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Wiki is a terrible way to organise a debate in the context of conflicts of material interest, argues Yanis Varoufakis. As long as our societies are typified by a stark separation of the political from the economic sphere, reserving equal rights for the former while allowing the latter to be characterised by increasing inequality in the allocation of property rights, wiki can play no significant role in civilising them.


1. Introduction


I begin with the supposition that anyone interested in the politics of wiki is motivated by a concern for the increasingly sorry state of our democracies. And I conclude, bleakly, that the politics of wiki is an integral part of the receding political sphere. That, rather than heralding a revitalised politics, it is part and parcel of the ethos of fragmentation that devalues political goods and turns democracy into an empty shell.


Wiki is, no doubt, a remarkable piece of technology. By catering for truly collaborative work, irrespectively of whether the group comprises two people or a multitude strewn all over the planet’s surface, it opens up new vistas for participatory projects.


Nonetheless, like all technologies, its impact depends on the social relations and the institutional framework in which it is deployed. The point of this paper is that, in our specific political and economic context, tools like wiki are condemned to become part of the ‘problem’, rather than of the solution.


Naturally, this austere assessment, like all prognoses, is qualified by the thought that technological change can never be properly double-guessed, as it possesses immense powers to subvert all the projections which we make as if by walking with our back turned toward an unknowable future. However, at a time when our ears are full of messianic prophecies, viz. the brave new world that technologies like wiki are about to usher in, it is important to warn against false expectations.


Wiki, together with other technological facilities, evokes in many enthusiasts of e’democracy the vision of a virtual community of millions, the members of which are active participants in a process of deliberation that has the capacity to break the tidal waves of apathy and disenfranchisement, and thus give a new lease of life to the idea of a society ruled by popular will and participatory decision making. My main objection to the optimistic assessment of wiki and the like is that these splendid hopes rest entirely on an erroneous diagnosis: namely, that our democratic deficits is a technical problem in search of a technological solution. Elsewhere, I have argued that e’democracy, in general, is ill-equipped to ameliorate the deep causes of western democracy’s crisis.


2. E’democracy’s conundrum


Democracy was never about majority rule, or the idea that the multitude ought to be consulted before important decisions are reached, or the right to free speech. While all these are, undoubtedly, important attributes of the Good Society, they are not sufficient conditions for democratic rule. As the ancient Athenians knew only too well, the lynchpin of democracy is isigoria; that is, equal say in the final formulation of policy independently of whether one is rich, comfortably off, or indeed a pauper eking a modest existence out of manual labour.


Elsewhere, I have argued that, “in this reading, the key figure [in classical Athens] was not Pericles, or orators of stunning talent like Demosthenes, but, rather, the anonymous landless peasant who, despite his propertylessness, had a voice in the Assembly of equal weight to that of the great and the good.” (1)


Sadly, our own brand of Western democracy, instead of achieving increasing levels of isigoria, is receding further and further into a blend of generalised apathy and centralised power that bends others’ opinion to the will of the few. In the words of Bertrand Russell, “[w]hat is called the rule of the majority in bourgeois democracy is in … reality the rule of those who control the methods of manufacturing opinion.”


In ancient Athens isigoria was achieved by taking unparalleled (and often coercive [2]) steps to ensure that no kind of power structure biased the citizens’ Assembly in favour of some particular point of view. That one’s proposals were judged on their merit, on the basis of free dialogue, but independently of one’s: (a) wealth, (b) social standing, or even (c) rhetorical skills.


The answer to the question of “What can e‘democracy do for us now?” is: “Not much!”, unless it makes a dent in the way that socio-economic power is allowed to determine the clarity and volume of the average citizen’s voice. Our liberal, Western societies, were designed from the outset so that the rule of the majority was never really about Rule by the People. At best it was about fashioning an oligarchy who would gain sufficient legitimacy so as to portray its practices as a form of Rule on Behalf of the People. In this sense, democracy (as a system founded on isigoria) was designed out of the ‘system’ from the inception of the ‘Western’ or the ‘Free’ World.


