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What is the modern political method?

Humans naturally use two methods for decision making:

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the statutory method: the group assigns one of its members to make decisions in certain areas (which does not prevent this person from consulting before making their decision)

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the voting method: the final decision is the proposal which, after deliberation, wins the most votes

The old regime, and the dictatorships, correspond to the global statutory form: the king decides.
Direct democracy corresponds to the voting method.
Between the two, there is a whole series of intermediate or mixed methods. For example, we can have a government (which applies the statutory method) responsible to a parliament (which applies the voting method).

We can assume that hunter-gatherer groups, even before the Neolithic revolution, used these two methods: either choosing (or being imposed by the law of the strongest) a leader, or deciding by deliberation. The democracies resulting from the philosophy of enlightenment are only refinements of intermediate methods.

Failed attempts to reform the two natural methods of decision-making

When the modern scientific method led to the technological good of the 19th century, the archaism of social organization, which leads to shocking inequalities (read Emile Zola), becomes more visible. Once again, in the 21st century, the problem arises in the same way, just a few decades after the end of the two 20th century world wars which had caused massive redistribution (see Thomas Picketty).

However, all attempts in the 19th century to define a new social organization (Saint Simonism, Positivism, Fourierism, Anarchism, Communism) failed because they did not succeed in reforming the natural system of decision-making beyond a new mix. (statutory or voting). They all fall into one, or even more, of the following three faults:

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Deny the problem, considering inequalities as natural.

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Call for more morality, that is to say the emergence of a new man.

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Propose a new convoluted combination of the two traditional methods (statutory and voting) of decision-making, which will prove ineffective when implemented.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the yellow vest movement in France encountered the same problem of inability to propose an in-depth reform of the decision-making method.

Definition of the modern political method

La méthode politique moderne consiste à dire qu'une décision ne tient qu'aussi longtemps que the reasoning which leads to it is not invalidated. It can be invalidated by not conforming to the modern scientific method, i.e. not taking into account all the known facts. It can also be invalidated by no longer being recognized as consistent with the common interest.

Why this term 'modern political method?'
Parallel with the modern scientific method

Read the question firstWhat is the modern scientific method?'.

With the modern scientific method, knowledge no longer depends on social support. This differentiates it from a dogma. It holds as long as the reasoning which produced it is not faulted. It is exactly the same thing regarding a decision taken in accordance with the modern political method.

Usefulness of the modern political method

The modern scientific method enabled the technological good of the 19th and 20th centuries.
In the same way, the modern political method must allow good quality at the level of social organization.

Why only now?

We may wonder why Antiquity practiced science without leading to the modern scientific method? We can also ask why two millennia of political practice, and its numerous attempts at revision during the 18th and 19th centuries, did not result in the modern political method? Finally, we can ask why the discovery of the modern scientific method, then of the mathematical formalism associated with it at the end of the 19th century, did not lead to the discovery or formalization of the modern political method before the 21st century? Because on the one hand, neither of these two methods are intuitive, and on the other hand, the modern political method is not the simple entry of politics into the field of method modern science, as modern medicine has been.

Go deeper

Continue to question 'What social organization would allow us to live in harmony?'

Consulter la seconde partie du livre From capital to reason, which presents, in more detail, a method of implementing the modern political method.

Read (or listen, available on litteratureaudio.com) Paris by Emile Zola, in particular book 2, chapters 4 and 5, to understand that the problem of social injustice arose at the end of the 19th century in terms practically identical to those of today, with at the center a relation to the truth of the facts, and therefore a challenge to science, which poses a problem.

 

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