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Title: Debunking Democracy Author: Bob Black Date: April 2011 Language: en Topics: political theory, anarchist analysis,democracy Source: Scanned from CAL Press Pamphlet Series #2, Printed April 2011. Proofread online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3860, retrieved on November 30, 2020. Notes: Scanned from original
For the first time in history, "nearly everyone today professes to be a
democrat." [1] Professors profess democracy profusely, although they
keep it off campus. Democracy—truly, "that word can mean anything." [2]
Even North Korea calls itself a Democratic People’s Republic. Democracy
goes with everything. For champions of capitalism, democracy is
inseparable from capitalism. For champions of socialism, democracy is
inseparable from socialism. Democracy is even said to be inseparable
from anarchism. [3] It is identified with the good, the true, and the
beautiful. [4] There’s a flavor of democracy for every taste:
constitutional democracy, liberal democracy, social democracy, Christian
democracy, even industrial democracy. Poets (admittedly not many) have
hymned its glory. And yet the suspicion lurks that, as it seemed to
another poet, Oscar Wilde, "democracy means simply the bludgeoning of
the people, by the people, and for the people. It has been found out."
[5] Found out, and found to be unfounded.
Until the 20th century, there were few democracies. Until the 19th
century, the wisdom of the ages was unanimous in condemnation of
democracy. All the sages of ancient Greece denounced it, especially the
sages of democratic Athens. [6] As Hegel wrote: "Those ancients who as
members of democracies since their youth, had accumulated long
experience and reflected profoundly about it, held different views on
popular opinion from those more a priori views prevalent today." ** [7]
The Framers of the U.S. Constitution rejected democracy. [8] So did
their opponents, the Anti-Federalists. [9] The democracy which was then
universally despised is what is now called direct democracy, government
by the people over the people. "People" in "by the people" meant the
citizens: a minority consisting of some of the adult males. "People" in
"over the people" meant everybody. The citizenry assembled at intervals
to wield state power by majority vote. This system no longer exists
anywhere, and that makes it easier to believe in it, as Hegel observed.
Democracy only became respectable, in the 19th century, when its meaning
changed. Now it meant representative democracy, in which the
citizenry—now an electorate, but still a minority—from time to time
choose some of its rulers by majority vote (or rather, by the majority
of those actually voting—which is not the same thing). The elected
rulers appoint the rest of the rulers. As always, some rule, and all are
ruled. In the 19th century, when this system prevailed in only a few
nations, it acquired a few intellectually able proponents, such as John
Stuart Mill, but it also evoked some intellectually able opponents, such
as Herbert Spencer, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Democracy, as one of the ascendant political ideologies of the age,
accommodated itself to the others: to liberalism, nationalism,
socialism, and even Christianity. They in turn accommodated it, usually.
Improbably, the doctrines legitimated one another, usually.
The announced popularity of democracy is surely exaggerated. It’s a mile
wide and an inch deep. Aversion to authoritarian regimes is not
necessarily enthusiasm for democracy. In some of the post-Communist
democracies, democracy has already lost its charm. [10] In others, such
as Russia, democracy itself is already lost. Older democracies persist
more from apathy and force of habit than from genuine conviction. John
Zerzan reasonably asks: "Has there ever been so much incessant yammer
about democracy, and less real interest in it?" [11] Well, has there?
The idea of democracy has never been justified, merely glorified. None
of the older criticisms of democracy has been refuted, and neither has
any of the newer ones. They come from left, right, and center. Some of
these criticisms follow. They establish that democracy is irrational,
inefficient, unjust, and antithetical to the very values claimed for it:
liberty, equality, and fraternity. It does not even, for instance, imply
liberty. [12] Rather, the instinctive tendency of democracy is "to
despise individual rights and take little account of them." [13]
Democracy not only subverts community, it insults dignity, and it
affronts common sense. Not all of these violated values are important to
everyone, but some of them are important to anyone, except to someone to
whom nothing is important. That is why post-modernists are democrats.
In recent years, some intellectuals (academics and former radicals) have
tried to revive direct democracy as an ideal, and set it up as a viable
alternative to representative democracy. Their strenuous exertions
interest only themselves. Their efforts fail, for at least two reasons.
The first reason is that, as a matter of fact, "there is no reason to
believe that there has ever been an urban, purely direct democracy or
even a reasonable approximation of one. Every known instance has
involved a considerable admixture of representative democracy which has
sooner or later usually subordinated [direct] democracy where it didn’t
eliminate it altogether." [14] There is no space to prove it here, but
the evidence is ample. [15] Direct democracy is merely an abstract
ideal, a fantasy really, with no basis in historical experience.
According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who is falsely claimed to be an
advocate of direct democracy, "however small any State may be, civil
societies are always too populous to be under the immediate government
of all their members." [16]
The second reason is that the major objections to representative
democracy also apply to direct democracy, even if the latter is regarded
as an ideal form of pure majoritarian democracy. Some objections apply
to one version, some to the other, but most apply to both. There are
more than enough reasons to reject every version of democracy. Let us,
then, consider some of these objections.
1. The majority isn’t always right.
As (among many others) Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Henry David Thoreau,
Mikhail Bakunin, Benjamin Tucker, Errico Malatesta, and Emma Goldman
said—and does anybody disagree?—democracy does not assure correct
decisions. "The only thing special about majorities is that they are not
minorities." [17] There is no strength in numbers, or rather, there is
nothing but strength in numbers. Parties, families, corporations,
unions, nearly all voluntary associations are, by choice, oligarchic.
