Is Democracy Possible?
The alternative to electoral politics -- by John Burnheim
Welcome to a new electronic edition of John Burnheim's book Is democracy possible? The alternative to electoral politics. This work was originally published in 1985 and is republished here for the purposes of private study only. In a new preface written for this edition the author reflects upon the impact of the book and outlines his current thoughts on the issues raised. Despite a generation of historical change and interest in democratisation the problems remain unsolved.
© John Burnheim 2006.
New Preface :: Introduction :: Complete Web version :: Print on demand edition :: Search Keywords
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New Preface contains Burnheim's assessment of the work and the changes in his thinking since the first edition.
Chapter 1 confronts the usual arguments for the necessity of the state in an attempt to undermine them, and underlines the dangers in the state system and the precariousness of attempts to control it. It is argued that the system of states generates rigidities and absurdities that are impossible to control democratically.
In Chapter 2 the problem of bureaucracy, control from the top through large permanent administrative organizations, is examined and the reasons for it criticized. The possibility of organizations being answerable directly to those affected by their decisions is explored and the problems of such a system clarified.
Chapter 3 undertakes a sustained critique of voting, emphasizing the paucity of the information a vote can convey, the futility of the individual vote in mass assemblies and the impossibility of voters becoming well informed. The defects of party politics and the incapacity of reforms in systems of voting to remedy them are detailed. This critique is followed by an argument that statistically representative decision making bodies would provide a means of meeting all the major objections to electoral politics, as well as providing a means of breaking bureaucracies down into small units under the direct control of those they affect.
Chapter 4, having briefly surveyed the inadequacy of a pure market economy to provide public goods and reasonable access for all to the means of production, outlines a proposal for a market society in which various productive resources are vested in different trustee bodies. These trustees would be independent of each other and not subject to any central policy-making or executive body. They would lease productive resources to firms at prices that would cover the need for public goods, and safeguard other community requirements. The argument is that demarchy would constitute an adequate social control of production in a market economy and provide satisfactory security for all.
In Chapter 5 various features of and objections to this system of public decision-making that I call “demarchy” are examined, and the hopes that might reasonably be placed in it are detailed.
A reader who is anxious to get to the heart of the matter might start at chapter 3, or even at the third section of that chapter, where the working principles of demarchy are outlined, and proceed to chapters 4 and 5.
