Saturday, September 29, 2018
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Democracy vs. republic
On my 2011 post Deconstructing the Ten "Cannots" of Political Economy, (apparently) new commenter John Nicholas remarks,
Leaving aside for the moment that "democracy" and "democratic republic" are generally used as synonyms, which is the sense used in the context of the thread (Donald Trump and George W. Bush notwithstanding, we generally elect our republic's representatives by majority vote), the alleged superiority of a republic to a democracy is a bit of received wisdom, perhaps an article of faith, that deserves critical examination.
It's difficult to untangle theory and practice. Any system of government can be implemented poorly, so even observing that the American republic in particular does not, in fact, protect minorities and the weak except when such protection is actually demanded by the masses themselves, does not by itself argue that republics are inferior to democracy. One does not have to read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers all that closely to conclude that the working class and the propertied class constituted the "factions" that most concerned the founders of the American republic, and they were primarily concerned with defending the "weak minority" of the propertied against the masses of workers. However, perhaps this failing is a failure of implementation of our specific republic, not a theoretical weakness of republics in general.
Similarly, one can examine a poorly-implemented democracy (such as one in which every citizen votes on every matter, however trivial or inapt for social decision-making) and declare in insufficiency of that particular implementation. A working government has a lot of moving parts, and there are a lot of ways any particular government can go wrong despite the theoretical soundness of its basic structure.
Every other feature of government — e.g. rule of law, independent judiciary, centralization/devolution, or constitutionally established individual rights — is compatible with both a republic and a democracy. The crucial difference between a republic and a democracy is that a republic relies on trustee representatives; a democracy does not.
The key theoretical advantage of a republic is that these trustees will be more likely to act in the public good than would ordinary citizens under their own authority. But this key difference does not seem to pass the smell test. Why is the citizenry competent to elect wise public-spirited representatives but not competent to simply act with wisdom in the public interest? If some "faction" does not have an absolute majority, they would have to compromise to achieve majority support for some of their agenda, just as a trustee representative must compromise between factions to be elected by a majority. But this supposed theoretical advantage is illusory.
The real justification of a republic is to privilege a ruling class, some subset of people in the republic who monopolize rule. (The occasional "outsider" might sometimes be elected, but they are soon co-opted into the ruling class.) "Democratic" elections serve two purposes: first, simply to generate the illusion that the people rule themselves. More importantly, no ruling class is monolithic; the illusion of democracy does give people some scope to exercise pressure to mediate conflicts within the ruling class. A democratic republic is superior to an outright oligarchy, but only just.
The big drawback of a republic, a drawback that seems inherent to the form itself and not an accident of particular institutions, is that trustee representatives come to see themselves as apart from the people, representing the interests of the ruling class(es) rather than the people. Lenin writes about this phenomenon in The State and Revolution, and we've seen any number of modern examples, notably Barack Obama's privilege of Wall Street over Main Street after the global financial crisis. Indeed, the entire Republican party clearly represents the capitalist class and the Democratic party the professional-managerial class; no faction in government represents workers and ordinary people.
When the interests of the ruling class harmonize with the means of production, then ruling class politics is relatively benign. But when contradictions develop between the relations of production and the means of production, the republic's trustee representatives are tied too strongly to the outdated relations and fight to the death by the side of the obsolete ruling classes. Only a true democracy can promote and follow revolutionary changes.
I for one DO NOT want a democracy! We live in a Republic for a reason, it helps to protect the minority,the weak, from the masses.
Leaving aside for the moment that "democracy" and "democratic republic" are generally used as synonyms, which is the sense used in the context of the thread (Donald Trump and George W. Bush notwithstanding, we generally elect our republic's representatives by majority vote), the alleged superiority of a republic to a democracy is a bit of received wisdom, perhaps an article of faith, that deserves critical examination.
It's difficult to untangle theory and practice. Any system of government can be implemented poorly, so even observing that the American republic in particular does not, in fact, protect minorities and the weak except when such protection is actually demanded by the masses themselves, does not by itself argue that republics are inferior to democracy. One does not have to read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers all that closely to conclude that the working class and the propertied class constituted the "factions" that most concerned the founders of the American republic, and they were primarily concerned with defending the "weak minority" of the propertied against the masses of workers. However, perhaps this failing is a failure of implementation of our specific republic, not a theoretical weakness of republics in general.
Similarly, one can examine a poorly-implemented democracy (such as one in which every citizen votes on every matter, however trivial or inapt for social decision-making) and declare in insufficiency of that particular implementation. A working government has a lot of moving parts, and there are a lot of ways any particular government can go wrong despite the theoretical soundness of its basic structure.
Every other feature of government — e.g. rule of law, independent judiciary, centralization/devolution, or constitutionally established individual rights — is compatible with both a republic and a democracy. The crucial difference between a republic and a democracy is that a republic relies on trustee representatives; a democracy does not.
The key theoretical advantage of a republic is that these trustees will be more likely to act in the public good than would ordinary citizens under their own authority. But this key difference does not seem to pass the smell test. Why is the citizenry competent to elect wise public-spirited representatives but not competent to simply act with wisdom in the public interest? If some "faction" does not have an absolute majority, they would have to compromise to achieve majority support for some of their agenda, just as a trustee representative must compromise between factions to be elected by a majority. But this supposed theoretical advantage is illusory.
The real justification of a republic is to privilege a ruling class, some subset of people in the republic who monopolize rule. (The occasional "outsider" might sometimes be elected, but they are soon co-opted into the ruling class.) "Democratic" elections serve two purposes: first, simply to generate the illusion that the people rule themselves. More importantly, no ruling class is monolithic; the illusion of democracy does give people some scope to exercise pressure to mediate conflicts within the ruling class. A democratic republic is superior to an outright oligarchy, but only just.