[18] Indeed, in assemblies whether direct or representative, in
electorates as in legislatures, the whole is less—even less—than the sum
of its parts. It is even mathematically demonstrable (but not by me)
that majority decision-making generates inefficient, socially wasteful,
more or less self-defeating decisions. [19]
Besides, after all, why should you, why should anyone, accept a decision
that you know is wrong? Surely the quality of its decisions has
something to do with the quality of the decision-making process.
2. Democracy does not as is promised, give everyone the right to
influence the decisions affecting her, because a person who voted on the
losing side had no influence on that decision.
As Henry David Thoreau wrote, "a minority is powerless while it conforms
to the majority; it is not even a minority then." [20] It is, in fact,
powerless, it is nothing. Thomas Hobbes anticipated Thoreau: "And if the
Representative consist of many men, the voyce of the greater number,
must be considered as the voyce of them all. For if the lesser number
pronounce (for example) in the Affirmative, and the greater in the
Negative, there will be Negatives more than enough to destroy the
Affirmatives; and thereby the excesse of Negatives, standing
uncontradicted, are the onely voyce the Representative hath." [21] "The
numerical majority," wrote John C. Calhoun, "is as truly a single
power—and excludes the negative as completely as the absolute government
of one or a few." [22]
3. Democracy especially in small constituencies, lends itself to the
disempowerment of permanent minorities, who occupy the same position in
the democracy as they would in a despotism.
It isn’t always the same momentary majority that rules, but often it is,
and shifting majorities only make it less likely, not unlikely, for some
group to be always opposed to the winning gang. [23] Under American
democracy, it has long been well-known, even to the U.S. Supreme Court
in 1938, that "discrete and insular minorities" are at a political
disadvantage beyond the mere fact (which is disadvantage enough) that
they are minorities. [24] And the smaller the constituency, the more
likely it is that many interests may be represented "by numbers so small
as to be less than the minimum necessary for defense of those interests
in any setting." [25]
4. Majority rule ignores the urgency of preferences.
Preference varies in intensity, but consent does not. Preference is more
or less, consent is yes or no. The vote of a person who has only a
slight preference for a candidate or measure counts the same as the vote
of someone passionately opposed, and so: "A majority with slight
preferences one way may outvote almost as many strong preferences the
other way." There could even be, as just noted, a permanently frustrated
minority, which is a source of instability, or even oppression. To put
it another way, the opportunity to influence a decision is not
proportionate to one’s legitimate interest in the outcome. [26]
Democratic theorists usually ignore the issue or, like John Rawls, wave
it away by dogmatizing that "this criticism rests upon the mistaken view
that the intensity of desire is a relevant consideration in enacting
legislation." [27] But, however embarrassing to democrats, "the
intensity question is absolutely vital to the stability of democratic
systems"—and it’s a question to which pure majoritarian democracy has no
answer. [28] Rousseau at least recognized the problem, although his
solution is impractical. He thought that "the more grave and important
the questions discussed, the nearer should the opinion that is to
prevail approach unanimity." [29] But there is no way in which to decide
a priori the importance of a question. First you have to decide how
important the question is, and the majority may well rule a question to
be unimportant to make sure that the question will be answered as that
majority wishes.
5. There are no self-evident democratic voting rules.
Majority or plurality? Proxy voting? Quorums? Are supermajorities
(three-fifths? two-thirds?) required for all, some, or none of the
decisions? Who sets the agenda? Are motions from the floor entertained?
Who decides who gets to speak, and for how long, and who gets the first
or last word? Who schedules the meeting? Who adjourns it? And who
decides, and by what rules, the answers to all these questions? "If the
participants disagree on the voting rules, they may first have to vote
on these rules. But they may disagree on how to vote on the voting
rules, which may make voting impossible as the decision on how to vote
is pushed further and further back." [30]
6. Collective, all-or-nothing balloting is irrational A decision made on
a momentous matter by a single vote is as valid as a unanimous vote on a
trifle. That extreme rarity, the one time one vote, one person’s will,
makes a difference, is the very same situation—monarchy, dictatorship,
one-man rule—that democracy is supposed to be an improvement on!
At all other times, of all the votes for the winning side, only one is
decisive, so the votes of all but one of the winners, like the votes of
all of the losers, might as well not have been cast.
7. Majority rule is not even what it purports to be: it rarely means
literally the majority of the people. [31]
Many people (such as children, foreigners, lunatics, transients, and
felons) are everywhere denied the right to vote. The disenfranchised are
never much short of being the majority, and sometimes they are the
majority. And since it rarely happens that every one of the eligible
voters votes every time, usually the resulting majority of a majority
means plurality rule, [32] in other words, the rule of the momentarily
largest minority, which might be rather small. The majority of a
majority is often, and the majority of a minority is always, a minority.
In order to cobble together majorities out of incoherent assemblies,
leaders usually wield literally decisive power. [33] Under any possible
government, a minority governs.
8. Whether voting by electoral districts or in popular assemblies,
decisions are arbitrary because the boundaries of the districts
determine the composition of their electorates, which determines the
decisions.
In a democracy, "the definition of the constituency within which the
count is taken is a matter of primary importance," but democratic theory
is unable to say who should be included in an electorate. [34] Redraw
the boundaries and the majority becomes a minority or vice versa,
although no one has changed his mind. The politicians who draw and
redraw the boundaries understand this very well.
