November 22, 2009
Some Ways to Think About Democracy
Over at Stumbling and Mumbling, Chris Dillow has recently been expressing various degrees of scepticism about the virtues and values of democracy. For example yesterday he wrote that:
“Of course, in a democracy irrational and illiberal preferences have as much weight as rational ones. Which, for some of us, is another argument against democracy.”
Now, I’m not sure to what extent Chris is being tongue in cheek in his expressed dissatisfactions with democracy. But I get the feeling that in these sorts of short closing remarks an awful lot of complicated stuff about what democracy is and why it might have value gets neglected. And that seems to me not only an intellectual shame, but slightly troubling. So this is primarily for you, Chris. But it’s also for everyone else who uses this very strange word “democracy”, to make many big points about many difficult things – whether you realise you’re making such points or not.
Let’s begin by recalling with John Dunn - as expressed in his excellent little book Setting the People Free - that democracy typically refers to at least two things. Firstly it’s a system of government, which has a decision-making procedure embedded within it. (Notice straight away that we’re into complications: what kind of system of government? America is rather different to the UK in institutional respects, after all. And how are “democratic” decisions made? Typically: by representative agents, selected by an enfranchised group that usually covers the majority of the adult population of a given territory. But what about referenda?).
Secondly, “democracy” also refers to a value. Democracy is generally treated – in political sloganeering, impassioned discourse and expansionist American foreign policy - as the only legitimate form of government in the world. But more than that, people frequently want to say that “democracy” has value; that a system, or procedure, or consequence which is “democratic” is better than one which is ”undemocratic” (a word typically employed, it’s worth noting, as a slur).
So, when we chuck around the term “democracy”, we’re chucking around references to at least two broad categories of things, which are themselves immensely complicated. Oh, and there’s also a little historical puzzle to consider too: apart from a brief, intermittent 100 year experiment in Ancient Athens from (very roughly) 440-322 BC, for all of history until 1789 AD (the year of the French Revolution), almost nobody thought democracy was a good idea. Indeed, even the authors of that great founding text of modern American Government - The Federalist Papers – were explicit in that work that they were certainly not founding a “democracy”, but a “republic” (from which to construct an “American empire”). Yet nowadays “democracy” is the only legitimate dog in town. A strange story indeed, you might think. But that’s a tale for another day.
Anyway, another man who thought democracy meant at least two things (and quite possibly more) was my personal intellectual hero, Alexis de Tocqueville. After travelling to America in the early 19th Century on a compare and contrast mission to discover if American democracy could ever be emulated in post-Revolution, post-Napoleon, total-mess-of-a-country France, Tocqueville wrote the splendidly enormous book Democracy in America. In that he noticed that democracy seemed to be not just a form of government – Americans voting in their presidential elections, for their state representatives, attending their local town hall meetings etc - but also about a social condition of society. American democracy was all about “equality of conditions”; that in the USA there was no “aristocratic” class, deemed to be intrinsically superior to the masses and bestowed with legal privilege accordingly. Rather, everyone was equal in legal – and crucially, social* – status. Democracy was intimately bound up with notions of equality and American people themselves were thoroughly conditioned by this belief in pervasive egalitarianism (even if the egalitarian picture got much messier the deeper one delved).
It’s worth mentioning Tocqueville not just to highlight that “democracy” may be a much trickier concept than typically assumed, but because his reflections serve as an entry point for my first comment upon why “democracy” might be a desirable thing to have. Tocqueville – you must understand – didn’t particularly like democracy. He thought it produced mediocre men who lived in mediocre times, (the grand aristocratical endeavours of the ancient world, for example, were finished – and that was to be lamented). Having said that, Tocqueville could see that democracy brought some considerably and important benefits, albeit strangely paradoxical ones.
There was no doubt for Tocqueville that democracy returned politicians of poor quality, who tended to enact laws of likewise poor substance. Looked at in isolation, this appeared a mark against the democratic system. But Tocqueville observed that the great upshot of democratic mediocrity was that it likewise didn’t produce terrible politicians who enacted terrible laws (or if it did, such politicians were quickly kicked out, and the laws quickly repealed). Under democracy, there would be no Napoleons conquering their neighbours in great flourishing sweeps of military grandeur - but likewise, there would be no catastrophic retreat from Moscow, and humiliating defeat of the state, with thousands of dead soldiers and innocents strewn across a continent.
