Unfinished or Uncertain?

Back to Democracy

Democracy: Uncertain or Unfinished? If it were ever firmly established that discouraging certain segments of the population from civic participation would be best for promoting the general welfare and securing the blessings of liberty for everyone, it would effectively endorse conditions as they today exist in the US where we have a somewhat democratic federal republic. Though it’s rare to hear it brazenly expressed, many influential Americans still do not believe it would be optimal if all US citizens exercised their right to vote. This has always been true, but since at least the last world war, people holding such sentiments have been somewhat reticent about expressing them Still, would it truly be ideal if all citizens participated equally in deciding state policy or even in choosing the officials qualified to do so? It may not even be possible to ask this in a non argumentative way because the question still cannot be separated from issues of race and economic class.  If the US were ever to wholeheartedly subscribe to our self proclaimed ideals, race would be forever excluded as a factor.  Economic stratification, however, would remain a different story. An non ironic concept of “meritocracy” would probably be acceptable to most American citizens.  Most versions would acknowledge that some people, because of their recognized abilities and accomplishments, are more suitable than others for shouldering certain responsibilities in an effective disciplined way. But no matter how “merit” was defined, it would not necessarily exclude inherited wealth and the political advantages it makes possible.   But what about voting?  If considerations of race were abolished, and disadvantages of parental wealth were compensated for by education, who could reasonably regret near universal participation in elections? Here is how Karl Popper, in his “The Open Society and Its Enemies” quotes Pericles: Although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it. Were Pericles words actually intended to endorse a fully participatory democracy?  Couldn’t they today also justify a certain satisfaction that, in the world’s “leading democracy”, so few people actually translate their judgment into the action of voting?  It’s appropriate to consider such questions in light of US history and its Constitution whose checks and balances impose certain “safeguards” against democracy.  This is appropriate because anyone who prefers having large numbers of citizens refrain from voting could reasonably be called “anti-democratic”, but could not reasonably be called “un-American”.  The Powell Memorandum and the Trilateral Commission’s report on the governability of democracies” demonstrate that respected and well established leaders still feel justified in worrying about possible “excesses of democracy”. Discouraging certain people from voting would not even necessarily imply they are inferior.  Rather, it might acknowledge that their talents would be better employed elsewhere, and as Plato believed, everyone would be more happy and prosperous if left to do what they did best.  Discouraging is, after all, not the same as “preventing”.  But there are other questions also worth considering, especially when it comes to circumstances palpable in the real world. The Powell Memorandum was explicit in advocating for business interests to reassert a dominance somewhat shaken by the participatory tumult of the sixties and seventies.  Of course it was merely an updated formulation of positions taken in reaction to the New Deal, the Progressive Era, back to the aftermath of the Civil War - and even to the original purpose of the Republic as it was understood by northern Federalists. This line of reason, if accepted, forces us to consider whether the primacy of business interests is actually best for society as a whole - and, if so, whether some checks against the influence of business would safeguard the interests of everyone else, as well as those of the business sector as a whole.  This, fairly comprehensively, describes the dominant US political system today with those calling themselves “Conservatives” convinced that constraints on business freedom have gone too far.  Liberals in positions of power tend to believe the existing balance is basically sound but are more or less aware that a failure to regularly update protections for workers, consumers, and the environment could endanger political stability to a potential tipping point where the interests of business would be severely disrupted. There’s a great deal of population survey data indicating a majority of US citizens are in favor of a much different balance between the interests of business and those of the rest of us.  This remains true even in light of powerful strains of racism and a visceral abhorrence of the commonly used terms for economic democracy so carefully induced and manipulated by the public relations industry and the mainstream limits on political debate. It may be that human nature will forever preclude the types of skills, responsibilities, and inclinations necessary for the self determining collective efforts required for economic democracy.  It may also be that fearful urgencies to protect increasing income and wealth inequality will motivate effective measures to quell an excessive desire for more democracy.  It may be that we are already experiencing the latter scenario.

