April 24, 2010
The Universal Panacea
Yesterday Johann Hari declared “a fact that is usually kept obscure: Britain is a country with a large liberal-left majority.” The evidence? Hari assures us that 85% of Britons want greater equality, 58% support “dramatic” minimum wage increases, and the same number want to ditch Trident. 77% want to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, and 53% reckon people are worse when they leave prison than enter it.
We know Hari has problems with statistics. (This is the man who once claimed 90% of the world’s fish have been destroyed by commercial fishing. Certainly the devastation to our oceans has been immense – but just think about what it would mean for 90% of the world’s fish to be gone). Unfortunately for Hari, this latest batch doesn’t straightforwardly translate into a “left liberal majority”. He is conveniently leaving out results from (for example) the British Social Attitudes Survey, which told us that only 21% think unemployment benefits are too low and cause hardship, and that only 38% think the Government should do more to redistribute to the poorest. As the saying goes, you can prove anything with statistics so long as you pick the right ones.
What’s interesting about Hari’s piece, however, is the conspiracy theory running through it. It’s declared loud-and-clear by the title: “The Forces That Have Been Blocking British Democracy Are Becoming Visible in This Election”. Hari’s culprits are foreign-born newspaper-owning billionaires who distort our political discourse to the right, and the electoral system which rewards the entrenched parties of the old right-wing politics.
Of course Hari has something of a point. The extent to which our media is right-wing and pushes an agenda which overwhelmingly benefits a privileged few is profoundly troubling for leftists. And the electoral system certainly needs reform. But what’s interesting in Hari’s piece is the assumption that there is a “real” British democracy that is being supressed by sinister interests and institutional mechanisms. Interests and mechanisms which if over-turned would allow the real democracy to flourish. A real democracy which it just so happens would deliver the left-liberal political values that Hari himself holds. How interesting. How convenient.
As I’ve remarked before, democracy is in many ways the modern cardinal political virtue. Despite being synonymous with anarchy, mob-rule and chaos for most of the past 3,000 years (excepting a 100 year experiment in Ancient Athens, and then 20th Century North America and parts of Europe), it is now seen as the only legitimate political system on the planet – as well as the highest political value. Indeed if you want to smear somebody you don’t like, it’s easy to follow Rod Liddle and tar them as anti-democratic. It’s a guaranteed winner.
It is exceedingly common for people to assume that all their values coincide with democracy. And if those values are at present un-realised, then there must likewise be some unrealised “true” democracy to fight for. There’s a piece up today at Liberal Conspiracy demonstrating exactly this sort of mind-set.
Josh Mostafa wants us to move beyond the false democracy we have now: where voters are not (as we are misleadingly told) “apathetic”, but “disillusioned: they see through the charade, and they feel powerless and angry. It’s not because politicians are ‘not listening’, but because our input as citizens is limited to a choice.”
Apparently we need a more authentic democracy. One that involves lots of civic participation, and a socio-economic base that allows for people to participate frequently in democratic institutions. Some vague reference to the Ancient Athenian practice of assigning public posts by lot is cited in support. Without noting that the Athenians could do this because they had slaves and disenfranchised women to do all their manual labour thus providing a lot of free time for the male citizenry to sit around in the Assembly.
Accordingly Mostafa is pretty thin on details of what the true democracy would look like. A bit like David Cameron and his big society, actually. Something which has apparently been dying on the doorsteps, as voters tell the Tories that they don’t want to run their own services in their free time – they want to walk their dogs and play tennis and have paid-up professionals deliver services for them.
Yet Mostafa is undeterred. The real democracy (still undefined) would apparently be a better Britain. Why else advocate the “complete reinvention of the idea of what it means to be a citizen: a much greater responsibility, a demand on our time”? If the real democracy didn’t promise a better future, why else “can’t [Mostafa] help but look back with admiration on a society that-for all its faults-coined the word ‘idiot’ to mean someone who does not participate”?
