The remark "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried" is attributed to Churchill, who was also no friend of Socialism. It is worthwhile to consider whether there is a relation between the two. I think there is, and that it is this.
What makes democracy attractive is that it gives a voice in governance to the governed by a supervised mechanical means, the vote. Thus the people are governed by representatives whom they have chosen. The risk still remains, however, that the majority will then exercise the same dictatorial powers exercised by individual tyrants or oligarchs over a minority. To some extent, this is usually controlled by the existence of protective laws, but laws can always be changed, and so the risk remains.
Given that power is acquired in a democracy by means of the vote, the candidates for power will necessarily compete for the largest share of votes from the population at large. This means that candidates will inevitably follow the populist strategy of promising new and more costly benefits to the voters. Given that the process is competitive, the candidates will vie with each other in promising ever more to the voters. Given further that there are always limits to state wealth, even taking into account the ability of the state to borrow or print money, the process must inevitably lead to the offer of the re-distribution of wealth. In effect, the candidates will offer to the voting public at large the wealth of one of its subgroups, that of the most successful.
The implication of this is that democracy inevitably morphs into socialism simply as a consequence of the mechanism by means of which power is acquired.
But Churchill was right that all other forms of government have proven less attractive than democracy. What, then, is to be done?
Perhaps the answer lies in the modification of democracy rather than its replacement.
Since the problem lies in the power-acquisition mechanism, it would seem that this is what should be modified. But how? In some way, what we want is to retain the feature of democracy that fairly allocates power to the governed people, while eliminating the motive to re-distribute the wealth of minorities. The answer is at once both utterly clear and absolutely beyond implementation.
As long as the society allows large contingents of people who do not contribute to the gross national product to vote, the move towards Socialism, a system of centralized government theft, is inexorable. What we want is a system of power distribution that takes into account what the voter has at stake in the system and, more important, what the voter contributes to the system.
What must be changed is universal suffrage, the principle of one person, one vote. It is inevitable that as long as universal suffrage is in place, one or more "parties" will a) promise the wealth of others to the many, and b) attempt to increase the number of the non-producing many as much as possible.
In the U.S.A., the Democrat party has been very energetic on both counts. The current president, Obama, has been quite clear that he is interested in redistributing wealth, a euphemism for institutionalized theft. But the Democrat party has been active since the times of Kennedy and Johnson in increasing its voting base, primarily using the civil rights movement. The welfare policies put in place in those times had the double desired effect of exponentially increasing the number of impoverished and government dependent blacks born, on the one hand, and exponentially increasing the number of government dependent social work functionaries. All of these, it was correctly anticipated, would inevitably vote Democrat.
At the current time, that same Democrat party is working to the utmost to allow roughly twelve million illegal aliens to become citizens, an automatic twelve million additional Democrat votes in one blow.
The strategy is not subtle and it is not new, it has been followed by the Catholic Church for hundreds of years as it has roamed the earth seeking ever new poor, un-educated, primitive souls to enlist in its enterprise.
Karl Marx was both right and wrong. There is a mechanical aspect to the flow of history that, in some cases, does lead inexorably to socialism. He was wrong, however, in his identification of the mechanism. It is not the inner workings of capitalism that move us in this direction, but rather the nature of the political mechanism at play in the acquisition of democratic power.
I disagree that democracy invariably leads to socialism, though, admitedly, when bad times spring up, populist candidates will tend to capitalize on the dissastisfaction of the voters by promising them entitlements. But I don't think this will necessarily lead to socialism; there are other factors that must be there, such as a powerful intelligentsia that runs academia and propagates certain notions to the masses. I think certain socialist impulses are natural, but the overall philosophy is very much counter intuitive; I hardly think it is the natural state of man.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with your solution as I see it is that it is essentially a solution to socially engineer a better society. Who are these "contingents of people who do not contribute to the Gross National Product"? Are they groups or are they going to be singled out as individuals? If the former, you're heading down a very dangerous path that would surely have other negative consequences. If you go by individuals, what will the specific criteria be? And how big will the Ministry of Voting Priveleges have to be in order to make sure that only the good people vote? I think you would unintentionally create the very socialist state you are trying to avoid.
The answer to me is not a radical reformation of the system, but rather the promotion of citizenship. This is not easy either and has to be done in a lot of different ways. But I for one do not think that America is necessarily doomed for socialism; and if it is doomed, it is not doomed by virtue of its democratic nature.
Socialist populist movements begin springing up in America in the 1870's; but at that time, they were basically native white Christians. Nothing much had changed demographically in the country. The rise of industry had created huge imblances of power and wealth and the socialists played on this; but it was by no means inevitable, and it would take an entire generation before any pro-labor legislation was passed (legislation which even most libertarians would agree with today). In the Civil War, the Congress debated endlessly about whether to impose an income tax - and this was in the middle of the greatest war in the continent's history when revenue was desperately needed. Certainly if socialism were inevitable it would have occured at this time. But it didn't; government power increased and a modest tax was imposed, but compared to what Obama is doing now, it was virtually nothing. The reason for this, in my opinion, is that socialism as an idea had not taken hold, and Christianity was still firmly the religion of the state. The key then, it seems to me, is in the war of ideas, not in radically changing the entire process.
Surely there are some steps you can take: immigration reform, promoting a constitution that exists to limit government not enable it, promoting individualism in other ways. But I think, as a conservative, you have to recognize that there only so many steps you can take before you yourself become the social engineer.
