This Entry represents one Researcher's personal view explaining their own theory of Democratic Anarchy... and why it's good for you.

The Nature of Democracy

It has become more and more apparent to many that modern government is not democratic. For a government of any kind to be democratic certain criteria must be met:

• All laws and policies by which the governed society lives must be created and implemented by the people or their elected representatives.

• Authority to rule must come from the people as a whole (or a majority thereof) or from an electorate formed of those members of society who fulfil certain criteria required (in the case of an organised bureaucracy).

• The aforementioned electorate must actively exercise direct control over the decisions made by and activities of the government, ie, by referendum, voting of officials in and out of office or by direct democracy.

The Original Democracy

Democracy was originally invented by those inventors of virtually everything, the Greeks. The first Ancient Grecian democracies were as close to the ideal democracy as anyone has ever come in many important ways (slavery and equality between the sexes excluded; it's the organisational side being referred to here). The system used was that of direct democracy, in which everyone voted on everything (excluding women and slaves but applied in the modern world these conditions would obviously not serve), by placing a vote for or against a proposal, to abstain you simply didn't bother. In effect the whole country became a parliament. This is, for many, the ideal system as everyone can have their say and society can truly direct its own course without politicians corrupting the system to meet their own ends.

Sounds paranoid? Well if politics is a career, and one with a damn good salary too, then why should we not expect the politicians to be in it for the money, and to do whatever is best to advance that career? However, very obviously this system is impossible to administer in countries with such high populations as are found today.

Ironically the world spanning revolution of the proletariat uniting the nations of man and freeing all humanity, of which we can only dream as very few people actually care, would completely and irreparably spanner this system. Although with Internet technology at our very fingertips, this could theoretically be arranged apart from problems with hackers defrauding the system for their own ends, overloading of data crashing the system, etc. It is a system of direct democracy that would give us the most truly democratic government, but for direct democracy to exist the government must be dispensed with in order to place control of society in the hands of the people via the system of direct democracy.

Anarchy!

Johnny Rotten screeched 'I am an anarchist!', but there is a lot more to anarchy than the Sex Pistols. Most people have the preconception that anarchy is utter chaos and disorganisation, mostly because the word 'anarchy' is used as a synonym for disorganisation and chaos. The advent of a state of chaos is one theory of the result of anarchy. The actual meaning of anarchy is 'the absence of any government' but over time - and with extreme misuse - it has been taken up as a term generally used to define everything cocking up in a shocking fashion.

Many anarchists want a world without government, while those that disagree believe that government is necessary as without it society would dissolve and be reduced to a 'state of nature' in which there would be a 'war of all against all'. Is it rather arrogant of those in power to assume that the human race, after so many centuries of evolution, are only kept from a return to barbarianism by their presence? To assume that their own presence in a ruling position is the only thing keeping an otherwise population of scum and criminals from living in a destructive fashion in which crime and depravity would ensue is truly worrying.

Sadly there is some truth to this as the human race as a whole is a very greedy and self-destructive force. However, how much does government limit this? In many places around the globe, you can't leave your property unattended without fear of theft, it's unsafe to walk the streets at night, and a surprisingly large section of the populace would, if given half a chance, steal anything and everything that wasn't actually nailed down (looting is a classic example of this). This is, however, in some ways the fault of the government. How can any government that allows a man to be so poor that he can't eat, then punish him for taking what he requires to survive? We all have the right to have what we need to survive and, therefore, if we cannot gain access to it by legal means then why should we not turn to crime to even the balance? How can you justify hanging a man for being hungry?

The truth of the matter is that the majority of crime around the world is caused by poverty. The fact is that our governments are capitalist governments that are dedicated to the advance and management of the economy. Our governments throughout history have sought to create better conditions for businesses to thrive and prosper, often at the expense of their own people. Look at the treatment of unions, the miners, slave labour and Western-backed use of child labour at below poverty rate pay in the developing world. Most governments spend a majority of their time advancing the interests of commerce to the deficit of their people. If this is what government is achieving for the people, sacrificing them for the sake of better and bigger business, then why not dispense with them?

The Original Revolution

Karl Marx's original belief was that there would come a time when the capitalist Bourgeoisie would have pushed the working Proletariat too far. They would become fed up with doing all the work and receiving a very limited amount of the profit and being mistreated, abused, taken for granted and treated like a subclass of society. When this time came, Marx predicted that there would be a revolution of the Proletariat who - being a vast majority against such a small group as the rich capitalist fat cats - would win. After this revolution there would come the final age of man, communism. Unlike most peoples' misconceptions, communism is not a political system, it is a method of economy.

In the Marxist-Leninist world of post-October Revolution Russia, things were very different. In the advent of the upheaval of the civil war, Lenin and the Red Army had to resort to 'war communism', which was little better than the tyrannical Tsarist feudalism that had preceded it. However, Russia was not developed economically to the right degree for a successful revolution of the proletariat which would lead to the beginning of a communist state and so, with Lenin's death, died the revolution as the era of Stalin's dictatorial neo-Fascist imperialistic personality cult came to power.

This state-run capitalism with Stalin's masquerade as a communist leader could not have been further from the vision of Marx - a society where everybody does what they can for the whole society and takes what they need for themselves and their family to live a happy comfortable life, free from fear, want or oppression.

The Theory Bit

This Researcher's vision of the ideal post-Marxist revolutionary communist world would be a state of democratic government by anarchy. Many may think that this is ridiculous, but if the whole of the human race, or the vast majority thereof, agreed to have a society in which everyone would return either to their pre-revolution jobs or to a different job of social worth, to not be paid for their work, and only to take from the resources created through this work what they needed to live, without need or want of the essentials to survive, then with society 'getting on with it' there would be no need for a government of any kind once society was back on its feet.

If everybody agrees to lack of government, then the state of anarchy has been reached democratically and as the people are conducting their own lives, and thereby governing themselves, this would still effectively be a form of government in the absence of a governmental body.