What follows emerges largely from my own experience of the alternative globalization movement, where issues of democracy have been very much at the center of debate. Anarchists in Europe or North America and indigenous organizations in the Global South have found themselves locked in remarkably similar arguments.
Does it refer a form of governance a mode of communal self-organization , or a form of govern ment one particular way of organizing a state apparatus? Does democracy necessarily imply majority rule? Is representative democracy really democracy at all? Is the word permanently tainted by its origins in Athens, a militaristic, slave-owning society founded on the systematic repression of women? Is it possible for those trying to develop decentralized forms of consensus-based direct democracy to reclaim the word?
These are arguments about words much more than they are arguments about practices. On questions of practice, in fact, there is a surprising degree of convergence; especially within the more radical elements of the movement.
Something is emerging. The problem is what to call it. Many of the key principles of the movement self-organization, voluntary association, mutual aid, the refusal of state power derive from the anarchist tradition. My own approach has normally been to openly embrace both terms, to argue, in fact, that anarchism and democracy areβor should beβlargely identical. However, as I say, there is no consensus on this issue, nor even a clear majority view.
It seems to me these are tactical, political questions more than anything else. When first coined, it referred to a system in which the citizens of a community made decisions by equal vote in a collective assembly.
