Genuine question. I feel like there’s too much division and that people should find common ground. I really don’t like the two-party system in the US either.
Common sense.
Direct Democracy, perhaps? One way to not have these parties is to not have representatives at all.
I’m not sure there’s a name for thinking the parties shouldn’t exist. If you tell us what you think SHOULD exist we can probably tell you what labels apply to that.
nonpartisan democracy
Idealism
Nonpartisan. Though there are not really movements against this, just small nations that ban parties.
I will push back on your opinions, though. “Division” is not a moral or political quantity. It is not itself good nor bad. Trans people were universally oppressed for centuries. Now they have some protections. This is a consequence of struggle against transphobia, that struggle is inherently a division. There are transphobes and pro-trans people. The pro-trans group should win. For them to win we need to support them materially and in as effectively as possible, which means through organized work. Progress against oppression only occurs through division and struggle. And the best vehicles for this are organizations - basically parties or very similar apparatuses.
The two-party system is a symptom of deeper problems and they shouldn’t be summarized as division. The two-party system is really just a very effective way for the ruling class (business owners) to achieve their ends while still providing a venue for “the political”, often struggles and oppressions that they personally exacerbated. For example, some of the earliest institutional racism in what would become the US emerged due to worker solidarity and struggle. The ruling class decided to divide and conquer: they created a race-based system, defining a new class corresponding to “black”, who would be the most exploited, and exploiting everyone ekse skightly left. This is not theater, as the oppressed are facing actual oppression, but it is cynical: it’s really about profit maximization and controlling workers. The two-party system makes this kind of thing a constant endeavor, you can spend all of your time invested in struggles imposed by the ruling class and exemplified in the parties, and in doing so never focus on the underlying system that creates it. But of course not every oppression makes its way into this attempt at distraction, as when the oppression is bipartisan (no division in that case but still bad!). For example, both parties are in favor of the genocide of Palestinians and both actively ensure that it happens. A few decades ago both were purely transphobic and did nit evdn exhibit today’s liberal cooption of the struggle (notice that it has slowed down).
Most importantly, the two-party system prevents popular politics that runs counter to ruling class interests. Their greatest opponents are the left, so the US political system prevents left parties from functioning abd becoming popular. Want to run as a third party? Well the Dems will gladly do a last-minute change to how many signatures you need to gather to get on the ballot. They can meet the number because they will pay people to collect them, but you have to have already prepared a horde of volunteers. Organize a socialist party? They might just plain kill you.
It is not the existence of parties that is the problem, but the stifling of left parties, of those that can challenge the systemic causes of oppression.
George Washington didn’t want political parties either. So whatever you are it’s patriotic af.
I think parties are fine but a multi party system usually works much better since parties will have to make coalitions and will usually shit on each other a bit less.
GW specifically didn’t want the US to devolve into a 2-party system.
IMO single party or multi party system can both result in a functional representative democracy.
Are the examples of single party functional representative democracies? I have no clue…
The USA didn’t have a 2 party system for GW’s first 2 terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_in_the_United_States
I would argue that if the system completely lacked merit, than the USA would have dissolved given the inherant fragility of any newly founded nation.
Ignorance.
Common sense
You know, I don’t think there is a term.
So, I’ll coin it: Washingtonism.
Our first President famously advised against political parties. He also stepped down after two turns, establishing a tradition that later became part of the Constitution after FDR won his third term.
He also had slave teeth.
I don’t think there is a term
Pretty sure it’s “common sense”.
Political parties are inevitable with fptp elections. It will always come down to 2 candidates. Any 3rd candidate will only split the vote with whoever is most similar. People tend to naturally organize themselves into groups based on who they agree with most. I don’t know if its possible to get rid of political parties all together but having more than 2 would be an improvement. The only way to do that is to change our elections. Either ranked-choice voting or runoffs when no one gets more than half the votes could allow for people to vote 3rd party without throwing away their votes.
Political parties coalesce in a representative government anyways. “Hey Sally, can you support my bill to buy flowers for the White House, and I’ll support your bill to buy guns for the army”
Non-partisan.
There is a word anti-partyism, but it doesn’t seem to be commonly used.
