In the run-up to the European elections and in conjunction with those of
some Regions and Municipalities, the news, stimulated by judicial
investigations, deals with the sale of votes and the role of the
so-called card masters or caciques who control the voting market . The
eternal problem of the sale of consensus is intertwined with the
phenomenon of transformism which leads interest groups representing one
or more elected officials in local government bodies and at a national
political level to move into the most convenient alignment to ensure
business, which needs to be protected from the exchange vote. If there
were any need, what is happening clearly demonstrates the vices of
politics and the inconsistency of respect for the principle of
representation, demonstrating the fact that the management of public
affairs as well as politics is in fact the prerogative of an elite which
from time to time sometimes he disguises himself in order to maintain
and exercise power. Once elected or politicians, they become independent
from the voters and make the most convenient choices for them, often not
respecting the mandate received.
In this situation, it is not surprising that an increasingly smaller
number of eligible voters participate in the vote, in the belief that
nothing changes and in the face of the obvious uselessness of voting.
Abstentionism, considered the death of democracy and participation. it
is actually the product of disillusionment with the functioning of the
system of representation and the compromise of politics with power and
business, a radical and perhaps indifferent form of response from the
electorate who have become aware of the lack of influence of the vote.
The structural causes of the problem
Even before taking into consideration the impact of organized crime or
business groups on voting, it is good to examine the structural causes
of the problem, constituted by the institution of delegation. The vote,
expressed once and for all and for the duration of a mandate which
generally ranges from 4 to 5 years, does not foresee and is not
accompanied by any form of verification, control and reporting required
of the delegated person who therefore has a period of consistently ample
time and all the possibilities offered to him by the office to make the
delegated power conferred on him fruitful for his own purposes. This
lack of control over the action and behavior of the delegated person can
be mitigated if nothing else by introducing moments to verify compliance
with the mandate received and correctness in carrying it out.
What is wrong with delegation is that it happens without conditions; it
was once thought that the party should carry out this control function,
i.e. the organization that expresses those elected through the common
sharing of ideals, a program and objectives. In the ranks of the party
the militant acquired and formed his own political culture, experimented
with collective action and class solidarity, built a complicity of
common action which contributed to binding him to the other militants
and inserting him with an active role in the implementation of the
political line of the party. A non-secondary role of control and
orientation was entrusted to the political community constituted by the
party which influenced the behavior of the delegate, verifying his
concrete actions. Well, this control function of the party has
completely disappeared and this is because in fact the parties today are
electoral committees, devoid of ideals and programs, without a common
project that brings together the forces of the political community
towards the objectives collectively identified and shared by those who
refer to the party or who have placed their trust in the candidates
representing that party.
At this point our analysis necessarily shifts to the crisis of the
parties which largely derives from the disappearance of ideal contents
in political action, from the absence of a project for society which
refers to clear and distinctive values of the position of that political
party. In particular, the crisis of the parties concerns the left of the
political spectrum or self-styled left, which lacks a careful and
scientific analysis of the economic and political phase, supports
short-term and merely electoral proposals, lacks political planning and
a future vision of society, has lost the points of reference that
constituted the distinctive characteristics of a visibly left-wing force.
The case of the position of the reformist left parties towards the war
is emblematic, which, due to their ideological matrices, should by
definition be pacifist and in any case against the war, while they are
instead warmongers and convinced of the need for rearmament.
This loss of identity makes the parties unrecognizable and distances
voters from them who, without points of reference, distance themselves
from politics and develop an awareness of the futility of voting by
abstaining. By doing so they allow an increasingly marginal and limited
number of citizens to participate in the electoral debate, effectively
transforming it into a sort of opinion poll at the end of which the
members of the political class remain the same, repositioning themselves
according to convenience.
The end of ideologies
The political elite celebrated the end of ideologies, convinced that
they were an obstacle to the management of power exercised without any
contestation. They aim for stable governments, they bet on laissez
faire, they need the operator not to be disturbed. Increasingly
intolerant of any form of control, they attempt to build illiberal
democracies, managed by autocrats and top government figures, removed
from any control of elective assembly bodies. To justify this request
they invoke the need to adopt decisions quickly to respond to the
frenetic pace with which phenomena develop in society. Hence the success
of figures such as the premiership which sometimes overwhelm every
principle of representation with the result of distancing citizens even
further from participation in political life.
The so-called Western democracy is today reduced to a system where an
ever smaller share of potential voters participates in the vote and
legitimizes the political system. While the structure of the social
structure appears more like a set of parameters of tension, continually
subjected to verification stress for which inequalities multiply and are
constantly subjected to checks, the level of stability of the system is
constantly verified, putting it to the test to test how much difference
it is able to withstand between the number of rich people and that of the
absolute poor, how many how many inequalities it is able to tolerate,
how many injustices it manages to make accepted while maintaining the
management of power and the apical configuration of the social structure
unchanged.
In this new context it is hypocritical to talk about the rule of law,
welfare, rights and duties, guarantees and individual and collective
freedom because all rights are progressively and irremediably
increasingly attenuated and in fact we are moving globally towards
adoption of a single system of government whose variations are apparent.