But contrary to Hari and Mostafa’s animating assumptions, democracy just doesn’t necessarily track all our values. And it is not always the case that more or more authentic democracy – whatever exactly that might mean – is a panacea for a better society. An excellent illustration of this is provided in Richard Bourke’s book Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas.*
Bourke’s thesis is clear and compelling: that lying behind the Northern Irish “troubles” were rival – and incompatible – understandings of democracy. Loyalists understood democracy as the ratification of institutions and elected governments by simple majority. This was convenient, as the majority of Ulster was protestant and loyalist-leaning – meaning loyalist-leaning protestants dominated politics and manipulated institutions to the advantage of loyalist-leaning protestants.
By contrast, Republican-leaning Catholics were marginalised and disenfranchised by the political set-up of Northern Ireland. For them, a system of elections that kept them in a permanent minority, meant they never had a chance at wielding power and were systematically passed-over in the scheme of patronage and resource-allocation, could not bear the title of democracy. To steal a phrase, this was but the tyranny of the majority.
In Ulster both sides advocated “democracy” and claimed that peace could only be achieved if “democracy” were respected. But with their rival – and incompatible – understandings of what democracy meant this led only to further bloody conflict. It wasn’t until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement radically altered the institutional set-up of Northern Ireland that both sides (and the scores of actors with competing value and power-bases within those sides) could come to apply their respective understandings of democracy to the political set-up of Ulster, without coming into bloody conflict.
The lesson is that democracy is not a panacea for all political ills. On the contrary Northern Ireland shows that there can be many understandings of democracy and which in certain circumstances can clash with spectacularly murderous force. There is likewise no guarantee that simply advocating the monolith of “democracy” (whatever exactly that might mean) will result in all one’s favoured political values ripening to fruition. Not least because one man’s democracy may easily be another man’s tyranny.
In similar vein, we should not forget that a potential result of giving “power to the people” is always that “the people” can use their power in ways we may not like. If we had a referendum on hanging – and what could be more democratic than that? – it would almost certainly be restored. But how would that look for Mr Hari’s left-liberal “silenced majority”? Democracy is not a simple value, and we cannot assume that simply shouting “more” or “better” democracy will give us the happy world we all dream of – in our different ways. Just ask the people of Northern Ireland.
–
* Disclaimer: I know Richard. He was going to be my PhD supervisor if I’d stayed in London.
Tim Worstall said,
April 24, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Imagine the hung parliament and the PR voting system come to pass. I have a feeling that Hari (and Polly and others) are going to get something of a rude shock.
I’m sure that the majority of Brits are to the left of me (not too tough really) but I’m equally sure that they’re not “left liberal” or “social democratic”.
I think the majority is liberal. Liberal in the sense of “sure, some things have to be done so get on with them would you? As for the rest of it bugger off and leave us alone”. And I think that the agreement on “those things which have to be done” is on a much shorter list than Hari or Polly would like to think it is.
Paul Sagar said,
April 24, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Tim,
I broadly agree. Though I suspect I’m less happy about it than you are.
You’re also broadly right about most people just wanting to get on with their lives in peace and quiet. That’s what really irritates me about that Mostafa piece – a complete unwillingness to look at the way people actually are in this country,not how he wants them to be for his Athenian fantasy.
RA said,
April 24, 2010 at 3:03 pm
I agree with you that many writers and think tanks are thin on the details of how to arrive at some notion of true democracy, and I find many concrete proposals they do come up with to be fairly laughable. In the US, some academics have proposed Deliberation Day in which citizens would be paid $150 to meet at community centers a week or two before Election Day to engage in discussions about the issues and candidates. I fail to see how this is supposed to change in any significant way the actual structure of politics, particularly since the actual selection of candidates and construction of platforms is determined well in advance of such participatory discussions. And of course if we are going to slam Cameron, let’s not forget Brown’s revolutionary use of citizens’ juries to find out what people REALLY think.
Nick said,
April 24, 2010 at 4:09 pm
I immediately thought of the Bourke book while reading the first couple of paragraphs of the post, it is a brilliantly constructed argument about how meanings, often contested, are crucial to political discourse.
