THE CRITIQUE OF DEMOCRATIST IDEOLOGY
 Democracy Community and Revolutionary Action The critique of democracy made by the communist movement leads some revolutionaries to suspect that behind it lies a refusal of « direct democracy », and they see in the aspiration for a human community an inclination towards unanism, a suffocation of the individual or even a new totalitarianism. The suspicions of those who don't consider that in essence all society is totalitarian are founded on the manner in which they privilege an organisational form that is born from a necessary reaction to this world. In an atomised society, in which individuals end up by confining themselves in a solitary « madness » from which nothing seems able to deliver them, it is certain that an authentic revolutionary movement, however partial it is, will from the start affirm itself as the meeting, the reunion of the mass of the excluded, excluded both from themselves and from one another. The necessary condition for the success of such movements will obviously be the participation of the greatest number of people, acting together, without separation or mediation or manipulation. Assemblies, whether one calls them « councils », « soviets » or, today in France, « co-ordinations » contain within themselves this possibility of free association from which a revolutionary movement might begin to transform society. But, while they are the necessary condition, they are far from being a sufficient condition. However democratic an assembly is, however direct the democracy that reigns within it, it is never safe from attempts at manipulation. The only guarantee that the movement doesn't degenerate and that manipulation is frustrated, is the strength of the movement itself; is that the people who are assembled prevent power from passing into other hands; and that they understand that in itself representation is already renunciation. Even the most radical who say « we are all delegates » should rather say only « we are ! ». Of course, what is easy in a shop or a small factory where everyone knows one another is less easy in a big enterprise, or a city, and still less at the scale of a country. From the start transparency and the control of debate are more difficult. However, movements have already provided some practical solutions. In 1976 at Vitoria ( in the Basque country ) proletarians from all the factories on strike succeeded in assembling several thousands without the quality of debate suffering. At Gdansk in 1980, at the time of the negotiation of the famous « agreements » ( whatever one might think about their content ), workers from the yards insisted that microphones were installed in the conference room so that all those outside could follow the proceedings and know what « their » delegates were saying. |