The big drawback of a republic, a drawback that seems inherent to the form itself and not an accident of particular institutions, is that trustee representatives come to see themselves as apart from the people, representing the interests of the ruling class(es) rather than the people. Lenin writes about this phenomenon in The State and Revolution, and we've seen any number of modern examples, notably Barack Obama's privilege of Wall Street over Main Street after the global financial crisis. Indeed, the entire Republican party clearly represents the capitalist class and the Democratic party the professional-managerial class; no faction in government represents workers and ordinary people.
When the interests of the ruling class harmonize with the means of production, then ruling class politics is relatively benign. But when contradictions develop between the relations of production and the means of production, the republic's trustee representatives are tied too strongly to the outdated relations and fight to the death by the side of the obsolete ruling classes. Only a true democracy can promote and follow revolutionary changes.
Saturday, September 08, 2018
Manufacturing anti-semitism
Well! The Guardian manages to follow The Atlantic in The Stupid, it Burns! series. Never mind UKIP, Richard Spencer, the growing American neo-fascist/neo-Nazi/alt-right movements, etc., ad nauseam. In I still don't believe Corbyn is antisemitic – but his 'irony' comments unquestionably were, what's really important is for Simon Hattenstone to dissect a comment from British Labour Party chairman Jeremy Corbyn from five years ago to make a specious connection between anti-semitism and opposition to the democratically elected government of Israel (which government I do not support, and I would not travel to Israel for love or money... and I presently live in China). Although the stupidity and mendacity seems obvious enough, because this drivel was published in The Guardian, I will explain a bit.In 2013, defending Palestinian ambassador Manuel Hassassian, Corbyn said that
Zionists who were in the audience . . . clearly have two problems. One is that they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, don’t understand English irony either.
Hattenstone sees clear evidence of anti-semitism: by "Zionists", Hattenstone claims Corbyn clearly meant Jews: Corbyn's comment "is unquestionably antisemitic."
Hattenstone's first tries the "swap the minority" argument:
And if there were ever a clear example of somebody conflating Zionist with Jews, this appears to be it. Let’s play the traditional “swap the minority” game. Instead of “Zionists” let’s make it, say, Muslims or African-Caribbeans or Asians or Irish needing lessons in history or irony. Not nice, eh?
This argument is beyond stupid. Any criticism or generalization becomes racist if you replace the object of criticism with a racial group. Murderers are violent => Black people are violent. The point is whether the initial object of criticism is itself a racial group, not that the comment is critical.
Next, Hattenstone tries to make the case that Zionist necessarily means Jewish. He quotes Shami Chakrabarti:
Crucially, I have heard testimony and heard for myself first hand, the way in which the word ‘Zionist’ has been used personally, abusively, or as a euphemism for ‘Jew’, even in relation to some people with no stated position or even a critical position on the historic formation or development of modern Israel. This has clearly happened so often over a number of years as to raise some alarm bells in Jewish communities.
This argument is just warmed-over third-hand Fox News "Some people say" bullshit. Just because some people use Zionist as a euphemism for Jew doesn't mean that Corbyn used it in that sense. Hell, I consider Republican and conservative as euphemisms for racist, but that doesn't mean that everyone who uses the former term means the latter.
Notably, Hattenstone does not link to the source (pdf) of the quotation, but to a summary article in which it does not appear. He apparently ignores such passages from the summary as Chakrabarti’s report "doesn’t deserve to be 'weaponised' in one direction or another." Chakrabarti "doesn’t offer an unambiguous definition of antisemitism and its relationship to anti-Zionism." Oh, and Chakrabarti calls for :a moratorium on trawls through the past statements of Labour party members." I suspect Hattenstone himself might not have the strongest grasp on the concept of irony.
Hattenstone continues:
Meanwhile, Labour’s new code of conduct states that the use of the word Zionism “euphemistically or as part of any personal abuse” may “provide evidence of antisemitic intent”. On both fronts, if Corbyn said the same thing today he would be in breach of his own party’s guidance.But this would be true only if Corbyn actually did use the word Zionism "euphemistically or as part of any personal abuse," which Hattenstone has not, you know, actually established.
Finally, Hattenstone argues that criticism is indeed criticism. Corbyn said that
these British Zionists don’t study history, and they don’t understand irony . . . In other words, they are uneducated, they have failed to integrate or assimilate, they are outsiders, they don’t belong, they need to be taught a lesson. Sorry, Jeremy, this is the language of supremacism.
Hattenstone's extrapolation is complete nonsense. I cannot speak to British culture, but there are a metric assload of fully integrated and assimilated Americans who don't study history and don't understand irony. Most of them are in fact uneducated (although a lot of supposedly educated people don't study history or understand irony), but criticizing someone for being stupid is not saying they're "outsiders", except, perhaps, in that they are outside the group of intelligent people capable of basic critical thinking.
I'm not sure it's the hill I personally want to die on, or that the Western Left should die on, but the Israel-Palestinian conflict is one of the sharpest and most binary examples of social justice: The Israeli government and its supporters, Israeli citizens and non-citizens, are in the wrong, are acting grievously against social justice. It's impossible, I think, to be an honest SJW and not at least give lip service to the condemnation of the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians.
I am hesitant to contradict Hanlon's Razor, even with all the charity I can muster, I can't explain Hattenstone's nonsense just with stupidity. This looks more like a malicious hatchet job: any challenge to the absolute authoritarian rule of the capitalist class must be smeared by any means possible. Hattenstone is lying, he knows he's lying, and he's lying on purpose, to discredit Corbyn and the Labour party. And The Guardian is complicit in this malicious purpose. One person might be just that stupid; it's too much of a stretch to believe that not just Hattenstone but also all the editors who published this crap are all that stupid.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)