In the same vein, the Sartori book I mentioned earlier is premised upon the shortcomings of contemporary democratic theories and their denotative failures. His thesis is that several intellectual developments – principally ‘stipulativism’ – the belief that words’ are mere conventions and thus can mean anything, freedom-from-value theories, and behaviouralism – have led to the fragmentation of democratic theory. This has had a knock-on effect on political practice as there is no proper understanding of what democracy is or isn’t. Thus, as Bourke shows and Hari et al unwittingly demonstrate, it is all things to all people.
Mark said,
April 24, 2010 at 5:27 pm
How important is the ability to vote with your feet?
Alex said,
April 25, 2010 at 2:34 am
I think I’ve found where Hari got his fish statistic from. Now, there are two claims he made that are from the same paper:
“we have killed 90 per cent of the world’s fish”
and:
“Professor Ransom Myers found that whenever the vast industrial trawlers are sent in, it takes just 15 years to reduce the fish population to a 10% shadow of its former self.”
He has taken this from this study:
http://as01.ucis.dal.ca/ramweb/papers-total/nature01610_r.pdf
But those two statistics aren’t correct. The study was from 2003, so maybe these were just factoids he’d picked up and slightly misremembered. Or maybe media reports back then said what he’s claimed. But it’s hard to read the actual study, and take from it what he has.
On the first point, the study says:
“Using a meta-analytic approach, we estimate that large predatory fish biomass today is only about 10% of pre-industrial levels.”
So that’s 90% of large predatory fish have gone, not of all fish.
Also, note “biomass” and not population – although Hari is writing for a lay audience, and so this is a relatively minor point.
Now, perhaps you shouldn’t have responded to Hari’s statistic incredulously. He was wrong, but not obviously wrong without checking it out.
And on the second point:
“Industrialized fisheries typically reduced community biomass by 80% within 15 years of exploitation.”
So reduced to 20%, not 10% as Hari claimed. Further, this is about large
predatory fish again, not all types of fish.
Again, note “biomass”.
Oh, and I’m sure Myers’ co-author Boris Worm will be happy not being given credit for that study by Hari.
Joshua Mostafa said,
April 25, 2010 at 3:39 am
On the major points I suspect we won’t see eye to eye. But to clarify my position, I’m not calling for ‘more democracy’; as I see it, I’m calling for democracy *at all*. What we have now is capitalo-parliamentarianism that does not represent the interests of the people – it represents the interests of capital. This is different from representing their views on every subject (e.g. capital punishment). Human rights should be enshrined explicitly in a written constitution.
On the ‘utopian’ allegation. Fair enough, that’s your opinion. It’s a matter of degree ultimately … my communist friends would say I’m a sell-out for proposing reforms, and that everything less than world revolution is doomed to failure.
Paul Sagar said,
April 25, 2010 at 11:57 am
I’m just going to LOL at the idea of marxists using Ancient Athens as their example for true democracy.
I thought that Ancient Greece belonged way back in the pre-feudal development of historical materialism? How can you draw conclusions about glorious post-revolutionary communist society from a society based upon modes of production long-surpassed in the dialectical striving towards the absolute?
James A said,
April 26, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Hey Paul,
Whilst Hari may have gone too far in saying unequivocally that Britain has a “left-liberal majority” (the worryingly high level of anti-immigration sentiment by itself gives the lie to his claim), there is a kernel of truth there that I think I’d defend. British public opinion polls do reveal that on a range of issues the public diverge greatly from the mainstream party political consensus, and in many instances one could say they are “more left-wing”. So, for instance, as I think I’ve mentioned before on this blog, the public strongly support re-nationalisation of key public utilities, something off the table for the major political parties. Other statistics reveal deeper values. The public strongly support a progressive Bill of Rights, including very high levels of support for a range of socioeconomic rights; rights which are dismissed as non-justiciable by the Labour party. Indeed, something like 60% of the public think the right of the homeless to be housed should be in a Bill of Rights, a radical idea if I’ve ever heard one. And when it comes to foreign policy, the evidence for a “democratic deficit” in British politics just becomes overwhelming.