Thus, taking sides in defense of democracy, Western values and other
such talk appears in all its illusory and inconsistency.
That said, the only way to get out of the irreversible crisis of
authoritarianism towards which political and social management
institutions are headed is to return to utopia, starting from the belief
that another world is possible, a more just world, a basically
egalitarian, with a social structure in which equal access to the good
things in life is ensured for everyone also thanks to a more equal
distribution of resources and work. This means having a strategy and a
program, having rational and achievable objectives, taking into account
that what was difficult to achieve in the past, today that technology
could change the relationship of women and men with work, becomes
potentially achievable.
To do this we cannot rely on the role of reformist parties because in
reality they are not reformists but tend at best towards what they call
a rational management of the existing situation, without taking on a
project for a future society.
We need to go back to thinking about a possible social revolution that
has a radical and profound impact on production structures and the
distribution of power, that redistributes wealth, creating a tendency
for equality between men and women and between them without distinction
of ethnicity, religion, gender , skin color, and any other different
parameter of distinction of the human race.
Changing things means first of all convincing yourself that another
world is possible and working to make change possible because tackling
problems in a radical way is not always utopian, but rather it is the
only way to find a solution.
The events of Bari, Turin, Palermo, Catania.....
Numerous investigations by the judiciary still underway are
investigating possible vote buying and selling and when this is
happening it constituted a wonderful opportunity for the Democratic
Party and 5 Star to break the alliance in view of the municipal
elections in Bari. Without going into the merits of the accusations made
by the judiciary , still to be verified, which
reveal a buying and selling of votes, the granting of favors and
privileges, we note that the alliance between the left-wing parties
already presented elements of fragility due to the ambition of both
party secretaries to be the leaders of the alliance and we point out
that on a practical level, at least as regards the elections to the
Municipality of Bari, the real problem is their possible postponement in
the face of the dissolution of the expiring municipal council, by the
investigation commission set up by the ministry of the interior because
in relation to the results of the vote, we remember that the electoral
law provides for voting in two rounds and therefore it cannot be ruled
out that 5 Star and the Democratic Party will be split in the first
round, and then the votes of the respective electorates will converge on
the candidate called to participate on the ballot. Of course, given the
situation in Bari, it is also possible that the centre-right, if
excluded from the ballot, decides to support in the second round which
of the two contenders they like most, perhaps after yet another more or
less obvious negotiation for a transformative convergence on the name of
one of the two candidates.
This last hypothesis among the possible ones would be the bleakest.
GL
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/04/25/il-voto-in-vendita/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
some Regions and Municipalities, the news, stimulated by judicial
investigations, deals with the sale of votes and the role of the
so-called card masters or caciques who control the voting market . The
eternal problem of the sale of consensus is intertwined with the
phenomenon of transformism which leads interest groups representing one
or more elected officials in local government bodies and at a national
political level to move into the most convenient alignment to ensure
business, which needs to be protected from the exchange vote. If there
were any need, what is happening clearly demonstrates the vices of
politics and the inconsistency of respect for the principle of
representation, demonstrating the fact that the management of public
affairs as well as politics is in fact the prerogative of an elite which
from time to time sometimes he disguises himself in order to maintain
and exercise power. Once elected or politicians, they become independent
from the voters and make the most convenient choices for them, often not
respecting the mandate received.
In this situation, it is not surprising that an increasingly smaller
number of eligible voters participate in the vote, in the belief that
nothing changes and in the face of the obvious uselessness of voting.
Abstentionism, considered the death of democracy and participation. it
is actually the product of disillusionment with the functioning of the
system of representation and the compromise of politics with power and
business, a radical and perhaps indifferent form of response from the
electorate who have become aware of the lack of influence of the vote.
The structural causes of the problem
Even before taking into consideration the impact of organized crime or
business groups on voting, it is good to examine the structural causes
of the problem, constituted by the institution of delegation. The vote,
expressed once and for all and for the duration of a mandate which
generally ranges from 4 to 5 years, does not foresee and is not
accompanied by any form of verification, control and reporting required
of the delegated person who therefore has a period of consistently ample
time and all the possibilities offered to him by the office to make the
delegated power conferred on him fruitful for his own purposes. This
lack of control over the action and behavior of the delegated person can
be mitigated if nothing else by introducing moments to verify compliance
with the mandate received and correctness in carrying it out.
What is wrong with delegation is that it happens without conditions; it
was once thought that the party should carry out this control function,
i.e. the organization that expresses those elected through the common
sharing of ideals, a program and objectives. In the ranks of the party
the militant acquired and formed his own political culture, experimented
with collective action and class solidarity, built a complicity of
common action which contributed to binding him to the other militants
and inserting him with an active role in the implementation of the
political line of the party. A non-secondary role of control and
orientation was entrusted to the political community constituted by the
party which influenced the behavior of the delegate, verifying his
concrete actions. Well, this control function of the party has
completely disappeared and this is because in fact the parties today are
electoral committees, devoid of ideals and programs, without a common
project that brings together the forces of the political community
towards the objectives collectively identified and shared by those who
refer to the party or who have placed their trust in the candidates
representing that party.
