Democracy, the people, and elites

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1 Democracy, the people, and elites GJ Boris Allan A simple, and popular, definition of democracy can be taken from a famous speech:... this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth. Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address (19 November 1863) However, is democracy more than a government of the people, by the people, for the people? Can a democratic government of the mass of people, chosen by the majority of the people, be for all the people? some are wary of what the mass of other people might do: Can we help feeling that under the rule of the masses the State will endeavour to crush the independence of the individual and group, and thus definitely spoil the harvest of the future? José Ortega y Gasset, The revolt of the masses (1930, translated 1932) Looking at definitions of democracy does not seem to help us understand what is democracy, or what makes a democratic state. For example, democracy has been variously defined in a positive way as: The political orientation of those who favour government by the people or by their elected representatives A political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them The doctrine that the numerical majority of an organized group can make decisions binding on the whole group And we could go on. 1

2 Examining positive views of a notion is not always most useful and, sometimes, negative views can provide more insight. Start with a less than positive view about democracy from an Argentinian writer: I know I annoy everybody in expressing opinions about political matters, but perhaps I might be pardoned for adding that I do not believe in democracy, that curious abuse of statistics. Jorge Luis Borges (1976) 1 Borges had received a prize from General Augusto Pinochet, not long after the General s military coup against Chile s President Allende (not a very politically appropriate move in some circles). Borges felt Pinochet was saving the Chilean people from themselves a result of his experiences in Argentina, where authoritarian Peronist governments had, he believed, shown that democracies could produce authoritarian governments. Later it became clear to most that Pinochet was no liberator, he was a dictator pure and simple. Borges s problem was summed up by Edwin Williamson:... how do you create a democracy when the largest sector of the electorate will elect a totalitarian leader who is ideologically hostile to liberal democracy? Must one accept the will of the people regardless of principles and values? Edwin Williamson, Borges: A Life (2004) Borges did not trust the electorate to reinstate democracy, and he thought change must be instigated by an unelected elite of leaders. In his elitist mode Borges noted that most people did not think a majority of people could have valid opinions about mathematics (or literature), and so he continued how could the majority (the mass) have valid opinions about politics (a much more delicate subject)? John Calhoun a proponent of slavery, and a key thinker in creating the environment that led to the secession of the Confederate states in the US civil war is reported to have warned: 1 My translation of Me sé del todo indigno de opinar en materia política, pero tal vez me sea perdonado añadir que descreo de la democracia, ese curioso abuso de la estadística. (Prólogo de La moneda de hierro, 1976) 2

3 People do not understand liberty or majorities, he remarked. The will of a majority is the will of a rabble. Progressive democracy is incompatible with liberty. Those who study after this fashion are yet in the hornbook, the a, b, c of governments. Democracy is leveling this is inconsistent with true liberty. Anarchy is more to be dreaded than despotic power. It is the worst tyranny. The best government is that which draws least from the people, and is scarcely felt, except to execute justice, and to protect the people from animal violation of law. John C Calhoun, quoted in John S. Jenkins, Calhoun's Views of Slavery, His Character, and His Personality (1831) A different kind of elitist, but still an elitist, Vladimir Lenin proposed an elite corps of intellectuals to lead the masses in the revolution, pointing out that Marx and Engels were themselves of the bourgeois intelligentsia no [revolutionary] movement can be durable without a stable organisation of leaders. Lenin knew that, by emphasizing an elite, he was disregarding the masses, and in so doing (some say) he was showing contempt for the working classes: I know that exception will be taken to my undemocratic views, but I shall reply to this altogether unintelligent objection later on. Vladimir Illyich Lenin, What is to Be Done? (1902) Not having the benefit of reading Lenin (he was not born), the leaders of an earlier revolutionary movement justified their revolution by an appeal to an egalitarian ethos: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, US Declaration of Independence (1776) But was the ethos truly egalitarian, or were they just words? Did the authors mean that all people should be treated equally? 3

4 Many disagreed with the claim that all were equal: elitist Calhoun, not surprisingly, was disposed to doubt the correctness of the sentiment contained in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal and he considered the colored population as constituting an inferior race, and that slavery was not a degradation, but had the direct tendency to improve their moral, social, and intellectual condition as reported in Jenkins (1831). Thomas Jefferson was the main author of the declaration, heavily edited by others, and if you look at the groups of people involved the declaration was written by a members of an elite. Members of an elite were, therefore, propounding an egalitarian ethos but did the ethos match reality? For example, in earlier drafts Jefferson had included statements about the evils of slavery, statements which were then removed by others involved, so does this mean he thought that all men, even female slaves, were created equal? It does not seem so, because slave-owner Jefferson, after condemning freed slaves as "pests in society by their idleness", wrote:... [The slaves] amalgamation with any other color produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character can innocently consent. My opinion has ever been that, until more can be done for them, we should endeavor, with those whom fortune has thrown on our hands, to feed and clothe them well, protect them from all ill usage, require such reasonable labor only as is performed voluntarily by freemen, & be led by no repugnancies to abdicate them, and our duties to them. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Coles (1814) If by men we understand mainly property-owning white men, Jefferson obviously felt that slaves were not created equal to men (they were degraded) and so, logically, slaves did not have those unalienable Rights shared by men. And, of course, slaves (and women, and men without property, and others) were being governed without their consent. If you look at the written record, it is chastening to realize that so much twisted thinking has taken place, by so many, for so long, to try to satisfy the declaration s fine words and its obvious insincerity. Some people, of course, told it how it was, or how they thought it should be. Though there were no truly verbatim records of debates in the US 4