For Tocqueville, this was the great paradox of democracy: a crappy system returning crappy politicians making crappy laws, which somehow managed to be the best system because when summed together all that crappiness worked. It worked, especially, to the best advantages of all the ordinary people, living under the equality of conditions. Whilst creating many mediocre men and perhaps no great ones, democracy ensured the former weren’t sacrificed in their thousands to the mad-cap schemes of the unrestrained latter.
In this sense Tocqueville’s observation (which is much more detailed and nuanced in his text than I’ve been able to render it here) is not a million miles away from Winston Churchill’s remark that:
“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried”
Churchill’s observation should ring especially true in the early 21st Century, as we look back not just upon the feudal and aristocratic systems that preceded modern democracy, but upon the very fresh graves of Nazism, Stalinism and Maoism of the last century. So, substantive ethical point to think about number one: democracy (whatever that may actually mean), appears to be much better at not ruining the lives of the people who have to live under it than any other form of social-political organisation yet tried.
If you’re having thoughts about “enlightened dictators” who could avoid the worst excesses of tyranny and deliver us from the incompetence of democracy, well here’s another substantive point: your thoughts pertain to the fantasy of an unspecificed system never known, tested or tried. Democracy, on the other hand, has shown that whilst it can produce Richard Nixons and George Bushes, it doesn’t seem to produce Joseph Stalins. And that really does matter, as Tocqueville was able to observe even before the horrors of the 20th Century gave us pause for thought.
Switching focus, here’s some other things to consider. Democracy – if it is to be such – only really works when certain things are granted to the democratic population. I’m here thinking of certain “rights” which look like a pretty necessary prerequisites of genuine democratic society (in terms of government and social arrangements, again conveniently ignoring the complications). For example, it seems fairly obvious that for a “democracy” to exist, we need free and fair elections. This means that amongst other things, the government cannot control all the media in a given nation state, or prevent the population from associating and organising politically. Free and fair elections require freedom of the press, and freedom of association. These freedoms – and rights of the citizen body to exercise them – are built into the framework of functioning democracies. Of course, there will always be imperfections, failures, limitations and complications. No system is perfect. But if you value freedom of speech, press and association, then you really ought to value democracy – or at least think about the fact that no other system known or tried by humanity has ever managed to deliver these things.
So far, however, our thoughts have all been “instrumental”: about how democracy (whatever it might be) is valuable because it leads to other things we value being brought about. But is it possible that democracy is just good in itself, and not because of the consequences it creates or promotes?
It looks likely that the answer is yes. For consider, if a democracy is to be such, it seems like something pretty fundamental is going to have to obtain with regards to the citizen class of that democracy: they must all have equal rights to participate in the political process. This seems to be just a fact about democracy. If you exclude a portion of the population from the right to participate, on some arbitrary grounds (e.g. race, sex, religion), then that doesn’t look like a democratic government or society, even if some sections of the population are considered (full) citizens and allowed to participate, e.g. by voting or standing for election. (So yes, I don’t think Britain was properly a democracy until women were granted the suffrage, and yes, the example of Ancient Athens with it’s male-only suffrage and slave class raises very interesting questions).
Of course, some limits on who can participate will have to be imposed – under 18s, say, or maybe criminals. But the exclusions are the exceptions, and made with stated justifications; the default is that every citizen has equal right to participation, in lieu of countervailing considerations. And that to me looks like an intrinsically good thing about democracy. That it is ethically desirable for a state to extent equal rights to all citizen members, simply on the basis of their being citizens.
If equality doesn’t rock your boat, that’s not so big a problem. Think about this: democracies typically extend equal rights to everyone, and enshrine them in law. This means that everybody under democracy is treated equally before the law (at least in theory, though sadly often not in practice). The result is that democracy operates upon the principle that citizens have intrinsic equal worth vis-a-vis each other, and also vis-a-vis the institutions of the state, at least as far as the application of laws is concerned. Because of equality before the law, under democracy the state must consider all citizens as equal when exerting its power and influence over them or adjudicating between them, meaning that all citizens are deemed to have equal intrinsic worth.