Joseph Panzica

Before Organized Inequality

Back to Democracy Before Organized Inequality Stratified inequality and the domination of vast populations by tiny elites is a very recent development for humans as we know ourselves to be. Our species, with its current capacity for creating culture, has existed for no more than three hundred thousand years, and quite likely much less.  For about ninety percent of this time we all (like our most probable ancestral species: Homo Erectus) were nomadic foragers occasionally capable of organizing “great hunts”. Stratified domination is both a symptom and a driver of civilized development as it has been experienced so far. Neolithic settled agriculture does not seem to existed for more ten thousand years and is probably not much more than eight thousand years old.  Civilizations, and the proto states they eventually supported, seem to have started somewhere between six and eight thousand years ago. When considering the prospects for democracy in modern (or “postmodern”) societies as they develop in the face of crises that are more and more often self generated, it might be important to consider at least two important aspects of our formative pre agricultural existence.  One of these potentially relevant aspects is egalitarianism.  The other has to do with social and psychological mechanisms involving control of attention and effort. Most of what we think we know about pre neolithic foraging communities is derived from speculation based on studies of contemporary Hunter/Gatherer societies.  These scattered “remnants” are quite diverse as would be expected of human groups who successfully adapted to a wide variety of habitats, climates, and food sources.  Of course even the commonalities observed among these isolated examples cannot be categorically ascribed to any of our pre agricultural predecessors.  But speculation, firmly grounded in the best available empirical data, can provisionally be used to guide reasoned explorations and quests for understanding that may result in additional hypotheses, tests, and sources of data. Christopher Boehm is an anthropologist who has amassed a comparative database of hundreds of existing foraging societies.  He has interesting things to say about egalitarianism among male hunter/gatherers. First of all he does not dismiss the powerful drive for domination in humans.  He recognizes at least two major sources of this drive.  One is based on our capacity for aggression and competition.  The other is based on our capacity for nurturance.  These two potential bases for dominance strategies among humans are probably related in very complex ways, but we all can recognize our own tendency to resent being dominated no matter the motive (or mixture of motives).  If we are honest, we must also acknowledge our own propensity to dominate others (when we can) whether our motivation is more aggressive or nurturing. Surely we have all (adult or not) sometimes chafed at the nurturing dominance of caregivers even when we believe it to be legitimate - or at least well meaning.  We might draw upon our own aggressive tendencies to rebuff this kind of interference. (Don’t “nanny state” me!)  Or we might have other strategies - including more or less loving efforts to be reassuring about our capacity to care for ourselves.  Despite various initiation rituals meant to clearly delineate certain stages of maturity, pre agricultural societies still struggle with these issues though perhaps not as acutely as we. Domination based on nurturance (sincere or counterfeit) can be employed by both males and females just as it can be directed towards members of either sex.  Aggressive type dominance in adult homo sapiens is usually employed by males against females and other males.  Adult male aggression against females can be more or less managed (but not eliminated) in various ways by forager cultures. One way is based on kinship including various approximations of what we might call the “nuclear family” in patrilineal societies, but of course this does not always protect women from their own kinsmen or monogamous partners. Another strategy involves segregating the genders, sometimes even comprehensively - except on occasions well governed by ritual for certain essential purposes. Aggressive dominance of hunter gathering males over other males tends to be effectively countered by the communal aggression of males.   Christopher Boehm estimates that 50% of intra-group homicide in forager societies (which are often quite violent in other ways too) is directed at “upstarts”.  Though the male community can often regulate attempts at status seeking through shunning or ridicule (laughter frequently does the trick), there is always the ultimate sanction.  This is mostly brought about by assassination by ambush, though in societies where murder is usually handled by kin revenge, dispatching troublesome bullies could be the prime motive for what we might recognize as  “execution”.  Boehm speculates this might be what’s depicted in a cave drawing depicting archers raising their bows in exaltation over the body of a man pierced by at least 10 arrows. As we all should know, human societies able to generate an economic surplus invariably result in stratification which permits the rise of “strong men” and the ability of a small elite to “legitimately” dominate and exploit large populations.  