Even the best government and political system has flaws; we have to work on an imperfect system and may be able to enact only limited change. I will avoid talking about rigged or fake elections, though I feel that is a growing concern. However, I will stop short of saying that I believe democracy is truly dead at the time I'm writing these lines. It is time to debate whether we need political parties or not.

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Even the best government and political system has flaws; we have to work on an imperfect system and may be able to enact only limited change. I will avoid talking about rigged or fake elections, though I feel that it is a growing concern. However, I will stop short of saying that I believe democracy is truly dead at the time I'm writing these lines.

I have observed politics in United Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and now in the United States of Europe. Most often, it was not democracy because there was an almighty leader following a vision no one could agree with.

DYSFUNCTIONAL POLITICS

From an early age, I have thought politics didn't work. For some reason, even though the process looked entirely democratic, we always ended up voting for parties instead of people, and hence, always seemed to elect the wrong people. It has been my observation that once in power, leaders rarely do what the people actually want. It always ends up in disaster, and sometimes we even re-elect the same horrible people, and no one can understand why.

It is really a question of transparency about who we do elect to power. Who are they truly deep down, do we even get to really know, considering all the lies we are being fed all the time?

I have never bought into anything about communism or socialism; for some reason when they came to my universities to recruit new fresh minds, I never got on the boat.

I remember "The Social Contract" of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke and most especially, "The Prince" of Machiavelli. I know that the American political structure was inspired by Charles de Montesquieu who lived in France from 1689 to 1755, and who also inspired the French political system. Unfortunately, his famous theory of the separation of powers no longer works. It is obvious to anyone that this separation of powers no longer exists, or at least can easily be circumvented.

I simply want to talk about politics at its most basic function and structure; because this is what I feel does not work and ultimately fails us all. This is what can give the power to anyone to start a world war or destroy an entire economy for the wrong reasons.

PARTIES MUST GO

A radical change in the structure itself is required. Basically, the
The idea of political parties needs to go. It is the most outdated and impractical concept in politics. More so because in this day and age, the line is so blurred between party lines, there is not much difference if you vote for one or the other.

The only difference is a few main "wedge issues" such as being for or against gay marriage, abortion, women's rights; should we give more money to big corporations; should we give more money to the poor; and finally, the big argument that cannot fail to win you an election: should we have tax cuts and who for and continue a tax code that is punitive to the powerless and gives a pass to the powerful.

Now, these few issues truly have nothing to do with any political party, for most of the time they will be no more than attempts to garner votes of special interests. These can be debated anyway by all the elected representatives. If you paid more attention to the personal beliefs and ideas of local representatives instead of the political party you will vote for, you would know if the person you're about to elect will be a little tyrant and betray you completely or not.

That little group of local politicians is really all you need to study in order to vote, nothing else. By electing a political party, you most likely vote for the representative of that party without knowing anything about who that person truly is and what that person can truly do for you (or to you). Most of the time these people are so powerless anyway, their elections are more like a formality for a party to get into power, and then the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, or the President and his appointees take over the show.

So in essence, you will be ruled by a very small group of people. And your local representatives, you will know very little about, and they will be powerless anyway, without a voice of any kind. You see the problem?

THE PRICE OF POWER

By getting rid of political parties and coming back to basics, we will also eliminate another growing concern in actual politics. Now parties are spending so much money on their elections, it goes into the millions if not billions. What does this tell you? That only rich candidates can now get into power. Where do they get the money? This invites bribery, corruption, conflict of interests, and now we're destroying Iraq to take over their natural resources, because who paid for the American Elections? Petroleum companies.

No one can now compete freely in the political arena. If I were to present myself tomorrow as an independent, I will most certainly lose. If I were the standard bearer of a political party, I could win, but all for the wrong reasons.

RESIST PROPAGANDA

So first, eliminate political parties. Second, eliminate the right to publicise in any way thinkable political ideas and representatives. No one should ever be allowed to accept money from anyone or any corporation for a political campaign. No one should be able to win an election simply by injecting billions into a PR and publicity machine. It is too corrupt and unjust.

As soon as you hear one guy on the radio or the TV talking about this or that, no matter what he talks about, you are probably very likely going to vote for him, because you will recognise his name on the election ballot, when the others will seem not to even exist. What's a name after all? I won't even talk about negative publicity in order to destroy one's opponent, a common practice nowadays, where a mistake in the life of your opponent is all you need to win an election.

So now that we have eliminated the political parties which elect the wrong type of people, and that we have finally eliminated the big brainwashing publicity machine that will most assuredly influence everyone to vote for this or that, all for the wrong reasons, whilst preventing anyone without the money to be heard, and so speaking destroying democracy, what do we do?

Simple. Who pays for the publicity campaign? The government, meaning, and we forget it all the time, the people pay for it. A few pages about each candidate distributed locally to everyone, so we can find out about these people we're about to elect outside of party lines, and hopefully with the thought that they can think for themselves, that they can be heard and that they can make a difference. An hour here and there on local TV and radio, for each of them, space available in local newspapers, all paid by the people. Cheaply done, no more millions and billions spent on politics and publicity machines. It must remain at a local level, never national. As soon as a political election is national, it defies democracy; it elects the wrong people.

So now that the elections are over, and that people have won for the right reasons, without being a drain on the economy, without bribes and corruption, who's going to be the leader? It has always been the leader of the political party who took ultimate power, and the leader of the opposition being the leader of the second most popular party. This needs new thinking.

Well, I feel we need to work towards a more democratic process where no one is so clearly an all powerful leader, able to veto everything, or unilaterally make decisions with huge impacts upon the country and the world.

Either the leaders are decided after the elections by the people you elected, or in parallel you also vote for anyone who presented himself or herself specifically as leader. The opposition should be everyone else in the assembly.

The idea is that no one should win a seat in an election based on that one man or woman alone who runs for President or Prime Minister, since all the representatives should be independent. So no one will win for the wrong reasons, and no leader will be capable of obliging half the government to vote on any new law or policy. Following the party line will be something of the past.

In the end, there should never be a strong leader in charge of any country or any other government or council, or else, it eliminates the voice of everyone else, and so, your voice. It cancels the idea of an election and of democracy. Only after, should it be decided who is the leader, or independently from anyone else. And that leadership should never be permanent for the whole mandate; it should change every so often.

This should not stop there. The ministers or whatever they are called in the US should not be decided by the leader. They should also be voted by the whole of the assembly based on merits and who they feel should be in charge of certain departments. Or else it is too easy for the leader to get all his little friends there in power, and then it becomes dangerous, because the leader can do whatever he or she likes without fear of being stopped.

I hope my observations might help us move toward a truly functional democracy. The wrong people will be less likely to obtain power, and no leader will be able to dictate how most or all members of a party should vote on any issue. It could get rid of corruption, bring back democracy, and avoid costly elections. It would certainly solve a few of the biggest problems in politics today.

Let's debate whether we need political parties or not, and let's find solutions, so we can have a better democracy, or even, so we can have a real democracy.


This article is an excerpt of the book Destructivism, The Path to Self-Destruction, written by Roland Michel Tremblay. It is available online for free on his website, it also contains all his previous political articles:

http://www.crownedanarchist.com/destructivism.htm

Authors Website: www.themarginal.com

Authors Bio:
Roland Michel Tremblay is an author. More information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Michel_Tremblay