The literal answer to your literal question is called “believing that US politics should be non-partisan”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-partisan_democracy
The US started as de facto non-partisan democracy. There is a de jure option.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy
Direct democracy would probably give less power to political parties, but there still could be voting blocs. An example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Jewish_bloc_votingThe best answer here @qtpie@piefed.social
It’s hard to assign a name to a negative, as the alternatives are so plenty. Maybe describe the improvements you might like?
I, for one, like the ideas of liquid democracy.
Finally! I found the name for what I’ve been thinking of. Thank you!
Yeah! I think liquid democracy is practical with today’s technology, especially if it is encrypted correctly with verification and privacy in mind.
This is my favorite type of democracy. Why even have representatives in a digital-first world?
There was a very interesting tool/game someone made in Finland. You got shown the same problems the actualy Ministers of Parliament have to vote on, and all attachments that are available for public.
The idea was that it shows that direct democracy can work just fine.
I spent an evening trying to make my mind on whether I want to support expanding a ski centre in Lapland or not. Both sides had very good arguments! In the end I ended up thinking “Damn, this is a huge amount of work! If there was a system like this in place in Finland, I’d definitely want to outsource my part. I’d find someone that thinks more or less the same way as I do and I’d pay them to do the research and use my vote. It would make sense that people would sell that service to several citizens at once, bringing down the cost per person. I would not want to spend several hours each day researching something like ski centres 800 km away from my home – yet if only few do and vote, then the result is really random. So, I would definitely want someone to represent me.”
And then I figured that “damn, this is actually the system we have right now!”
And then I figured that “damn, this is actually the system we have right now!”
Not quite. Liquid democracy lets you delegate your vote to someone who either has the same love of skiing as you do, or same preference to give as much cash as dividend to citizens (UBI/freedom dividend) and a bias to reject frivolous spending without a ROI for your future dividend.
You can change your delegation after disappointment with vote on an issue, and can choose to not delegate your vote on a mandatory military draft proposal.
There is no concept of a parliament majority leader being able to block a proposal from being voted on.
None of those are close to what we have right now.
There is no concept of a parliament majority leader being able to block a proposal from being voted on.
I didn’t get what this is referring to. Is it some Canadian or US-American concept? I’d be happy if you could elaborate a bit!
You can change your delegation after disappointment with vote on an issue, and can choose to not delegate your vote on a mandatory military draft proposal.
I am already able to change my delegation after disappointment. Luckily I’ve never had to exercise that right. Also, another thing that flew far over my head: why is an exception specifically regarding mandatory military drafting important?
Liquid democracy is crypto voting from phone or computer. There is no majority winning parliamentary representatitves. You directly choose your own representative, if you want to. That representative has as many votes as the number that were delegated to them. No necessary parliament means no parliamentary restrictions (based on limiting volume of bills to manageable amount)
I am already able to change my delegation after disappointment.
Liquid democracy lets you change it every day. Even if you live in a system where recall elections are possible, it is a lengthy process that requires significant cooperation and agreement.
why is an exception specifically regarding mandatory military drafting important?
You could directly vote against being sent to die. You might not care about a ski hill funding request.
You could directly vote against being sent to die. You might not care about a ski hill funding request.
Uh, people choose when they are 18 whether they want to go to civil service or army. If they choose army, they will obviously be drafted if the Russia ever attacks, unless they have later had themselves removed from the drafting lists. To make a decision on how many soldiers we’ll need for the defence is actually an extremely good example of what kind of decisions absolutely cannot be made by a broad public vote. You need a military person relaying secret strategical information to the Ministers of Parliament. It cannot be relayed to all 5.6 million people without compromising the information. If such an amount of people knows about our military strategy, so does the Russia.
So, at least for that kind of decisions something else must be at place. Maybe there could be a restricted set of representatives that are allowed to vote in case we are attacked and you could then choose which one of those will handle your vote in this precise case – before they have talked with the military specialists.
Paid young adult mandatory military training/service is an entirely reasonable policy where if pay is high enough, enough old people will force the young to do it. Even mandatory “go die in vietnam because domino theory will destroy capitalism” can have more old people force the young into draft. Though obviously, exposing those reasons to kill our youth makes the vote less favourable.