5 congress at the time, a speech from Henry Wise (Mr W) was reported in a semi-official publication as follows: Mr. W. observed that, whenever black slavery existed, there was found at least an equality among the white population; but where it had no place, such equality was never to be found. And that was the question to which we must be brought at last. Look at England. He would not compare the white man of the North and the white servants there. The principle of slavery was a levelling principle; it was friendly to equality. Break down slavery, and you would with the same blow destroy the great Democratic principle of equality among men. [A laugh in one portion of the House.] Proceedings of the House of Representatives, 26 January 1842, Congressional Globe 11(10), 1842 [A laugh in one portion of the House.] was in the original transcript, and the laughter probably came from John Quincy Adams and his anti-slavery allies who had been goading pro-slavery congressmen. The anti-slavery allies thought the twisted thinking of Wise and his fellows about moral justifications of slavery ignored economic and white supremacist reasons and the desire to keep white power. Wise seemed oblivious to the human cost of slavery, being more concerned with white equality in the US slave states, an equality that, he said, did not exist in England or the US North. Was there ever an equality among the white population in the US South? there was always a plantation elite, often termed the Southern aristocracy, and there were poor white people. Wise himself was the son of wealthy plantation owners, and he was governor of Virginia during the US civil war. The ratification of the US constitution generated arguments about elitism within the US white male population, with federalists such as James Madison in the vanguard of the elitists. In Federalist 63 Madison examined the composition of the Senate in the proposed constitution: each state would have two senators, and the two senators were to be chosen by that state's government, not directly by its voters. The reason a state s government, not the state s governed, chose senators was elitist. Madison held that the people (the governed) could not be trusted because they might be prey to some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage or simply misled by the artful misrepresentations of 5

6 those with vested interests. Borges s curious abuse of statistics echoed Madison, who wrote: [The people] may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next. James Madison, Federalist Papers 63 (1 March1788) [My emphasis] I wonder, however, if Madison really means liberty, and whether popular liberty is just another way saying the will of the people or public opinion. He writes about people calling for measures they might later regret, or how (in other terms) the will of the people (public opinion) at one time might lead to actions those same people might later regret. Madison s view of popular liberty, thus seems to have little to do with liberty as such and a great deal to do with circumventing what people want. Madison was not talking about liberty, as such, but about electoral processes (which are connected to liberty) using some notion of public opinion: Is there such a thing as the will of the people (and how do we assess it an extremely slippery concept)? Would Madison agree with Borges who claimed that liberty was not important as such because Most of all, the majority do not know how to exercise it. They use it in a stupid way. 2 In an earlier paper Madison (Federalist 10) had noted how the liberty of one faction in the majority could oppress the liberty of a minority But it could not be less folly to abol- 2 My translation of his comments in an interview: No. Yo creo que se le ha dado demasiada importancia. Sobre todo, ya que la mayoría de la gente no sabe ejercerla. La ejercen de un modo bobo. (Bernardo Neustadt, Entrevista a Jorge Luis Borges, Revista Extra XII(133), July 1976) 6

7 ish liberty,which is essential to political life, [just] because it nourishes faction,... his solution was not to abolish liberty but to circumvent its effects (as with the Senate). Again, he was not really talking about liberty, but the idea of all members of a group a faction having the same goal (their will? their opinion?). Madison hoped, in a republic:... to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. James Madison, Federalist Papers 10 (22 November 1787) Madison seems to say in both these papers (10 and 63) that, to obtain the consent of the governed, one should speak of liberty for the governed but in reality let the elite decide. In practical politics, when the elite makes decisions, not only do they have to mouth liberty, but also they might find it prudent to take note of some of the views/opinions held by members of the public (and fain compliance) another important concern to decision makers is how their decisions might affect future public views/opinions. Of course, in contemporary politics it might be crass to wonder who are those people whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and not be prey to temporary or partial considerations. Of course, we could ask whether the elected might begin to act like an elite and begin to control their own re-election. A common complaint in the USA is that it is very difficult to depose an elected member because of the advantages of incumbency (financial contributions, media access, and the like). Large changes in personnel can occur, but they are rare, and even in 2006 a year with relatively large changes in the US House of Representatives about 1 in 13 members ran unopposed (33 out of 435 seats, or about 7.6%). This does not seem healthy. Ultimately the will of the people changed about electing senators,and something was done the governed decided to change the constitution. The 17 th amendment (1913) to 7

8 the US constitution stipulated that there were to be two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof (and not by state governments). 8

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