If the above is true, technological innovations that facilitate costless communication over the World Wide Web are unlikely to generate anything beyond a new vista of lifestyle choices.


3. ‘Wiki politics’ as a retreat from (and of) democracy


Wikipedia (the bottom-up encyclopaedia fashioned by millions who offer unsolicited and unedited entries via the technology known as wiki) is a truly fascinating experiment. To a political economist, it appears as an intriguing new mechanism for generating ‘order’.


The greatest debate of the 20th century was the well-known Left-vs-Right clash on whether ‘order’ is best created through the market or some central plan. Free marketeers thought of the price mechanism as superior to any centrally administered mechanism for “getting things done”. Proponents of state intervention, or some form of collective agency, counter-argued that, while markets do generate some form of ‘spontaneous order’ through the operation of the price system, these outcomes are fraught with both inequities and inefficiencies (e.g. chronic exploitation, surges in unemployment and under-investment) that can only be weeded out through collective or state action.


Wikipedia is a 21st century ‘product’ produced by millions. Its generation confounds both of the ideologically opposed camps of the last century. While there is no central plan involved in its creation (save for the formation of the initial website), and participants freely add, subtract or alter entries, prices play no role in the regulation of all this massive, uncoordinated activity either. (3)


The question of how authoritative Wikipedia is (relative to some conventional encyclopaedia) notwithstanding, a crucial question arises regarding the possible utilisation of wiki in the context of revitalising democratic politics: Can the process that brought us Wikipedia evolve into one that cultivates the ground on which isigoria can be cultivated in our societies?


Enthusiasts answer in the affirmative, pointing to wiki’s capacity to give an equal say to (anonymous) allcomers. This is indeed so. If wiki were to be used for drafting, say, legislation, anyone with a web-linked computer would have exactly the same capacity to contribute. However, there is a powerful reason for which isigoria is unlikely to emerge:


It is that in any wiki e’community the power to influence the final outcome rests with those who are most determined to exclude the views of others. For example, we know that, in the writing of Wikipedia, monumental clashes have occurred between eager participants who spend countless hours erasing and editing each others’ entries. When wiki moves to other realms in which much more is at stake than an encyclopaedia entry, e.g. the drafting of environmental controls on oil companies, the possibility of isigoria will be extinguished in an instant.


4. Conclusion


Wiki is a brilliant tool for those who wish to collaborate. It is, unfortunately, also a terrible way to organise a debate in the context of conflicts of material interest. As long as our societies are typified by a stark separation of the political from the economic sphere, reserving equal rights for the former while allowing the latter to be characterised by increasing inequality in the allocation of property rights, wiki (in particular and e’democracy in general) can play no significant role in civilising them.


Wiki may help democracy but only if it is employed in the context of a wider political project of redesigning property rights in such a way as to make possible a world in which people form units of production which create and distribute value in a participatory manner; in a manner such that no one employs anyone, everyone contributes labour and ideas, while each is rewarded according to contribution but also need.


Until then, all wiki can achieve is, at best, interesting experiments in non-price spontaneous order (like Wikipedia) and, at worst, an e’Mob that is as distant from an e’Demos as Genghis Khan was from a contemporary critic of nationalist divisions.

——————————————————————————–

(1) From this perspective, Athenian society, despite its long list of repulsive features (e.g. the hideous treatment of women, the reliance on brutal exploitation of slaves), produced a genuine democracy which has probably never been replicated since.

(2) Indeed, ostracism was a means by which to safeguard isigoria from an asymmetrical distribution of oratory prowess.

(3) This is, of course, made possible by the non-existent pecuniary marginal costs of all work expended in the context of the evolution of Wikipedia’s entries.


Further links


What is neoclassical economics?


Regarding the Global Minotaur

Special issue: recent articles, wiki politics
Tags: Greece, isigoria, wikipedia, yanis varoufakis

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