Opening Up the Code of Society (For a Better Democracy)
Democracy fails to fulfill its promise. We should have power, yet we're just ruled. Ideally, democracy should be the “unfounded” system of politics that French philosophers like Ranciere and Deleuze have craved for. But it doesn't satisfy the deleuzian-guattarian demands for an unfounded founding: the rhizomic organization, the interchangeability of the points in the network, the building from the middle, the constant structuring and auto-organizing instead of a fixed, organized structure. We should make our democracy better, but how? When looking for a “more democratic democracy”, the philosophers usually long for the Greek polis, the city state of ancient Greece, an ambiguous and somewhat erring concept, since there were very different city states in ancient Greek world.
It must be admitted that there's something compelling about this idea of polis, namely that in most cases the law of the polis was written in a stone that was placed in the middle of the town. Anybody could see the law, understand it, and defend himself or accuse others or simply make suggestions about the public affairs, according to that simple law. But the Greek city state wasn't simply this, and what ever it was it is sure it wasn't today's world and it has very little in common with the world we live in. So, perhaps it would be better to take model from something that surely is today's world, namely the open source community. Why couldn't the process of legislation be similar to that of the creation of an open source software?
The open code layer of the governance would surely mean that all the processes of legislation would be open for us. One thing that aids this, is free Internet. The whole process of legislation could be showed directly on Internet, so that we could follow what's happening. Why hasn't this already been done?
We can only assume, that the current processes of legislation can't bear the light of day – that there's something horribly wrong in how the legislation happens. Indeed, it is not distopic to assume so, since lobbying and the influence of private interests is the rule of the system. It is problematic that we don't know what private interests affect our more and more well detailed law, the code of our society.
There's yet another problem. The content itself, the law, is hardly in our hands. Can we use it? Can we even follow it any more? The law is so detailed and the legal texts so ambiguous that their interpretation employs legions of lawyers. We can't handle the law ourselves and it, too should be opened up to us. We should be able to take part to the juridical processes without being intimidated by the lawyers. So, the law should be less detailed and more clear. We should have way less law, and way less complicated legal system. We should have sort of “stupid” legal system in order to have “smart” juridical and social units. A minimally determining legal system that would allow smart applications connected to it.
Talking about the legal code in terms of a “stupid” system is not merely an analogy, because the (smart) system as it exists now doesn't allow everybody to take part to the legal and political processes in equal manner. Indeed, we are very unequal in that regard. There's a clear hierarchy: some are legislating, some are executing, some are judging and some are just being ruled. This is a system that doesn't allow us to take part in legal system as equals, but merely as ruled, in the bottom of the systemic hierarchy.
Now, a “stupid” system of legislation would not discriminate users or set a hierarchy. It would be a governance by an auto-organizing network of equal individuals, contributing voluntarily to the legislation of the society. Clearly not all would be contributing to it, but the point is, that the system would not delimit the possibility of contributing to it in creative manner, of coding it, to some specific social positions. For example, one would not have to make a run in elections to be able to take part in legislation. In similar fashion, a minimal legal code would leave us enough room for a case particular and rhetorical participation to the juridical practice.
The Legal Code and the State Ruled by Law
Political Rhizome: Open, Equal and Undirected Social-Political Network