Representation is Theft! is a regular column by Samuel Rosenberg critiquing electoral democracy and advocating for lottery-based sortition as a viable alternative
In the modern state structure, government decision-makers can profit massively from their role. In such a position, one can embezzle taxpayer funds for personal gain, solicit large sums of money from private interests in exchange for specific reforms, or utilize state knowledge to plunder from the stock market—the possibilities are endless. Most would agree this is unbefitting of any healthy democracy. However, if so many people are on-paper opposed to political leaders undertaking such blatant corruption for personal gain, then why can politicians unapologetically get away with it, often with the full support of their voters? The culprit, like many ailments of contemporary society, is none other than representative “democracy.” In a political system that associates a leader’s individual gains with a greater political benefit, it is no wonder that corruption is so prevalent. This can only end with a broadening of access to the state.
A fundamental dictum of contemporary state systems is that the otherwise disorganized and free-flowing wishes of the popular masses—rather than being directly translated into the actions society takes to organize itself—must be indirectly “represented” by an isolated ruling political class. According to this rule, these “representatives” are tasked with embodying the concerns and desires of their constituents, or, more accurately, their own concerns and desires that they claim belong to their supporters. This forced association leads society and the media to treat the individual politician as a personification of ideas: an avatar for the supposed change that their supporters wish to see.
As one would expect, the association between specific political ideas and the politicians who promote them also extends to their shared success. In a system of governance where ideas can only achieve prominence when championed by electable individuals, electoral success becomes the sole gateway to tangible state policy influence. To their supporters, a politician’s electoral victory is synonymous with the ideas that they espouse, regardless of their authenticitygenuineness in espousing those ideas. Take, for instance, the jubilation that followed Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020; Trump’s fascism could only be temporarily faltered, not through popular action, but through boosting the career progression of a singular geriatric man. Through this association, representative “democracy” redirects collective political mobilization to merely boosting the personal careers of politicians, specifically those who do not seek to change the status quo at any fundamental level during their time in office.
It is no surprise, then, that success in elections is not the only kind of personal success a politician can experience that their supporters celebrate as a political one. Electoral systems already do the heavy lifting of normalizing a correlation between individual success and collective political success, positioning voters to grant career advancement to politicians in the form of voting for any hope that reform will take place. This argument is extended to suggest that politicians’ unethical personal gains are justified as reflections of political will. For instance, if a politician accepts bribes (or “is lobbied,” as is the preferred nomenclature in the United States) from a private interest in favor of benefits, that just means that the politician has more resources to compete in elections and, in turn, benefit their constituents. And if a politician really is as good as their supporters claim, don’t they then deserve to gain some extra benefit for a job well done?
This is one of many lies fed to the public by those who uphold the tyranny of representative “democracy.” The common person is consistently belittled and demeaned by the political class, convinced that their undiluted political will must be filtered through politicians that supposedly personify their ideas and hopes for change. These politicians then go on to profit off the public offices they are bestowed, profiteering that is justified by the notion that what personally benefits a political leader translates to their supporters. When Trump accepted a free private plane from Qatar, his supporters claimed that the success of his fascist platform of hate excused it. When Democrats leverage their positions to win big at the stock market, their supporters turn a blind eye so as not to impede their efforts to prevent Trump’s fascist platform of hate. In a system where control of the state is scarce, those who find themselves in power naturally seek to maximize personal gain whenever possible.
Many of the horrors of electoral “democracy,” from the supremacy of hidden coalitions to the pervasiveness of political corruption among its members, depend on the exclusivity inherent to electoral systems. Simply creating and enforcing more anti-corruption laws isn’t enough, as the exclusivity of control over the state, stemming from the monopolies of hidden coalitions and the sheer financial and logistical difficulties of winning elections, naturally invites the maximum extraction of benefits possible from that artificial scarcity. The answer, then, is to eliminate that artificial scarcity. If the act of serving in public office were as common as fulfilling jury duty or paying taxes, then this scarcity would be nonexistent, as everyone would serve in government at least once in their life. We can achieve this by implementing sortition, the process of selecting legislators through random lottery instead of elections. With this alternative system in place, the main justification of corruption, that it is necessary to gather resources to win elections, goes right out of the window, as there would be no elections to win before the people can control the state themselves.
Most notably, by replacing the electoral system—the middleman—with a fair sortition-based framework, we inherently also remove the myth of politicians as personifications of collective political will. It is due to this misconception pushed upon us by the ruling class that we identify certain politicians as representing certain things, all defined by their individual characteristics and ideas, as if they were stars on a reality TV show instead of members of government. This illusion fuels justifications of corruption as benefiting collective political benefit via a politician’s personal benefit; as such, it must be done away with. Through sortition, legislatures generated through randomized selection will directly reflect the political will of the people, with no specific persons being held responsible for individually personifying political ideas and values, as all worthwhile ideas and values will be given their respective proportions amongst a body randomized to best mirror society at large. No participant will be more important or specialized than any other, and the mythicization of an idea-personifying political class and its corruption will be no more, as there will be no ruling political class to mythicize in the first place.
Corruption cannot be prevented within a political system that naturally encourages corruption. Personality cults cannot be prevented within a political system that naturally encourages personality cults. The system of electoral “democracy” is a system meant to enforce the economic, social, and political alienation of the common person in favor of a groomed politician-class that treats government as sport and collects their prize winnings just as shamelessly. Through sortition, the barrier between the state and the people will be shattered, and the corruption built upon and justified by this barrier may eventually be no more.
