The obsolescence of the politics of political parties

The idleness of 2014, when I had little of any significance to wake up to daily, made me spent time reflecting on the path of human civilisation. My interest in the modern landscape of political economy, international, regional and local, grew with each day as I reflected on the intricate linkages among globalisation, imperialism and neo-imperialism, and terrorism. It is some subject politicians must think is eternally going to be outside the perspective of the mere mortals on the peripheries of the game that is politics, interested or uninterested. Thus, the politicians’ hegemonic grip on the world’s world view of the optimal mode of governmenting is supposed to continue indefinitely, nourishing their selfish gluttonous need for power and the material gains that accrue from it.

It’s not that the term governmenting can be obtained from any dictionary; I have simply invented it for this piece, and we can use it going forward as we deem fit, so long it is with regards to the way nation-states are managed or run.

The rise of the workers, envisaged by Marx, will remain a subject of academic enquiry and populist social movements. Just like anybody else who has taken their time to critic the idea of socialism, I have also realised it will remain a utopian aspiration that will never be realised. However, I do think something akin to the triumph of the exploited will be the culmination of evolution of the human species and that is, the extinction of career politicians. In my own personal estimation, this will positively transform the efficiency and effectiveness of current systems of government.

There are already people who have questioned the idea of democracy in its current form, whether it is the best form of forming governments, and I find such inquisitions agreeable. In my view, I find the processes of government formation and succession which we currently undertake through mass participation in national elections, voting along political party lines to be out of sync with the diversity of individuals whose needs are equally diverse yet mostly similar.

What I think we ought to transition to in our systems of statehood, it is still an idea new to me, and as is always the case when a novel thought assaults the conscience of the mortal, the impact intoxicates the mind, disorienting its established conceptions of existing forms of institutions such that the first presentation of the novel thought is no more than scattered intellectual crumbs. As such, the reader may not be able to weave together the morsels of the idea upon reading this text, in which case it is advisable to read thus far and not further [As Mark Twain would put it].

I wish I was born a little earlier than 1985, perhaps so I maybe have had to write this on time before the 1990s, before the developmental curse that was the ESAPs. Those so-called Economic and Structural Adjustment Programmes so ill-conceived it is not far from logic to doubt the mental faculties of the souls guilty of authoring such embodiments of addle-headedness. But I most certainly would not have mastered sufficient persuasive syntax to elicit any common sense, let alone understanding, from the responsible geniuses employed by World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and most importantly the willing hoodwinked leaders of the implementing governments.

Nonetheless, I put forth a thesis that concerns ditching the politics of political parties and career politicians. I think governments now ought to be configured as if they are private enterprises, just bigger in scope and more noble in the conceptualisation of what is deemed 'profit'.

Private enterprises are more efficient and effective, and most often make greater profits relative to their equivalent government run counterparts. Private enterprises make profits because often they employ the right people in the right posts. The employed individuals cannot afford to under-perform otherwise they may be unemployed by the beginning of the next financial year. Why can’t this be done in governments? Why can’t governments be as effective and efficient as private enterprises?

The reasons underlying governments’ ineptness the world over is that no state is practically accountable to its people the way a private enterprise is to the market and the investors. In fact, the governments are the bosses. They make the laws. They tell us what they want us to know. They make us think in ways they want us to.

Proponents of this thing we call democracy would say governments are accountable to their citizens because it is the citizens who vote them into power. But surely where in this world has any government been accountable for its actions to the citizens? It is practically impossible to take a government to jail, literally and even figuratively speaking. Instead, mere individuals with less political power are sacrificed in place of the guilty, more powerful cadres.

Human evolution, or as might be preferred for better expositional proficiency, civilisation, thrives for the continuous attainment of a higher order state of being, application and, ultimately, living. As people civilise, so should their forms of social organisation, modes of economic production as well as political organisation. The production and organisation of the politics of an era have the ability to spur or hold back the pace of human advancement, that gradual freeing up of the human faculties, the mental, the physical and the relational; that embodiment of the state of being.

