Monday, January 15, 2007
democracy
When has Democracy really been tried? Democracy is supposed to be rule by the majority. The ruling class would never permit such a state of affairs. Democracy is something claimed, and rarely achieved. What is called Democracy is really just one variety of velvet gloves to legitimate and mask the state's iron fist.
Democracy is supposed to be rule by the people which would mean majority vote of the assembled people propose and decides issues and what few government offices are required would filled by random selection or by election. This requires that the people must be assembled to decide issues, or regular referendums are proposed and voted on by the people. In the first case we have many examples of towns with assembled voting. We have the ideal of the New England town meeting where the people decide issues. This is not an example of rampant lawlessness. This is because the people are familiar with the issues and able to have a considered opinions, and therefore unlikely to support bad ideas. They also live in the communities affect by their policies, which give them different incentives from a DC bureaucrat making policy. On the other hand there may be many examples of oppression of minorities or seizure of property. Deliberate forays into communism, liquidation of opponents, genocide and war mongering, must be rare in the history of small town democracy and certainly as compared to the history of great nations.
It should be clear that we do not live in this type of democracy.
In our present system the state rules. It’s a group of officials separate from society. These state officials make the rules, execute policies, and pass judgment upon members of society who violate the state's rules. This benefits the ruling officials. Rulers of the present democratic states have short-term incentives to maximize the benefits of power.
We are told we have a democratic system where the majority of the people decide how the government is organized and run. In democracy people do participate by voting but do they vote on the law, policies or pass judgment? A majority may decide referendums. But we know that the state routinely disregards referendum results it doesn't like. The people of California decided that medical marijuana is ok but the state decides otherwise and has its way. It’s possible for the people to use computer and telecommunications to decide all questions. This is never pushed upon the people by the ruling class of our so-called democratic states.
Some of the people are occasionally allowed to participate as members of juries. However state officials help make sure the juries will reach the right decision, and juries are told it is not up to them to decide the justice of the various laws that may be used to condemn their fellow citizens.
People do elect representatives to act as their voice. They can therefore affect the political process. There are many examples showing how the voice of the people is continually subdued by their rulers.
Elected officials routinely violate campaign promises. They can do whatever they want for their term of office. If they support enough popular policies to ensure re-election, they support plenty of unpopular ones too that would never have passed a popular vote. In the US the ruling class does all it can to ensure that the people can only vote for one of the officially approved candidates.
Even if we accept that the elected representatives do represent the people, we have additional problems. Much of the state is made up of unelected bureaucrats. These people do the actual work of executing policy, and it is extremely difficult to remove them. History shows that elected officials, including presidents, are not able to fully control the bureaucracy.
Another important class of officials is judges, who are often appointed and routinely decide against popular decisions. They can put huge burdens on local community governments, some of whom may be democratically run, and are certainly more likely to be responsive to popular pressure. This too violates popular decision-making.
We often see attempts by the ruling class to do everything they can to suppress government by the people. After all, how can the ruling class rule if the people rule? A would-be ruling class did all they could during the American Revolution to set themselves up in power with a central government that would take power from the local communities.
Calling our system democratic serves a very important legitimating function. Without legitimacy any state would disappear, as the East German state did or the USSR dissolved into smaller states. The ruling class likes to talk about democracy because it is able to legitimize its activities, especially the evil ones, by claiming that the people think its ok for the rulers to make the call. If anyone disagrees with the rulers the rulers claim that the people have spoken. If this wasn't effective people would ignore the rulers, just as they would ignore you or I if we declared ourselves king of our town and right ruler of all that we survey. It’s effective, even though it creates especially curious results when the majorities of the people clearly disagree with a ruling official and would like to see different policy if not recall or impeach him.
The idea of majority rule must be delegitimized. Just as kings could not exercise their rule unless a majority of public opinion accepted such rule as legitimate, so will democratic rulers not last without ideological support in public opinion.
In many cases majority rule is the only legitimating function. It’s important to remove the idea of majority rule, and it’s also important that people realize that the majority isn’t, in fact, making the rules. The democratic state allows common people entry into the exploiting class. This combines with the twin fictions that majority rule legitimates anything, and that the majority does rule. Together this destroys the class-consciousness of the people that they are exploited by their rulers. Instead people believe that they are the rulers, they might be the rulers some day, or the rulers are legitimate.