9. Then there is the Voter’s Paradox, a technical but very real
contradiction in democracy discovered by Condorcet before the French
Revolution.
In every situation where two or more voters choose from three or more
alternatives, if the voters choose consistently, the majority preference
may be determined solely by the order in which the alternatives are
voted on. It can happen that A is preferred to B, B is preferred to C,
yet C is by the majority preferred to A! [35] This is no mere
theoretical possibility: it has happened in real votes. There are, in
fact, a number of these voting paradoxes. Under ideal conditions,
majority rule almost always produces these cyclical preference orders.
For this and other reasons, "the various equilibrium conditions for
majority rule are incompatible with even a very modest degree of
heterogeneity of tastes, and for most purposes are not significantly
less restrictive than the extreme condition of complete unanimity of
individual preferences." [36]
What that means is that whoever controls the agenda controls the vote,
or, at least, "that making agendas seems just about as significant as
actually passing legislation." [37] It is fitting that a 19th century
mathematician who wrote on this phenomenon (which he called "cyclical
majorities") is better known under his pen name, Lewis Carroll. [38] He
came by his sense of the absurd honestly.
10. Another well-known method for thwarting majority rule with voting is
logrolling.
Logrolling is an exchange of votes between factions. Each group votes
for the other group’s measure, a measure which would otherwise be
defeated because each group is in the minority. (Note that this is not a
compromise because the measures are unrelated. [39] The factions aren’t
splitting the difference.) In a sense, logrolling facilitates some
accommodation of the urgency of preferences, since a faction only trades
its votes for votes it values more highly—but it does so by bribery and
to the detriment of deliberative democracy. No majority really approves
of either measure enacted by logrolling, since if it did, there would be
no need for logrolling. And those whose votes are unnecessary can be
excluded from the logrolling process. [40] The practice is common to
representative and direct democracies. [41]
11. In the unlikely event a legislative body eschews logrolling, it may
succumb to gridlock.
Consider a typical political issue, the building of a highway. (A power
plant or a garbage dump might be an even better example.) Everyone wants
a road, but no one wants it in his back yard. If three groups want a
road—but not in their back yards, thank you—they will gang up to scotch
the project. [42] The road that everyone wants somewhere will not be
built anywhere. That is an even worse outcome than with logrolling,
where at least the road gets built somewhere, and might be of some use
to somebody. It isn’t easy to say which is worse, a democracy that
doesn’t govern, or a democracy that does.
12. Democracy, especially direct democracy, promotes disharmonious,
antisocial feelings.
The psychology of the ekklesia (assembly) is the psychology of the agora
(marketplace): "Voters and customers are essentially the same people.
Mr. Smith buys and votes; he is the same man in the supermarket and the
voting booth." [43] Capitalism and democracy rose to dominance together
as the goals of the same class, the bourgeoisie. Together they made a
common world of selfish individualism—an arena of competition, not a
field of cooperation. Democracy, like litigation, is an adversarial
decision method: "Majority rule belongs to a combat theory of politics.
It is a contest between opposing forces, and the outcome is victory for
one side and defeat for the other." Indeed, as Georg Simmel noticed,
majority rule is really the substituted equivalent of force. [44] "We
agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads. The
minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but
because it is convinced that it is a minority." [45] Literally having to
face an opponent publicly may provoke aggression, anger, and competitive
feelings [46]
In a winner-take-all system there is no incentive to compensate or
conciliate defeated minorities, who have been told, in effect, that not
only are they not to get their way, they are also stigmatized as wrong.
The unaccountable majority is arrogant; the defeated minority is
resentful. [47] Coercive voting promotes polarization and hardens
positions. Deliberation "can bring differences to the surface, widening
rather than narrowing them." [48] These consequences, muted in systems
of large-scale, secret voting in not-too-frequent elections, are
accentuated in the imagined communal combination of very small
electorates, extremely frequent elections, and public voting. Citizens
will take their animosities and ulcers home with them and act them out
in everyday life. Elections are undesirable everywhere, but nowhere
would they be more destructive of community than in face-to-face
assemblies and neighborhoods.
13. Another source of majority irresponsibility and minority indignity
is the felt frivolity of voting its element of chance and arbitrariness.
As Thoreau (quoted by Emma Goldman) put it, ’All voting is a sort of
gaming, like checquers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a
playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting
naturally accompanies it." [49] Majority rule is majority roulette. The
popularity of student government and Model UN confirms that there is a
ludic, playing-around element to deliberative decision making which is
independent of its consequences. Here is an interest the delegates share
with each other, but not with their constituents. Voting is a contest,
officially umpired by the majority, with sometimes high stakes. To the
extent that the assembled citizens are playing games with each other, or
that winning for its own sake (or for how you play the game, for that
matter) plays any part in their motivation, the quality of decision
making is reduced still further and the humiliation of submission to
majority rule is that much deepened.
14. Under representative democracy with electoral districts,
malapportionment—the creation of districts with unequal populations—is
possible and, even if they are equal, gerrymandering is almost
inevitable.
Modern democrats agree with H.L. Mencken that "it must be plain that a
community whose votes, man for man, count for only half as much as the
votes of another community is one in which half of the citizens are, to
every practical intent, unable to vote at all." [50] Even if as
currently in the United States, districts are required to be nearly
equal in population, gerrymandering—the drawing of their boundaries so
as to favor some candidate or party is a standing temptation. Especially
since the incumbents do the drawing. Using the latest liberatory
technology—the computer—it’s easy to devise gerrymandered but
mathematically equal districts.
