The Promise of Popular Democracy, Part II: Solidarity of the Shaken

by: Rockridge Institute

Sun Apr 27, 2008 at 14:36

Can we repair our political practices and achieve something like the popular democracy that has remained always just around the corner? Popular democracy - a democracy in which the wisdom of a self-governing people is translated into policy - was opposed from the beginning of our nation's history by the likes of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was a shrewd authoritarian who had the insight that capitalist elites, protected by federal charter and largesse, could rule safely as invisible monarchs. This, of course, unraveled the naïve hopes of Adam Smith, who attempted to include compassion and human sympathy within his rationalist model, and who thought a free, unfettered market economy would promote human sympathy, equality and understanding.

Today, the elite democracy view is embodied in top-down political practices that diminish the franchise and excuse voter suppression, advantage the wealthy through legal fiat that makes wealth and speech equivalent, reduce citizenship to passive consumerism, and maintain a class of political consultants and pundit elites who believe themselves a cut or two above the people they pretend to represent.

What's loosely referred to as the "netroots revolution" is part of a revitalized progressive, popular democracy movement aimed at the reform of these practices. Its egalitarian emphasis is on engagement and action by the many. Citizens are entering the political sphere in numbers that threaten the hegemony of an elite class that has long dominated the Republican and Democratic parties. A good example of the movement's spirit was seen in the overwhelming grassroots reaction against the patronizing and condescending performances of moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos during the ABC Obama/Clinton debate. Sen. Hillary Clinton revealed the elite's us-and-them feelings of superiority when she told a private gathering of contributors that activists were getting in the way of their old-politics plans: "I mean, that's what we're dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions ..." Clinton said.

This is all well-known to the readers of this site and other movement activists. Still, we need to continue thinking through the theoretical basis of the movement, including the articulation of fundamental progressive moral views. So much needs to be urgently accomplished, so much attention is needed on pressing issues and tactical demands, that the editors and readers of OpenLeft should take pride that they have always made room for such explorations.

Here I want to approach one of the keys to the progressive moral view and to the possibilities of popular democracy, and that is the role of human empathy in our political practices. In Part I of this series, The Promise of Popular Democracy: Origins, I looked at democracy's true ancient roots in human empathy and anti-authoritarian practices. I deconstructed the privileging of austere reason over emotion in the Myth of Democratic Origins, and pointed toward a more authentic picture of the political human being.

The Promise of Popular Democracy: Origins

by: Rockridge Institute

Sun Apr 06, 2008 at 15:38

"Democracy: a recognition of souls, all down the open road, and a great soul seen in its greatness, as it travels on foot among the rest, down the common way of living."

         D.H. Lawrence

Political theorist Robert Dahl once noted that twenty-five centuries of debate about democracy had not "produced agreement on some of the most fundamental questions about" it. It turns out that Dahl, like many theorists and historians, wildly underestimated the duration of the discussion. It's more like 5,000 years, or even 10,000 years. But he was right about the confusion. And if we don't understand what democracy is, or what the human values are that inform it, how can we achieve its promise?

When we examine the health of our political practices, differing concepts of democracy lead to different conclusions. Advocates of classical democracy, better termed popular democracy, focus on political equality and believe democracy to be a system in which the wisdom of individual citizens, expressed directly by initiative or through the election of representatives from among their neighbors, should determine outcomes. Elite democrats believe that human nature is essentially competitive and hierarchical, that issues are too complex for most people's level of knowledge, and that democracy requires only that some of the people participate in election contests, choosing leaders from among more knowledgeable and naturally gifted and powerful elites.

For the advocates of popular democracy, low voter turnout and systematic corruption of election processes are disasters. Concern for the common interest and individual autonomy and responsibility are balanced. Most importantly, popular democrats believe support for representative government depends upon bonds of sympathy and understanding among citizens and between the chosen representatives and those represented.

For elite democrats, as long as some reasonably well-informed citizens participate, tyranny is somewhat inhibited by a latent threat of voter rebellion. Turnout levels matter little (as long as it's the right people who vote); corruption of election practices is often shrugged off as the unhappy but inevitable result of competitive human nature. Self-interest prevails, and a little democracy goes a long way. Important decisions are left to a knowledgeable elite, but the people are given at least a token opportunity to have their say.

There is also a critical asymmetry in the public descriptions of these two kinds of democracy. Elite democrats can and often do disguise elite rule in the language of the popular democrats. Even Mussolini called his fascist state a democracy. True popular democrats, however, can hardly deploy the language of hierarchically oriented elites in the promotion of political egalitarianism. Plato famously recommended that rulers employ a "noble lie," to convince the ruled that their unequal status was due to pre-determined divine ordinance. Similarly, modern elites justify their overblown paeans to popular democracy as noble lies or necessary fictions.

The Noble Truth of Human Empathy

If popular democracy depends upon authentic bonds of sympathy and trust among citizens, these bonds cannot be faked. It could be said that popular democracy depends essentially upon the noble truth of human empathy.

In his essay on Walt Whitman quoted in the epigraph above, D.H. Lawrence says democracy is a "recognition of souls" embarked upon a common journey along a never-ending "open road." By defining democracy within the metaphor of Life as a Journey, Lawrence gives us democracy as a process of becoming. Democracy is not a thing whose essence can be captured or contained. Democracy must be enacted, the way, say, two lovers daily enact a marriage. It's up to democratic citizens, every moment of their lives, to enact democratic bonds with one another. Lawrence also speaks of the emergence of "a great soul seen in all its greatness," implying that empathy or the recognition of souls allows for the temporary ascendancy of skilled leaders among an egalitarian people. This is an important point. Critics of popular democracy often accuse egalitarians of simply being anti-authority. To the contrary, the practices of popular democracy arose in recognition of the need for leadership, with appropriate checks and balances in place to make sure these leaders continue to travel "on foot among the rest," and not ride ahead upon noble lies or political steeds of their own invention.

Both popular and elite conceptions call upon a dominant Myth of Democratic Origins, which locates the embryonic democratic impulse among the pre-Classical Greeks and credits its blossoming to the rise of a decidedly unemotional, Western concept of Reason. We can't underestimate the power of origin myths, because the widely shared folk theory of essences tells us that essences are contained in origins. But this myth of origins has skewed our understanding of democracy's past as well as its potential. Among other faults, it confuses human emotion with unreason, and so it discounts the importance of empathy to democracy.

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