In the 18th century, people understood that the state was a group for the enrichment of the rulers, usually the king and his ministers, and certainly not for the benefit of the people. It was ridiculous to say that war was for the people, or that the state should help the people by feeding, educating, employing or nursing them. If anything the subjects were to help the state. Therefore the people wished to support it as little as possible, and had no illusions that any good would come of the state. When the American and French revolutions came along, people were faced with a choice. Either dismantle the old state system, or take it over. The winning choice was to take it over, and a new set of people became the ruling class.
This new ruling class faced a problem. If the old state system created to serve the ruling class was unjust because it served the ruling class at the expense of the people, how to justify the new ruling class using the old state system? Wouldn't people assume it was still serving a new set of people at the expense of the rest of the people? The answer was to tell the people that all these evils were for their own good; this was a new state that would serve the people instead of the king. The doctrine that the people ruled, and that whatever the people ruled was just, served as the perfect way to legitimate any of the states actions and contributed to its power.
It was also essential to ensure that direct ruling by the people be minimized as much as possible. We hear that democracy, as strictly defined, is a terrible thing because it would allow the people to engage in rampant lawlessness and bad decision making.
We don't really live under a democracy. Strictly defined democracy is a fairly unimportant form of government in the modern world. In fact the ruling class rules quite firmly; though it may bend to popular pressure occasionally it is also good at creating the pressure so it can appear to bend. The progressive era in the US was partly about making voting irrelevant so experts could rule. As the saying goes, if voting could change things they'd make it illegal.
The problem with democracy is the idea that majority rule can decide what is right and wrong. This is evil. In practice the ruling class decides what is right and wrong in a so-called democracy. This is what is wrong with so-called democracy, and people are rightly outraged by unending assaults on ordinary decency and morality in the name of the people. People see in republics and constitutions a solid foundation of what is right and wrong; some things cannot be decided or changed. There is a common evil in both democracy and so-called democracy; that right and wrong can change.
Speaking against democracy does not get to the root of the problem, which is the incoherent or evil rules that people are expected to follow. The state system is inherently contradictory, as what is wrong for ordinary citizens is right for state officials. What made the countries of Europe such a mess was not the ethnic composition of their society or the forms of government, but to what degree that state was allowed to interfere with society. A regime that does not interfere in society is usually a quite pleasant place to live; one that does interfere is regularly unpleasant. In our so-called democratic regime the rulers have every incentive to interfere in society and the people are likely to allow it. When more people realize that majority rule does not legitimize everything and that they do not in fact rule, we will be farther along the road to a just world.
Democracy is supposed to be rule by the people which would mean majority vote of the assembled people propose and decides issues and what few government offices are required would filled by random selection or by election. This requires that the people must be assembled to decide issues, or regular referendums are proposed and voted on by the people. In the first case we have many examples of towns with assembled voting. We have the ideal of the New England town meeting where the people decide issues. This is not an example of rampant lawlessness. This is because the people are familiar with the issues and able to have a considered opinions, and therefore unlikely to support bad ideas. They also live in the communities affect by their policies, which give them different incentives from a DC bureaucrat making policy. On the other hand there may be many examples of oppression of minorities or seizure of property. Deliberate forays into communism, liquidation of opponents, genocide and war mongering, must be rare in the history of small town democracy and certainly as compared to the history of great nations.
It should be clear that we do not live in this type of democracy.
In our present system the state rules. It’s a group of officials separate from society. These state officials make the rules, execute policies, and pass judgment upon members of society who violate the state's rules. This benefits the ruling officials. Rulers of the present democratic states have short-term incentives to maximize the benefits of power.
We are told we have a democratic system where the majority of the people decide how the government is organized and run. In democracy people do participate by voting but do they vote on the law, policies or pass judgment? A majority may decide referendums. But we know that the state routinely disregards referendum results it doesn't like. The people of California decided that medical marijuana is ok but the state decides otherwise and has its way. It’s possible for the people to use computer and telecommunications to decide all questions. This is never pushed upon the people by the ruling class of our so-called democratic states.
Some of the people are occasionally allowed to participate as members of juries. However state officials help make sure the juries will reach the right decision, and juries are told it is not up to them to decide the justice of the various laws that may be used to condemn their fellow citizens.
People do elect representatives to act as their voice. They can therefore affect the political process. There are many examples showing how the voice of the people is continually subdued by their rulers.
Elected officials routinely violate campaign promises. They can do whatever they want for their term of office. If they support enough popular policies to ensure re-election, they support plenty of unpopular ones too that would never have passed a popular vote. In the US the ruling class does all it can to ensure that the people can only vote for one of the officially approved candidates.
