Re: [Ag Meinungsfindungstool] [MG] Helping the Pirate Party to vanish

[Dinu Gherman <gherman AT darwin.in-berlin.de>]

Michael Allan:

> To succeed in taking down the party system, the party
> must sacrifice itself completely.

Hi Mike,

that sounds a lot like what a compatriot of yours, Lester Frank Ward, said 
about political parties in the US, way back in 1893, in a paper I've found 
reprinted in a book about sociocracy, and which I extracted and translated 
into German here:

http://de.slideshare.net/dinugherman/sociocracy
http://de.slideshare.net/dinugherman/soziokratie

I'm adding just one quote below. Unfortunately, Ward was way ahead of his 
time. And it seems like, even 120 years later, we're still not getting there.

Regards,

Dinu

How then, it may be asked, do democracy and sociocracy differ? How does 
society differ from the people? If the phrase “the people” really meant the 
people, the difference would be less. But that shibboleth of democratic 
states, where it means anything at all that can be described or defined, 
stands simply for the majority of qualified electors, no matter how small 
that majority may be. There is a sense in which the action of a majority may 
be looked upon as the action of society. At least, there is no denying the 
right of the majority to act for society, for to do this would involve either 
the denial of the right of government to act at all, or the admission of the 
right of a minority to act for society. But a majority acting for society is 
a different thing from society acting for itself, even though, as must always 
be the case, it acts through an agency chosen by its members. All democratic 
governments are largely party governments. The electors range themselves on 
one side or the other of some party line, the winning side considers itself 
the state as much as Louis the Fourteenth did. The losing party usually then 
regards the government as something alien to it and hostile, like an invader, 
and thinks of nothing but to gain strength enough to overthrow it at the next 
opportunity. While various issues are always brought forward and defended or 
attacked, it is obvious to the looker-on that the contestants care nothing 
for these, and merely use them to gain an advantage and win an election. -- 
Lester Frank Ward, 1893