Before the question “who will govern us?” comes another: “why must we be governed?” Sometimes the first step is to widen the table a little and ask, “why aren't we taking this decision ourselves?”
There is something strange about our relationship with politics. We do not take part directly in most of the decisions that directly affect our lives, yet we still call this order democratic because it is “representative.” We vote every five years, answer a survey now and then, sign the occasional petition, and send people to speak on our behalf where decisions are made. Whether the tree in our neighbourhood is felled, how our day will pass at work, which areas of the city are allotted to whom, and where the taxes we pay are used are mostly decided far away from us. What falls to us is to learn of the decision, object if we dislike it, and try someone else at the next election.
Unmediated politics first reminds us that this habit is not natural. It questions the idea that people necessarily need professional politicians, party headquarters or permanent representatives in order to talk about and decide their common affairs. Before “who will govern us?” it asks “why must we be governed?” On first hearing, the question may sound too large, even slightly romantic. Yet unmediated politics usually begins not with the state as a whole but with the small areas of daily life: a building’s shared expenses, the working arrangements at a workplace, the use of an empty plot in the neighbourhood, the needs of a child’s school, or how a solidarity group will spend the money it holds.
The line between representing and replacing
The idea of representation is not in itself bad. It is impossible for everyone to attend every meeting, learn every detail and do every task together. A community may send one of its members to a negotiation, assign someone to carry out a particular task, or seek expert support on a technical matter. The problem is that the assigned task gradually turns into an independent power. If the person chosen to speak on our behalf begins after a while to tell us what we want; if they cannot be recalled, their decisions cannot be supervised and they define the limits of their own role, then they no longer merely represent us — they have taken our place.
Modern politics has made this substitution ordinary. It is assumed that from the moment of election the elected person knows more than those who elected them and can see the common interest better. The citizen turns from the subject of their own life into a spectator who periodically approves a governing cadre. And this does not happen only in parliament. The same relation can repeat itself in associations, unions, professional bodies and even small initiatives founded on a claim to horizontality. As a few people assigned at the outset to make things easier accumulate information, connections and decision-making authority, the structure begins to revolve around them.
Unmediated politics does not imagine a crowd with no division of tasks. It asks that the task be explicit, limited, supervisable and revocable. A spokesperson conveying a community’s decision is not the same as taking a decision in the community’s name. One is coordination, the other government. The difference sometimes looks small but over time it changes the character of the whole structure.
Politics is not only where the state is
When unmediated politics is mentioned, squares, assemblies or large public meetings come to mind. Yet an important part of the power relations in our lives is built where we do not meet the state directly. Who may speak at work, who carries the burden of care at home, whose words become visible in an online community, whether tenants have a voice in a building — these are all matters of politics. When we push them outside politics as “private life,” “a business decision” or “a technical issue,” we also render invisible the power operating over them.
Workers having a say not only about wages but about the pace of work, the shift system, the technology used and the purpose of production is one form of unmediated politics. There is a great difference between residents giving their opinion at a token meeting to which the municipality invited them and genuinely deciding together on part of the budget. In the first, participation supplies material for a decision to be taken; in the second, decision-making authority is shared. Many institutions today love the word “participatory,” yet participation often remains a consultative ceremony that changes no final decision.
This is why genuine participation is somewhat unsettling. Giving people a voice is easy; giving them authority is harder. A manager listening to everyone is no obstacle to doing what they wanted anyway. Unmediated politics cares not about being heard but about the shared decision producing a real outcome. It therefore looks not merely for well-meaning administrators but for arrangements that remove the need for an administrator’s good will.
Digital intermediaries did not disappear; they became invisible
The internet was for a time presented as the great domain of disintermediation. People would write without publishers, send money without banks, trade with each other without companies, and build political movements without party organisations. Digital tools did indeed make it easier for people who could not previously have met to find one another. But the intervening years have shown that the intermediary did not disappear; it usually only changed form.
Today the platform a community uses to reach one another can decide which message will be seen. Even if a campaign brings thousands of volunteers together, its account can be closed by a single company’s decision. On work platforms presented as “unmediated,” it is now scores, ranking algorithms and deductions that stand between customer and worker. The old intermediary had a face and a desk; the new intermediary has terms of use and code. And because it is invisible, it is taken for neutral.
This does not mean unmediated politics must be hostile to technology. On the contrary, it requires asking to whom the tool used belongs, how it is governed and whether the community can change it. If all of a group’s communication sits in an account managed by one person, there is a centre of power there even without an official chair. If technical knowledge rests with a few people, they draw the invisible limits of decisions. Open source, common data ownership and community oversight are therefore not merely technical preferences but political questions.
Can everyone really take part?
Unmediated politics sounds egalitarian, but if the possibilities of participation are unequal, opening the meeting door to everyone is not enough. Someone with time and someone working two jobs, someone who speaks comfortably and someone constantly interrupted, someone with no care responsibilities and someone unable to find anywhere to leave their child are not in the same position. If a decision meeting runs until midnight, the decision of those who stayed may be formally collective yet fail to reflect the whole community. Those who speak constantly may take on visible power while those who keep minutes, prepare food, call people and defuse tension take on invisible labour.
Disintermediation is therefore more than saying “let everyone come and speak.” It requires information shared intelligibly, accessible meeting times, tasks rotated, monopolies on speech broken and the burden of care taken into account. Participation is not a test of character; declaring those who do not attend uninterested or unaware is a shortcut. A structure that does not ask why people cannot take part may unwittingly become the government of those with time, money and self-confidence.
Moreover, not everyone wants to take part in every matter with the same intensity. Unmediated politics does not mean condemning people to endless meetings. It is possible for those directly affected by a decision to carry greater weight, for tasks to be delegated, and for small groups to act autonomously within shared principles. The point is not to gather everyone at the same table at all times but to prevent decision-making power from accumulating permanently in a few hands.
The small beginning of leaving spectatorship
Unmediated politics is not a flawless model to be built overnight. After years of being kept outside decision processes, people coming together may not immediately know how to speak, how to hold disagreement and how to share responsibility. Invisible leaders may appear, meetings may fall apart, shared work may land on a few shoulders. These do not show that disintermediation is impossible but how far our ability to decide together has been left unused.
Perhaps the beginning is not to draw a grand scheme for governing the whole state. It is to look at how a decision is taken in the nearest place we live. Who knows, who speaks, who has the last word, who pays the price? And then not to demand back a small but real field of authority but to begin exercising it together. For politics is not lived only in the moments when we elect those who speak for us. It is already present wherever we decide together what to do.
The strongest promise of unmediated politics is not to destroy every intermediary but to stop people being permanent spectators of their own shared life. Sometimes the first step is not finding a new name in answer to “who will represent us?” but widening the table a little and asking, “why aren’t we taking this decision ourselves?”