United We Stand
United We Stand and Divided We Fall. While everyone can relate to that expression, each of us has our own definition of ‘we’. That, unfortunately, will keep us divided. The ‘we’ might be our nation or community, maybe a social movement, or even a favourite sports team. It’s not often the whole of humanity though. Another expression we’ve all heard — ‘We’re All In This Together’ — was briefly popular early on in the pandemic. Yet, once vaccines became available, they were not shared in a fair way. We couldn’t even share rolls of toilet paper. Some may shrug it off, telling themselves ‘it was ever thus’, but we should keep in mind that as long as humans as a species remain divided, the world we know will continue to fall apart, possibly, as Hemingway said about bankruptcy, in “two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Humans are cooperative though — it’s fundamental to our nature. With our relatively frail bodies, we’d have gone extinct long ago without the ability to organize communities and support each other. Like other primates though, we recognize injustice when we see it and are unlikely to cooperate when treated unfairly. For most of our existence, we’ve lived in small egalitarian groups in which we know and trust everyone. In that context, we cooperate.
Competition
The discovery of agriculture changed everything. With a surplus of food available, some enterprising men came up with the novel concept of private property, and took control of it. Enter class politics. Ever since then, humans have been able to organize much larger societies, though always requiring the social control of the majority of people by a small minority, who happen to own most of the property. At times that control has been maintained purely through force, other times with the use of religion, and then sometimes with a ‘social contract’. We can look around the world and see all three methods being used today. Sadly though, any society built on inequality is inherently unstable and prone to crisis, and eventually, collapse. The human story is full of civilizations that have come and gone. We are now living through the gradual decline of the first global economic system.
There are, of course, thousands of diverse and distinct cultures around the world, but all are now trapped by the inescapable grip of capitalism’s invisible hand — which forces us all to compete with each other for survival. We have to compete as individuals, as communities, and as heavily armed nation states. As long as we live our lives in competition with each other, we’ll continue to gradually destroy the biosphere that keeps us all alive. Humanity is trapped in this inhumane competitive system and, like an escape room, we’ll have to learn to cooperate to save ourselves along with the rest of the biosphere, and time is running out.
What about the United Nations one might ask? Unfortunately, the UN doesn’t actually represent humanity at all. Instead, the general assembly represents only the most powerful people in each competing nation state, whether democratic or autocratic, and ultimately all decisions rest with the security council, whose five permanent members, each with veto power, are currently at war over Ukraine and possibly soon Taiwan. The UN simply does not provide the democratic forum that we need to solve global problems collectively. It’s not going to get better; a functioning global democracy can’t be built on undemocratic foundations.
Confederation
Occasionally, humans have formed larger cooperative societies based on equality by creating a confederation of self-governing communities. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy is one such example. Created nearly a thousand years ago, it brought together five nations which were previously at war, into a cooperative union called the Great League of Peace. Some historians argue that American democracy was inspired by that system. Whether that’s true or not, the founders of the US constitution left out the most important part — self-governing communities.
In Haudenosaunee democracy, clan groups govern themselves, then each chooses representatives to a central governing council. In contrast, American democracy, and liberal democracy generally, gathers together voters who don’t know each other, to elect someone to rule over them for a fixed period of time. Naturally then, everyone votes in their own personal interests rather than the collective interests of the community as a whole.
The resulting system is a dysfunctional version of democracy which is easily corrupted by economic power, and incentivizes the polarization of political parties. As the American system spirals out of control, the Haudenosaunee people (called Iroquois by the French) continue to practice democracy today, although now with severely limited powers of self-governance, since their lands were stolen by European colonizers and are currently divided between the U.S. and Canada.
Similar, although short lived, forms of democracy have been created spontaneously during moments of revolutionary upheaval, such as the Paris Commune in 1871, and the Soviet (council) system during the Russian revolution in February 1917. The Commune survived only two months before being crushed by the combined efforts of the French and Prussian states — two enemies uniting to prevent the inspiration of radical democracy spreading through Europe. Tragically, Soviet democracy was destroyed from within, when the Bolshevik party seized power for themselves in October 1917, creating the authoritarian regime which has been mislabelled as ‘communism’, and causing division and confusion among progressives for over a century. If it weren’t for the October revolution, which was really more of a coup d’état, Soviet democracy might have gradually spread to other communities around what could have been a very different world today.
