The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

David Graeber, The author of The Democracy Project was one of the key players in the early 2010's Occupy movement. He is an academic, self-proclaimed anarchist and the originator of "the 99%". The book is part history of the Occupy movement and part manual for running an anarchic organization.

He describes the "1%" as the ruling class of the United States. These are the people that are in political and corporate power. They are also those with lots of money that can make donations to political campaigns. While "legal", these contributions are viewed as a form of bribery. The institutions of the state (such as police, laws, courts, etc.) are set up to provide benefit to the 1%. Foreclosures are an example of the apparatus of the state being used to support the 1% against "the 99%". The current system of laws and regulations is so vast that it is impossible to enforce everything. The result is a selective enforcement. The protestors were hit with citations for crimes that were rarely charged. There is almost always "something" illegal that is being performed by somebody. It is up to those in authority to pick and choose what is enforced. This allows for fully "legal" discrimination on those that are out of favor. This also extends out of the state to unions and other organizations. (A bus-drivers union can cause a massive slow down simply by "working to the rule".)

The occupy movement did not have a leadership structure and used consensus to make decisions. Consensus ensures that everybody has a voice and nobody is forced to go along with something they do not believe in. Alas, it does not scale. He does give examples of reducing consensus decisions to those that are important to the body as a whole. (Universal agreement is not needed for designing a logo.) A consensus society would be an ideal. However, implementing it would be close to impossible. Some of the pre-Columbian societies in the Americas may have had the anarchic structure. However, they were also easily destroyed by the hierarchical Europeans.

The author advocates "real" democracy. He criticizes voting as just a means to promulgate the leadership by the elite. The masses are given a small choice between a few elites as a means of keeping them subjugated. There is rarely a choice between vastly different systems. The left can't understand how working class voters chose Republicans, seemingly against their own self interest. However, the voters realize that the Democrats are merely throwing them a few bones. There is little significant difference between the two parties. The constitution specifically did not have direct democracy, but merely a system of elected officials.

Full democracy is common in protest movements, but has rarely succeeded on a large scale. Pirate crews would often implement a democratic structure - after they had mutinied against their original ship leadership. Small communes have also had varying degrees of success with full democratic organization. On a large scale, there are just too many people and too many decisions to maintain direct democracy. These problems eventually led to the downfall of the occupy movement.