over the course of the centuries a 'public sphere' emerged, to borrow a phrase and a theory from German sociologist Jürgen Habermas
When the supporters of the American and French revolutions proposed elections as a way of getting to know 'the will of the people', there were as yet no political parties, no laws regarding universal franchise, no commercial mass media, let alone social media. In fact the inventors of electoral-rep…
[...] Electoral fundamentalists refuse to regard elections as a means of taking part in democracy, seeing them instead as an end in themselves, as a holy doctrine with an intrinsic, inalienable value.
Occupy demonstrates the malaise more than it suggests any remedy. Its diagnosis of representative democracy was correct, but the alternative was weak. [...]
[...] He conveyed Marx's view of the process of holding elections in a sentence that would not have been out of place in New York or Madrid: 'The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in Parliam…
