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Title: The Two Souls of Democracy Author: Anarcho Date: July 18, 2005 Language: en Topics: democracy, film review Source: Retrieved on 28th January 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=163][anarchism.pageabode.com]] and on 28th October 2021 from [[http://www.anarkismo.net/article/962 Notes: A review of Tony Benn’s 2005 TV programme on democracy. It points out the democracy has many meanings and can, and is, used to justify elite rule.
Big Ideas That Changed the World: Democracy, Tony Benn, Channel 5,
21^(st) June 2005
Channel Five has produced a series of programmes on “Big Ideas that
changed the world.” Tony Benn presented the one of “democracy.” As would
be expected, Benn came across well. The programme was interesting and,
rightly, did not dwell purely on political democracy. He rightly noted
that democracy means “people power” (democracy comes from the Greek for
“strength of the people” rather than demarchy which would be “rule by
the people”). As such, he rightly broadened his discussion to bring in
the trade unions and other popular movements rather dwell on elections,
“majority rule” and other aspects of “democracy” so beloved of
politicians.
With this essentially correct premise Benn sketched the history of
democracy from its roots in ancient Greece to the modern day, via the
Magna Charta (rightly dismissed as an elite document with nothing to do
with democracy), John Ball and the peasants’ revolt, the English Civil
War, the Chartists, the suffragettes and the struggle against
imperialism. He ended by examining “globalisation” and how our hard-won
democratic freedoms are being taken away by global business. As he
reminded us, reforms have never been given from on-high by the elite but
rather fought for from below, by the masses using their own
organisations and strength. Moreover, the struggle never ends as the
ruling elite use their wealth to undermine the advances of the past:
“There is never a final victory for democracy. It is always a struggle
in every generation, and you have to take up the cause time and time
again.”
Needless to say, the programme had its flaws. Benn is right, of course,
to stress that all change comes “from below” and the pressing need for
people to organise themselves. Sadly, he squeezed these truisms into the
mould of parliamentarianism and so utterly destroyed their real meaning
and potential. This is unsurprising as the term “democracy” has
radically different meanings. It has, to coin a phrase, two souls. One
is hierarchical, the other egalitarian. One is from the top-down, the
other is from the bottom up. One is statist, the other libertarian.
The heart of the difference is to do how democracy is viewed. Benn put
the underlying principle of democracy as being equality, the premise
that we are all equal. Which is true, but it hides a more fundamental
principle: freedom. The real rationale of democracy is that it is
impossible to be truly free if others are ruling you. In order to be
free, you need a meaningful say in the decisions that affect you. That
implies equality. Unlike liberalism, which happily tolerates the rule of
the (enlightened) few, democracy states the obvious: there is no freedom
for the many if there is inequality.
This, however, exposes the fundamental flaw in what is commonly known as
“democracy.” If democracy is based on equality, then why does it
tolerate the situation where the many alienate their power to the few by
means of election? What equality is there between an electorate who are
allowed to vote every few years and the government who exercises
authority in the meantime? Simply put, representative democracy is based
on a fundamental inequality of power between the electors and
politicians. Rather than represent the people, governments rule it.
Democracy in this context becomes little more than the “power” to pick a
master and after a few years get to replace them with a new one.
As such, statist forms of democracy are inherently self-contradictory.
Hence the anarchist critique of democracy as being undemocratic.
Electing a handful of people to govern for you, while a step forward, is
hardly democratic nor freedom. Sadly, far too many radicals (including
such notable revolutionaries as Marx and Engels) side with Benn and
consider such limited forms of democracy as democratic and as expressing
the (political) power of the masses when, in reality, it is no such
thing. This can be seen from any genuine popular revolution.
Benn failed to mention the French Revolution in his potted history of
democracy. As a consequence, he did not mention the classic example of
when the two souls of democracy clashed, when representative democracy
came into conflict not only with legacy of Absolutism and Aristocracy
but also the popular (direct) democracy of the sections created by the
revolution itself. This conflict between representative (statist)
democracy and direct (libertarian) democracy is a feature of all popular
movements and revolutions. Within the trade unions, for example, the
rank and file consistently comes into conflict with the officials — the
strikers’ assembly is hated as much by the bureaucrats as by the bosses.
During the American and French revolutions, the popular assemblies were
finally destroyed in favour of representative democracy. During the
Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks systematically undermined the factory
committees and soviet assemblies and concentrated more and more power
into the hands of their central committee. More recently, in Argentina,
politicians lined up to attack the neighbourhood assemblies as
“undemocratic.”