15. Direct democracy trying to avert this evil, embraces federalism,
which increases inequality.
If the neighborhood or face-to-face basic units were
autarchic—self-governing and self-sufficient—it would be nobody’s
business but theirs which people they included and how many. They could
go to hell in their own way. But schemes for direct democracy typically
call for a federal system with layers of "mandated and revocable
delegates, responsible to the base" by which the decisions of assemblies
are reconciled. Some delegates to the higher levels will potentially
speak for a different number of citizens than other delegates but cast
equal votes. In a federal system of units of unequal population, voting
equality for the units means voting inequality for individuals. The
federalist—but single-member—simple-plurality system evidently
contemplated by most direct democrats, including the syndicalists, is
the least proportionate of all voting systems. [51]
The inequality will be compounded at every higher level. The majority;
the majority of the majority; the majority of the majority of the
majority—the higher up you go, the greater the inequality. The more
often you multiply by a fraction, the smaller the number you arrive at.
"It is not possible," it is said, "to find a general answer to the
question of to what extent federalism may legitimately be allowed to
outweigh democracy." [52] Actually, there is a general answer to the
question. The answer is no. A direct democrat who claims that an
overarching confederal system produces majority decisions, [53] affirms
the impossible as an act of faith.
16. Direct democracy, to an even greater degree than representative
democracy, encourages emotional, irrational decision making. [54]
The face-to-face context of assembly politics engenders strong
interpersonal psychological influences which are, at best, extraneous to
decision making on the merits. The crowd is susceptible to orators and
stars, and intolerant of contradiction. [55] The speakers, in the
limited time allotted to them, tend to sacrifice reasoning to persuasion
whenever they have to choose, if they want to win. As Hobbes wrote, the
speakers begin not from true principles but from "commonly accepted
opinions, which are for the most part usually false, and they do not try
to make their discourse correspond to the nature of things but to the
passions of men’s hearts. The result is that votes are cast not on the
basis of correct reasoning but on emotional impulse." [56] "Pure
democracy, like pure rum, easily produces intoxication, and with it a
thousand mad pranks and foolishness." [57] Dissenters feel intimidated,
as they were, for instance, when the Athenian assembly voted for the
disastrous Sicilian expedition: "The result of this excessive enthusiasm
of the majority was that the few who were actually opposed to the
expedition were afraid of being thought unpatriotic if they voted
against it, and therefore kept quiet." [58]
17. A specific, experimentally validated emotional influence vitiating
democracy is group pressure to conform.
This was strikingly demonstrated in a famous experiment by social
psychologist Solomon Asch. Each of seven to nine experimental subjects
was asked to compare a series of lines, and in each case identify the
two lines that were equal in length. For each comparison it was obvious,
indeed extremely obvious, which lines matched—but time after time, every
member of the group gave the same wrong answer—except the only subject
who was unaware of the real purpose of the experiment. In these
circumstances, fifty-eight percent of the test subjects changed their
answer to agree with the unanimous majority. Even when subjects were
each given one ally, thirteen percent of the subjects agreed with the
group instead of the evidence of their senses. [59] Some of the
conformists actually changed their perceptions, but most of them simply
decided that the group must be right, no matter how strong was the
evidence to the contrary.
18. Another inherent flaw in direct democracy partly (not entirely) a
consequence of the previous one, is the inconstancy of policy.
This really covers two related arguments against democracy. What the
assembly does at one meeting it may undo at the next, whether because
citizens have had sober second thoughts (a good reason) or because a
different mix of people shows up (a bad reason). This often happened in
classical Athens, the only polity which has ever seriously tried to make
direct democracy work. For example, the assembly voted to give the
Mytilenians, whose revolt had been crushed, the Melian treatment: death
for all the men, slavery for the women and children. The judgment was
reversed the next day, the second ship dispatched to Mytilene happily
arrived first, and so only the Mytilenians held mainly responsible—over
1,000 of them—were executed. [60] Better, of course, to reverse a bad
decision than stick to it; but people are reluctant to publicly admit
they were wrong.
It is bad enough if the composition of the assembly fluctuates randomly
or because of politically extraneous factors, as the weather, for
instance, influences American election outcomes by influencing voter
turnout [61] (higher proportions of Democrats turn out in good weather).
But it might well turn on deliberate mobilization by a faction. This,
too, happened in Athens. The general Nicias, addressing the assembly in
opposition to the proposed Sicilian expedition, stated: "It is with real
alarm that I see this young man’s [Alcibiades’] party sitting at his
side in this assembly all called in to support him, and I, on my side,
call for the support of the older men among you." A line by the satiric
playwright Aristophanes also attests to bloc voting in the assembly.
[62]
Hobbes observed that "when the votes are sufficiently close for the
defeated to have hopes of winning a majority at a subsequent meeting if
a few men swing round to their way of thinking, their leaders get them
all together, and they hold a private discussion on how to revoke the
measure that has just been passed. They resolve among themselves to
attend the next meeting in large numbers and to be there first; they
arrange what each should say and in what order, so that the question may
be brought up again, and the decision that was made when their opponents
were there in strength may be reversed when they fail to show." [63]
Hobbes exactly describes how Samuel Adams manipulated another assembly,
the Boston town meeting, at prior private meetings of his faction at the
Caucus Club: "Caucusing involved the widest prevision of problems that
might arise and the narrowest choice of response to each possibility;
who would speak to any issue, and what he would say; with the clubmen’s
general consent guaranteed, ahead of time, to both choice of speaker and
what the speaker’s message would be." His cousin John Adams was
astonished, after many years of attending town meetings, to learn of
this: "There they drink flip [a rum drink], I suppose, and there they
choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote regularly, and
selectmen, assessors, wardens, fire wards, and representatives are
regularly chosen before they are chosen by the town." [64] Exactly the
same methods of manipulation were practiced in the Athenian assembly.
