Peter Kropotkin on process under Socialism:

	As to parliamentary rule, and representative
government altogether, ...  It is becoming evident that it
is merely stupid to elect a few men [sic], and to entrust
them with the task of making laws on all possible subjects,
of which subject most of them are utterly ignorant.  It is
becoming understood that Majority rule is as defective as
any other kind of rule; and Humanity searches, and finds,
new channels for resolving the pending questions.  The
Postal Union did not elect an international postal
parliament in order to make laws for all postal
organizations adherent to the Union.  The railways of Europe
did not elect an international railway parliament in order
to regulate the running of the trains and the partition of
the income of international traffic; and the Meteorological
and Geological Societies of Europe did not elect either
meteorological or geological parliaments to plan polar
stations, or to establish a uniform subdivision of
geological formations and uniform coloration of geological
maps.  They proceeded by means of agreement.  To agree
together they resorted to congresses; but while sending
delegates to their congresses, they did not elect MPs _bons
a tout faire_; they did not say to them, `Vote about
everything you like -- we shall obey.'  They put questions
and discussed them first themselves; then they sent
delegates acquainted with the special question to be
discussed at the congress, and they sent _delegates_ -- not
rulers.  Their delegates returned from the congress with no
_laws_ in their pockets, but with _proposals of agreements_.
Such is the way assumed now (the very old way, too) for
dealing with questions of public interest -- not the way of
law-making by means of a representative government.
Representative government has accomplished its historical
mission; it has given a mortal blow to Court-rule; and by
its debates it has awakened public interest in public
questions.  But, to see in it the government of the future
Socialist society, is to commit a gross error.  Each
economical phase of life implies its own political phase;
and it is impossible to touch the very basis of the present
economical life -- private property -- without a
corresponding change in the very basis of the political
organization.  Life already shows in which direct the change
will be made.  Not in increasing the powers of the State,
but in resorting to free organization and free federation in
all those branches which are now considered as attributes of
the State.

			PETER KROPOTKIN, writing in the liberal
			   monthly, _The Nineteenth Century_, 1887

