3. GOVERMENT AND AUTHORITY

In a democracy, people are supposed to freely decide their civic behavior, which can be dictated by their conscience and critical judgment, and submit to the rules and laws democratically promulgated and contained in the social right. This means that to reasonably exercise their rights and duties as citizens, they need to freely form a personal criterion of conduct. For this, they must make decisions that force their will to act accordingly, even against their principles and convictions. In other words, their freedom forces them to "govern" themselves, to establish their social behavior, and thus coexist in harmony in society. 

On the contrary, in a dictatorship, people cannot freely decide their social behavior. Still, they must follow the doctrines of a leader, who is alienated, by conviction or obligation. Hence, they become individuals without personal criteria that must be governed because they lack the ability to freely govern themselves. 

From this reflection, it follows that in a dictatorship, individuals need to be governed. Still, in a democracy, there is the conflict of the existence of two superimposed governments, the personal and the state. One of the states tries to govern people, considering them as individuals, and the staff refuses to be governed by the state because it means the annulment of their personality and free will. The outraged are "people," so they reject any alienating form of government, and that is precisely the revolutionary aspect of this movement, which does not obey the slogans of parties, unions, or religions, but their own personal judgment of political reality. and social in which they live. For this reason, their mobilizations are spontaneous and lack, and will always lack it! A specific leader. Whereas traditional mobilizations throughout history have been carried out by "individuals" motivated by a leader's personalized doctrine. 

If we want the future society to be freer and more responsible, and the state does not become police and repressive, that is, simply in a dictatorship skillfully disguised as a democracy, as there are already many today, without a doubt, the personnel must prevail. 

From which it follows that free people simply cannot be governed. So the institution of state government must change its function and role. Instead of directing, ordering, and commanding, it must limit itself to "managing" or "administering" citizens' interests because, in a free and democratic society, the government is already in each one of them. Citizens cannot obey other orders than those that emanate from the law and the constitution. 

This may seem like a utopia, but if in the future civil society does not progress in this sense, it will do the opposite. It will be inevitable to fall into a false democracy, with a government-protected by economic interests and supported by a majority of individuals who prefer to act upon dictation rather than take responsibility for being free and governing themselves. Therefore, the outraged want the freedom that this democracy can no longer offer. 

On the other hand, the current supposedly democratic governments receive from their constituents the necessary authority to carry out a specific political agenda on their behalf. But the governments' agendas are mere projects that served to prepare their programs with their electoral promises, which are subject to the changing circumstances of the political, social, and economic reality. Therefore, the government does not receive a specific mandate, but a vote of confidence and the necessary "authority" to carry out, roughly, and as far as possible, the fundamental ideas proposed in its electoral program. 

This means that the government has sufficient authority to change its political plans or to include others in the course of its legislature for circumstantial and more convenient reasons if it deems it appropriate, but that they were not on its initial political agenda and that they may be in total—opposition with the arguments and reasons why their constituents supported them. But, as is already more than evident in governments' current action, this authority can easily degenerate into authoritarianism when the government acts outside the mandate was given by citizens according to their programs and ideology, or even control parliamentary. 

The cause of this embezzlement of the will of the citizens who elected them lies not only in the government itself but in its authority. We always refer to members of any government as "authorities"; that is to say, that they have the authority to propose a bill or any other type of political, economic, or social the initiative, but above all, and that is the very essence of all authority, to "command" and give "orders," which It can easily make them fall into authoritarianism. 

It follows that if the government did not have authority, there would be no possibility of falling into authoritarianism. The first and most important proposal for political reform is for the government to cease to have authority. But, strictly speaking, a government without authority cannot even be described as "government," but, as I said, "manager." or "administrator." Therefore, and once again, what a democratic society need is not a government to order and command us, with authority or authoritarianism, but a commission to manage and administer us, with the power delegated by free and sovereign citizens, which is very different. 

