The Spirit of (Anti-)Party and the Two-Party State

A number of recent posts here have focused on what we might call the spirit of anti-party. In a similar vein, a piece at magaliwitz makes "the case for a zero party system," promising to expand upon the topic in future articles:

We operate our government through two political parties who, rather than being beholden to their constituents, are beholden to their corporate and special interest masters. Rather than being beholden to the core philosophies that they purport to espouse, their primary focus is to gain power and maintain and increase the power they get. . . .

Our parties don’t stand for anything anymore. They pretend to stand for substantive things, but they really don’t. They’re doing what George Washington said they would do-they “agitate the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms” in attempting to cling to power. That’s their sole function. They ceased to govern and began to rule. After all, governing demands accountability to those being governed, while ruling requires only propaganda and servitude by those being ruled. . . .

I keep hearing that we need a third party in this country. What the hell for? Typical American reaction, you see two bad things, now let’s add another bad thing to it in the hope that things will improve. All I need is another group of boobs that play slave to corporate America. All I need is another party that advertises a philosophy and abandons it to hold on to power. That’ll fix things all right! . . .

There are practical considerations to make when abandoning the party structure of government to be sure, but other countries have done it. Future articles will explore how that can be accomplished.