While you’re right to call attention to the polysemous nature of the concept of democracy, and to insist that people spell out clearly what they’re envisaging when they call for “greater democracy”, nevertheless that there is a democratic deficit, and that this is a phenomenon that requires urgent explanation and action, can’t seriously be denied. Moreover, people are acutely aware of this. I don’t have the exact figures to hand, but something like 3/4 of the population think the media and big business have strong influence on government policy, and that “ordinary people” have little. And, naturally, they aren’t happy about this state of affairs. If we don’t want the BNP and other extreme right-wing groups capitalising on this disaffection, then those who think of themselves as to the left of the spectrum should be: (A) acknowledging that there is a problem; and (B) doing something about it.
I’m not sure how much you agree or disagree with all this, but when you dismiss “the assumption that there is a “real” British democracy that is being supressed by sinister interests and institutional mechanisms. Interests and mechanisms which if over-turned would allow the real democracy to flourish”, it does sound like you are denying that there are institutional structures marginalising the public and inhibiting democracy. But the fact that the mainstream party political consensus fails to track public opinion on a significant range of important issues rather suggests that this is the case. The analysis of how these institutional structures operate to inhibit democracy on a range of issues will be complex. But *that* they do is, surely, obvious?
Incidentally, although the polling data isn’t entirely clear, polls have shown that the British public are deeply divided on the death penalty, with maximum levels of support for the death penalty for any particular crime not reaching 50%:
http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/10758
Best,
James
Paul Sagar said,
April 27, 2010 at 12:03 am
James,
Your concerns are all important, valid and I support pretty much all of them.
I wasn’t meaning to suggest that somehow everything is now all fine and dandy. Far from it. What I was attempting to militate (and that seems the right word, reading over my angry words) against is the tendency to assume that democracy is a) simple and b) harmonises with all our existing values.
I certainly agree that we have much to be concerned about in the problems you point to, and that correspondingly there are many ways to strive to make the world a better place. And some ways of making the world better will include increasing various forms of (participatory?) democracy. But having said that, “democracy” is not a panacea that will proportionately improve the world insofar as the quantity of the magical D goes up. And there’s no strict link between democracy and other things we value – indeed it might be quite possible that democracy produces bad things we don’t want at all. This, to pick an obvious example, was the concern of Mill and Tocqueville who worried about the tyranny of the majority – enslaving the very souls of citizens – that they saw as coming hand-in-hand with democratic society and politics.
Hence, apologies if I made it sound like I was dismissive of the things you describe. that’s not what I intended. It’s just in my OP I have my attention focused in the other direction.
James A said,
April 27, 2010 at 10:34 am
Paul,
OK, well it’s as I suspected might be the case: we don’t really disagree. I agree that democracy is not a panacea, and that the tension between individual autonomy and collective self-governance is something that any reasonable conception of democratic society should address. Incidentally, this is a burning question within (what one could call) recent libertarian socialist thinking.
James
Pinning Down PR « Bad Conscience said,
May 8, 2010 at 5:01 pm
[...] Chunk of the People Always Ruling By Continuously Ignore the Smaller Chunk. And we’ve already seen in nearby Ulster’s recent history that simple majoritarianism – when it leads to permanent [...]
Do I want the BNP in Parliament? « Left Outside said,
May 10, 2010 at 8:01 am
[...] Paul Sagar says that there is a worrying tendency for everyone to assume that greater democracy will deliver whatever they want. The people are always in tune with that person’s ego. [...]
Case Study « Bad Conscience said,
May 20, 2010 at 9:42 am
[...] attention to the fact that “democracy” does not ensure all values harmonise, and is not a panacea for soothing all conflict and disturbance. It’s therefore worth noting the situation in [...]
The Conservative Left « Bad Conscience said,
August 31, 2010 at 12:55 pm
[...] 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 upon the [...]
Lana said,
January 31, 2012 at 3:09 pm
The llhyiekood of us going back to the 80s when you look at the current crop of mps.This latest idea is a tory policy and one that will enrage sctivists and the plp.In a true meritocracy people would achieve what we could regardless of wealth.
xbvbpc said,
February 3, 2012 at 5:35 pm
nnlhmp yeolmekwcckq