Talk:Democracy

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I'm not sure how a leader from another country can claim they are "bringing democracy" when they really bring guns and bombs, especially when their democractic invasion is to remove a dictator that country previously enabled. - ABliss

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Pure democracy is not anarchy. Anarchy is explicitly the abscence of law and government, whereas a democracy inherently requires laws and government, whether that "government" includes everyone or not. -- Amw

My definition of democracy is less complex, perhaps ("In a Democracy the citizens are the source of power."). I don't see how a democracy inherently requires laws & government at all. As for anarchy, it seems that socialist anarchism (syndicalist?) fits the bill here; the collective will of the people is what guides decision making. crtn

So you would suggest that the collective will of the people is to enjoy piracy, download music, movies and whatever else they want. Do you think free access to intellectual property can become part of our so-called democracies? You could draw an analogy to trade unions and their fight against the leaders of industry. This is part of socialist philosophy. This is how I see copyright, as an exploit that must be corrected.

I think the good of humanity in general would be greatly increased by the free and open distribution of such materials, but also that the "content creators" deserve the reciprocal support of society, just as any other producers do. crtn

I should note that my ideas on this are somewhat muddled and writing here is as much me trying to sort things out as much as asserting my opinion. crtn

It's cool :) I think a lot of us are doing the same thing. Contributing to a Wiki is like participating in an evolving discussion, except the thread never disappears, it just keeps getting distilled purer and purer till you get the perfect definition down. -- Amw

I wonder what you call that distilling process and whether anyone has discussed this in relation to wikis. Where else does this process happen? - ABliss

I disagree with: 'democracy inherently requires laws and government'. I hope my small knowledge about the Greek language is good enough.

The meaning: 'Demos' is Greek for 'People'; 'Cracy' is Greek for 'Will' (or power). In other words: the People's will. Montesquie invented the Trias politica in the Middle ages. The word democracy (and thus democracy itself) was invented back in Greek society. Here where i live we (men and women who are 18+ and Dutch nationality or lived here legally for 5 years) didn't had the right to vote until beginning 20 century. The hierarchies of these democratic societies differ. Was one of these societies democratic, and the other one not?

The question is not if we live in a democratic society. Even in an Orwellian society, one can argument that it's a democratic society. This is too black/white, and too easy to argument out by anti-anarchist people. Therefore i rather say: the question is how much democratic the society is, which is subjective, and on which a lot can be (and is) changed in a society. In current Western societies we decide the People who decide what to do. So what happens when we vote is we chose the People (Demos) who have Will (Cracy); we actually chose our democracy; which is then called a democracy. We (People) do not have the Will ourselves. After the votes, we normal people have little Will on what a number of elite people, our government, does. What capitalism tries to do in various ways is trying to look as democratic as possible with all kind of complex 'tricks' trying to manipulate people in it's process. A lot of factors make it so certain People (Demos) have more Will (Cracy). Sometimes it's dropped into /dev/null. Nobody knows about it. Another time it's called 'freedom'. People have the freedom to invest in political parties. The current (Western) democracy is what i call a (once in X years) 'chosen dictatorship'. Ever noticed how nice politicians are when it's voting time? And how harsh they are after that theatre. What a game.

In an anarchist collective where no leader or elite exists, is there are a democracy there? I think there is, because literally the People have Will. How much democratic it is differs per collective, time and other factors; it's not static. The fact that when we speak about a democracy, most people think of it as how our society is, with all the bells and whistles, like for with a Trias politica and more stuff like military, fire dept, religions, porn, money, rich, poor, middle class, working class, computers and all kind of more stuff which is 'normal' doesn't mean that's a better, or The only system, or a more or even a less democratic system. It's just what people are used to, and what people don't know is what some people are afraid for. Xenophobic or Conservative, i dunno. I do see certain things which are the same with nationalism; finding the current system the best, and the ony good/right/possible/correct. It sounds like a repeat to me after i typed this, so i stop here.

My bottomlines are: 1) The original meaning of words can be important and in this case, are important 2) Recently i found an interesting document about this subject which i can recommend: From the director's democracy to direct democracy by the Eurodusnie collective. It's basically a howto on how to setup an anarchist collective. -- dpi