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Zohran Mamdani (left) out campaigning in Flushing last June. The New York City mayoral election has drawn more attention than usual this year, thanks to the initially surprising rise and eventual victory last night of the radical left candidate Zohran Mamdani. At a time when American democracy is declining at an alarming speed thanks to…
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The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony is an excellent guide to humans’ powerful group instincts, written by psychologists Jay Van Bavel and Dominic J. Packer. Our group instincts drive us to work together in groups and have underpinned all of our greatest achievements, from…
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And now for something a little different, a bit of satire that builds on a point I made in an earlier post. Anne, the new treasurer, is presenting her first budget to the club board. “…For too long, Sandford Tennis Club has been let down by a leaky roof. During their long rule, the Tennis…
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If you’re in despair about the state of the world, the best thing you can do is join a movement for an alternatives — one that can make a real difference. My view is that the current crises are too severe to be answered in the existing mainstream. And while past radical movements like communism…
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Many have wondered, as I have, why we study history. For a long time, I only really did it for fun, only in the last few years beginning to realise that it can do more. Seeing the past puts present-day problems in perspective. It can give clues as to what may happen next, but one…
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In the Western world and especially the United States, the political left has a problem. It is increasingly seen as a champion of the identity politics of discriminated groups to the exclusion of others, sometimes rightly and often wrongly. Yascha Mounk had previously written books such as The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is…
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As Vladimir Lenin didn’t say, “There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen.” In his book The Quiet Before (2022), the journalist and writer Gal Beckerman makes the case that revolutionary political and cultural movements have often been “incubated” by a period of quiet discussion beforehand: People don’t just cut…
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A few aspiring assembly organisers I’ve spoken too have discussed the idea that a people’s assembly could stand independent candidates in elections. Is this a good idea? My personal opinion is that it’s better to wait and see where the assembly goes when you start it, and only make the decision about whether to stand…
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Whatever your political beliefs, Murray Bookchin argued against them. When we face drastic political, environmental and economic problems, we need radical solutions. And that means that we need to look to radical traditions. That’s what led me to Murray Bookchin, an American political thinker and writer. He was an anarchist for most of his adult…
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As the philosopher Roman Krznaric put it in a recent opinion piece on how to save democracy, “The rise of citizens’ assemblies is the most significant innovation in Western democracy since women won the right to vote a century ago.” So it is worth learning from this previous innovation as to how assembly democracy can catch…
Assembly Project 