If you’re an egalitarian, the equality bit is an extra bonus. But even if you’re not, you may think that a system of government that enshrines the intrinsic worth of all individuals, based simply on their being born a human citizen (and not, say, because of their race or religion) has a great intrinsic value. And this point still stands even if we enumerate all the ways in which existing democracies often fail to enshrine or uphold the intrinsic (equal) worth of all citizens: democracy does a damn better job on this score than any other system of governmental-social arrangement every witnessed or tried. And again, that counts for a lot.
Don’t get me wrong, I know I’ve brushed aside a whole heap of contradictions and difficulties. I’m not trying to say that democracy is perfect (we all know it isn’t!), or that everything I’ve said is uncontroversial or can’t be refined or challenged (almost all of it is and can). What I’ve tried to do is sketch some basic reasons why democracy is complicated, and why some of its potential values need to be considered carefully.
Want more? Well you could do a lot worse than buy the second edition of Adam Swift’s excellent little book Political Philosophy, A Beginners Guide for Students and Politicians. (You must buy the second edition, as the democracy chapter is absent from the first).
–
* Ok, Ok, it’ a bit more complicated than that. But this is just an intro sketch.
Grace said,
November 22, 2009 at 9:47 pm
“….intrinsically good thing about democracy. That it is ethically desirable for a state to extent equal rights to all citizen members, simply on the basis of their being citizens”
i guess so. but why do these rights have to include the political right of being able to vote? from the perspective of the individual it doesn’t seem like the right to vote is particularly important, since the probability of your vote being decisive is negligible. it’s certainly *much* less valuable to me than other rights, eg freedom of speech/belief. (i probably will either spoil my ballot or not vote at all). i have barely any power to rule myself (in the sense of choosing my laws etc) – i don’t see the massive normative significance in the fact that decisions are made by millions of other people rather than thousands, or hundreds, or tens.
also, i think your distinction between arbitrary and justified exceptions to the right to vote is a bit weak. there are plenty of justifications that could be given for not allowing huge sections of the population to vote – like those who don’t own property, those under a certain IQ etc. now we might not think these arguments are very good. but who judges whether a justification from stopping someone vote is a good one? what even are the criteria? if a certain set of rules fails to treat people as equal, deserving of respect perhaps – but again, who should decide this? the people being stripped of the vote may give a very different answer from the people doing the stripping, which answer is the right one, deciding what is and what isn’t democratic?
Paul Sagar said,
November 22, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Grace,
Buy Adam Swift’s book.
The post was an invitation to have a think about some issues. Like I said in the OP, I know I’m cheating on some points, and moving too quick. But my purpose here, surprisingly, isnt to provide detailed argument on the vast complex of difficult questions the issue of democracy raises, but to sketch how many issues are raised.
Grace said,
November 22, 2009 at 11:35 pm
I’ve read it already
Paul Sagar said,
November 22, 2009 at 11:53 pm
Erm, then maybe read it again? More slowly? He covers properly the stuff i’ve only sketched.
On your point about arbitrariness, I think you’ve misunderstood me, by the way. It’s precisely my point that BECAUSE under democracy we tend NOT to have people passing a priori judgement on entire groups of people thus excluding them from the democratic process (etc) that democracy embodies some intrinsic values, e.g. that people aren’t excluded on the say-so of others’ judgements, when those others don’t appear to have any clear-cut basis or justification for so judging.
When we do exclude some people, it’s for stated reasons that show them to be specific exceptions backed up with reasons that are compatible with the idea of everyone having automatic initial right to be a member of the citizen body – so e.g. under18s can’t vote now, but one day they can; criminals can’t vote, but they used to be able to and they forfeited their right etc.
What we don’t say in democracy is “you can’t vote because your IQ is below the threshold; you fail to meet citizen-class status as a matter of what you are (as oppose to what you’ve done, or will become)”.
