Re: <nettime> The Revolutionary Role of a Transnational Counterparty

[Dmytri Kleiner <dk@trick.ca>]

On 31.10.2011 07:59, Keith Sanborn wrote:
> Party specialization for those seen as incapable of representing
> themselves may seem quite pragmatic but it's the beginning of
> hierarchy.

We did not choose the party form, that is the form that currently 
Governs our society. Our choice is merely to develop our own 
representation or beg for it from the existing political parties.

By creating our own representation, we have the option of creating a 
type of party, such as what I describe as the Transnational 
Counterparty, having antithetical extrinsic and intrinsic 
characteristics so as to create the new society in the shell of the old.

Our party can never be the "beginning of hierarchy," since the 
governance form we encounter is already thoroughly authoritarian and 
hierarchical, and this in turn dictates the extrinsic form of even our 
party before we even get started. Yet, our intrinsic form is up to us to 
design, and we have the opportunity to implement the most fluid and 
participatory internal democracy possible.


> It wd clearly give rise to internal party hierarchy, whether
> acknowledged or unacknowledged and you're stuck with party cadres
> with specialized expert self-interest.

While I hope you are wrong with the above, even if our party is so
doomed, we are no worse represented than with the current parties,
and, at least for time improved as the transformation you describe
above would not be instantaneous, thus the party could at the very
least serve a short-term purpose.

I fully agree with what you say below.


> A mass party has to be non-hierarchical from the beginning, which
> precludes the use of previous models of party relations with a mass
> they "represent." there can be different kinds of participation
> perhaps but social structures themselves must be altered or you're
> back with the same old illusions of 20th century democracies
> whether capitalist or "people's" democracies. The slippage into
> representation vs participation is critical and fatal.

And these ideas should be embedded into the internal structure of the
party, even when they can not be present in the external interfaces.

Best,

--
Dmyri Kleiner
Venture Communist






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