Haiku Politics

Sunday's New York Times magazine published an article by Jim Holt titled "Export This?", in which he discusses the difficulties associated with the use of the word "democracy". He points out that the word has been used to refer to forms of government that are often radically different from one another--including some that most would actually consider dictatorial. He also points out that the American system of government differs in significant ways from the original Athenian concept of democracy. Holt writes:

The most distinctive feature of Athenian democracy, as the British political theorist John Dunn reminds us in his forthcoming book, "Democracy: A History," was its "fierce directness." Laws were made by an assembly that every full citizen had the right to attend, address and vote in as an equal. (Excluding women, resident aliens and slaves, that left about 30,000 participants.) The assembly's agenda for each meeting was decided on by a council of 500 citizens, chosen by lot. The only elected figures were military generals, and this was considered the least democratic aspect of the system.

This is clearly nothing like our own system of government. In fact, Holt writes,

Our own government, to the Athenians, would look like an elective oligarchy. In fact, it was deliberately set up to ensure, as James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers, "the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity, from any share" in it.

The last point raised in the above quote is particularly salient. The US government was never intended to be a true democracy, and in fact many features of our government were designed to serve as roadblocks to thwart the implementation of the popular will. The bicameral legislature, the division of powers between executive and legislative branches, and the lack of direct election of the President (and originally the Senate as well) are all examples of this.

Holt's article does raise an important question--what is a democracy, really, and what makes a society democratic? Holt points out that the US is governed "by professional politicians". More importantly, Holt adds that

Clearly, politicians do not represent us in the sense of being like us: quite apart from some peculiar psychological characteristics common to the breed, they are older, maler, whiter and lawyers almost to a man. Ideally, though, they represent us in the sense of looking after our interests, the way a guardian represents an infant in law. Unlike an infant, we have an intermittent right to replace them with other politicians if we judge them to be ineffective in this representative role. But, owing to a byzantine division of labor, much of what politicians do is hidden away from the public eye. Moreover, in one of the more devastating theoretical arguments against democracy, Anthony Downs observed that most citizens have no economic incentive to learn enough about what politicians do to vote intelligently. Nearly half of American voters acquiesce in their infantilization by not voting at all.

Here we see Holt briefly touching on the question of economics, but only briefly. The ostensibly representative nature of our government, as Holt alludes, may not be as democratic as it claims to be. This is not only because voters have no economic incentive, as Holt suggests, to learn about what politicians do. It is also because, for one thing, the system does not operate on a fair playing field. Powerful economic interests influence governance and the electoral process, and elections themselves are limited to--in the case of the United States--a duopoly of two parties with entrenched bureaucracies and a close relationship with powerful economic interests. The range of issues available for public debate are framed and constrained by those two parties and the economic interests they represent. Voters at some level actually have a reduced incentive to participate in the political process because the political process itself is inherently unfair.

Any attempt a addressing the problem of what constitutes democracy without a class analysis is thus inherently limited in its usefulness. In reality, the question of economics is crucial. In capitalist societies, decisions having vast implications for society are left out of democratic control. The management and distribution of social resources are left in private hands, and managed for profit; furthermore, the exigencies of the marketplace result in some decisions being made without any conscious decision whatsoever. Thus the vast majority of people, largely working people who sell their labor on the marketplace, are without any say in the economic decisions that affect their lives.

Holt briefly dismisses the notion of a class analysis by referring to the Stalinist dictatorship as a failed attempt at "expressing the will of the proletariat". However, it is interesting to note that Marx and Engels looked to the Paris Commune of 1871 as the model for a proletarian society. Engels described in his 1891 Postscript to Marx's essay "The Civil War in France" the way he envisioned establishing "a new and really democratic state". Among the characteristics of such a "really democratic" state that he saw in the Paris Commune were the following:

In this first place, it filled all posts,— administrative, judicial, and educational,— by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion.

The goal of eliminating "place-hunting and careerism" among politicians was thus seen as a key element of such a democratic form of government. Eliminating the privileges of power, both by the right of recall at any time and by eliminating government jobs as a conduit to wealth, are seen as ways of transferring power more democratically directly to the people.

The goal of giving people democratic control over their lives can only be achieved, I would argue, in the following ways. One is to deconstruct the structures of power. This means that representative government is stripped of all the impediments to full democratic control, and bureaucracy is eliminated as much as possible. In addition, economic and political decisions should be merged into a single democratic process, in which working people own the means of production democratically while also exercising the most direct and democratic control over economic and political decisionmaking.

The Socialist Party USA describes this conceptually as "radical democracy" as the cornerstone of democratic socialism. As the party's statement of principles puts it, in its section on a "Democratic Revolution From Below":

No oppressed group has ever been liberated except by its own organized efforts to overthrow its oppressors. A society based on radical democracy, with power exercised through people's organizations, requires a socialist transformation from below. People's organizations cannot be created by legislation, nor can they spring into being only on the eve of a revolution.

They can grow only in the course of popular struggles, especially those of women, labor, and minority groups. The Socialist Party works to build these organizations democratically.

The process of struggle profoundly shapes the ends achieved. Our tactics in the struggle for radical democratic change reflect our ultimate goal of a society founded on principles of egalitarian, non-exploitative and non-violent relations among all people and between all peoples.

To be free we must create new patterns for our lives and live in new ways in the midst of a society that does not understand and is often hostile to new, better modes of life. Our aim is the creation of a new social order, a society in which the commanding value is the infinite preciousness of every woman, man and child.

It seems to me that unless we achieve this kind of radical democracy, then the ostensible "democracy" that is said to characterize American society (and other societies) is little but a charade, masquerading what is at a fundamental level a real lack of democratic involvement by the people in the decisions that affect their lives.

Posted by The Haikuist on Tuesday, April 25, 2006 at 10:59 AM | Permalink