Asher
You're quite right that social engineering is always a potential threat. I'm not sure that linking voting weight to, let's say earned income, is necessarily a form of social engineering. If it is, then so is one vote per person -- both are equally decisions on voting weight.
ReplyDeleteI think ideas can only be used historically as a staying action, and that ultimately greed trumps ideas. Socialism is nothing other than tarted-up greed for the wealth of others. I don’t think the original American dream idea can be sold to the asian, south American, and American black populations – it worked originally because the populations were white protestants already disposed to believe it on religious grounds. It was more difficult to sell it to the later Irish and Italian Catholics, though the Jews took to it quite well (while also retaining their birthright leftism). Some ideas simply market better than others. A story in which my inadequacies are someone else's fault simply is easier to sell than one in which I am responsible for my own life. Thus, Americanism is an uphill battle. As an uphill battle, all that is necessary is that come circumstance change in favor of the opposition, and the battle is lost.
How do we account for one's contribution to the GDP? The amount of money one earns, or the dollar value of the product one produces? What does the money earned by the CEOs of credit card companies represent? Governments are not the only entities printing money. Would the structure of the right to vote be intended to encourage everyone to be a productive member of society, or simply to prevent politicians from promising too much? It seems to me that there are plenty of ways in which the government could promise too much to the wealthy, in terms of loosening financial regulations, for example. Is it really OK for us to let the economy continue on in a boom-bust cycle, just because the top 1% of earners can still come out ahead? Some wealthy people are smart enough to see that they'll come out better in a stable economy, but others are just short-sighted. At least lower-income people have no trouble recognizing this, because they don't stand to make much extra money by taking huge risks.
ReplyDeleteBut I think the main thing that is missing for me in the idea that each person has a right to whatever wealth he or she can amass, and a vote share equivalent to it, is the fact that in many cases, that wealth is based not on the exploitation of labour or human capital, but on natural resources that are finite. If you give more votes to people who exploit natural resources or pollute the environment, without any consideration of the impact they are having on it, there is an inevitable slide toward permanently losing a lot of natural beauty and destroying the conditions necessary for human health, not to mention the folly of short-term thinking (witness the collapse of the East Coast fishing industry in Canada). For the same reason that individuals' self-interest will lead to the desire to redistribute wealth without regard to the general social impact, the self-interest of individuals making money through the direct exploitation of the natural environment can cause them to shrug off the costs that are shared by us all, either now or in the future, and focus on immediate gain. Even a human lifetime is too short a span to have in mind in terms of preserving the future exploitability of a natural resource.
I am also unsure how to think about the wealth that is earned on mere ownership of land rather than actual productivity. Does rent count as GDP?
Just to clarify, I'm not deliberately trying to espouse a utilitarian concept of the social good, which would naturally lead to a certain kind of redistribution of wealth. My point is more that even enlightened self-interest can fail when there's money on the table.
ReplyDeleteAll perfectly reasonable concerns, but I was not suggesting the earned income option as a completed “solution,” just as a possible starting point and, indeed, not one to which I’m wedded (we’re not even engaged, just good friends).
ReplyDeleteI’m fully aware of the excesses associated with the industrial revolution, just as I’m fully aware of the horrors associated with Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao.
I do not think that our political structures or economic policies should be determined by our annoyance with high earners. Many people seem to be offended by the bare fact that some people manage to become enormously rich, while they remain unimpressed by the fact that the same system that allows such wealth at the same time has produced historically unprecedented benefits for both the middle class and the poor.
There are losers in every conceivable economic system. In ten years, we will be 100 years from the peasants revolt in Russia in 1917, but those 100 years have contained levels of slaughter previously unimagined and the Russian population continues even now to live in dismal poverty. That’s a centrally controlled economy.
Europe has tried to go the “Social Democrat” “third way” since the second world war, but it has managed to do this with only limited success economically and by letting itself become a protectorate of the U.S. (as is the case for Canada), bearing none of the costs associated with the maintenance of an army. It is largely for this reason that the French have been such enthusiasts of “diplomacy” over war – they haven’t the army and they haven’t had the will since Verdun.
I’m not comfortable with the word “exploit” when talking of work for pay – it smacks of facile Marxism and “wage slavery.” We haven’t had wage slavery since the sweatshops, and there are very few sweatshops in north America. If they exist in Asia, then let the Asians repair that.
The case on the environment has not been made. I’m fully convinced that the global warming crisis is a manufactured junk science scam. These people cannot predict tomorrow’s weather from their super-computer models, but they presume to warn us about calamities decades away. The whole thing is simply implausible for more reasons than an email can possible contain.
If there are businesses that pollute the environment, then enforce the existing laws. In my experience in public parks and on inner city streets, the public polluting is done far more by the welfare poor than by Exxon.
As far as rights are concerned, they exist only to the extent that some population decides they do. Quine’s general remark on metaphysics applies aptly in this case: to be is to be the value of an individual variable.
When I say "exploit," I don't always remember the Marxist overtones - I live with a biologist, and I have become used to thinking in morally neutral terms of resources and energy expenditure. I often forget to be careful about words like that.
ReplyDeleteThe case for global warming doesn't have to be made for me to shudder when I see the cloud of smog over Mexico City. But if we are thinking of earnings as a starting point to consider rather than the essential solution to the problem, then the push I'd anticipate against environmental legislation is not as great a worry.