On Participatory Democracy

Richard Flacks’s article is the most serious discussion of “participatory democracy” that has yet come out of the New Left, and with most of it I am not in fundamental disagreement. I have some questions, or different emphases.

Flacks defines “participatory democracy” in a way all democrats can accept, namely, that “men must share in the decisions which affect their lives.” When he says that participatory democrats “seek to extend the con...