Legitimacy
Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2019 8:46 am
Legitimacy
There is a bemusing radio programme that asks religious-philosophical questions that start out by being confused.
Legitimacy in democracy or otherwise is an example.
We are mortals in a naturally imperfect world and no answer to the question can be other than of approximation.
And legitimacy must relate to the essential form of society.
For a tyranny the king or high-priest is the authority, but suffers form mortality and madness. The most perfected system may be similar to that for the Dalai Lama. Selecting a young person or several, and providing training in the constitutional system or religion until he is needed to take over authority. In reality it is the system that has authority.
For anarchism, there is no central authority with every person his own authority over his land. Where anything does need to be corporately decided, the system may well break down. The nearest system that worked in a distant fashion was perhaps in the Greek polis, which tended to be small, and anyway its citizens excluded a mass of slaves. They could meet together and make decisions. But this usually involved placing ‘authority. in the hands of a particular person who probably already had more than his share of influence.
For egalitarian democracy, authority rests in the people corporately. Which may work in the fashion of a Greek polis, within the limits of natural ignorance and folly. In the larger scale to be found today with states consisting of millions and even billions of people, any corporate decision by referendum may simply result in tyranny by the majority over cultural minorities. Even in cultural genocide, especially when employed globally as today. Or for the state to be in fact run by a mafia of wealth owners. All of which last is a contradiction of the term egalitarian and indeed altruist democracy. The idea that it is democracy for the majority in an election to assume total control and dictate policy is a contradiction. A representative government is essential, but one that works from the grass roots upwards. A village or town thereby being a cohesive and sustainable environmental whole, incorporating countryside with its economy and nature, within a country that is also sustainable. Almost certainly of limited population, with industry only as needed by that population, and not what is wanted by an elite of wealth. Such a democracy requires a judiciary and constitutionl court that is demonstrably on the side of altruist democracy.
There is a bemusing radio programme that asks religious-philosophical questions that start out by being confused.
Legitimacy in democracy or otherwise is an example.
We are mortals in a naturally imperfect world and no answer to the question can be other than of approximation.
And legitimacy must relate to the essential form of society.
For a tyranny the king or high-priest is the authority, but suffers form mortality and madness. The most perfected system may be similar to that for the Dalai Lama. Selecting a young person or several, and providing training in the constitutional system or religion until he is needed to take over authority. In reality it is the system that has authority.
For anarchism, there is no central authority with every person his own authority over his land. Where anything does need to be corporately decided, the system may well break down. The nearest system that worked in a distant fashion was perhaps in the Greek polis, which tended to be small, and anyway its citizens excluded a mass of slaves. They could meet together and make decisions. But this usually involved placing ‘authority. in the hands of a particular person who probably already had more than his share of influence.
For egalitarian democracy, authority rests in the people corporately. Which may work in the fashion of a Greek polis, within the limits of natural ignorance and folly. In the larger scale to be found today with states consisting of millions and even billions of people, any corporate decision by referendum may simply result in tyranny by the majority over cultural minorities. Even in cultural genocide, especially when employed globally as today. Or for the state to be in fact run by a mafia of wealth owners. All of which last is a contradiction of the term egalitarian and indeed altruist democracy. The idea that it is democracy for the majority in an election to assume total control and dictate policy is a contradiction. A representative government is essential, but one that works from the grass roots upwards. A village or town thereby being a cohesive and sustainable environmental whole, incorporating countryside with its economy and nature, within a country that is also sustainable. Almost certainly of limited population, with industry only as needed by that population, and not what is wanted by an elite of wealth. Such a democracy requires a judiciary and constitutionl court that is demonstrably on the side of altruist democracy.