So the distinction to me looks perfectly sensible, and if you’re trying to use the point against me that it becomes impossible to say who is qualified to make these judgements about others’ ability/right to participate then that looks especially confused because that’s a reply to the anti-democrats, not me…
Paul Sagar said,
November 23, 2009 at 8:42 am
OK Grace, perhaps I’m misreading you.
Are you trying to say that it is equally arbitrary for me to prefer default universal enfranchisement as it is for somebody else (the anti-democrat) to prefer enfrachisement only for men, or for whites, or for high-IQs?
If that’s what you mean, then I resist: my grounds for prefering universal default enfranchisement are that this reflects the equal worth of all individuals, and the good of likewise extending them equal rights. That’s cos I think people are equal, and that accordingly they should have equal ability/right to participate and equal right to equal treatment by the laws. I also think (instrumental point), by the way, that granting this sort of equality will make everyone’s lives go better. And it matters if everyone’s lives go better (and not just the lives of some at the expense of others), because I think of people as being fundamentally equal and having equal worth in their lives going better.
So for me it’s not “arbitrary” to prefer this sort of equality; it’s arbitrary to exclude people on grounds that deny that equality – e.g. race, gender, intelligence.
Now, you might reply that I’m begging the question about what is valuable. To which I reply: no, those are my values. If you don’t share them, then perhaps democracy isn’t for you. But have a careful think about what denying the kind of equality I espouse looks like it entails: racism, sexism, anti-thickism, or whatever. Most people, in my experience, don’t want to commit to those things. And I think they’re right not to. Insofar as they don’t so commit, that looks to me like they should be compelled towards democracy over any other sort of political-social arrangement.
p.s. sorry for being snappy last night.
Grace said,
November 23, 2009 at 8:05 pm
you weren’t snappy, i probably should read it again, it was ages ago and i don’t remember it that well
your first interpretation was more what i meant, sorry for being so unclear. i was trying to say that lots of arguments trying to exclude groups whose exclusion you’d think arbitrary (eg low IQ) can be couched in the language of “specific exceptions backed up with reasons that are compatible with the idea of everyone having automatic initial right to be a member of the citizen body”.
eg. gay people can’t vote, but “they used to be able to and they forfeited their right” – we’ve already established the principle that the community can decide to exclude certain people from voting because of things they do (you think taking the vote from prisoners is compatible with democracy)
also. people who haven’t attained a certain level of education can’t vote. “they had every opportunity to attend school, they had the same automatic initial vote as anyone else, but chose a particular course of action which disqualifies them”
and both these examples seem obviously undemocratic. so it’s not enough to give the kind of justification you asked for. i suppose this is a bit of a dodgy point though, since you could easily have just gone into a bit more detail on the requirements of the justification necessary to take away someone’s vote, and this post was meant to be “an intro sketch”
i kindof do agree with what you say in response to your second interpretation of me, lots of people have pointed out that all baselines from which deviations must be morally non-arbitrary are themselves morally arbitrary, though i didn’t used to think it mattered since i had a fairly strong egalitarian intuition, now i don’t so much (eg after reading frankfurt’s equality as a moral ideal)
Paul Sagar said,
November 23, 2009 at 8:28 pm
One reason the Frankfurt stuff would bother you is if you think your moral sentiments need to be grounded in rationalist bases that can be universalised and which all other agents must accept.
You might find his thoughts less troublesome if, e.g. you think like Hume and Smith (see: Theory of Moral Sentiments) that this isn’t what ethics is about at all.
But then, maybe Frankfurt has other good points. Jeremy Waldron in Locke, God and Equality reckons it’s pretty much impossible to be an egalitarian without believing in god (hint: there’s a get-out card for you there, that I can’t use).
Personally, Frankfurt doesn’t really bother me. These are my ethical sentiments, they define who I am. I plug for equality, as a general rule. So what if, when we get down and dirty into the ethical deep waters, things get confusing and hard. Who ever said that our ethical commitments and sentiments were going to be neat and transparent all the way down?
Frankfurt bothers some people more than others. He doesn’t really bother me. It’s a temperament thing, I think.