If such an amount of people knows about our military strategy, so does the Russia.
Our military slave numbers are public.
The extreme cost of maintaining offensive and diminishment operations is the first thing likely to be eliminated in favour of cash dividends to voters. There can be constititutional limits on what can never be voted against. Legitimate defensive needs/preparation of the nation would be covered. Funding a proxy war on Russia or Palestine or Israel would come from personal individual donations rather than forced social budget support. Constitutional limits against offensive war propaganda are just as important as defense preparation.
Maybe there could be a restricted set of representatives that are allowed to vote in case we are attacked
There needs to be an administrator (President) to respond quickly to emergencies. Review of adminstrator behaviour after emergencies is a liquid democracy process. You’re right that genuinely required secrets (as opposed to frequent national security classified corruption and evil) would require private judicial review, but liquid democracy would select the judges.
ranked-choice voting? that would eliminate much of the need for parties anyway
That really does not end up resulting that way.
EDIT: I didn’t have a lot of time to flesh this out at time of reply and I think the 10 upvotes for the person I replied to and single downvote for me might be an indication that my comment has been interpreted as disparaging preferential voting systems. For my comment to be understood correctly I should clarify that that is definitely not my intended meaning.
I was careful to say “resulting” because although perhaps theoretically you could say there isn’t a need for parties in preferential voting systems (though I think you could technically do the same in first past the post systems as well), the way it works in practice, and I speak from experience as a voting citizen in Australia where we have preferential voting, political parties are the dominant and indeed only viable political forces capable of weilding significant power and influence. There are a handful of state and federal independents but governments are formed today as they pretty much have done from our earliest days, by political parties. I’m not sure I can think of examples of representative democracies with preferential voting systems that don’t also exhibit this dynamic. I also strongly suspect if this state of affairs was reset tomorrow and we decided to run things closer to the way our Westminster system was initially conceived where the emphasis was upon individual parliamentarians representing constituentcies rather than parties; that voting blocks, factions and inevitably parties would rapidly form.
Parties emerge because of their branding and political machinery, they’re well financed and they’re organised with internal mechanisms to enforce member votes along party lines in Parliament making them more effective at forcing an agenda than loosely or temporarily coalesced independent representatives.
I might not like them and I feel like they undermine the whole point of having a representative supposedly chosen to represent me and my local area, given they first and foremost represent this other organisation instead but it’s naive to think that our voting system, while technically not mandating the existence of parties, would somehow eliminate them. They are also favoured by the public themselves as well, as a shorthand for a candidate’s platform and ideology which is more efficient and effective at messaging and communicating to the public than campaigns by multiple individual candidates with far smaller warchests and recognition.
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It’s a sign of above average intelligence. The two party system is what has destroyed the United States. Democrats and Republicans and the citizens who fear anything different are all equally responsible.
I don’t know how the hell we’re going to eliminate our first past the post voting system. The two entrenched parties, by design, will want to hold onto that power, and it will require their cooperation to both make change while simultaneously making the active choice to let go of power.
Doesn’t seem likely to happen, which is depressing.
BTW, I’m not disagreeing with you, just felt my reply made the most sense here.
New Zealand switched from first past the post to mixed-member proportional in 1992. Despite a two party system at the time.
The two parties will go away if nobody votes for them. The population is far too complacent for any kind of actual change.
No they won’t. As long as fptp exists, and as long as one party that blindly aligns with fascism and votes no matter what (as we have seen in practice), then all we will see is continued consolidation of power to that one party and a continued erosion of our rights.
We are living this exact scenario RIGHT NOW. One party was apathetic in voting, and the other one capitalized on it.
I dont know how they got rid of monarchs when they hoard all the power, but somehow they’re mostly gone (at least de facto, since “monarchs” in constitutional monarchies are not true monarchs)
Maybe it goes a bit beyond just asking nicely. See Euromaiden Revolution (it was about corruption and foreign influence not fptp, but same principle applies)
Edit: typo
We can get there with A LOT more violence.