Therefore, we must replace the government itself and its authority with another public management model without the need for authority but with power, which, therefore, cannot degenerate into authoritarianism. 



The political parties 


Factions or parties have existed since the first popular assemblies were formed. The reason is that in every political the discussion, there always appears a minority group of individuals who lead the debates and a majority who support or reject them, according to their ideas and arguments, but who lack their own initiative; that is, groups of "supporters" of the various leaders of an assembly. Naturally, a leader's fundamental interest is to have the largest number of supporters, since it depends on whether their proposals are approved or rejected. 

In this dialectical relationship, supporters are alienated from the leader, and their only option is to change the leader, or what is the same, to substitute one alienation for another. 

Political parties will be the historical consequence of the adoption of universal suffrage, in which the vote of the assembly is extended to a large number of the population. However, the alienation relationship between the leader and his supporters are the same, but so numerous that it requires a certain organization. This need for the organization will generate a more or less hierarchical structure, whose competence will come to require an internal assembly, where the leader is elected, its statutes, its governing bodies, and their electoral programs are approved. 

Starting with the formation of political parties and their full integration into the representative democratic system, people with a political vocation must necessarily join one of these organizations, and, once integrated, manage to be nominated candidates within their electoral lists, so the original assembly the process is repeated, and leaders still need the support of "supporters" within the party itself; that is, whenever there are factions, there will be individuals alienated from their leaders. Or, to put it another way, as long as there are parties, there will be a free leader and alienated supporters. So what we do in choosing a certain party, the leader is actually to choose a potential "dictator" and tacitly acknowledge our alienation and submission. For this reason, and once again, we should not choose them to govern us, but to administer us. 

As if this were not serious enough, citizens in today's democracy hardly have the real possibility of knowing objectively who they have voted for. Their choice is based on the knowledge they gain through electoral "propaganda" and manipulating those mass media interested in their choice. 

Today, opinions for or against political ideologies and their parties are manipulated just as easily as fashions, cultural trends, or mass idols' preferences. In our consumer society, where there is a total overlap between politics and the economy, the parties become strongly bureaucratized organizations whose objective is to defeat competition with the same strategy as if it were just another product for the market. And this the organizational model is found in both right-wing and left-wing parties, because, as Hawley puts it, "as soon as mass political participation is organized in a democracy of competitive parties ... they become forms that lead to opportunism ». 

The demand for political competition forces them, above all, to conquer power. Once power is conquered, and ends are reached, they are supposed to find a way to justify the means. But unfortunately, it often happens that the fraudulent, deceptive, and corrupt means they use end up becoming the ends. 

There is also an unfortunate relationship between the mediocrity of party politics and the mediocrity of the criteria of the mass society that supports and elects them, which is the consequence of this fraudulent democratic procedure and the consequent distancing of the most conscious citizens from their representatives. . Therefore, sovereignty in today's society does not reside in the citizens, but in the masses conveniently manipulated by the parties. 

If manufacturers are obliged to sell their products to make the investment profitable, to the extent that political parties need to invest heavily to create the image of their candidates, they are also obliged to win, without taking too much into consideration other criteria than the of pure electoral profitability. Thus, a small group of corporations and super-millionaires, related to the great political parties, control most of the mass media's advertising messages that lead them to electoral victory. Therefore, the political parties are in the hands of those who finance their electoral campaigns. Who, who does not yet have a solid political background, can resist this powerful influence? Today's democracies are the best that can be bought with money. 

On the other hand, the current ideological discrepancies between the various political parties lie in their different conceptions of ethical and moral values ​​that should or should not be considered fundamental rights of the citizen; criteria on economic and financial measures to promote job creation; the limits to be imposed on freedom of action and expression; differences on the political conception and form of the state or other criteria and ideas on social welfare in general. This discrepancy is based on the inability to accept that there are already universal values, both ethical and economic, that should be adopted by all parties, whatever their ideology. 