As far as we know there are no archaic or contemporary “civilizations” without this type of stratification and dominance.  The term “civilized” usually refers to societies able (by means of a manageable food surplus) to support cities.  There are also societies which might be called “civilized” (or even “states”) that do not have cities per se, but are able to support a “court” of ruling elites led by some version of “king”.  Then there are large communities (usually centered near prodigiously productive fisheries) which support both stratification and specialization even though they have much more in common with hunter gatherer cultures than what we call “civilizations” All known archaic, agriculture based, civilized “states” had kings and priestly castes.  These kings often had their “state” voluntarily bestowed upon them by the priestly caste alone (priest kings).  But sometimes they earned (or seized) their predominance through their ability to command armed men and win victories (warrior kings).  In either case the support of the priestly class was essential for their long term legitimacy.  Rule by fear alone is generally short lived and/or unlikely to be transferred to a new generation.  But kings, even when firmly legitimated by a priestly caste, frequently feel the need to employ armed coercion (which can sometimes rise to the level of “terror tactics”) against elements of their subject population. The human drive for dominance well predates our own species and even our own genus and family (all other hominids).  It dates back to the origins of great apes and maybe deep into our order (primates which includes all apes, monkeys and some other species).  Our ways of controlling attention (on the individual, group and cultural level) probably have even deeper roots.  These “ways”, taken together, may be the primary defining factor of all hominids even though our species is the only one extant in both our evolutionary family and our genus “homo”. The allure in enchantment can be delightful, inspiring, sinful, sinister, or dreadful.  But to be disenchanted is to be alone, let down, exposed to some presumed reality with all its stark harshness or emptiness.  To be disenchanted could mean being left open and vulnerable to the pallid or rageful insinuations of reason.  An enchantment might be an individual’s only protection from the most primordial terrors the psyche, the most horrifying elaborations of the imagination, the most lethal contingencies of natural world, or the sternest sanctions of a shared culture. Enchantments can safeguard an individual whether alone or in the very thick of human bustle.  But enchantments, for good or ill, can also take an individual outside of herself into the collective - and even into the cosmos or beyond.  And some enchantments may captivate a wan lone soul to be set forever apart, walking only ghostlike among his kin. The word “enchantment” has its root in song.  Prosody and melody may be carried alone within a single soul, but (aside from specially cultivated throat singing, and the yodeling echoes of stoney spaces) harmony requires more than one voice.  The etymology of the word “chorus” holds additional intrigue. The English conflation with “choir” goes back only to the 1600s. In Latin, a chorus was a circle dance.  The Greek word refers to an enclosed area for dancing, but also to the dancers within.  And in Greek drama the dancers intermittently gave voice to the communal values enacted in performance.  But speculative roots for “chorus” hint at deeper origins in verbs that once meant either “to grasp” or “to rejoice”.  Of course, a combination of both meanings could be valid for describing ecstatic immersions. There are few species able to combine controlled singing and dance in the way of humans. Raucous communal circle and line dancing among apes has been noted by anthropologists, but whether or not this mimics observed human behavior, other primates demonstrate nothing like  our ability to coordinate movements in groups or pairs. Only a few bird species exhibit anything like our control over pitch, volume, and rhythm when vocalizing.  But when observing apes engaged in what seems to be somewhat patterned dance and shout, it is at least forgivable for us to infer some degree of communal bonding (and perhaps even some basic form of collective “meaning”) in their celebrational antics. Again, everything is speculative, but the case has been made that human religion and language have some basis in the syntax and symbolism of communal song and dance.  And the musical ceremonies drummed up in known hunter gatherer societies and pre modern agricultural communities have a relatively clear positive effect on social bonding.  Ethnographic studies and even primary source accounts from individuals native to the Americas, Australia, Hawaii, as well as the Arctic and tundra also support claims that such ceremonies, often lasting from several days to several months, are experienced as ways to contact, conjure, enact, or give give rise to powerful spiritual beings (or states of being). These aspects of human culture are powerful ways of sharing and coordinating attention and effort.  