Other examples include Germany in 1918, Hungary in 1956, Iran in 1979 and even presently in Rojava, Syria. There have been so many spontaneous examples that it would seem to be the most natural form of human government. Most importantly though, it is the form of democracy which would be best able to scale up to include everyone. It’s been called ‘council democracy’ by Hannah Arendt, or ‘democratic confederalism’ by Murray Bookchin, but the name is not important. What matters is that self-defining communities govern themselves, and together they form a cooperative network for collective decision making. Each time they’ve been created though, rising up in isolation with very limited experience, they’ve been easily destroyed, like a tragic game of Whac-A-Mole, devastating human lives and communities.
Global Cooperation
Our challenge, I would argue, is to create a community-based democratic system, which can scale up gradually over time to eventually include all humans, while at the same time not posing any immediate threat to capitalism so as to avoid once again inviting destruction. At some point in our future, humanity collectively might then be able to decide together how to replace capitalism with a system that is fair for all. As David Graeber wrote about the embryonic democratic system developing during Occupy Wall Street, “but was it our job to come up with a vision for a new political order, or to help create a way for everyone to do so?”
Global cooperation will require the creation of a new global democratic system which is inclusive to all humans. This is not a new idea — just very hard to accomplish. The World Federalist Movement has been promoting it since 1947. The Industrial Workers of the World have been trying to create “one big union” since 1905. But, how can a system which is currently keeping us all alive be replaced? The new system must be fully functional and tested before we dismantle capitalism. Otherwise, billions of people are likely to suffer or die.
Constituent Power
As Fredric Jameson said, it is “easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Perhaps that explains why there are so many books and movies about the end of the world, and far fewer about how to end capitalism. Of course, it is actually relatively easy for a small group of people to end the world if they have access to massively destructive weapons or technology. Ending capitalism, on the other hand, will require finding a way for the majority of people to cooperate in creating a new system.
Any new system of governance can only be established by constituent power — those rare moments when enough of the population can agree to accept a new constitution which everyone must then live by. Constituent power is usually considered a temporary state of affairs, being so difficult to organize, but the internet, a global communication system, now makes it possible to organize global constituent power … if we use it properly.
Many believed, back in the 90s and briefly after the millennium, that the internet had the potential to bring us democracy and a better world. Douglas Rushkoff’s 2003 book Open Source Democracy predicted hopefully that “the rise of interactive media does provide us with the beginnings of new metaphors for cooperation, new faith in the power of networked activity and new evidence of our ability to participate actively in the authorship of our collective destiny.” Too few people took him up on the idea though, so that sense of optimism dissipated as facebook and other platforms began to demonstrate how capitalism would now be able to use the internet to extract ever more profit, and further erode liberal democracy. The internet certainly does provide the hardware for a global democratic network. The problem is that we have, so far, allowed capitalists to design the software in their own interests.
Ideology Divides Us
Global democracy was never going to happen automatically — we’ll have to design and build it together. Unfortunately, ideology gets in the way of organizing. When we organize a movement based on ideology, it immediately excludes anyone who doesn’t agree. Sure, we can always hope to convince the others of the brilliance of our plan, but in reality, organizing ideologically automatically inhibits growth. Movements inevitably reach a limit and then begin splintering into factions divided by ideological differences. Many people wish to ‘unite the left’ but, even if that were possible, we’d only end up in a global civil war against a ‘united right’. No one wins that.
Furthermore, ideological movements, in order to grow, must make demands on our time, energy, and finances, and sometimes involve personal risk. This is a lot to ask from people who have very busy lives and are struggling just to survive and feed their kids. It’s simply unrealistic to expect masses of people to commit themselves to any ideological project, no matter how progressive. Organizing ideologically will never bring together the numbers of people necessary to actually change the world. Despite what Margaret Mead famously, but mistakenly, said about “a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens” changing the world, in truth, movements have only ever been able to change parts of the world, and even then, only temporarily. Any problems that can be solved by movements, are actually only symptoms of the real problem, which is that we humans are divided and in competition with each other. While movements are of course essential to solve specific problems, the sad reality is that as the global system collapses around us, many movements may, in the end, amount to little more than bailing water on the Titanic.
