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What if we practiced direct democracy?

Direct democracy (or participatory democracy, in the jargon of the early twenty-first century) is the literal application of the myth of the Enlightenment.

The Enlightenment myth is based on the following hypothesis: if citizens are educated, if they have a decent means of subsistence through non-subordinate work, and if they are allowed to discuss collective issues, then they will make appropriate decisions.

This does not work for two reasons:

•

It reflects a positivist view of the individual, which conjectures that vices result from precariousness and ignorance. However, the limits of human nature that stem from our genetic inheritance—social ambition and cognitive dissonance—must be controlled by social organization, and are entirely different from what is assumed.

•	It ignores technological progress, the consequence of which is that certain questions require in-depth study that cannot be conducted individually by each citizen.

Deepen the topic

Consult the question 'Why is Enlightenment philosophy a dangerous myth?', then the justification 'What is a human being?'.

See chapters 4 and 7 of the book From Capital to Reason.

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