Even if we accept that the elected representatives do represent the people, we have additional problems. Much of the state is made up of unelected bureaucrats. These people do the actual work of executing policy, and it is extremely difficult to remove them. History shows that elected officials, including presidents, are not able to fully control the bureaucracy.
Another important class of officials is judges, who are often appointed and routinely decide against popular decisions. They can put huge burdens on local community governments, some of whom may be democratically run, and are certainly more likely to be responsive to popular pressure. This too violates popular decision-making.
We often see attempts by the ruling class to do everything they can to suppress government by the people. After all, how can the ruling class rule if the people rule? A would-be ruling class did all they could during the American Revolution to set themselves up in power with a central government that would take power from the local communities.
Calling our system democratic serves a very important legitimating function. Without legitimacy any state would disappear, as the East German state did or the USSR dissolved into smaller states. The ruling class likes to talk about democracy because it is able to legitimize its activities, especially the evil ones, by claiming that the people think its ok for the rulers to make the call. If anyone disagrees with the rulers the rulers claim that the people have spoken. If this wasn't effective people would ignore the rulers, just as they would ignore you or I if we declared ourselves king of our town and right ruler of all that we survey. It’s effective, even though it creates especially curious results when the majorities of the people clearly disagree with a ruling official and would like to see different policy if not recall or impeach him.
The idea of majority rule must be delegitimized. Just as kings could not exercise their rule unless a majority of public opinion accepted such rule as legitimate, so will democratic rulers not last without ideological support in public opinion.
In many cases majority rule is the only legitimating function. It’s important to remove the idea of majority rule, and it’s also important that people realize that the majority isn’t, in fact, making the rules. The democratic state allows common people entry into the exploiting class. This combines with the twin fictions that majority rule legitimates anything, and that the majority does rule. Together this destroys the class-consciousness of the people that they are exploited by their rulers. Instead people believe that they are the rulers, they might be the rulers some day, or the rulers are legitimate.
In the 18th century, people understood that the state was a group for the enrichment of the rulers, usually the king and his ministers, and certainly not for the benefit of the people. It was ridiculous to say that war was for the people, or that the state should help the people by feeding, educating, employing or nursing them. If anything the subjects were to help the state. Therefore the people wished to support it as little as possible, and had no illusions that any good would come of the state. When the American and French revolutions came along, people were faced with a choice. Either dismantle the old state system, or take it over. The winning choice was to take it over, and a new set of people became the ruling class.
This new ruling class faced a problem. If the old state system created to serve the ruling class was unjust because it served the ruling class at the expense of the people, how to justify the new ruling class using the old state system? Wouldn't people assume it was still serving a new set of people at the expense of the rest of the people? The answer was to tell the people that all these evils were for their own good; this was a new state that would serve the people instead of the king. The doctrine that the people ruled, and that whatever the people ruled was just, served as the perfect way to legitimate any of the states actions and contributed to its power.
It was also essential to ensure that direct ruling by the people be minimized as much as possible. We hear that democracy, as strictly defined, is a terrible thing because it would allow the people to engage in rampant lawlessness and bad decision making.
We don't really live under a democracy. Strictly defined democracy is a fairly unimportant form of government in the modern world. In fact the ruling class rules quite firmly; though it may bend to popular pressure occasionally it is also good at creating the pressure so it can appear to bend. The progressive era in the US was partly about making voting irrelevant so experts could rule. As the saying goes, if voting could change things they'd make it illegal.
The problem with democracy is the idea that majority rule can decide what is right and wrong. This is evil. In practice the ruling class decides what is right and wrong in a so-called democracy. This is what is wrong with so-called democracy, and people are rightly outraged by unending assaults on ordinary decency and morality in the name of the people. People see in republics and constitutions a solid foundation of what is right and wrong; some things cannot be decided or changed. There is a common evil in both democracy and so-called democracy; that right and wrong can change.
Speaking against democracy does not get to the root of the problem, which is the incoherent or evil rules that people are expected to follow. The state system is inherently contradictory, as what is wrong for ordinary citizens is right for state officials. What made the countries of Europe such a mess was not the ethnic composition of their society or the forms of government, but to what degree that state was allowed to interfere with society. A regime that does not interfere in society is usually a quite pleasant place to live; one that does interfere is regularly unpleasant. In our so-called democratic regime the rulers have every incentive to interfere in society and the people are likely to allow it. When more people realize that majority rule does not legitimize everything and that they do not in fact rule, we will be farther along the road to a just world.
