forms of auditing and control

G.5 The Media

G.6 Disproportionate influence

G.7 Army and conflicts

G.8 Secrecy

H. Smooth transition from the current system

H.1 Contemporary issues

PART ONE -

PRINCIPLES

A. What holistic politics is and why it is useful to us

Capitalism, as each of us knows, does not endure or spread by accident; it has some very serious comparative advantages over other systems. To start with, it is not imposed as a plan which we must all follow but as a lack of plan. This means that in principle we feel free, even if that freedom requires us to engage in economic and social competition. Secondly, it accepts human nature as it is at present, not as we would wish it to be. In other words, the solidarity we can display over long periods is limited and our need to compete with each other is deep-seated. This competition does not have to be in material form, it can be symbolic, e.g. it can be about other people’s respect.

So, if we are to move towards a political system which does not confine itself to merely managing the capitalist economy, but uses the economy to bring about the society which the citizens want, we must accept those two basic tendencies as fixed principles. The experience of ‘applied socialism’ regimes showed that the attempt to impose on ourselves principles which stand higher than our own nature leads in the end to hypocrisy, corruption and violence.

Holistic Politics is probably the first political proposal which does not claim to be putting forward the right answers; on the contrary, it claims that what it aims to do is to ask society the right questions each time. It relies on human society with its limitations and forces each one of us to take a stand concerning those limitations; that is, to consider what each of us thinks that we should reasonably expect from others and what others can reasonably expect from us. This is done through the decision-making system, which precisely requires an overall orientation before it concerns itself with particular problems, e.g. it obliges us to choose the degree of social equality and the degree of social welfare we want and whether those two figures, for each one of us individually, come before or after our desire for as much consumption as possible. What is more, it opposes a piecemeal view of the issues which a system of governance has to manage. Nothing is dealt with as an isolated problem and everything has a political dimension which must respect the priorities defined by the citizens. There are several basic features of the holistic view of politics:

It rejects a piecemeal view