[65]
Direct democracy is well suited to machine politics: "The powerful town
meeting [in Boston] named the many municipal officials, determined taxes
and assessments, and adopted public service projects that were a rich
source of jobs and economic largesse. For years the original Caucus and
its allies in the Merchants Club had acted as the unofficial directing
body of the town meeting in which Caucus stalwart Sam Adams played a key
role." [66] This is democracy in action.
What Hobbes is talking about, as he proceeds to say, is faction, which
he defines as "a sort of effort and hard work, which they use to fashion
people." [67] James Madison famously argued that direct democracy
promotes factionalism. [68] But an organization of organizers of votes
serves a purpose (its own) in any assembly or legislature. Parties (the
euphemism for "factions") could play central roles in a direct
democracy, maybe greater roles than in representative democracy.°
Only regular high turnouts would minimize (not eliminate) these
capricious or manipulated reversals, since, if most citizens attend
every meeting, most of them who attend one meeting will attend another.
The polar possibilities are that all the same people, or all different
people, attend the next meeting. If it is all the same people, it is de
facto oligarchy. If it is all different people, it is chaos, the only
kind of "anarchy" consistent with direct democracy. It will usually turn
out to be closer to oligarchy.
Majority rule is as arbitrary as random decision, but not nearly as
fair. [69] For a voter, the only difference between the lottery [70] and
an election is that he might win the lottery. Better pure chance than
"pure democracy, or the immediate autocracy of the people," as Joel
Barlow described it. [71] A celebrant of Swiss direct democracy at its
height admits: "Corruption, factionalization, arbitrariness, violence,
disregard for law, and an obdurate conservatism that opposed all social
and economic progress were pathologies to some extent endemic to the
pure democratic life form." [72] Democracy in any form is irrational,
unjust, inefficient, capricious, divisive, and demeaning. Its direct and
representative versions, as we have seen, share many vices. Neither
version exhibits any clear advantage over the other. Each also has vices
peculiar to itself. Indeed the systems differ only in degree. Either
way, the worst tyranny is the tyranny of the majority, [73] as most
anarchists, and some conservatives, and some liberals, and even the more
honest democrats, have often said.
Is democracy nonetheless the best form of government? Even that is not
so obvious, after taking a hard look at just how bad it is. Its theory
is reducible to ruins in a few pages. The believers claim that democracy
promotes dialogue, but where is the dialogue about democracy itself?
Democrats ignore their critics, as if democracy is such a done deal, why
bother to defend it? They just take it for granted that somebody (Locke?
Rousseau? Lincoln? Churchill?) has long since made out a strong case for
democracy. Nobody ever did. That’s why you didn’t learn it in school.
You were just told to believe. The arguments for democracy—which aren’t
often articulated—are so flawed and flimsy, some of them even so silly,
[74] that pious democrats might be startled. [75]
Now, it may be that some of these criticisms of democratic government
are really criticisms of government itself. That does not detract from,
but rather enhances, their validity. That just means that democracy is
not so special after all, and that it has been found out.
VOTE NOBODY
NOBODY TELLS THE TRUTH.
Bob Black PO Box 3112 Albany NY 12203
[1] David Held, Models of Democrat), (2nd ed.; Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1996), 1; see also Tibor R. Machan, "Introduction: The
Democratic Ideal," Liberty and Democracy, ed. Tibor R. Machan (Stanford,
CA: Hoover Institute Press, 2002), xiii.
[2] Jacques Ellul, The Political Illusion, tr. Konrad Kellen (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 181.
[3] David Graeber (in the AK Press catalog 2008), quoted in Bob Black,
letter to the editors, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, No. 67 (Vol.
26, No. 2) (Spring-Summer 2009), 75.
[4] "Democracy is made identical with intellectual freedom, with
economic justice, with social welfare, with tolerance, with piety, moral
integrity, the dignity of man, and general civilized decency." Robert A.
Nisbet, Community and Power (London: Oxford University Press, 1962),
248.
[5] "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." The First Collected Edition of
the Works of Oscar Wilde, 1908-1922, ed. Robert Ross (repr. ed.; London:
Pall Mall, 1969), 8: 294. Wilde was a decadent anarchist dandy. Such
lifestyle anarchists despise democracy. See, e.g., Octave Mirbeau,
"Voters Strike!" in Rants and Incendiary Tracts, ed. Bob Black & Adam
Parfrey (New York: Amok Press & Port Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited,
1989), 74-78.
[6] Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (New
York Dover, 1959), 13; M.I. Finley, Democrat.; Ancient and Modern (2nd
ed.; London: Hogarth Press, 1985), 5, 29; David Held, "Democracy: From
City-States to a Cosmopolitan Order," in Contemporary Political
Philosophy: An Anthology, ed. Robert E. Goodin & Philip Pettit (Malden,
Mk Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 80.
[7] G.W.F. Hegel, "On the English Reform Bill," Political Writings, ed.
Laurence Dickey & H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), 235.