Movements have definitely influenced the world, but at this point in history we desperately need a way for eight billion people to cooperate and act collectively. No movement will bring us there. However, when we organize unions, we do so in a very different way. We allow and encourage all workers to join the union, no matter what their ideology. Once a union is organized, the members can then debate ideology in healthy democratic discussions in order to make decisions together and act collectively. To change the whole world collectively, we’ll need to organize a non-ideological global union of the majority of humans, to decide together how to replace capitalism with a cooperative system which is inclusive to all.
A Global Digital Community Centre
The internet makes this possible now because all of humanity is already organized into real communities which can all be gradually organized into a global democratic network by creating a platform-cooperative which requires the registration of a real community to participate. We can think of it as a global digital community centre, with only one requirement for membership: registration of a real community that we belong to. As people choose to join the platform, which would obviously have to be worth joining, they will be simultaneously connecting the community they’ve chosen to register, to the growing network of real communities.
The term ‘online community’ is an oxymoron. It’s true that many people have shared their interests, made good friends, and even developed lasting relationships after first meeting each other online, but clearly we can never really trust online connections since there is no way to be sure that anyone is who they say they are. Or even if they’re human, as opposed to AI.
Every internet platform faces the problem of anonymity, and must then deal with all the anti-social behaviour inevitably arising when angry individuals know that they can say or do anything they want and face no consequences. A simple requirement though, of registering a real community that we are part of (our workplace, school, religious or cultural community, neighbourhood…) can remove the element of anonymity from this platform. Each individual’s behaviour on the platform would then be self-policing, just as we all behave within our communities, for the simple reason that they will have to explain themselves to their own registered community if they behave in an anti-social way on the platform.
Instead of leaving it up to AI, or traumatizing underpaid workers as the corporate platforms do, communities themselves would moderate content on the platform. For example, if a user has a complaint about another user, resolution of that situation might then involve their two communities having discussions together. It might require the intervention of another community to help resolve it. Maybe ultimately, the collective will decide to suspend an individual’s access to the platform or even a whole community’s access. In this way we can gradually develop democratic processes together, and eventually a global democratic community network might be able to find solutions to global problems which currently seem impossible to solve.
Democracy From Below
We can’t trust the internet, but we all belong to at least one, and usually several real communities that we can trust, such as our neighbourhood, our religious or cultural community, our workplace, our school, and many other types of self-determining communities. Each of our identities on the platform can be verified by our chosen community allowing a global democratic system that we can all trust, to be built gradually by linking those real communities together, one at a time.
To access the platform, individuals must maintain good standing in their chosen community, and each community, to keep its access, must maintain good standing with all of the other communities in the network. Those self-governing communities would each choose delegates to represent them at a local council. As self-governing local councils gradually spring up around the world, they would each send delegates to a regional council. Self-governing regional councils would then send delegates to a global council. The internet platform-cooperative provides a very convenient communication system, and can facilitate the creation of a global democratic system, but democracy itself would exist within and between our communities in the real world rather than on the internet.
There have of course been many other proposals for global ‘e-democracy’ making use of the internet. Typically though, they require complicated and potentially very expensive methods of verifying identities. It would be nearly impossible to prevent sabotage or abuse of such a system, and since access to the internet is not equal for everyone, it would still not be a fair and representative democracy. Any democracy relying on the internet would leave us dependent on technology which really can’t be trusted. The internet is a great tool to help us build it, but democracy must be based in our real communities in the real world if we expect people to trust it and choose to participate.
Permanent Democracy
Many of us have come to see democracy as an ‘event’ which occurs periodically, rather than part of our daily lives. With community-based democracy however, there would no longer be the need for simultaneous elections as we know them now. Instead, each self-governing community would choose their delegates whenever they decide to. Ideally, those delegates should receive no special privilege, and be immediately recallable, in order to prevent misuse of the position and to ensure that the choices of communities are represented properly. This can’t be decided in advance of course; communities must be allowed to decide for themselves how they are best represented.
Political parties, which have come to dominate modern politics while feeding the ideological divisions between us all, would likely play a declining role in a community-based democratic system. The way that liberal democracy functions, allowing economic power to influence elections, has gradually enabled political parties to dominate our polarizing societies. It is rare that even two people can agree on everything, yet within political parties there is an expectation that everyone hold the same ideology — as religions do.