Their “spell” retains its potency  well beyond immediate social contact in space or time.  It’s compelling to consider how pallid is the “rational” linear exposition of prosaic language when compared to the more visceral urgencies evoked by strenuous participation in music and drama.  It’s also beyond question that body language and voice inflection are often much more communicative than text or even spoken language.  The intended content of our words and sentences, even when well supported by “facts” and “logic”, can be easily defeated by non verbal cues we exhibit unconsciously. The communicative aspects of language, physical coordination, mimicry, memory, and symbolism form one large assemblage of our capacity for cultural coordination which seems quite unique to our evolutionary phylum.  But our capacity for technology also sets us apart.  No doubt mimicry and memory as they are encoded, enhanced, and extended by language based systems play an important role in transferring and developing technology, but there is also another component of attention control that should be considered. The notion of “hyper-focus” has been explored (originally?) in the context of studying autism and also in what is somewhat paradoxically referred to as “attention ‘deficit’ syndrome”.   But aren’t both of these examples of human behavior which sometimes frustrate the social (or authoritarian)  direction of attention?  The ability to autonomously control sustained attention and effort on a prolonged task may well have been essential for elaborate forms of technology - even those that seem primitive to us.  Anthropologists confirm the time and difficulty involved in mastering  the skills involved to craft Acheulean hand-axes, a technology that was dominant for the vast majority of human history.  Regardless of how communal it may have been, it’s difficult to imagine persisting in the learning or execution processing without a great deal of self control. Hyper-focus, largely external to social constraint, has been described as an “ADHD superpower” found among certain very successful scientists, artists and writers.  It has also been identified with what are described a “flow” states in which individuals seem to lose themselves, happily captivated, in some absorbing mental or physical activity.  Such states are reasonably well documented and are apparently actively cultivated in certain religious or mystical disciplines. The self abnegating transcendences and captivations of “enchantment” can be frightful or even destructive.  In both their communal and autistic forms, they also seem to provide exhilarating benefits often experienced as life enhancing and primal sources of “meaning”.  Their power with regard to attention and effort may be critical to the maintenance and enhancement of human culture.  Reason’s persuasiveness and the efficacy of language can be easily dwarfed by their visceral and vigorous allure of their potency and vigor.  They are beckoning captivations whose perils often seem inconsequential compared to their promised delights. None of the powerful ancestral mechanisms for enforcing equality and for controlling attention are determinative to understanding the prospects for modern democracy.  The brutal forms of aggressive dominance displayed by great apes is not a viable strategy for long term survival in any human society.  Communal male counter aggression may now be potently supplement by collective pressures from females (who may well have always played an important, if not “dominant” role in how our species began the process of domesticating itself long before we commenced the domestication of other species.)  The reach and intrusiveness of contemporary organs of culture are replete with potentials to enhance elite domination, to support collectively controlled institutions coordinated by democratic processes, and to promote individual autonomy, freedom, and alienation.  The history of liberal republics demonstrates these are not necessarily mutually exclusive because they can, at least, coexist for generations. Formal democracy is a recent and elaborate overlay onto very complex institutional frameworks essential for modern and archaic states.  Democracy, to survive and continue to fulfill its potential, will require much more extensive cultivation of commonly held rational, critical, and empirical capacities. There is no guarantee any society will ever be able to successfully accomplish this even if the necessary potentials were sufficiently distributed throughout enough of its population.  These are open questions.  But if democracy is ever to live long and prosper, its proponents must be as cognizant as possible of the primal motivational wellsprings so demonstrably available to plutocrats, autocrats - and maniacs. J. Panzica

The Dreams That Make US

