It is actually with horror that I find the sheer hatred expressed towards all manifestations of democracy on those pages. I had always assumed that libertarians were influenced by writers citing Jefferson and Hamilton and so were simply conservative liberals, until I started really digging into the subject. (see 6552). They also distort the subject. But totalitarian movements always do that.
"“Democratic” in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule . . . a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose."
Let us examine this subject. Is the premise true?
There are so many ways that these arguments are wrong. I'll try to explain them.
First, she picks a straw argument by adding the attribute "unlimited' to the definition. Any "unlimited" system can be abused Even direct democracy usually involves a limited majority direct rule. Most democratic cultures are bound by traditions and traditional authority.
On contrary, democracy has always and originally meant "rule by the demos" -- rule by the people. As created by the Athenians it has always referred to participatory government. The root of democracy is and was individual initiative, free speech, and participation. For Athenians. "Ho Boulemos." Those who offer initiatives, were the leaders. Athenians forced direct rule through lotteries. They believed each person should take a turn governing. They were suspicious of votes. Indirect Democracy was associated with oligarchy for them. However, democracy, even in its direct form has never meant 'unlimited majority rule.' That assertion amounts to a lie.
See this post; http://www.fraughtwithperil.com/blogs/holte/archives/005949.html and this book The Principles of Representative Government by Bernard Manin
The residual power of all countries, is in the long run majority rule, so the concept of democracy just formalizes a reality or at least pays it lip service. Even animals pratice democracy. Scientists have shown how most animals from bugs to Bison judge what the majority is about to do. When they perceive that more than 51 percent of the population is facing (trending!) a certain way, the entire group will turn and move in that direction. This is what accounts for phenomena from acrobatic flying, to the seemingly mysterious behavior of Elephants. Democracy is innate, and majority rule is usually practiced by any group of people with power to make decisions. Democratic voting is a way to get consensus.
But Ayn Rand attacks the concept in a devious way, she first says Democracy is a "a social system." I can concede that for democracy to work it has to be embedded in the social system. It has to be an attribute of any social system to be a reality. However, Democracy has never been a social system of and to itself. There have been socialist democracies, capitalist democracies, but democracy as a feature of a social system has only been practiced at the local level -- and only makes sense there.
When we are talking about democracy we are talking about the right of the people to participate in their government. A system that disregards the rights of the governed is a tyranny. Not to be democratic in attributes is tyranny. Her argument is backwards. On the contrary, even tribes, clans, and monarchies are ultimately democratic in at least some attributes. No ruler can long rule without the consent of the Governed. Representative Democracy simply is one way to assure that that consent is gained in a consistent manner. Direct democracy guarantees consent of the Governed.
Democracy, in truth, doesn't exist in its pure direct form unless it is present in the local system where it is limited by the greater society. However, She posits that in a democracy; "one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority." But such a gang, or "faction", is no longer something democratic. If democracy doesn't involve rule of all the people, or at least their acquiescence, that is not democracy. Rather what she is talking about is faction. Rule by faction is oligarchy. Even if the majority support a faction, such a faction is still a faction that represents degraded democracy. Factions develop with or without the presence of democracy. Oligarchies are successful factions. Monarchies are the result of the reduction of fighting as oligarchs form a new order and work out their power relationships. Therefore a tyranny that arbitrarily and permanently takes away property, imposes authoritarianism, is not a democracy, even if it pretends to the forms.
Moreover, The Athenians were rightly suspicious of elections because they knew just how easy it is for a faction to form and dispossess others of their right to be consulted. A society can have the principle of democracy within a faction and still not be a faction. The Athenians, and the founder Virginians, talked so much about liberty as they did because they had examples of deprived liberty serving their food.
Direct Democracy is only possible in small societies. The rest of us have to be content with acquiring attributes of democracy. To me her argument describes the agonizing death of democracy -- not democracy.
Influenced by Ayn Rand and other objectivist ideologues and propagandists someone wrote me:
You can idealize the word "democracy" all you want, but the framers of the Constitution understood its implications all too well.
Now I can stand guilty of idealizing democracy only in its ideal sense. Democracy is usually defined as "a lousy system of governance, only better than the alternatives." Groups that don't govern by democratic principles usually fail. Mason and Madison understood this. That is why they valued representative government. Representative Government with democratic attributes is superior to unrepresentative Government with no democratic attributes. This isn't a matter of idealization it is a matter of reducing risk of failure from arrogance, stupidity, ignorance, and selfish decision making.
