AH Challenge: "Direct Democracy" as a credible force on the Left

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the concept of "Direct Democracy" as a credible force on the Left.
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the concept of "Direct Democracy" as a credible force on the Left.

The biggest stumbling block is the fact that huge numbers of left wing platforms would never win referenda, and a great many right wing causes celebres would win them.
 
The biggest stumbling block is the fact that huge numbers of left wing platforms would never win referenda, and a great many right wing causes celebres would win them.

I don't think we'd be looking at a big fed left here. Direct democracy would limit the kind of issues you can vote on by the level at which you're voting for them. A county or municipality might be able to vote in things like prohibition, and maybe even most counties or municipalities will vote for something like that, but it wouldn't be binding on a state-wide or federal level. I think even things like welfare would be left on a state by state basis, not federal.

Politicians would be concerned with drafting legislation in response to electorate demand, determined during the election process. One would vote for a representative in order to get a policy on the ballot, not in the expectation that they will always vote in your best interests.

The concept of delegative democracy would be closer to how this would work in practice. One vote that you can either use directly on any issue on the ballot, or give to a representative to use on your behalf.
 
I'm with Meadow: this strikes me as much more naturally aligned with conservative politics; after all, the core of left-liberalism is about protecting political minorities from the tyranny of the majority.
 
I'm with Meadow: this strikes me as much more naturally aligned with conservative politics; after all, the core of left-liberalism is about protecting political minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

I don't think conservatives would like this at all. Social conservatives, for example, would look very awkward trying to argue in support of DOMA when they know that they are not necessarily preaching to the choir and that there may be gays in the audience. I think the problem with direct democracy stems from the simple question of how do you get it to work in country like, say the United States, which has a population of almost 350 million.
 
what direct democracy has ever been socialist, in fact when was the last time their was a direct democracy?

Right now there are probably all manner of squats, communes, co-ops, anarchist collectives, protest organisations, etc, all practicing direct democracy and all decidedly socialist.
 
maybe but we're talking about nations here.

You might as well admit that you're talking about "states" in a bourgeois sense, and the original poster's question is fundamentally incoherent, and shows no understanding of the left. The original question, by the way, said, "As a credible force on the left."

Yet another answer would be both the moral and physical force chartists who demanded universal male franchise and yearly parliaments (ie: yearly votes). This was believed in the early 19th century to be the potential for an unmediated exercise of power.

yours,
Sam R.
 
The American Socialist Labor Party was a big advocate of direct democracy through labor unions so it did happen on a moderate scale.
 
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