Syndicalism, localism, atomism

Daniel Owen, a syndicalist, responded to my comments on the lack of a convincing syndicalist blueprint for the coordination of a large scale society. We then proceeded to discuss the matter on his blog, starting with his post, and continuing in the comments to the post.

Owen granted the need for some society-wide decision making body made of delegates from the small scale bodies – the local assemblies. His view is that the current version of such a body, i.e., the national legislature and courts, have encroached on what should be the powers of local, or intermediate level, bodies. Owen believes that once most of the business of government is handled at the appropriate, lower, level of aggregation (the local assemblies or aggregations of few local assemblies), the society-wide decision making body would handle only “[b]road ‘constitutional’ policy and foreign relations.”

Advertisement