At this point our analysis necessarily shifts to the crisis of the
parties which largely derives from the disappearance of ideal contents
in political action, from the absence of a project for society which
refers to clear and distinctive values of the position of that political
party. In particular, the crisis of the parties concerns the left of the
political spectrum or self-styled left, which lacks a careful and
scientific analysis of the economic and political phase, supports
short-term and merely electoral proposals, lacks political planning and
a future vision of society, has lost the points of reference that
constituted the distinctive characteristics of a visibly left-wing force.
The case of the position of the reformist left parties towards the war
is emblematic, which, due to their ideological matrices, should by
definition be pacifist and in any case against the war, while they are
instead warmongers and convinced of the need for rearmament.
This loss of identity makes the parties unrecognizable and distances
voters from them who, without points of reference, distance themselves
from politics and develop an awareness of the futility of voting by
abstaining. By doing so they allow an increasingly marginal and limited
number of citizens to participate in the electoral debate, effectively
transforming it into a sort of opinion poll at the end of which the
members of the political class remain the same, repositioning themselves
according to convenience.
The end of ideologies
The political elite celebrated the end of ideologies, convinced that
they were an obstacle to the management of power exercised without any
contestation. They aim for stable governments, they bet on laissez
faire, they need the operator not to be disturbed. Increasingly
intolerant of any form of control, they attempt to build illiberal
democracies, managed by autocrats and top government figures, removed
from any control of elective assembly bodies. To justify this request
they invoke the need to adopt decisions quickly to respond to the
frenetic pace with which phenomena develop in society. Hence the success
of figures such as the premiership which sometimes overwhelm every
principle of representation with the result of distancing citizens even
further from participation in political life.
The so-called Western democracy is today reduced to a system where an
ever smaller share of potential voters participates in the vote and
legitimizes the political system. While the structure of the social
structure appears more like a set of parameters of tension, continually
subjected to verification stress for which inequalities multiply and are
constantly subjected to checks, the level of stability of the system is
constantly verified, putting it to the test to test how much difference
it is able to withstand between the number of rich people and that of the
absolute poor, how many how many inequalities it is able to tolerate,
how many injustices it manages to make accepted while maintaining the
management of power and the apical configuration of the social structure
unchanged.
In this new context it is hypocritical to talk about the rule of law,
welfare, rights and duties, guarantees and individual and collective
freedom because all rights are progressively and irremediably
increasingly attenuated and in fact we are moving globally towards
adoption of a single system of government whose variations are apparent.
Thus, taking sides in defense of democracy, Western values and other
such talk appears in all its illusory and inconsistency.
That said, the only way to get out of the irreversible crisis of
authoritarianism towards which political and social management
institutions are headed is to return to utopia, starting from the belief
that another world is possible, a more just world, a basically
egalitarian, with a social structure in which equal access to the good
things in life is ensured for everyone also thanks to a more equal
distribution of resources and work. This means having a strategy and a
program, having rational and achievable objectives, taking into account
that what was difficult to achieve in the past, today that technology
could change the relationship of women and men with work, becomes
potentially achievable.
To do this we cannot rely on the role of reformist parties because in
reality they are not reformists but tend at best towards what they call
a rational management of the existing situation, without taking on a
project for a future society.
We need to go back to thinking about a possible social revolution that
has a radical and profound impact on production structures and the
distribution of power, that redistributes wealth, creating a tendency
for equality between men and women and between them without distinction
of ethnicity, religion, gender , skin color, and any other different
parameter of distinction of the human race.
Changing things means first of all convincing yourself that another
world is possible and working to make change possible because tackling
problems in a radical way is not always utopian, but rather it is the
only way to find a solution.
The events of Bari, Turin, Palermo, Catania.....
Numerous investigations by the judiciary still underway are
investigating possible vote buying and selling and when this is
happening it constituted a wonderful opportunity for the Democratic
Party and 5 Star to break the alliance in view of the municipal
elections in Bari. Without going into the merits of the accusations made
by the judiciary , still to be verified, which
reveal a buying and selling of votes, the granting of favors and
privileges, we note that the alliance between the left-wing parties
already presented elements of fragility due to the ambition of both
party secretaries to be the leaders of the alliance and we point out
that on a practical level, at least as regards the elections to the
Municipality of Bari, the real problem is their possible postponement in
the face of the dissolution of the expiring municipal council, by the
investigation commission set up by the ministry of the interior because
in relation to the results of the vote, we remember that the electoral
law provides for voting in two rounds and therefore it cannot be ruled
out that 5 Star and the Democratic Party will be split in the first
round, and then the votes of the respective electorates will converge on
the candidate called to participate on the ballot. Of course, given the
situation in Bari, it is also possible that the centre-right, if
excluded from the ballot, decides to support in the second round which
of the two contenders they like most, perhaps after yet another more or
less obvious negotiation for a transformative convergence on the name of
one of the two candidates.
This last hypothesis among the possible ones would be the bleakest.
GL
https://www.ucadi.org/2024/04/25/il-voto-in-vendita/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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