There are also further troubles with this argument It borrows from the arguments of the framers selectively and assumes unanimity where there wasn't unanimity, and ignores nuance. The Framers were all over the map on the subject of democracy, some of them at times opposing it and other times fighting for it. But all of them ultimately endorsing the need for attributes of Democracy in the final Government.
Finally, Ayn Rand's arguments aren't about critiquing democracies weaknesses, Objectivists reject democracy entirely! It's not about providing a Republican system "superior to [direct] democracy", as Madison and Jefferson envisioned. For genuine American Republicans it has always been about preserving that system from people who argue that because democracy is not perfect it should be discarded, and rejecting arguments that justify manipulation, demagoguery, and tyranny on fallacious grounds. Most democracies bind themselves with constitutions, traditions, and laws. And they only last as long as those things are respected.
Unfortunately, within a generation or two from that point, it became a slogan and that grandy of all astro-turf institutions, to-wit: public education formalized it to the point where it was up there with the ridiculous concept of "God-given rights".
The Objectivist argument is not a Madisonian argument. It's not even an accurate representation of Hamilton or Adams. On the contrary Objectivists who are arguing for the purification of American Republicanism from its democratic features are arguing in the manner of an extortionist who cuts words out of a newspaper to create a ransom note. It may be taken from the founders but it is nothing like what the founders were talking about! There is little relationship between their arguments and the actual arguments of the founders. To argue that the founders argued in favor of a "capitalist" political system is insane. They had just fought off the East India Corporation Monopoly. Why would they want to justify corporations?
The muddled argument proceeds from trying to connect East European ideas, and totalitarian thinking, to Madison's attempt to explain why we should have a Democratic Republic rather than direct democracy, and why we should moderate the features of direct rule not to be governed by mindless elections, factionalism, but to have some institutional safeguards against demagogues and temporary "popular passions."
The error which limits republican government to a narrow district has been unfolded and refuted in preceding papers. I remark here only that it seems to owe its rise and prevalence chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy, applying to the former reasonings drawn from the nature of the latter. The true distinction between these forms was also adverted to on a former occasion. It is, that in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.
The founders were not uniformly hostile to Democracy, only its most extreme expressions. For example in debates about the selection of the executive; "Mr. MADISON considered the popular election of one branch of the National Legislature as essential to every plan of free Government." avalon: debates_531.asp In that same debate a man named Gerry blamed all the problems of the Government on Democracy;
Gerry: "The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. In Massts. it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute. One principal evil arises from the want of due provision for those employed in the administration of Governmt. It would seem to be a maxim of democracy to starve the public servants. He mentioned the popular clamour in Massts. for the reduction of salaries and the attack made on that of the Govr. though secured by the spirit of the Constitution itself. He had he said been too republican heretofore: he was still however republican, but had been taught by experience the danger of the levilling spirit."
This man Gerry may have been arguing against Democracy, but Madison and his colleagues (Mason and Jefferson) were not arguing anything of the sort. They knew that democracy is not a bad thing, just that it has potential for evil -- risks like any other human enterprise. On the contrary they saw the dangers of elitism, factionalism (oligarcy), and dictatorship all too well as well. They had just fought those things and won initial battles. Now they were trying to put into place a system that would be flexible yet stable, deliberative yet not parallized. Decisive yet not arbitrary.
But note, the evils of democracy flow from "false reports" and "designing men." They are inherent in Government in general and not particularly flaws of democracy alone. And this debate next flowed to Mason who said:
Mason: "argued strongly for an election of the larger branch by the people. It was to be the grand depository of the democratic principle of the Govtt. It was, so to speak, to be our House of Commons-It ought to know & sympathise with every part of the community; and ought therefore to be taken not only from different parts of the whole republic, but also from different districts of the larger members of it, which had in several instances particularly in Virga., different interests and views arising from difference of produce, of habits &c &c.
Simply because a system can go to an extreme of representation doesn't mean that it should be replaced with its opposite.