Grace said,
November 23, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Don’t you feel a bit uncomfortable sometimes that
(a) you can’t reasonably expect others to share your fundamental moral convictions, eg re equality. you can’t even explain *why* you have the ethical sentiments you do, let alone give a good argument for them AND
(b) you are prepared to use force against others to promote these values (through the state)
how worth reading/buying is “locke, god and equality”? should i read locke first?
Paul Sagar said,
November 24, 2009 at 1:28 am
“However it is immensely moving when a mature man – no matter whether old or young in years – is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: ‘Here I stand; I can do no other.’ That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position.”
- Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation
(Of course you should read Locke first. You should never read a secondary text before a primary, because it will force you to read that text through somebody else’s spectacles. And not only is that a great intellectual shame, because the great texts are wonderful in themselves and deserve to be read themselves for the experience this can bring, but it’s also dangerous: you will pick up other people’s prejudices, and not least, false or bad interpretations. Though I seriously suggest you wait a couple of years to read Locke and for pitty’s sake please leave the political theory alone. There is so much more out there to see and live and read and feel…)
Rob said,
November 24, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Just wanted to say that I loathe Tocqueville.
Paul Sagar said,
November 24, 2009 at 3:04 pm
On what possible grounds?!
Rob said,
November 25, 2009 at 2:22 pm
On the grounds that a) he systematically over-estimates the virtue of aristocrats and b) systematically under-estimates the achievements of democratic states and individuals, and as such, is an apologist for a class of parasitic rentiers. Or at least he does in ‘Democracy in America’, which on top of this is a ridiculously repetitive and over-written book. This dislike may be partly fuelled by contrarianism. Tocqueville couldn’t, contra apparently evey political scientist to write on him, “predict well”; because he thought that democracies were incapable of sustaining high culture, he thought no American would ever write a great novel, and the fact that on any reasonable assessment, plenty of great novels have been written by Americans seems to me to cast rather a lot of doubt on the more general claim Tocqueville thought entailed its impossibility, a more general claim central to his scepticism about democracy in general. Although in his mitigation he does at one point compare lawyers to Pharaonic Egyptian priests.
Peter said,
November 25, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Grace,
I’ll admit, I haven’t read Frankfurt’s paper in a few years, but I hardly think it gives you cause to give up (or start to give up) on egalitarianism. IIRC, he shows (fairly successfully) that arguments that go from diminishing marginal utility don’t work, and that a particular argument of Dworkin’s doesn’t work.
But so what? Dworkin no longer uses that argument (his equality of resources is more nuanced than saying “some people have bugger all stuff”, which is Frankfurt’s charge against him). So I’m not sure Frankfurt really touches luck egalitarianism – ie. that brute inequalities are unfair. And of course, it doesn’t touch Rawls either. So it seems that at least two very respectably egalitarianisms aren’t really affected by Frankfurt.
(I share your worries about not being able to justify our politics to others)
Paul Sagar said,
November 26, 2009 at 8:36 am
Rob,
Whilst it’s true that Tocqueville got it wrong about democracy being incompatible with high cultural achievement (though perhaps it’s fair to say that whilst there have been many very very good American books, America has yet to give us a Shakespeare, a Goethe, a Proust or a Joyce. But then that doesn’t prove Tocqueville’s point because the last two wrote under “equality of conditions”), he did make some other interesting predictions. That America and Russia would come to dominate the world and undertake a global confrontation. That the commercialism embedded in American democracy would lead to the rise of moneyed demagogues and the political stupidity of the self-interested, self-absorbed masses. Didn’t look that far off…
As regards his love of aristocracy: partly, bear in mind who he’s writing DinA for; the French bourgeoise and (what was left of the) aristocratic classes. These people needed to get it through their heads that democracy was a) a fact of life and b) had some redeeming features, so c) get used to it. Nonetheless, part of the placation would have been to smooth the feathers by confessing that this was loss of a golden age. But then, Tocqueville thought the golden age had been slipping away from hundreds of years. And as a young French aristocrat in the shadow of the revolution, that’s no surprise.
