The society was to be organized by internal voluntary associations of producers. Workers and farmers, organized at their place of work and branching upward through the principle of representation, could oversee and coordinate all of a country and finally the world economy. In fact, what has happened everywhere in the communist world is that the cadres who seize power do carry out the first step of ridding themselves of the independent classes. Then they build a centralized state and only allow such authority to the roots and cells of the society as they must. From that stage on, the activity of the citizens becomes automated.
Activity is to be decentralized in order to be effective.
Activity is not to be controlled by anyone, including the state. II Americans have had a double experience in regard to political activity, just as in respect to many of its bads and goods. Most of its history witnessed a struggle to actualize these ideas by extending the suffrage finally to everyone over eighteen, smashing political machines that dictated people's votes, etc. On the other side has occurred that trend which we have described and so detest and deny throughout this book, which is in effect eroding the very foundations of free political activity through general aggrandizement, centralization, bureaucracy, and general dependency. Suppose you were to take at random a sample of Americans who are politically active.