Positional Authority vs Delegation

Different Models of Organizing Political Society for A Better World

I’ll start with some definitions. What exactly do I mean by Positional Authority and Delegation and how do they relate to visions of societal organization.

By Positional Authority, which is a term I just came up with out of the blue and do not know if it exists in one form another somewhere else, I mean to denote political power that is directed within the form of a position. When an official is elected, they’re given a position and this position often comes with a generalized and/or extensive mandate to exercise political power. Forget about countrywide elections for a minute and imagine a local, small organization. Imagine a local worker’s council in a sub-10k population town. Let’s say the town is discussing a new construction project, it could be anything really, maybe a new school is to be constructed, the resources have to be allocated, the needs of the town need to be determined, schedules and appointments need to be made. If this council decides to hand the running this project to the already elected head of the council or a central committe, they will’ve created positional authority. The basis of the political authority in this case is not a perceived ability but a generalized mandate. Some sort of accountability can be fostered in this situation by having the head or the committee report to the council at large with maybe predetermined actions that can be taken through calling for a new vote etc. But at most, it will stop at only and only a diminished form of accountability. Our historical experience demonstrates it will likely not even achieve this as a general mandate will give the ones who acquired the mandate opportunity to hold onto it and not be fully and directly accountable. This isn’t realistic anyways, no one man can do and know everything nor a central committee for that matter. Looking for accountability for specific persons will be unreliable at best and totally ineffectual at worst. It misses the point entirely which I define as collaboration. The organization is accountable, every member is accountable, people at large are accountable. This requires people to approach these issues with a mindset of taking responsibility, either for their work or for their opinion. In turn, any overseers are results of purely technical appointments because the political line is the collective as a whole. Appointments don’t represent a shift of politics. This is likely to not work perfectly either but my goal here is to describe a frame of mind and a way of thinking rather than a positive programme per say. That can only be tested in action and if we’re afraid of taking action, history will sweep dreams of a better world aside.

So, what is my counter-suggestion to the paradigm of positional authority which in one way or another is the working condition of most capitalist democracies, of course with a lot and I mean a lot of factors limiting participation.

Delegation as a revolutionary model is not necessarily a new idea. It can take different forms and its theoretical gaze can be focused on various facets of our political existence. You can imagine delegation as a general practice within representative democracy where it’ll exist alongside positional authority. My suggestion is more radical. I imagine delegation as the crux of the political organization of society. Delegation is not a method of communication between different parties, i.e. a political class vs. the rest. It’s a method of creating limited authority from within the people at large without creating vaguely defined positions of authority, hierarchy and most likely a political class divorced from the rest of society. This is the main difference I see between what I’m proposing and some models that focus more on recallability. Recallability is non-negotiable but it is not enough on its own. The act of recalling a political appointment is not a pure technical issue but a social and political issue. Given that positional authority creates a power difference between let’s say the voters and the voted that can and will allow the newly emerging political class to use their position to influence this process. Delegation based on clear definitions of powers and limits based on specific mandates, recallability and a continuous effort to question the rational bases of delegative authority will not kill this problem dead but will not only be designed in a manner to oppose it in form but also give the political constituents, the people, the platform to be active throughout any given process. Where delegation runs into an issue is that it requires people to be politically active and I don’t mean just voting for one program or the other. People at large need to be active in real time which requires considerably more effort than what we’re used to. Not only will it require different intensities of struggle at various points of societal development but it will require extensive critical engagement with society and humanity. It will also require politically active agents to be able to understand certain technical issues because what will you base your opinion on say a logistical matter without being able to at least cursorily understand what is going on. Everybody’s expertise is different and nobody can wholly grasp every technical detail but everybody needs to be willing to put in the effort to learn and acclimate themselves enough with a given issue to be able to take part. Not all of this need be an individualized issue as a great way to learn about the technicalities of something enough to able to reliably think about it is to produce through collective effort a guide, a popularization of complex topics. That way, a delegation will not be an appointment above the people but a conscious method of achieving a given goal by the collective at large.

To end this discussion, I want to focus a little bit on what this could mean for any state or state-like form of organization beyond class based societies. I believe a delegation model such as this can be a sort of bridging of the gaps between ideologies that oppose anything they might associate with the concept of a state and ideologies who seem way too happy to just replicate their statist desires. The model I’m proposing, significantly reduces and limits authority while allowing people to consciously nip any hierarchy formation in the bud and rationalize authority. One possible issue I can see arising is the coordination of huge, international constituents that will inevitably move towards centralizing tendencies within itself. I believe the conscious, critical participation of people at large is enough of a force to stop these tendencies from becoming pathological but I have to concede that I recognize the danger and I recognize how far away from this kind of activity we are collectively. Nonetheless, I believe it to be a good starting point for discussion. This was merely educated speculation and our theories are bound to change and grow with every step taken forward.