[8] Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
(Cambridge*. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967), 282284;
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 17761787 (New
York & London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1972), 222-223, 409-413; see, e.g,
The Federalist, ed. Jacob E. Cooke (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University
Press, 1961), 61 (No. 10) (James Madison); The Records of the Federal
Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1911), 1: 2627 (Edmund Randolph), 48 (Elbridge Gerry), 49 (George
Mason), 288 (Alexander Hamilton). Randolph blamed America’s problems on
"the turbulence and follies of democracy:" Records, 1:5 1.
[9] Herbert J. Storing, What the Antifederalists Were For (Chicago, IL &
London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 29.
[10] Ralf Dahrendorf, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe (New
Brunswick, NJ & London: Transaction Publishers, 2005), 168.
[11] John Zerzan, "No Way Out," Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of
Civilization (Los Angeles, CA: Feral House 2002), 204.
[12] Bertrand Russell, "The Prospects of Democracy," Mortals and Others:
American Essays 1929-1935, ed. Henry Ruja (London & New York: Routledge,
1996), 2: 24; James Fitzjames Stephen, Liberty Equality Fraternity
(Chicago IL & London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 168.
[13] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Mayer, tr.
George Lawrence (Garden City, New York Doubleday & Company, Anchor
Books, 1969), 699.
[14] Bob Black, Anarchy after Leftism (Columbia, MO: C.A.L. Press,
1997), 71. Representative democracy can also incorporate minor elements
of direct democracy, as it does, in the United States, with trial by
jury. But representative officials (judges) severely circumscribe the
jury. Robert C. Black, "FIJA: Monkeywrenching the Justice System?," UMKC
Law Review 66(1) (Fall 1997), 12-13.
[15] Bob Black, Nightmares of Reason (2010), chs. 14 & 15, available
online from The Anarchist Library.
[16] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Discourse on Political Economy," The Social
Contract and Discourses, tr. G.D.H. Cole (New York: E.P. Dutton and Sons
& London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1950), 313.
[17] Loren E. Lomasky, "Default and Dynamic Democracy," in Liberty and
Democracy, 3.
[18] Clark Kerr, Unions and Union Leaders of Their Own Choosing (New
York The Fund for the Republic, 1957), 12. Similarly, Switzerland’s
democracy is the most participatory in the world, but the Swiss are not
" particularly participative in economic and social life." Wolf Linder,
Swiss Democracy (3rd ed., rev. & upci.; Basingstoke, Hamps., England &
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 127.
[19] Grant McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New York
Vintage Books, 1966), 120-127; James M. Buchanan & Gordon Tullock, The
Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1962), 169; Elaine Spitz,
Majority Rule (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1982); 153;
Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy and Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1982), 54-55.
[20] Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience," in Walden and Civil
Disobedience (New York: Signet Classics, 1960), 231.
[21] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex, England: Pelican Books, 1968), 221.
[22] John C. Calhoun, Disquisitions on Government and Selections from
the Discourses (Indianapolis, IN & New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1953),
29.
[23] Spitz, Majority Rule, 183; Juerg Steiner, "Decision-Making," in
Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought, ed. Paul Barry Clarke & Joe
Foweracker (London & New York Routledge, 2001), q/v "Decision-Making."
[24] United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 152-53 n. 4
(1938).
[25] MacConnell, Private Power and American Democracy, 105 (quoted),
109.
[26] John Burnheim, Is Democracy Possible? Alternatives to Electoral
Politics (Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1985), 83 (quoted); Jeremy
Waldron, The Dignity of Legislation (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 132, 142-143; Buchanan & Tullock, Calculus of
Consent, 125-127, 132-133; Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic
Theory (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 91-99; Robert
A. Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy: Autonomy vs. Control (New
Haven, CT & London: Yale University Press, 1982), 88-89.
[27] John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (rev. ed.; Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, Belnap Press, 1999), 230.
[28] Benjamin Barber, The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Philosophy in
Democratic Times (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 79
(quoted); Willmoore Kendall & George W. Carey, "The ’Intensity’ Problem
and Democratic Theory," American Political Science Review 62(1) (March
1968): 5-24.
[29] Rousseau, "The Social Contract," The Social Contract and
Discourses, 107.
[30] Steiner, "Decision-Making," 130.
[31] Spitz, Majority Rule, 3.
[32] John Stuart Mill, "Representative Government," in Utilitarianism,
Liberty and Representative Government (New York: E.P. Dutton and Company
& London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1951), 346-347; Harold Barday, People
Without Government An Anthropology of Anarchism (London: Kahn & Averill
with Cienfuegos Press, 1982), 118; Linder, Swiss Democracy, 110.
[33] "The necessity for these leaders is evident, since, under the name
of heads of groups, they are met with in the assemblies of every
country. They are the real rulers of an assembly." Gustav Le Bon, The
Crowd (New York: Compass Books, 1960), 189.
[34] Peter J. Taylor, Graham Gudgin, & R.I. Johnston, "The Geography of
Representation: A Review of Recent Findings," in Electoral Laws and
Their Political Consequences, ed. Bernard Grofman Aren Lijphart (New
York: Agathon Press, 1986), 183-184; McConnell, Private Power and
American Democracy, 92 (quoted); Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy,
97-99; Bruce E. Cain, The Reapportionment Puzzle (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1984), 36-37.
