Democratic Confederation and Centralized Administration When Necessary

"A confederalist view involves a clear distinction between policymaking and the coordination and execution of adopted policies. Policymaking is exclusively the right of popular community assemblies based on the practices of participatory democracy. Administratiom and coordination are the responsibility of confederal councils, which become the means for interlinking villages, towns, neighborhoods, and cities into confederal networks. Power thus flows from the bottom up instead of from the top down, and in confederations, the flow of power from the bottom up diminishes with the scope of the federal council ranging territorially from localities to regions and from regions to ever-broader territorial areas."—Murray Bookchin (The Meaning of Confederalism)

I am not necessarily opposed to centralized institutions per se. I am opposed to centralized mechanisms of control and systems of power and domination. I am within the libertarian socialist tradition, and specifically within the democratic confederalist tradition. The socialist movement, from its very beginning, advocated the "replacement of the government (control) of men with the administration of things." This was the phrase used by Henri de Saint-Simon. The socialist tradition has always advocated the wholesale abolition of the State. I advocate the democratization of municipalities and the confederation of those municipalities into regional, provincial, national, and inter-national organizations.

My guiding organizational principles are subsidiarity and confederalism. "Subsidiarity is an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority."(Wikipedia) Subsidiarity is etymologically derived from the Latin term subsidium, which literally means "to sit behind" and referred to relief, help, and assistance. Alternatively, the term signifies that the agency in charge of providing for any need ought to be "seated down" as close to the area of need as possible. The principle of subsidiarity holds that the legitimacy of more centralized institutions is predicated on the assistance that they provide to lower levels of organization and their subservience to lower levels of governance and organization. Confederalism is a complimentary notion, which holds that local communities ought to freely associate (confederate) in order to guarantee better protection and provisions for the well-being of their members. I believe that municipalities should be governed through a form of direct democracy and ought to be confederated in order to create a strong and stable system for the provision of national defense and social welfare. All matters that can be dealt with at the local level ought to be dealt with at that level. All matters that cannot be sufficiently dealt with at the local level ought to be dealt with at the most local level capable of dealing with them adequately.

There is a benefit to association. Large groups of people can do things that smaller groups cannot. For instance, an individual may not be able to carry out the task of lifting a log by himself. He may simply lack the strength. Even if he had an infinite amount of time, he might never be able to succeed. Five men in cooperation might be able to move the same log quite easily. Additionally, an individual may not be able to afford to pay for some good or service by himself, but if he pools his resources together with others in his community, they may easily be able to afford the goods and services that they need. For instance, a man may want to move into a certain building but find that he cannot afford the rent or mortgage. If he starts a housing co-operative with his friends, they can move in together and divide up the cost. National defense and welfare are other matters that cannot be guaranteed upon an individualistic basis but can be easily provided for on a collectivistic basis. Defense and welfare cannot be adequately provided for at the most local level, so I advocate the confederation of local municipalities in order to provide for national defense and social welfare.

Within a confederation, member communities are free to withdraw from the confederation at any time. However, their withdrawal from the confederation entails their forfeiture of the benefits of confederation. Supposing that the confederation provides a currency, national defense, universal basic income, and universal health insurance, a member community's choice to withdraw from the confederation would mean that the community and its members are willing to be excluded from all of these benefits. Furthermore, I hold that municipalities ought to be directly democratic. They ought to be governed by a mixture of assembly democracy, delegative democracy, and digital democracy. If any municipality did choose to withdraw from the confederation, it would signify a general consensus to withdraw among the members of that particular community. The withdrawal of democratic municipalities from such a libertarian municipalist confederation would likely only occur if the confederation ceased to serve the interests of the members and began to resemble something more like a State. A State is a system of governance from the top, where the most important decisions are typically made at the national level. In a subsidiarist confederation, the decision-making authority is greater at the local level and the higher levels of governance focus more on administration.

I'm not opposed to having centralized administrations and institutions at the national level, so long as the principle of subsidiarity is upheld. These administrations and institutions ought to exist solely for the purpose of serving the member communities at the local level. I would like for the confederation to maintain a land trust, and for the member communities to collect a land value tax and hand over that revenue to the confederation as rent, which the confederation would then redistribute in an egalitarian fashion to every individual citizen in the confederation in the form of a citizen's dividend in order to supply all members of society with a universal basic income. (Cf. Henry George & Thomas Paine) Perhaps most of the administration of these matters could be automated. If we had a digital currency system and all the citizens within the confederation had an account, the revenue from land value taxes could be deposited into a certain account and automatically divided up equally and distributed back out to the accounts of the citizens on an egalitarian basis. This automation would remove a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. Whatever administrative tasks cannot be automated ought to be handled at the most local level possible, and handled at the national level only when entirely necessary. The provision of universal health insurance would be another task of the confederation.

It may be necessary for there to be some decision-making at the national level. If it is necessary, this should be done through delegates that are able to be recalled at any time. Sections or districts within a city ought to send delegates to their city council, and the city council may send delegates to a regional council, and so on, all the way up to the national level. Each delegate ought to be subject to the authority of the assembly that elected them. And the delegates should be able to be recalled or removed from their official position at any time. If the assembly that appointed the delegate is unhappy with the way the delegate is "representing" them, they can depose of them and replace them. Thus, delegates or representatives could be held accountable and would be removed from their positions if they went against the general consensus of their constituents. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to have a system of e-democracy in place that allowed the citizens to directly veto any decision made at the national level, checking the more centralized decision-making bodies with the general consensus of the populace. I differ from the opinion of Bookchin insofar as I am not certain that all decisions can be made at the local level. Instead of being a purist, I think it best to admit that we do not yet know whether a totally bottom-up confederalism will work and to advocate a system of subsidiarist democracy that allows for sufficient checks and balances.