Local Self-Determination!
And Cooperation!
Local self-determination, a lessening
of alienating influences on our lives, must and will go hand in hand with
regional, trans-regional, inter-national, and inter - continental cooperation,
or they will not exist, at all.
What local democracy is about
is not “collectivism,” it is not conformism, it is not uniformity.
Instead it is expressivity, intelligence,
variety, choice.
It is what some of us call ‘individuation’:
the fuller, more meaningful developments of individual potentials or capacities.
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Historic fairness
and human decency require that the project of democratic self-rule, of
urban democracy, of regional self-determination (in other words, the democratic
process of decentralization, where power is seen as belonging to the grass
roots locally wherever problems that can be solved locally are to
be dealt with) is not conceived as separate from questions of trans-regional,
inter-national, and intercontinental responsibility and solidarity.
Local democracy
is unthinkable and would not work without cooperation, mediation,
compromise, coordination.
Whether we
will be subjugated to an imperial globalism of all-powerful corporations
exerting their influence through international organizations (and
national governments linked with or dominated by them), or instead will
succeed to strengthen civil society in our quest for more meaningful democratic
involvement and participation of ALL, depends very much on our ability
to strengthen local self-rule, urban and regional democracy by forging
cooperative alliances the world over. For this,
- global
cooperation by ordinary citizens and their grass-roots organizations,
- the
democratic evolution of institutions of self-rule on the local, regional,
and national level that encourage direct influence by the people,
- local,
regional, and national bodies of democratic, rational (instead of bureaucratic)
planning that draw up broad outlines of needs, resources, and production
goals,
are all essential. |
A networked
world, linking computerized information, would make large planning bureaucracies
obsolete. It has become possible to locally and regionally formulate pieces
of rationally planned world-wide production based on need
instead of the profit motive, and place them into a puzzle that as
a whole makes sense if local, regional, and national bodies autonomously
decide only those items of a plan where no outside input/output is seen
as necessary and forward all data concerning the need of outside resources
or goods and the ability to furnish resources or goods (to any outside
partners) to all other potential partners, via the ‘net,’ as well as taking
such data from others into consideration. The ‘plan’ as a broad assessment
of needs, resources, productive capacities (including socially desirable
and locally okayed input of working time) would be perpetually
adapted, in flux, as information as to changing needs, changing resources,
etc., came in. Today’s supermarket scanning systems are a perfect example
of how it is possible to keep minute-per-minute track of stock,
and of changing ‘consumer preferences,’ wishes or needs,
although supplemental communicative roads of citizen input as to
needs,
as to priorities, as to the desire to shape working conditions,
determine working time, etc., must be invented. The California-based
virtual companies that coordinate the production schedule of Asian subcontractors
or partners and the incoming ‘buy’ list of supermarket and department store
chains are another example of the communicative, computer-based and net-based
technology available for democratic, rational, broadly sketching planning
efforts coordinated worldwide on the basis of solidarity, compromise, and
fair mediation of interests. |
The best premise (if not precondition)
for this is voluntary cooperation. It is friendliness. It is a desire to
turn to the other, instead of combating him in a competitive game. This
leaves enough room for withdrawal, being on your own, for necessity moments
or hours, days or months of solitude.
Individualism, today, is often the
contrary of individuation. Millions of people thought of them as brandishing
a particular, individual style when wearing Roeback shoes, or whatever
they were called. Millions think that a hair-style, or style of dressing,
a particular car or kind of music they prefer constitutes their individuality
and sets them apart from others. If you enjoy these little diversion,
alright. But don’t forget there are millions like you. Don’t forget the
products that help you define your ‘individual’ style are produced by the
millions. Those who devised and marketed them preformulated ‘your’ individual
style. You have been largely passive in this, a productive, process.
