Notes on Epidemocracy
The Commissioners, created on Artbreeder.com
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The city is composed of dozens or hundreds of cellular communes, cross-organizing each other to facilitate the life-expression of their inhabitants. Cells hold local land, buildings, vehicles, knowledge-practices, et cetera in common. Their sizes and populations vary significantly and overlap in complex ways. One cell might consist of the residents of an apartment complex. The formal abolition of landlords is in no way denounced or curtailed, but rather the conditions for such an abolition are made possible by reducing the actual reach and effectiveness of their powers. For example, by shifting from individual-rent based residency to communal occupation of space, eviction can be resisted in a variety of ways, directly and indirectly, overtly and covertly. By pooling tools, time, and knowledge of the residents of a one-hundred apartment complex, for example, and especially by empowering those residents who are already doing the actual work of maintaining the grounds in exchange for reduced-rent, many of the critical services which residents must plead for can be addressed by turning to their fellow residents, whose interests naturally tend to align with each other. It is likewise in the interest of cells to enact alliances with each other; the renters throughout a given city thereby form formal and informal confederations. By agitating publicly, offering aid to renters and homeless people not in soul possession of their places of residency, organizing blockades, demanding complete moratoriums on evictions, terms are forced upon the local government, which is to be metabolized from obstacle into resource.
How does this metabolization process occur? First, the capitalist immune system must be resisted, from within and without; such resistence should place a premium on seizing resources and transferring them to bodies which are already engaged in democratic, decentralized community development. For example, all police departments should be abolished, their funding and weaponry seized. Their former members are transferred to other departments unconnected to law enforcement or violence of any kind. A commission drawn by lottery from among the most overpoliced communities is responsible for determining which ex-officers can be safely maintained at their new, non-police posts, which should be dismissed, and which should be charged with abuse of power. Those who can be reformed are allowed to pursue public service careers in sanitation, fire fighting, construction, etc.
Meanwhile, the responsibilities of the police as well as their funding are reallocated to the residential cells, which are ultimately governed by assemblies of all residents, regardless of race, gender, age, immigration status, et cetera. Community defense organizations are formed, answerable to this assembly. Every cell or small group of cells establishes a gym in which the values and techniques of self defence, conflict de-escalation, and first-aid are developed and practiced. Instructors who have experience and training in these fields provide their knowledge, but the actual administration of the gym is divided between the assembly, its commissioners, and both short-term/new and long-term/senior attendants, who together form a council which develops systems for mutual education and ensure that the gym maintains a code of conduct hospitable to an atmosphere of inclusivity. A high value is placed on cross-education, with a recognition that a variety of skill sets require a variety of teachers and practice-spaces. To this end, seminars are held on the social economic causes and phenomenology of mental illness, drug dependency, and domestic violence. Community mediators, who are nominated from within the assembly and who undergo regular evaluation with assembly members during and after their terms of office, are required to attend and help to facilitate such programs. Such community mediators replace the police as responders of first resort.
Cells are also responsible for services designed to foster social connection and expression. For example, renter’s and workers unions should hold regular meeting in which at least 50% of the time is dedicated not to formal politics, but to group recreation. Potlucks, concerts, movie screenings, sporting events, game nights, et cetera are hosted on a rotating basis to help community members recharge and develop a sense of shared social life. Taking part in the arranging of such events, like the aediles of ancient Rome, provides an opportunity for activists and community representatives to develop and demonstrate their skills as organizers. As such work has traditionally been the domain of women and femme people, such projects ideally help to bring credit to the performers of such care work as well as recognition in assembly meetings, thereby fostering a diverse pool of leaders who can be called upon, along with community mediators and community defense instructors, for other commissions.
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Above the cellular-residential level, direct democracy requires other forms to take place effectively. Cells form overlapping confederations with varying powers and responsibilities. For example, the cell we discussed earlier composed of the residents of an apartment complex might participate in and send representatives to a confederation of all residential cells in the city, as well as interstate or international conferences representing all the clients of the property-management corporation which owns our example cell’s building, as well as cells not focused on residency, such as transit rider unions, student-parent-teacher-unions, inter-municipal community gardening unions, etc. Some of these confederations will serve purely coordinating functions, while others may possess the power to require community dues from their constituent cells and pass binding ordinances. These are simply two points on a possible spectrum, and to facilitate the building of power they should consider the diverse political and material conditions which member-communes may be facing. Before a community joins a confederation, it may choose to or be required to spend six months to several years under Observer Member status, during which it will send non-voting representatives to participate on a conditional basis while the cell is not yet required to pay dues or observe by-laws.
Speaking of representation, there are a variety of creative ways in which the democracy of the confederation can be organized. In many cases, a hybrid system of representative democracy, sortition, and digital democracy may be in order. For example, a city is organized around a central council or congress, half of the delegates of which are elected through proportional representation through tenant and labor unions, while the other half are randomly chosen from the assemblies which administer the cellular communes. In order to prevent a deficit of experience from weakening the randomly chosen representatives relative to their elected colleagues, inauguration of the sortioned occurs on a staggered basis, so that each year only one third to one fifth of their number are entering and exiting office. Representatives chosen randomly are still subject to questioning by the assembly from which they were drawn, and may in some cases be bound by instructions from that assembly. Likewise, the delegations elected to represent labor and tenant unions are subject to immediate recall.
The delegates pass resolutions as a unicameral body, but either a majority of the elected or randomly chosen representatives can delay the passage of a resolution until the people as a whole can be consulted. Such consultations trigger townhall meetings at the level of the assemblies, which issue instructions or objections to the congress. Online referenda might also be used in which a resident may register their support or opposition for the resolution, or transfer (according to the principles of fluid democracy) their vote to an elected or sorted delegation.
The execution of referenda, at the cellular or confederal level, is invested in commissioners chosen for that purpose by the congress, representing the various material interests of workers, tenants, cellular assemblies and other organs of the democracy. A council of commissioners together are invested with the Congress’ executive mandate. Some commissioners serve for several years at a time, overseeing a department or acting as ambassador to confederations within or outside of the city. Others are nominated by the executive council or the Congress itself to carry out a specific task.
Unlike most parliamentary systems, wherein the ministers and other agents of the government are bound by a principle of mutually assured destruction to support all of the government’s programs or resign their position, commissioners may at times enter into conflict with each other owing to the fact that they are not responsible to a single chief executive officer, but may be separately elected by different factional coalitions within the Congress. When such division does happen, the conflict is brought before the Congress for arbitration. Also like republics of the ancient world, multiple executives are chosen for each role. A department may be headed by two to a dozen executive agents, each of which have the right to veto official actions on the part of their peers until the whole of the executive committee, or the Congress itself, can make a ruling. Continuity of purpose over departments is ensured by committees or colleges within the Congress, which under the chairmanship of the commissioners are responsible for long-term strategic planning. Any member of the Congress can participate in any departmental college, which hold regular local and online town-halls on issues relating to the departments in question. Though the colleges alone can only make recommendations to the Congress as a whole, short-term and long-term commissioners alike tend to be drawn from those delegates who have outlined compelling strategies within the college. As much as possible, every department’s hierarchical bureaucracies should be subsumed to or replaced by the open and democratic work of the colleges, which should work closely with relevant populations to develop and enact policy, cultivate organizers, facilitators, representatives, and commissioners from within the communities most affected by the policies in question, and work bilaterally with the various democratic organs within and across the democratic confederal landscape.