But this attitude is changing because due to the dramatic consequences of the successive wars and armed conflicts; the catastrophic effects of financial speculation, and the destruction of the environment, we are beginning to accept certain consensual values ​​as universal and binding, on which both social and economic behavior should be governed globally. In other words, with totalitarian and radical ideologies ruled out, we are increasingly aware that there is only one way to manage the economy and citizen coexistence on principles that are already universally accepted. 

As a consequence of this globalized unification of criteria and values, there must come a time when there is no longer a place to defend fundamental discrepancies between the various political parties, which in practice will mean their uselessness and inevitable disappearance. At this critical moment, we must find a new way to manage citizens' legitimate interests, without falling into the awkwardness of eliminating democracy or unsupportive selfishness. 

Once these fundamental and universal principles have been adopted, it will no longer be necessary to have a government but only a simple "managing commission," with power, but not authority, to manage what it has been commissioned for. Therefore, there will no longer be "authorities" linked to political parties to be replaced by independent "managers," integrated into two commissions. This, which may seem revolutionary, is how we are building the "government" of the European Union, based on a Commission, a Parliament, and a Council, which acts as the Upper House, or European Senate. This thesis's hypothetical revolutionary component is simply the way to adapt this system to the national states and incorporate the digital means made available to us to facilitate management and make it cheaper, more agile, participatory, and, above all, transparent. 



The Ideologies 




Possibly one of the most egregious errors in the history of political thought has been having considered liberalism as a political doctrine when what Adam Smith described in his essay "The A Wealth of Nations" was simply an economic theory. Politics is always social since its foundation lies in its interweaving with the society where it is carried out. Therefore, all politics is necessarily social; or, what is the same, "socialist," in the strictest and most exact sense of the word. What differentiates some socialisms from others is the degree of importance they attach to individual freedom over the general interest. Only totalitarian ideologies, such as orthodox communism, autarkic totalitarianism, or isolated, dogmatic theocracies, cannot be considered socialisms because they are not composed of free societies by communities subject to their dictates, ideologies, or beliefs. Therefore, all political ideologies are socialist, but some are more liberal than others. For the same reason, all economic systems are liberal, but some are more social than others. The differences are in the greater or lesser intervention of the political system over the economic system, eliminating their tutelage, such as radical or libertarian liberalism, or totally depriving them of liberty, such as the planned economy of communism. If we call things by their names, anyone connected with a social activity is, by definition, a "socialist" in the same way that anyone who is connected to the economy is also, by definition, an "economist." 

So we can say that there is only one political ideology, which we may well call "socio-liberal" but with differences of nuances regarding the degree of socialization of its economy or the liberalization of its society. Some central and northern European countries which have endured the current economic and financial crisis reasonably well, have already adopted this centrist ideology in real practice, to the extent that the traditional left and right the electorate is perplexed, without power. See clearly where the difference is. 

After more than ten thousand years of relationships and exchanges that in one way or another we can call "socio-economic," the synthesis of all these experiences has come together in a model that consists of a formula of balance between four fundamental pillars: investment, production, consumption and public spending, which is deducted from a proportional part of the economic activity itself. 

Governments, or in this case, managers, can do nothing but find the formula of balanced fiscal pressure, which does not harm the productivity and profitability of companies, in a fair proportion between large and small, new, and consolidated. In addition to supervising and regulating the labor market as freely and tolerable as possible, but without falling to extremes, and especially encouraging youth employment. Regarding consumption, apply the same proportional formula, recording less those essential goods, such as basic foods, prescription drugs or fundamental cultural goods, and more luxury or unnecessary. 