In a competitive society based on property ownership, it’s inevitable that democracy becomes nothing more than a competition between political parties and personalities. In a cooperative society conversely, political parties would no longer serve much purpose at all, and might gradually disappear.
Rather than voting for a leader at the top of society, which often leads to corruption and a system which few people actually trust, democratic communities would govern our world collectively from below. Of course, not all communities currently practice democracy. Those that don’t, will have to gradually learn from others that do. As individuals choose to join the platform cooperative, they will have an incentive to convince the rest of their community to get involved as well. All of our communities are already interconnected; we simply lack a mechanism allowing us to make use of that network.
Self-Organizing System
Social activists and organizers are often frustrated by the limited interest that most people show for getting involved in movements for social change, yet we can watch as millions will eagerly join a new internet platform which provides a service or some amusement to them. There’s nothing we can do to change that reality, so why not make use of it instead? Facebook has ‘organized’ the most people in human history simply by offering something that is useful, or just fun, and makes no demands.
We know that those users are in fact the product that facebook is selling, and of course they are not organized in any practical way to bring about positive social change, but imagine if facebook had originally been created as a democratic platform-cooperative, instead of a profit-seeking corporation. It might now be a democratic organization of over 3 billion people, possibly even in a position to demand from corporations and governments the changes we need for a better world. The best time to begin building a democratic platform-cooperative to create global democracy was twenty years ago. The next best time is to begin now.
The creation of an open-source, democratic, platform-cooperative which can provide all the useful features that people want from the internet, without the anti-social and profiteering side, could be very popular and entice many people to join. It might also be able to re-create the once hopeful and innocent online atmosphere of the early internet. The requirement to register a community when they join, can gradually create a global network of self-determining communities, which might finally allow humanity to act collectively.
Building Open Source Democracy
This is obviously a monumental task with no guarantee of success. It will require many volunteers to design, build, maintain, and fund it. The ultimate goal is to eventually have everyone choose to contribute in whatever way they can, to the best of their abilities. At the same time, it requires completely rethinking our approach to social change. As long as activists think in terms of organizing ‘our side’, within an ‘us versus them’ vision for social change, humanity will continue to be divided meaning that global collective decision making and action, remains impossible.
It is, of course, perfectly rational to seek like-minded people to organize with when trying to change the world and yet, that has never worked. For millennia, people hoping to change the world have proposed their idea for a better world, then tried to find enough supporters of their idea with the goal of reaching a ‘tipping point’ which would bring about the desired change. Some movements have simply disappeared; others live on as powerful religions or political parties today. On a small scale, organizing ideological movements does bring about change, but it’s not possible to change the whole world that way.
However, if we reverse that way of thinking, and instead we work first to organize enough people into a democratic network, then together we might be able to develop the ideas necessary to change the world collectively. We either trust democracy or we don’t. What is the point of designing the perfect form of governance if we have no way to put it into practice? We need to switch our thinking from building an ideological movement, to building a union that everyone can feel comfortable to join.
The Ideology of Non-Ideology
Some might argue that we need at least some ideological limitations on who can join. For example, we shouldn’t allow fascists to join the collective, right? That’s not really necessary though, and once we begin excluding one group, where does it stop? Currently, under liberal democracy, we can’t possibly know which of our neighbours or co-workers might hold fascist ideas as long as they don’t feel confident to express them publicly. Individual fascists rarely announce themselves within the real communities they belong to, and other communities collectively are not going to choose to include a group calling themselves fascist. Again, we’ll have to take a chance and trust the decisions that our future, democratically organized communities, might take.
Is this an ideological project pretending to be non-ideological? Maybe, but this idea only needs a few people to believe that it could work, among them at least one programmer, in order to get started. But the platform which can actually bring humanity together, must be built in a way that doesn’t exclude anyone for ideological reasons. It requires building an organization that follows no ideology, only mutual respect according to the standards that the collective decides. Is it a leap of faith? Maybe a leap of logic? We’ll never know if it could work unless we try to build it.
When the majority of people are truly allowed to practice democracy, we will collectively make wise choices. But first, we’ll need to create that democracy. Ultimately, in order to prevent the eventual collapse of the world we know, united we must stand.