Self government.

Editor,

I am reading "Victor Serge, A Political Biography," by Susan Weissman, truly a great book and enormously informative to anyone interested in knowing more about the history of the unbelievably painful birth, life, and death of the USSR.

The idea occurred to me while reading about the Kronstadt rebellion that democratic socialist ideals, which were tragically trampled under the rubric of War Communism and especially by the Cheka, and which require each individual's participation in the political and economic decision-making process, are not only constantly under attack from the right, but are also hard to get individuals interested in.

Self-government is wearisome, contentious, and highly demanding on a person's time and energy.

I worked with a guy who fled Czechoslovakia in the 1980's, and I remember him ridiculing the mandatory meetings the communists required everyone to attend. Of course the meetings were imposed, and not attending could get you jailed or shot, so they were not something people imagined for themselves or wanted.

But even when given a choice, self-government seems not to be something most people want; our tendency is to delegate -- through laziness, apathy, ignorance, or simply interest in other things -- political and economic decision-making to others. And these others invariably have their own agendas, which for the most part are not ours.

Participatory democracy is the solution to so many problems, yet few people want to bother with it.

Re: "The President on Inequality" (12/5/2013)