But I find it strange that you, 170 years later, are upset by his aristocratic sympathies. That you apply ethical and political sentiments born of a life spent under thriving and established democracy, with all the conditioning of your values and concepts that this will bring, back onto an early 19th Century thinker who didn’t share them, and find them wanting. I mean, do you dislike Hobbes because he’s an apologist for tyranny? Or Locke because he builds a weird protestant Christianity into his political theory which nobody now would really subscribe to?
Looks like an Oxford analytic political philosophy thing to me. I’ve migrated, and my adopted tribe is suspicious of these sorts of timeless comparisons…:P
Paul Sagar said,
November 26, 2009 at 8:38 am
“(I share your worries about not being able to justify our politics to others)”
Weird Rawlsian-Kantian rationalism.*
Stop trying to put us all in the original position, you dirty bastard.
–
* Of course, I want to be able to justify my politics to others lots of the time. It just doesn’t really bother me that I won’t be able to do it all of the time. That just looks like an obvious fact of life, and a silly thing to get upset about.
Ste For Sure said,
November 26, 2009 at 10:43 am
“That just looks like an obvious fact of life, and a silly thing to get upset about.”
haha, i said almost this exact sentence to someone, talking about objective moral truth the other day. “why are you worrying about a fact of life?” silly people.
Rob said,
November 26, 2009 at 2:31 pm
If you’re going to criticize my judgment of Tocqueville for applying universal standards, then it’s odd to locate those universal standards in a particular context; the judgment which tries to get me out of my time and place is the one which urges I pay attention to the context in which Tocqueville was writing, and not my own. More, is it a timeless, universal rule that one should try to contextualise writers, even when one’s context doesn’t give one that rule? Either have your cake or eat it. And don’t try and eat cake you either had to eat or keep but have already scoffed by actually trying to defend Tocqueville on grounds that I ought to be able to accept; after all, he’s just writing in a different time, isn’t he? Particularly don’t try and defend him by pointing out that he was able to mobilize the age-old complaint about democratic demagogues, or pointing out that he was able to observe that the Western World’s two largest and then rapidly expanding land powers might at some point come into conflict, since, regardless of context, the ability to reproduce the traditional, self-serving tropes of one’s class and to do basic geography are not sufficient to show that someone is a great political thinker. I’m sorry for being snappy, but you did ask why I loathed Tocqueville.
Paul Sagar said,
November 26, 2009 at 3:13 pm
“If you’re going to criticize my judgment of Tocqueville for applying universal standards, then it’s odd to locate those universal standards in a particular context;”
It’s odd to note that a given thinker’s purported universal standards were, in fact, context-situated, and furthermore, context-dependent, despite the auther in question’s thinking they were universal? That seems like a silly thing to want to say. Aristotle thought some people were by nature slaves. This was, obviously, a product of his context as a Macedonian living in Ancient Athens. He thought, however, that it was a universal truth. There doesn’t seem to be anything odd about noting that what he took to be universal was, in fact, context dependent and non-universal (and incidentally, not true either).
Nor does there seem anything odd in thinking that it would be peculiar if somebody in the 21st Century got especially worked up about Aristotle’s beliefs about slavery. (Which isn’t to say someone would have to like them, or think they were in any way right. But from that, to step further and “loathe them does seem a little odd).
“the judgment which tries to get me out of my time and place is the one which urges I pay attention to the context in which Tocqueville was writing, and not my own.”
Indeed. This would seem like a sensible strategy if we’re going to find out about what Tocqueville thought, and not simply about our reactions to his writings, which are filtered through the prism of experiences which are likely to have been significantly different to his.
“More, is it a timeless, universal rule that one should try to contextualise writers, even when one’s context doesn’t give one that rule?”
Whoever said anything about times universal rules? I, personally, was more thinking about sensible strategies for making sure we can distinguish our interpretations (conditioned by our contexts) from the meanings that past writers may have intended to impart (conditioned by their context) which may – or may not – be different. But what does “even when one’s context doesn’t give one that rule” mean? It would seem to me that, insofar as our ability to understand anything is predicated upon the experiences and frames of understanding we already possess (and this seems unavoidably to be the case) when approaching (say) a text, we should be careful when dealing with writings that may (but may not) have been predicated upon different experiences and different frames of understanding, which would render the text to have a different intended meaning in the author’s original impartation.
