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10. Political Parties A political party is a group of people acting voluntarily to promote a particular policy. It is not part of the State. If some citizens want to promote particular policies they can form political parties to do so, but the state can function without them. A large Party needs people to run its offices, to publicize its views, to organize meetings and talks, to raise funds, to create new Party branches and communicate regularly with its members. To do all this Parties hire full-time employees, known by various names – officials, secretaries, bureaucrats, nomenklatura. The names don’t matter; what matters is that these people earn their living by running political parties and controlling their work. They decide what to do and how to do it, they influence nominations to Party posts. Many of them care more about their Party job than about the Party’s policies. Each Party has its own policies, but there can be different versions of these. In most parties, different groups advocate different versions of the Party’s policies. When a particular Party wins a majority in an election - in which many voters may not have bothered to vote – it starts to run the State. Its Head becomes President or Prime Minister and Party leaders become heads of government departments. This Party then runs the government and its leaders use their government posts to implement the Party’s policies. This is how all ‘democratic’ states work today. Actually this contradicts the basic principle of democracy authorizing all citizens to participate in deciding all laws and policies. It also contradicts the democratic principle of nomination by lottery only. Party Rule is not democracy. In ‘Demos-kratia’ the citizens vote directly for policies, not for political parties. What is called Democracy today is not democracy but Rule by Representatives (RR). In democracy Party leaders would decide only the policies of their Party, not of society as a whole. Parties can propose a policy to the citizens; but not decide it for them. A political party advocating a particular policy contributes to democracy, but a Party deciding all policies for all citizens is blatantly anti-democratic. After World War II, political parties everywhere deteriorated in two ways: 1. Party officials took over the Party from Party policy-makers. 2. Parties began to seek power for their own benefeits, not for the benefeit of society. Today, in most countries, Party officials run states (and Parties) for their own benefit, not for the benefit of all citizens. Many people came to believe this is ‘normal’. |
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