[35] Kenneth Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (2d ed.; New
York: John Wiley & Sons, 1963), 2-3, 94-95; An Essay on the Application
of Probability Theory to Plurality Decision-Making (1785)," in
Condorcet: Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory, tr. & ed.
lain McLean & Fiona Hewitt (Aldershot, Hants, England & Brookfield, VT:
Edward Elgar Publishing, 1994), 120130. A certain Rev. Dodgson invented
the notion of "None of the Above" as a ballot option. "A Method of
Taking Votes on More Than Two Issues," in The Political Pamphlets and
Letters of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson and Related Pieces: A Mathematical
Approach, ed. Francine F. Abeles (New York: Lewis Carroll Society of
North America, 2001), 95. Since Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, "the
theoretical case that elections can assure desirable outcomes was dealt
a blow from which it is unlikely ever to recover fully." William R.
Keech, "Thinking About the Length and Renewability of Electoral Terms,"
in Electoral Laws and Their Political Consequences, 104.
[36] William H. Riker & Barry R. Weingast, "Constitutional Regulation of
Legislative Choice: The Political Consequences of Judicial Deference to
Legislatures," Working Papers in Political Science No. P-86-11
(Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1986), 13-18 (real-life examples of
perpetual cyclical majorities); Hanno Nurmi, Voting Paradoxes and How to
Deal With Mem (Berlin, Germany: Springer, 1999); Peter C. Fishburn,
"Paradoxes of Voting," American Political Science Review 68(2) (June
1974): 537-546 (five more paradoxes); Gerald H. Kramer, "On a Class of
Equilibrium Conditions for Majority Rule," Econometrica 41(2) (March
1973), 285 (quoted). The only reason cyclical preference orders are not
more common in real life is the influence of other undemocratic
practices such as logrolling (see below).
[37] Ian Shapiro, "Three Fallacies Concerning Majorities, Minorities,
and Democratic Politics," in NOMOSXXIII.* Majorities and Minorities, ed.
John W Chapman & Alan Wertheimer (New York & London: New York University
Press, 1990), 97; William H. Riker, "Introduction," Agenda Formation,
ed. William H. Riker (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press,
1993), 1 (quoted).
[38] "Method of Taking Votes on More Than Two Issues," 46-58; Robert
Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (New York Harper Torchbooks, 1970),
59-63; Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values, 94.
[39] Buchanan & Tullock, Calculus of Consent, 132-133; Burnheim, Is
Democracy Possible?, 6; McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy,
111-112.
[40] John T. Noonan, Jr., Bribery (New York: Macmillan & London: Collier
Macmillan Publishers, 1984), 580; Clayton P. Gillette, "Equality and
Variety in the Delivery of Municipal Services," Harvard Law Review
100(1) (Nov. 1986), 959. In 12th century Italy, Genoa and Pistoia
prohibited logrolling in consular elections. Lauro Martines, Power and
Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1979), 29. Such laws are in vain: "The laws against logrolling
(probably passed in part through logrolling) have substantially no
effect on the functioning of democracy in countries which have adopted
them." Gordon Tullock, The Vote Motive (n.p.: The Institute of Economic
Affairs, 1976), 41. They only invite secrecy and hypocrisy. The
two-thirds majority of states for the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery was obtained by
logrolling. Noonan, Bribery, 456-458.
[41] See, e.g., Tullock, The Vote Motive, 45-46. Referenda, another
expression of direct democracy, provide "the dearest example" of
logrolling, putting to a single vote unrelated measures grouped together
to appeal to a majority. Ibid., 48-49. Some state constitutions try to
prohibit induding more than one subject in each ballot proposal. These
provisions are notoriously ineffective They are also undemocratic
themselves, because the judiciary is then the final arbiter. In a
political system without checks and balances, democracy is tyranny. But
a political system with checks and balances is not a democracy.
[42] Nicholas Rescher, "Risking D: Problems of Political Decision,"
Public Affairs Quarterly 13(4) (Oct. 1999), 298.
[43] Tullock, Vote Motive, 5. Moral considerations aside (where they
belong), majority rule with logrolling may lead to inefficient
outcomes—peak efficiency requires, surprisingly, supermajorities:
"Majority rule is thus generally not optimal." Ibid., 51-55, 55
(quoted).
[44] "The Phenomenon of Outvoting," The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed.
Kurt H. Wolff (New York: The Free Press & London: Collier-Macmillan,
1950), 241-242.
[45] Stephen, Liberty Equality Fraternity, 70.
[46] Spitz, Majority Rule, 192 (quoted); Arend Lijphart, Encyclopedia of
Democratic Thought, q/v "Consensus Democracy" (majoritarian democracy is
"exclusive, competitive and adversarial"); Jane L. Mansbridge, Beyond
Adversary Democracy (New York: Basic Books, 1980), 273. Mansbridge adds
that because it is distressing to face a hostile majority, the meeting
exerts pressure for conformity. Highly motivated militants may just wear
down and outlast the others: "The Lower and Weaker Faction, is the
firmer in Conjunction: And it is often scene, that a few, that are
Stiffe, doe tire out, a greater Number, that are more Moderate." Francis
Bacon, "Of Faction," The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, ed.
Michael Kiernan (Cambridge Harvard University Press, 1985), 155 (essay
no. LI.). Not the least of the many serious inequalities which inhere in
the assembly is the inequality between extraverts and introverts.
Assembly government discourages attendance by the kind of person who
does not like to be in the same room with, say, Murray Bookchin or Peter
Staudenmeier.