Mason continued..."He admitted that we had been too democratic but was afraid we sd. incautiously run into the opposite extreme. We ought to attend to the rights of every class of the people. He had often wondered at the indifference of the superior classes of society to this dictate of humanity & policy; considering that however affluent their circumstances, or elevated their situations, might be, the course of a few years, not only might but certainly would, distribute their posterity throughout the lowest classes of Society. Every selfish motive therefore, every family attachment, ought to recommend such a system of policy as would provide no less carefully for the rights and happiness of the lowest than of the highest orders of Citizens."
Again, the founders understood my own theme, that the value of any society, organization or enterprise is more than the sum of its parts. A successful system has to embody thought, not only of the present, but of posterity. We should consider the wisdom of our ancestors in providing for us, their posterity. A republic with democratic attributes is our heritage. Even the wealthiest of individuals cannot guarantee all his grandchildren will be wealthy. Better that society preserve the attributes of freedom, opportunity and equality before the law. Democracy is in all our interests if we consider our posterity.
Yes some of the framers; Madison in alliance with Adams and the Federalists, feared excessive (direct) democracy, they saw a representative republic as a superior thing to direct democracy because they saw representative government as moderating the risks posed by ignorant people being manipulated by false information, demagoguery, and ambitious people playing on their passions. They also knew that direct democracy is impossible outside the setting of small towns and villages. They sought a system that would have the best attributes of democracy, oligarchy and monarchy. That is what they created.
However, the fact of systemic risk in any system, doesn't invalidate the importance of the desired attributes sought.
Historically, democracy has sometimes become a slogan, but not a meaningless one. On the contrary it has been a periodic rallying cry raised by people seeking "a more perfect union." People have pretty much grasped what it has meant, even in the face of demagoguery and deliberate anti-democratic obfuscation similar to Rand's. Andrew Jackson was a champion of democracy as people understood it in the early Republic. And it did mean majority rule (for white males). He fought hard to enshrine the "common man" and complete teh work started by Jefferson. Abraham Lincoln refined it further. The early founders valued their freedom precisely because they could see the consequences of its loss. And they preserved their democracy because they could see that the only way to guarantee its presentation is to preserve "consent of the Governed" in governing affairs. And later reformers seized on this early promise. Men like Frederick Douglas used the arguments of the founders to "perfect the Union." Concepts are not invalidated because the people who hold them have not been able to refine them. On the contrary, concepts are refined as people apply them and see just how universal they truly are.
Yes, Majorities can always be manipulated by tyrants, that is a risk built into all kinds of politics. Those who would eliminate risk will eliminate their own freedom in the process of seeking security. Democracy has never been first about majority rule; its been about people-power (Demos-Kratos). Any system that disenfranchises people is undemocratic, and if a majority dispossesses the minority that is both undemocratic, usually in most societies illegal -- and is usually the beginning of a slide to oligarchy and tyranny in which the majority in turn is dispossessed.
Democracy is as much an attribute of a fair society as it is a system. It is not primarily a "social system" so much as a way that people govern their public affairs. It is a necessary feature of a just society.
To equate democracy itself to totalitarianism is nuts.
The reason people refer to rights as "God Given" is that an "inalienable right" is something that is irreducible. In a sense it is something with a spiritual quality. Man can give away or take "rights", however asserting a right doesn't make it right, nor does denying a right make that right any less inalienable. Rights can be argued by negation.
They are inalienable because their importance cannot be denied, even to those who are denied them. Freedom for a slave is all the more valuable because it is denied. For the slaver it is ever on his lips because he can see the consequences of role reversal. They come from the Great Spiritual Reality of this Universe we live in, and in that sense they come from that ineffable God that Westerners have posited.
The inalienability of the rights to liberty, equality, property, democracy, and life, are affirmed by generations of people whose blood has been shed in their name.
Just as nations, peoples, corporations, and groups are all more (or less) than the sum of their parts. So is the Human race, and so is this Universe we inhabit. We are more than our parts. And if we are smart we will live, at least partly with in mind our legacy to future generations and out of respect to past generations. Objectivists unconsciously (or in some cases consciously) demean the founding fathers when they demean democracy. However, democracy can be degraded, demeaned or denied, but it is an eternal longing of the sentient soul; To be heard, to participate, to earn respect; to give back to those who are owed spiritually.
Posted by cholte at December 26, 2009 11:20 AM