“Either have your cake or eat it.”
But I don’t see why on earth there is a dilemma for me here. I pointed to the fact it seemed strange to get emotionally aggravated by Tocqueville, given his different contextual location, and from there you’ve gone on to attempt to make both a methodological critique of my position, and claim that you are thuswise vindicated in your emotional aggravation. Bizarrely, you seem to think this results in a dilemma for me. But as the above has tried to explain, i’m just suggesting sensible strategies for delineating our meanings and understandings from what could potentially be different meanings and understandings embedded in past authors’ works, which may in turn have an impact upon one’s emotional reactions (and judgements). That authors make claims to universality which turn out, upon reflection, not to be universal (despite the authors’ thinking they were) looks to me something very interesting, but not like something that leads to incoherence or dilemma on my behalf.
The rest of your comment looks not so much “snappy” as “ranty”, and appears to be aimed at a fairly undefined target, IMO. It also looks confused. You seem to be slipping away from claiming that you are (methodologically?) justified in being emotionally aggravated by Tocqueville, and claiming that I am impaled upon some sort of (methodological) dilemma, towards you warning me not to use certain examples to attempt to disprove a different hypothesis: namely, that Tocqueville was good at predicting the future. Except, that looks to me like a separate issue, and I don’t understand what that’s got to do with the cake I’ve allegedly scoffed.
Grace said,
November 26, 2009 at 6:31 pm
“a silly thing to get upset about”
I wouldn’t get upset about not being able to justify my views to others if they were just my own private views, with no impact on their life. eg my religious beliefs – of course i’m always very happy to discuss them with people, but i don’t think they’re facts that can be deduded straighforwardly from correct premises that everyone knows – unsurprising that other reasonable, rational people don’t accept christian teachings. but i wouldn’t dream of using force against people to get them, for example, to refrain from committing adultery.
now i haven’t read and thought about this issue enough – i need to (at some point in the future, i know i’m meant to be cutting back on theory, which i can’t understand properly ;D) – but it just seems unacceptable to me to used force on people for reasons they can’t even engage with. isn’t stuff about rawls and the overlapping consensus relevant here? -but (again, haven’t read enough) always seemed a bit of a quick fix, eg excluding opponents of abortion on the grounds that they hold unreasonable comprehensive
re frankfurt: i was prompted to think by points like this: egalitarianism “influences them to take too seriously, as though it were a matter of great moral concern, a question that is inherently rather in-significant and not directly to the point, namely, how their economic status compares with the economic status of others”. i can see how equality of distribution in positional goods can be justified, but what about goods that aren’t positional in the slightest (eg “pure utility experiences”)?
Peter said,
November 27, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Grace,
Any sensible egalitarianism will have a pareto principle built in. The thought about non-positional goods is that if Jones has 100 and Smith has 10, we can (maybe) take some of Jones’ and give them to Smith, thereby making Smith better off. Obviously, this makes sense if we’re prioritarians (Frankfurt’s view doesn’t really touch prioritarianism).
And if we’re luck egalitarians, all we have to say is that Jones doesn’t deserve the extra stuff (obviously this is partly an empirical question). Like I say, I really don’t see how Frankfurt threatens any sensible egalitarianism.
Frankfurt thinks that the egalitarian impulse is of no great moral concern. But that’s just obviously false. It really isn’t that implausible that undeserved inequalities (eg. one’s that accrue from being fortunate enough to have popped out of the right womb) are unfair. The moral starting points behind luck egalitarianism are in fact incredibly plausible.
Less initially attractive (but still very attractive imo) is Rawls’ thought that the coercive rules we live under must be justifiable to all, that even those at the bottom should be in a position where they can bear the strains of commitment. Yes, this is more complex than the impulse behind luck egalitarianism, but so what? It still seems pretty clearly false that Rawls is just blowing trivial things up to be of “great moral importance”.