Back to Democracy The distinction between political and economic democracy was a crucial development of the modern era.  It is one of the major achievements and characteristics of liberalism.  However obscured by reactionary claims equating liberals and left progressives with communism, the congenital liberal hostility to economic democracy (socialism, anarchism, etc.) is a matter of empirical historical record. The liberal firewall between economics and politics (including whatever passes for democracy) was probably an historical necessity, and perhaps remains so.  The threat posed by democracy towards concentrated wealth was as well recognized by Enlightenment figures as Madison and Hamilton as it was by classical philosophers.  The bifurcation of “public” v. “private” in terms of national wealth supports salubrious constraints on governmental prerogatives even as it disperses institutional power.  And limited government protects privately held concentrated wealth from the grasping of democratic majorities as much as from the avarice of insatiable monarchs. Surplus concentrated wealth, above and beyond the subsistence needs of workers and the replacement needs of an ongoing economy, is practically essential for economic growth and development.  Leave aside which is more wasteful: the corruption and self dealing of a “command” economy or the corruption and self dealing of an economy dominated by the demands of an unaccountable plutocratic elite.  There is basically no track record of a large population democratically directing the development strategies of any viable nation state. There is always the fear that we are probably not ready for economic democracy, and perhaps never will be. An argument for this line of thinking might have been made by the Socialist leader Eugene V Debs when he said to those who would be his followers: I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists who use your heads and your hands. The shortcomings of existing forms democracy cannot be simplistically explained, and blaming them on “human” nature or frailty is really no explanation at all.   The limitations and possibilities imposed by our humanity will never be completely enumerated much less completely understood if only because, with some apparent exceptions, the nature of any species includes much variation and generally inclines toward change. It can be credibly argued that natural variation tends to impell some humans to be leaders and others to be followers however much the relationship between the two “classes” may be institutionally regulated or modified. But this actually says nothing about either democracy or its ability to both survive and expand.  It’s an undeniable fact that in most societies some of the gulf between leaders and the led is maintained and reproduced by various mixtures of primitive repression and sophisticated systems of deprivation, misdirection, and ideology; but this does not provide any firm ground for definitive claims about human nature. The year 2017 has much potential to be another pivotal year for democracy and its uncertain march.   The electorization of trimp and ensuing assault on the selective social safety net (so preciously mislabeled “white privilege”) could fuel a fierce populist backlash that decisively dispenses with expendable fripperies as “due process” and “checks and balances”, exchanging them for the trumpeting captivations of domination, humiliation, punishment, and revenge - as the dogs of war yelp and snarl from every ditch and mountaintop. The current healthcare debacle could also set the stage for a populist upswell grounded in more humane and inclusive imaginings.    Franz Kafka can, of course, be characterized as “the high priest of realism” for his claim, “There is [infinite] hope. But not for us.”   But.  But.  But . . . calling the quoted a “high priest” is a welcome “tell.”  No one has any ultimate standing to define reality, no matter how incisively their apt criticisms pierce ruling ideologies to highlight the atrocious grimness underlying so much of civilization’s “relentless progress.”  There is just so much we do not know; more than can be dreamt of in our philosophies. We don’t know the extent to which humans prefer the safety and the comfort of a stable place in society to freedom, justice, and creativity.  We don’t know the extent to which creativity is essential to our being.  We can only make faint scratches in the soft surface of our planet while troubling its delicate biosphere, onion skin thin between the folding fabric of space and the rumblings of a solid mantle goaded by a molten center hotter than our sun. We can be sure all humans have some inclination to indulge in fantasy, to seek diversion, and to be immersed (at least occasionally) in a sensation we are part of something transcending our infinite failings and limitations. These fantasies need not be atavistic.  And we can place ourselves in a pleasant trance or even attain what some call a “peak flow experience” in the most mundane and repetitive activities (including breathing) as much as we can experience the same transcendence in exhilaration and challenge. We also know that high priests, charismatic warlords, or the Mad Men of the PR industry can engineer or dreams and longings.  Some of us suspect we can be our own high priests and everyone, perhaps, can to some extent choose what dreams seduce us.  Or we can believe we can.  The other option is just too grim; inhuman, perhaps. Joe Panzica

The (Dis)Enchantments of Democracy