That explains why anarchists tend to use the word “self-management” to
describe their ideas on decision making and self-organisation. In other
words, “democracy” is a term riddled with ambiguities and can be used to
describe many different regimes. Hence we see anti-globalisation
protestors proclaiming “this is what democracy looks like” while the
likes of Blair denounce them as “undemocratic” and stress their own
“democratic” credentials (having been elected by the votes of a quarter
and then a fifth of eligible voters!). So when George Bush talks of
“democracy” is he really meaning the same thing as Rousseau?
The term “democracy” has become the preferred means of undermining
genuine (libertarian) democracy of people making their own decisions.
Counter-revolution often stalks the land draped in flag of “democracy”
and both the bourgeoisie and Bolsheviks unite in attacking
self-management as “undemocratic” and proposing elected hierarchy as
genuine democracy. A formal democracy is aimed for where the people vote
in elections and then let the ruling elite do as it will, until the next
election. Thus democracy is used by right, centre and left to disempower
the many and empower the few. Whether this few are the wealthy or the
party leadership, it hardly matters to those at the bottom. This, as
anarchists have long stressed, is no accident. Democracy, by shifting
power from the base to the top, centralising initiative into the hands
of elected leaders, was designed by the bourgeoisie to marginalise the
people and ensure the continuation of their rule and wealth.
Benn, rightly, attacks the influence of wealth in undermining democracy.
He paints a picture of the 1950s to 1970s as a society of increasing
equality and democracy. Thatcher and Reagan were the
“counter-revolution,” turning back the clock to less democratic, more
capitalist, times. Yet these puppets of the rich were democratically
elected and attacked strikers and protestors as “undemocratic.” Why is
the labour movement (a minority) and strikers (a minority of a minority)
the real bearers of democracy while Parliament is not? Benn did not
address the issue. Yet, for anarchists, such direct action is the
necessary expression of our ideas on democracy. Direct action is the
source of people power, not the ballot, as it is the only means by which
those affected by a decision influence it. People act for themselves
rather than getting a few leaders/bosses to act for us (it is this which
usually produces the necessity for direct action in the first place!).
Neither did Benn mention how the trade union and Labour Party hierarchy
(then, as now) came into conflict continually with the rank and file of
the unions and the party (never mind the population at large). Labour
governments habitually used troops to break strikes while trade union
officials betrayed them time and time again. That these officials and
politicians may have been “democratically elected” hardly mitigates
their repression of real, direct, democracy in the form of strike or
union assemblies. Clearly, the issue of democracy within these movements
is as important as the issue of democracy in society as a whole. Neither
can be solved by the dubious pleasure of alienating your power to a
leader who misrules in your name — as the programme’s constant use of
pictures of Blair and Bush should remind the viewer.
The limitations of Benn’s account can also be seen from his claim that
nationalisation was an extension of democracy, replacing the power of
the wallet with the power of the ballot in area after area of the
economy. It would be more accurate to say that it simply replaced the
power of the wallet with the power of the bureaucrat. The general public
had no real say in what these industries did, it was the politicians
they elected who laid down general policies which were implemented by
the state bureaucracy and the managers it hired. Within the nationalised
industries workers were still wage slaves. Capitalism had been replaced
by state capitalism. Economic democracy was as non-existent within the
latter as in the former.
As would be expected, Benn portrayed his social-democratic ideas as the
means by which capitalism and the state can be saved from themselves. He
ended by saying that without a genuine democratic state, three outcomes
were likely: apathy, cynicism and violence. There is another option, the
alternative which Benn avoided in his talk — the idea that we build the
new world while fighting the current. It simply states that we apply our
ideas of a good society today and that our organisations are
self-managed, run from the bottom-up and reject giving power to a few
leaders within them. We build, in other words, libertarian alternatives
as part of the struggle for freedom — strike and community assemblies
and committees, unions, co-operatives, and so on — to complement other
forms of direct action and solidarity.
This was the idea which inspired the early labour movement across the
world, before Marxism (and then, inevitably, reformism) got their grips
on it. The first British trade union movement was based on it, arguing
that working class people should organise into unions and their congress
would replace Parliament. It was only when this radical unionism was
crushed in the 1840s that Chartism became a mass movement and the labour
movement looked to the state rather than its own strength and
self-organisation. A similar process occurred in the First
International, where Marx and Bakunin represented these two currents and
the two concepts of democracy they express. As before, the statist
current won and the labour movement was again side-tracked. In the
1900s, syndicalism again expressed these ideas and made a significant
and militant alternative to social democracy before the success of
Bolshevism yet again shunted the radicals into the same dead-end.
Now, at the dawn of the 21^(st) century, the question radicals must ask
themselves is whether they want to repeat the mistakes of the past or
learn from them. Whether they do or not depends on which vision of
democracy they hold: governmental (representative) or self-managed
(direct). Is democracy simply the masses picking their rulers or is it
genuine management of their own affairs? Sadly, Benn’s “big idea”
fatally confuses the two and ends up using the latter to justify the
former.