berman@ihuxm.UUCP (The Keyboard of Reason) (05/03/84)
OK, by popular demand, some excerpts on "Participatory Democracy" as
published in the ancient year 1962 by a then-small, somewhat innocent
organization that later went on to mobilize and politicize a generation
of American youth. The organization was Students for a Democratic
Society. The statement was "The Port Huron statement." Any decent
university library should have the complete text. (For an excellent
history of the organization, see Kirpatrick Sale's book "SDS")
(A note for the purists: the language of what was then among the
most forward-looking groups in the USA, was by today's standards,
mildly sexist: the references are to "men" not "people" "Negro"
not "Black". This should be taken in an historical context. Our
language and thinking today will surely be seen as backward
in the not-distant future).
Here are the excerpts:
"We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege or circumstance
by power rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and creativity...
As a social system, we seek the establishment of a
democracy of individual participation governed by two central
aims: that the individual share in those social decisions
determining the quality and direction of his life; that
society be organized to encourage independence in men and
provide the media for their common participation.
In a paticipatory democracy the political life would be based
upon several root principles:
-that decision-making of basic social consequence be carried
on by public groupings;
-that politics be seen positively, as the art of collectively
creating an acceptable pattern of social relations;
-that politics has the function of bringing people out of
isolation and into community, thus being a necessary, though
not sufficient, means of finding meaning in personal life.
The economic sphere would have as its basis the principles:
-that work should involve incentives worthier than money or
survival. It should be educative, not stultifying..
-that the economy itself is of such social importance
that its major resources and means of production should be open
to democratic participation and subject to democratic social
regulation...."