WHY SHOULD LAWS ONLY BE MADE BY LOCAL ASSEMBLIES?

 

One of the novel things about egalitarianism is that laws are only made by local assemblies of egalitarians. Does this mean that people can enact terrible laws somewhere and good people elsewhere are prevented from stopping that? No. This is discussed in the "Egalitarianism: What Is It?" page: click here.

 

Does this mean that there is no large scale order, no large scale planning and coordination and cooperation?

 

No. There is nothing about egalitarianism that prevents or discourages large scale--even planetary--cooperation and planning. The question is not whether there should be large scale social order, but rather upon what should this large scale order be based.

 

There are two ways to achieve large scale order. The way that exists today is to base it on the "authoritarian principle." This principle says that a legitimate central authority or highest level governmental body (such as the American Federal government or the World Trade Organization or the International Bank, etc.) has the right to make laws (or policies) that everybody in its jurisdiction must obey whether they agree with the law or not, simply because it IS the highest level legitimate authority.

 

The source of legitimacy for the highest level governing body can be whatever persuades most people of its legitimacy. In some cases the individuals comprising the highest level governing body claim they have the right to make laws that others must obey because they were elected. In other cases these individuals claim to be the representatives of God. In yet other cases they claim to have the greatest grasp of Marxism-Leninism. Regardless of the source of their claim to legitimacy, these individuals (or in some cases a single individual) act as a dictator: their will (called laws) must be unquestioningly obeyed by everybody--like it or not.

 

Once the authoritarian principle is accepted by the population, all that an oppressive class of people must do to dominate and oppress the population is to gain control of the highest level governing body. Once in control of this relatively small governing body, the oppressive class of people have total control over the entire population.

 

No matter how reasonable the source of legitimacy of the highest level governing body, such a body can often be taken over by a determined class of oppressors and used for its oppressive purposes. We see how this has happened in the United States, where government that is legitimized by elections as being of, by and for the people has been effectively taken over by Big Money. Now Americans feel obliged to obey laws that are written, in effect, by Big Money.

 

This illustrates the fact that the authoritarian principle is the friend of oppressors. Until people reject the authoritarian principle they will be sitting ducks at the mercy of any oppressor who gains control of the highest level governing body.

 

The way to avoid this problem is to reject the authoritarian principle by deciding to create large scale social order on a very different principle: voluntary federation of local assemblies of egalitarians. Voluntary federation of local assemblies achieves order on a large scale by having higher level bodies (formed of delegates from lower level bodies) craft proposals (not laws!) for the lower level bodies to accept or reject as they wish. Back and forth negotiations between lower level bodies and the proposal-writing higher level bodies seeks to reach a mutual agreement among however many lower-level bodies are required to implement a given proposal.

 

Local assemblies of egalitarians thus send delegates (whom they may recall whenever they wish) to meet with delegates from other nearby local assemblies as a one-step-higher level assembly of delegates. These assemblies of delegates in turn send delegates (whom they may recall whenever they wish) to meet with other such assemblies of delegates. This process continues as much as people desire, possibly to national assemblies of delegates sending delegates to a global assembly of delegates. This process can exist in paralllel for different kinds of things with some assemblies of delegates focused, for example, on economic or transportation order and others, say, on organizing events like the World Olympics.

 

At every level, when an assembly of delegates has accepted a proposal from a higher level assembly, it then offers this proposal to the lower level assemblies from which its delegates come. Back and forth negotiations again take place to try to reach a mutual agreement among the lower level assemblies on a proposal. Eventually the local assemblies of egalitarians are presented with a proposal and at this local level they either accept or reject the proposal. If they reject it then negotiations may continue. If and when enough local assemblies agree with a proposal to make its implementation possible, it is implemented. This is how people can develop mutually agreed upon proposals, on the scale of a region of any size no matter how large, even on a planetary scale if so desired. This is genuine democracy. And this is how egalitarians can make it extremely difficult for any oppressive power to end up ordering them to do what they don't wish to do.