[47] "To see the proposal of a man whom we despise preferred to our own;
to see our wisdom ignored before our eyes; to incur certain enmity in an
uncertain struggle for empty glory; to hate and be hated because of
differences of opinion (which cannot be avoided, whether we win or
lose); to reveal our plans and wishes when there is no need to and to
get nothing by it; to neglect our private affairs. These, I say, are
disadvantages." Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen, ed. & tr. Richard Tuck &
Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 120.
[48] Ian Shapiro, "Optimal Participation?" journal of Political
Philosophy 10(2) (June 2002), 198-199.
[49] Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience," 226, quoted in "Anarchism: What It
Really Stands For," Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks: Selected Writings and
Speeches, ed. Alix Kates Shulman (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 60;
Waldron, Dignity of Legislation, 126-127.
[50] H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy (New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 1926),
89 (quoted); see also Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy: Autonomy,
83-84.
[51] Sally Burch, Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought, q/v "Electoral
Systems."
[52] Linder, Swiss Democracy, 84. In the Swiss system, the vote of one
citizen in Uri, a small rural canton, outweighs the votes of 34 citizens
in Zurich. Ibid., 81.
[53] E.g., Murray Bookchin, Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the
Left, 1993-1998 (Edinburgh, Scotland & San Francisco, CA: A.K. Press,
1999), 314.
[54] "The general characteristics of crowds are to be met with in
parliamentary assemblies: Intellectual simplicity, irritability,
suggestibility, the exaggeration of the sentiments and the
preponderating influence of a few leaders." Le Bon, The Crowd, 187.
[55] Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the
Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York The Free Press &
London: Collier-Macmillan Limited, 1962), 64, 98-102. For anyone who has
doubts about democracy, this is the first book to read.
[56] Hobbes, The Citizen, 123; see also Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology
and the Analysis of the Ego, tr. & ed. James Strachey (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1959), 9; Le Bon, The Crowd 187.
[57] John Jay quoted in Lift of john fax ed. William Jay (New York J. &
J. Harper, 1833), 2: 315. Jay, co-author of The Federalist, was the
first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
[58] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, tr. Rex Warner
(London: Reagan Books, 1951), 425.
[59] Solomon E. Asch, Social Psychology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1952), 458, 477.
[60] Finley, Democracy, 52; Hegel, "On the English Reform Bill," 235;
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 212-223.
[61] Russell Hardin, Encyclopedia of Democratic Thought,
"Participation."
[62] Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 417 (quoted); "Ecclesiazusai,"
Aristophanes: Plays II, tr. Patric Dickinson (London: Oxford University
Press, 1970), 2: 256.
[63] Hobbes, On the Citizen, 124.
[64] Gary Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of
Independence (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1978), 20 (quoted),
23 (quoting John Adams). The Bostonians recreated the smoke-filled room
at the Continental Congress, where Jefferson noticed that "[Samuel
Adams] was constantly holding caucuses of distinguished men, among whom
was Richard Henry Lee, at which the generality of the measures pursued
were previously determined on, and at which the parts were assigned to
the different actors who afterwards appeared in them." Quoted in ibid.,
25.
[65] R.K.Sinclair, Democracy and Participation in Ancient Athens
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 144-145.
[66] Richard Maxwell Brown, "Violence and the American Revolution," in
Essay; on the American Revolution, ed. Stephen G. Kurtz & James H.
Hutson (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press & New York
W.W. Norton & Co., 1973), 102.
[67] Hobbes, On the Citizen, 124.
[68] James Madison, The Federalist No. 10, at 56-57.
[69] Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, 44-45.
[70] Thus "universal suffrage is in my eyes nothing but a lottery:"
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth
Century, tr. John Beverley Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), 141.
[71] Joel Barlow, "To His Fellow Citizens of the United States. Letter
II: On Certain Political Measures Proposed for Their Consideration," in
American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760-1805, ed.
Charles S Hyneman & Donald S. Lutz (2 vols.; Indianapolis, IN: Liberty
Fund, 1983), 2: 1106.
[72] Benjamin Barber, The Death of Communal Liberty (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1974), 197.
[73] e.g., Goldman,"The Individual, Society and the State," Red Emma
Speaks, 98; see also Robert L Hoffman, Revolutionary Justice: The Social
and Political Theory of P-J. Proudhon (Urbana, IL: University of
Illinois Press, 1972), 187. The expression is generally credited to
Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America, 250) and it was further
popularized by John Stuart Mill; but it was used by at least one
Anti-Federalist in the Ratification debate. Wood, Creation of the
American Republic, 484 & n. 19. Certainly the idea was widespread then,
and since.
[74] For example, voluntary residence in a country is said to be "tacit"
consent to its democratic government. Love it or leave it! Incredibly,
most democrats fail to notice that if voluntary residence counts as
consent to be ruled, then it counts as consent to be ruled by any
government, despotic or democratic. Harry Brighouse, "Democracy and
Inequality," in Democratic Theory Today: Challenges for the 21st
Century, ed. April Carter & Geoffrey Stokes (Cambridge, England: Polity
Press, 2002), 56; J.P. Plamanatz, Consent, Freedom, and Political
Obligation (2nd ed.; London: Oxford University Press, 1968), 7-8; A.
John Simmons, Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1979), 7374 & ch. 4. In the anthology
Democratic Theory Today, the eleven contributors—all of them college
professors—solemnly discuss civic republicanism, developmental
democracy, deliberative democracy, associative democracy, etc. Not one
of them pauses to justify democracy itself.
[75] See, e.g., William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,
ed. Isaac Kramnick (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books,
1976), 209-253; Crispin Sartwell, Against the State (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 2008), 39-96 (quoted); Bob