You have been active only as
a ‘consumer,’ a buyer, somebody who is sporting these goods. Don’t
forget you have a productive bend, a creative potential, as well. It is
in developing this potential that you become a full, mature, or rather,
maturing and ‘growing’ individual. This society does not
encourage and further the development of individuals. It encourages and
furthers the development of a gullible mass of people: people usable as
working people who function in the desires way (instead of thoughtful,
self-confident, imaginative producers), people who will make willing, uncritical
‘consumers’ (instead of productive consumers, consuming producers), people
who can be manipulated by the media and a caste of professional politicians.
Decades ago, an American sociologist
called this type of social being (who thinks or may think, in fact, that
he or she is ‘very individualistic’) the ‘outer-directed personality.’
For it, outside determination of thought, will, morality by authoritarian
institutions (the church, school, family, army, the factory) has
largely been superseded by instant impulses, kicks offered by the entertainment
industry, by info-tainment, by more or less ‘populist’ or ‘charismatic’
politicians, fashioned after an image that has been drawn up by experts
of modern mass psychology.
Both the outer-directed personality
of today’s society and the inner-directed one that was prevalent in much
of the 19th and the early 20th century, are ‘ideal types.’
They do not (often) appear in pure
form, it seems.
We all carry part of them in
us, in greater or lesser proportions. But we also carry a creative urge
in us, a desire to be free instead of alienated or manipulated, a capacity
to think for ourselves and to act in our best interest while taking care
not to disregard the best interest of our fellow men.
Who is the ‘ordinary citizen’, then?
Perhaps, today, more often than
not he is somebody crazy to consume, trapped by the latest craze, impatient
that he cannot afford so many things. Somebody hooked by the false promises
of a society that has low quality shoes, shoddily produced cars, food produced
under the most questionable circumstances, noisy neighborhoods and ugly
houses available for almost unaffordable rents for most of us. Today this
person, faced with the carrot and the stick of his or her invisible masters
(masters invisible as the absentee landlord was frequently invisible for
the tenants of another time or country) adapts to the rat-race of anti-cooperative
‘competition’, hoping to chance upon his own lucky streak while in fact
what he finds is stress, burn-out, sometimes sickness, and even premature
death.
But this same person, tomorrow,
may crave something different, may opt for different goals: dignity, decent
living and working conditions, a say in his own affairs, friendliness and
cooperation among neighbors and work-mates.
THE CITIZENS THAT URBAN DEMOCRACY
and SOCIETY-WIDE DEMOCRATIZATION DEPENDS UPON WILL NOT ONLY CHANGE THEIR
CIRCUMSTANCES.
THEY ARE ABLE TO CHANGE, THEMSELVES.
BOTH PROCESS ARE NOT NECESSARILY
COMPLETELY SYNCHRONIZED; ONE MAY TRACK THE OTHER, AT TIMES; IN OTHER MOMENT,
THAT RELATIONSHIP MAY BE REVERSED.
THE FACT REMAINS THAT CHANGE,
AN URGE TO CHANGE, HAS ALREADY SET IN.
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Your
contribution to the debate /
Your
ideas and suggestions:
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mail us! e-mail: urbandemocracy@aim.com
* * *
CONTENTS:
Urban Democracy: Editorial
The Influence of Big Money Is Far Too Large
Urban Democracy: A Proposal
We Propose A Discussion:
The Example of South Brazil
An Example of Regional Resistance: Why Does
The SPD Rank-And-File React Against Re-
Organization of Party Districts in NRW?
Urban Self-Rule
Debate: Who Is the Ordinary Citizen?
Local Self-Determination! And Cooperation!
© March, 2001 by Urban Democracy Group
Aachen (Germany).
This is a first proposal for discussion.
Reproduction is encouraged. So are your own
proposals for discussion
in the URBAN DEMOCRACY internet journal.
|
mail us! e-mail: urbandemocracy@aim.com |
A brief note appended in 2006:
You may also visit: urbandemocracy.blogspot.com
- a new blog that has been created by folks
who have become interested in this
issue of local (urban, and regional ! ) direct democracy, as well. |