With the performance of this balanced and proportional fiscal policy, which is not from the left or from the right, but as I said earlier, "socio-liberal" is where you should acquire your financial resources for social spending. This capital must be used, also to the current expenses of the State, which must be as close as possible to income, since the state that spends the most is not the most social, but the one that spends the best, to finance those works and services that the market, or that they are fundamental and cannot be left to the whim of their fluctuations, such as education or health. Financing public spending with credits is only justified for short periods of time to stimulate the economy and employment during the economy's cyclical fluctuations. Still, it is a disastrous practice when it becomes an established habit, because in this case, the state falls in the hands of financial speculators and can no longer regulate or combat them, in addition to losing their freedom and sovereignty. No state can have a healthy social economy or be free and sovereign if it is heavily indebted. 

As for social inequalities, these are not due to the market economy itself, since it is perfectly legal for someone to get rich if they succeed in some profitable economic activity. But once wealth is acquired, wealth itself gives it a dominant position that allows it to compete with an advantage. That is why public managers have to balance this effect by supervising more those who have more because if one part of society has problems, in the long run, the other will end up having them too. Lastly, we must prosecute and punish any type of tax fraud, especially from the big fraudsters and tax evaders, as well as risky financial speculation or money laundering, the true scourge of the current financial system. 

As radical as these proposals were, we cannot do without the free market economy and financial support. In fact, one of the foundations on which this movement rests, such as advanced digital media, is the indisputable fruit of this dynamic model, so it is not about destroying it but making it compatible with real democracy and with the fundamental needs of citizens. 















Chapter Summary 


The time of the great social reforms to rid citizens of the remnants of feudalism, which have justified all the great revolutions in history, has long since ended. With it, the traditional ideologies that promoted them disappear. In the youth revolts of May '68, to whose generation I belong, the need to completely renovate a democratic system that gave its first signs of decline and its inability to effectively, transparently, and honestly manage the citizens' interests. Young people back then tried to experiment with new "alternative" political and democratic models, but they were more imaginative than realistic. "Imagination to power" was then our slogan. But the time for change had not yet come. By then, communism and capitalism were in full swing and competing with similar imperialist and militaristic tactics to dominate a world made up of a minority. 

Of educated and wealthy nations, exploiting and squeezing many uneducated, superstitious, and horribly impoverished and backward nations. 

At that time, the nations of the so-called "Third World." were disconnected from the outside world and resignedly endured their destitution, dominated by national tyrants who considered themselves the state's owners and lords. The world was not yet globalized. In the midst of the sordid roar of the cold war, the so-called "Free World" tried to win adherents by exporting its confused liberal and capitalist ideology. To do this, it convinced national tyrants to establish democratic multiparty systems. In return, they would be candidates to receive large investments and loans for "development." granted by rich countries. Tyrants quickly understood that they could implement democracy without changing their tyranny one iota. For this, it was enough to create an "official" political party and invest a few million, taken from the meager national treasury, in electoral propaganda, with which they won by absolute majority one election after another. To the free world,d it seemed enough,h and they considered them related to their ideology, exchanging official visits at the highest level, with magazines of troops, national anthem,s and grandiose speeches of praise for having embraced the cause of freedom and democracy. 

But so much hypocrisy had to generate, sooner or later, an explosion of social outrage, and this is where the new media of the digital age intervene. 

Both the Internet and mobile telephony are the first advanced technologies created by wealthy nations, but which can be easily assimilated by the poor. And this is the great novelty that makes history, because of its massive use, especially among urban middle-class youth, are from a rich, poor country, or simply suddenly impoverished by some economic crisis, as in the case of Spain, is where this movement of “indignation” will arise, which will lead them to take to the streets, and camp in emblematic squares, to try to change this unfortunate state of affairs at its roots. 

Through social networks, they exchange the reasons for their outrage and denounce the battered state of their merely formal democracies, which not only deprive them of fundamental rights and which they consider natural but also accuse them of being the cause of their crises. At one point, messages are exchanged with calls to show their discontent, and one or two fundamental slogans are agreed, but the most significant will be "Real democracy now!". The slogan will drag parties and ideologies from the political scene as the matter is dragged into a black hole, quickly and without leaving a trace of both.