jmh wrote:
> If the desires and demands are expressed then no representation is
> required.

Ron Allen wrote:
> There can be assemblies of elected representatives, gathered in a
> public space, in order to discuss and debate the public business.
> In an anarcho-democracy, whatever is agreed upon within an assembly
> of representatives is not enacted as law; rather, whatever is agreed
> upon is then given over to the people for more discussion and debate,
> until the people either approve or disapprove what their elected
> representatives have agreed upon.  The important thing is that, it
> is the citizens who themselves decide and determine public policies,
> etc.  The elected representatives do not propose policies on their
> own initiative; nor do they enact or decree policies by their own
> verdicts or resolves.


jmh wrote:
> If the people all ultimately have to evaluate the proposals and make
> the decisions why even have representatives at all.


Ron Allen wrote:
> To facilitate public debate and discussion of the various opinions
> and preferences.  You cannot get every citizen into an assembly; but
> you can get every opinion and preference . . .


jmh wrote:
> If, as you say "whatever is agreed upon [by the reps] is then given
> over to the people for more discussion and debate, until the people 
> either approve or disapprove what their elected representatives have 
> agreed upon." then there must necessarily be some form or "assembly"
> in which "the people" debate and decide.

Ron Allen answers:
When the citizens vote in general elections, for example,
in these United States, they assemble in various voting
stations all over the country.  There they vote.  

As for public debate, the citizens can gather together in 
town hall meetings all over the country where public issues
are debated and discussed with order and dignity by each 
and every citizen with a desire to speak and to listen.
And that's where citizenship comes alive.  Less work and
more words; less labor and more listening.  Socialism has
always been about less work, and more participation in the
activities of political decision-making.  And I believe 
that the more people are engaged in active political debate
and in actual public democracy, the more will citizens be
what true citizens are  -- i.e., actors in the community
and in the common life of association with others.  Imagine
our short lives in active community with others, in mutual-
aid sharing with others.  Imagine our brief lives activated 
by a democratic freedom and the dignity that comes with the
rights of citizenship.


jmh wrote:
> Either the comment about has no meaning whatsoever relative to this 
> discussion or you had not thought out such a simply detail of what 
> you propose that you cannot say if "the people" are going to be doing
> anything much less have some control over what their representatives
> will be implementing. What you "belive" should happen or what has to 
> occur to be "consistent" with what you want to see don't matter much 
> at all since that's just utopian bable you hope someday might be 
> realized.

Ron Allen answers:
This is why discussing details is such an unrewarding and
abortive venture.   You do not favor democracy; and so, all 
you can do is nit-pick at any and every suggestion I might
come up with, finding faults where there may be no fault. 
I have no idea what you mean by what you wrote above.  And, 
it seems that you're only trying to bait me into discussing
the hows of doing a social democracy.  After all is said 
and done, you'll ask too many dizzying questions and write
too many flippant musings that the whole discussion will 
come to nothing.  I've been through this routine enough to
know where it will go.  



			<><><><><><><><><><>

"Capital is itself a social relation: specifically it is the
social relation involved in the self-expansion of value, the 
production, appropriation and accumulation of surplus value.
Capital, being self-expanding value, is essentially a 
process, the process of reproducing value and producing new
value.  In other words, capital is value in the process of
reproducing itself as capital and, being a process, it is in
a state of motion.  The circuit of capital describes this
motion and it highlights the fact that capital takes
different forms in its circuit or reproduction process.  The
social relation which is capital successively assumes and 
relinquishes as clothing the forms of money, productive 
capital and commodities."
                            -- Ben Fine and Laurence Harris