Rob said,
November 27, 2009 at 4:16 pm
I see no argument that you can make to me that I ought to be more sensitive to the contexts in which Tocqueville wrote which does not contradict itself by failing, itself, to be sensitive to the context in which I am writing. This is the cake you cannot have and eat. Either, I am entitled to assess Tocqueville by my universal standards, or you are not entitled to assess my assessment of Tocqueville by yours, since they are not mine. As for scoffing the cake you’ve already both had and eaten, presumably if you think there’s anything to be said in Tocqueville defence on the substance, you’re prepared to acknowledge that there are some standards it makes sense to apply to his work, whether or not one happens to be a early nineteenth century French aristocrat or not. Presumably that means I can perfectly sensibly think and say that he’s profoundly inegalitarian and makes enough predictions that you’d expect some of them to come right, and consequently think that the contemporary reputation of Democracy in America tells us much more about American self-mythologising than anything else.
Selected Reading 29/11/09 « Left Outside said,
November 29, 2009 at 6:56 pm
[...] Paul Sagar discusses some ways to think about Democracy. [...]
The Limits of Democracy « Left Outside said,
November 29, 2009 at 8:42 pm
[...] Paul Sagar has an interesting post on democracy and argues that while democracy is a process and a system of Government, it is also a value. It is assumed that democratic is always better than undemocratic. [...]
Democracy and minarets « Though Cowards Flinch said,
November 30, 2009 at 10:54 am
[...] reading: Left Outside (edited version at LibCon), Paul Sagar, Old Holborn, Jim Jepps, Methodist Preacher and Derek Wall. Possibly related posts: (automatically [...]
Denial Industry « Bad Conscience said,
December 9, 2009 at 9:09 am
[...] recently wrote about the potential values of democracy. But it’s worth doing some critical reflection on whether societies in which [...]
Simon Cowell and the Difficulties of Democracy « Bad Conscience said,
December 15, 2009 at 12:49 am
[...] to begin to see just how dark and messy actual democratic practice is, in stark contrast to the fluffy ideals I recently [...]
2009: Blogging Year in Review « Though Cowards Flinch said,
December 31, 2009 at 9:13 am
[...] to co-opt Left history, the No Platform Policy/Question Time or the question of Swiss democracy and banning minarets. I like to think our posts can be read as prime socialist/left-liberal answers to the questions of [...]
The Universal Panacea « Bad Conscience said,
April 24, 2010 at 1:01 pm
[...] I’ve remarked before, democracy is in many ways the modern cardinal political virtue. Despite being synonymous with [...]
Case Study « Bad Conscience said,
May 20, 2010 at 9:42 am
[...] Philosophy, Politics at 9:42 am by Paul Sagar I’ve written a fair few blog posts about how difficult a concept democracy is. In particular, I’ve drawn attention to the fact that “democracy” [...]
The Conservative Left « Bad Conscience said,
August 31, 2010 at 12:57 pm
[...] triumphed in the course of history simply because it was right to triumph. We don’t tend to pause and consider just how slippery a concept “democracy” really is. Nor do we often reflect [...]
Towering Over the Dilletantes « Bad Conscience said,
January 5, 2011 at 7:34 am
[...] however, this does illustrate a point I was getting at recently: that democracy (whatever that complex thing turns out to be in the end) may not match up cleanly with one’s other ethical and political [...]
Kylie said,
January 31, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Adele, the reason it might fit in with notions of social justice is that if working class people have managed to do well enough to do right-to-buy on their council house, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be allowed to leave it to their equally working class kids if it happens to have reached a value of over £285k.The problem with the response here is that, just as with our 1992 tax higher rate income tax proposals, most Labour people are blind to the aspirations of the poor and working class people we are supposed to represent. We tend to forget that even people who currently don’t pay higher rate tax or inheritence tax aspire and expect to be that well off – loads of people who were not higher rate tax payers voted against us in 1992 because they thought that one day they might be and would be hit by our proposed increase. Andrea – the only reason why this has generated headlines about a split is because of the intemperate reaction to it. A more considered reaction would have been “Treasury always keeps taxes under review as the demographics of the nation change. Mr Byers has floated an interesting idea, it will be for him to see if there is support for it in the National Policy Forum process etc.”
rhlioz said,
February 3, 2012 at 5:45 pm
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faigdg said,
February 6, 2012 at 8:27 am
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