However, going through history text regarding the evolution of the current configuration of the state, from 1650 to South Sudan, citizens are at the mercy of their ‘employee’, the state manned by deceitful mortals. Needless to point out, the 20^th century witnessed tremendous transformation in the political aspect, and can be traced back a few centuries with the American Independence, the French Revolution, and still before that when the seeds of democratic principles first sprout out in the British island at least only as far as the modern political landscape is concerned at the local level.

Let’s consider democracy in its modern-day application. Suppose all opposition politicians everywhere in the world, in their various capacities as professionals in their fields of expertise, spend all their time and efforts on productive endeavours for which they received training rather than worry about removing an incumbent government from power, and devise ways of how.

Suppose they do not misspend their talents and acquired productive skills (at the cost of society’s resources) by way of preoccupying themselves with scrutinising and magnifying the failures of an incumbent state, but rather advise and improve its weaknesses and polish its strengths. How much output, social and economic, would societies realise? That is the opportunity cost of today’s democracy, the opportunity cost so far incalculable except by the observable deaths, the diseases and instabilities around the world. A glaring flaw of the warped application of democracy.

What is it that we call democracy? Is what we call democracy really a democratic system? Why does it matter that every nation should have it so much now when it could have mattered centuries ago?

The online Oxford dictionary I consulted defines democracy as a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically the elected representatives. Fair and fine. I will for now not take much issue with that the definition does not in any way imply the involvement of political parties.

As pointed above, I will not delve into the details of how democracy has transformed over the years and assumed what forms at what period. I am not concerned with how Athenians performed it, nor the British in the 17^th century. Neither am I worried about how the American version of it upon the attainment of independence so much out of fighting against a tea tax was a weird one. It is not my concern how and why they completely ignored it in their constitution in favour of republicanism. I am concerned the current state of democracy, its costly current form. Dwelling in history does not serve the present material and immaterial interests of the living generations and certainly hurts the aspirations of future descendants.

Democracy today, not as we know it by definition, but as we live it in the Global South, is a cancerous system concealed in flowery apparel that appeals to the poor’s fantasies and entice them into being active, willing (sometimes unwilling) participants in the process of exchange of votes for flattery, a transaction from which we are robbed of a living consistent with the current state of development in the world.

For generations in the past centuries, the monarchy, the divine right of kings, extant in the rich new world of the Arabic nations (well, and Swaziland) was the standard mode of managing nations. This was succeeded by the model of constitutional democracy which unfortunately coincided with slavery. Globalisation and attendant under-development of the poor nations ensued in the wake of the rise of nationalism and attainment of so-called political independence in developing world. The current paradigm of governmenting has reached its limits and like its predecessors, ought to be replaced by (or rather transformed to) a more fluent system suited to the needs of the poor nations which make up the so-called Global South.

Now, what form this new mode of governmenting ought to take? Allow me a couple of suppositions, a reference to an earlier point alluded to, then a suggestion. Suppose all incumbents of public offices are selected on reputational merit. Suppose the selection of public officials is not flawed by bounded rationality and favouritism along lines of political parties. Let’s extend this to having experts in the right offices, not consultants constrained by the vested interests of public officials who are firstly servants of the ideologies of political parties, then maybe a people’s. 

I don't imply to suggest one-party states. Instead, my idea involves ditching career politicians who've become masters of speeches full of political correctness without the slightest inward inclination to apply their words. Perhaps it will be more beneficial to have revolving committees of successful, intelligent corporate leaders to serve as 'directors' of the state in revolving terms. The advantage of this is that politics for the people is a social service and should not be a source of sustenance. Therefore, while a career politician will seek to escape the clutches of impoverishment through trading flattery, a Dangote or Motsepe or Masiyiwa has no business dealing in flattery because the journey to success should have socialised them to trust in the exchange of valuables. 

In multiparty systems, good policies for the people can be rejected simply because they represent the political orientation of the opposition political party. When divisions along political party affiliations are removed, the the state can be more geared to respond to the aspirations of the people. 

Well, I will think more about this at a later date, and explain further how this new mode of governmenting can be configured.  Or any better mind can develop it.