Re: European Convention and European Constitution -- LIFEBOAT

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Date Posted: 15:31:37 12/19/02 Thu
Author: Wayne Hall
Subject: Re: European Convention and European Constitution
In reply to: SwimmingUpstream 's message, "Re: European Convention and European Constitution" on 06:38:08 12/03/02 Tue

Brian says that in the first part of my reply "active citizen" means one thing and at the end it means another.

Yes, because I commence from the empirical reality of groups all over Europe and elsewhere setting up social forums. Why are they doing this? How do they envisage the status of these forums?

I suggest a possible self-identity and a possible status which could be claimed. If it were, then "active citizens" would indeed become something else, because there would be a reaction to the claimed possession of a mandate, automatically establishing the friend/enemy dividing lines.

The "active citizens" would not really be like voters. They would be active participants at some level or other in policy debates. In situations where delegates were chosen there would never be political advertising, canvassing for votes or voting for people personally unknown. And the claim not to be, or be trying to be, a party would have to be plausible on pain of forfeiting credibility to one's frankly party-political rivals.

"Government by coup, or referenda, or structured election of "active citizens", or structured election of individual candidates -- what makes one better than the others?" asks Brian. What would make one better than the others would be that one side would be "us" and the other side would be "them". I have already said that this is an activist proposal targeting an empirically existing audience. If you, the observer, are not, or don't want to be, in that group, and/or do not identify with it or its aspirations in any way, then you are "them", and you will indicate as much by not giving your mandate to "us".

In other words if what the "anti-globalist" movement is doing in Europe at the moment currently leaves you cold, what evoking of philosophical principles by me could make you change this attitude and why should I want to try to?

I shall have to try to address the other recent posting some other night, soon.

This might seem a threadbare kind of response, but after all the main content of what I propose is in the original paper. If you want to single out specific "philosophical" blind spots or weaknesses that might give me more to go on.

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Replies:

Re: European Convention and European Constitution -- SwimmingUpstream, 08:13:14 12/20/02 Fri