On Utopia and Political Parties ...

I wrote this in response to the question, "What would happen if everybody left political parties, so that they no longer existed?".




I believe it is perfectly possible to do that in theory, but I doubt that it will ever happen in practice.



I believe that the organization of a free, independent, individualistic society would be the cause of the decay of political parties, not vise versa. I think that, in order to achieve this society (which is far, far closer to utopia than anything Marx ever came up with), we are going to have to start on the ground level of educating people why, on the most fundamental level, individualism, rather than communalism, is the way to go. Attempting to get rid of political parties at this stage (unless they are outright made illegal), would only result in an uneven distribution of power which would lead to one party, the one with far less diversity (the democrats) being able to take almost complete control. We cannot start at that end of the equation. Both of those visions are intertwined, and what happens to one will affect the other, but you cannot start the reform on the political party side of the equation, or it will lead to a monopoly of power by the democrats (at this point), which is worse than the two party system we have now.



A society of free, independent, individual citizens, as I previously stated, is utopia. Perfect individualism is utopia. Perfect communalism is dystopia. In an individualistic society, every action has meaning, whether it is raising children, doing a job, or simply living life the way you want. By comparison, in a communal society, no action has tangible meaning, because all that is seen is the net total end result. Individualistic societies are balanced, with millions and millions of individual forces interacting to create a diverse, but balanced and equal society. Communal societies (even in the ideal), essentially maintain balance and equality through uniformity, which means a stifling of freedom. It is also far less stable, because any act of freedom and individualism can upset the balance drastically. Everyone would be equal because everyone would be appraised as an individual, rather than part of a group, taking a fraction of the group's power, etcetera. Politically, there would be very little for the government to do. With the balance and equality that society would naturally have, the government's only role would be to prevent some people from disrupting that balance by exploiting, manipulating, or coercing someone else. That is the greatest accomplishment of all, although I am sure that production would improve, with people actually perceiving meaning and merit to their actions. With people perceiving meaning to their actions, charity would also increase, though the need for it would decrease.



That is the kind of society which will exist without political parties, but, until then, people will always form parties, and coalitions will become parties.



Positively dystopic.



That said, it will be worse if we attempt to eliminate political parties one sidedly at this point.