Democracy Even with a strong sense of history, it can be difficult for someone of the rationalist bent to justify any distinction between political democracy and economic democracy. Yet rationalism, like any other enchantment, is hard to sustain. Rationalism propels the construction of ever more complex and diverting entertainments.  Yet rationalism is also corrosive to all sustained fantasy and any fragile artifact of fiction.  Setting ever higher standards for the willing suspension of disbelief, it devours its most tender creations. Democracy, like any civilized human endeavor, requires rationality to guide, support, and evoke its development.  But as with all human aspiration, democracy is sustained by irrational wellsprings that generate the very being of humanity.  Democracy's best hope may well be that the irrational forces animating it are more powerful than the countervailing impulses constantly confounding our ability to coexist in peace and justice - even in small groups. To think of democracy as an enchantment is not to denigrate it any more than it would be to call it an unfulfilled goal - or an ideal never to be fully realized in the ongoing fracas of human affairs.  Our humanity probably requires us to insist on enchantment as we seek entertainment or fulfillment in as many aspects of our daily lives as possible.  But our humanity may also compel us to try being selectively cautious about what enchants us - and how. The rational mechanics of a living political democracy are the constitutional limitations on government and majority power.  These limits require their complex systems of rights, separations, checks, balances and due process. They require a pluralist dispersion of power centers and multiple procedural avenues for protecting the rights and dignity of each individual.  And they are always vulnerable. Democracy centers on supporting popular control over government policies. But democracy is ultimately about protecting individuals, minorities, and even the majority from human predation.  This, I think, is also protection for all of us against our own worst instincts.   Still, exploitation will always be a sordid temptation and human ingenuity will always seek opportunities for it, stretching any loophole that can be detected. The necessary liberal limitations on government power and its emphasis on individual rights have, by design, protected private freedom to exploit the vulnerable.  As capitalism developed, jurisprudence, perhaps especially in the United States, has continually extended the definition of individual "personhood" to cover corporations even as political struggle was extending it to more of the human population in certain jurisdictions. The liberal distinction between "public" and "private" has been a double edged sword for democracy.  But it's hard to doubt this was not a necessary historical compromise. The Federalist Papers and transcripts from the US Constitutional Convention of 1787 provide a frank illumination this. Centuries later, it remains to be seen the extent to which current strains on political democracy in the West can be blamed on immigration, the poor, and insouciant political classes. Concentrated wealth justly does not escape some share of blame for these and related issues. Yet, with the collusion of its corporately owned media, concentrated wealth deftly manages to foist undue responsibility onto more visible "usual suspects" who still also include Jews and other vulnerable minorities with longstanding residence in the more “stable” democracies. The concentrated wealth of a tiny majority is certainly a major driver of the ongoing global economic integration sold to the public under the brand name "Free Trade".   And their clout focuses the loyalties of politicians in the advanced economies while spurring on forces wresting control of resources away from the reach of native populations in less developed nations.  These forces include repression and violence wielded by autocratic regimes propped up by Western economic and military power.  And these forces erode the value of human dignity everywhere even if the brunt of this is suffered in regions that remain obscure until they explode into the global consciousness. If enough people refuse to be divided on the basis of class, religion, color, or national origin, there is a chance for popular pressure to influence how global economic integration proceeds.  And that affords the chance that the proceedings will be guided by more just and humane principles.  Otherwise populist resentment may continue to roil politics in ways that empower dangerous demagogues with simplistic explanations and solutions.  This possibility could pierce the flimsy integrity of democratic institutions in ways that set democracy back for generations if, indeed, it is able to ever recover. A civil society that respects and defends the institutions of political democracy requires deep rooted rational understanding of the complexities essential for protecting valid rights and freedoms.  But more is required as well.  The dark reactionary forces that so often commandeer populist protest and resentment understand this viscerally.  The more sober guardians of the mores of liberal political democracy do not. What is required is enchantment, the kind that arises from the solidarity of large or tightly knit groups - and the kind that arises from a rich symbolic, ritualistic system of images and ideals. Religion has always known this. Proponents of economic democracy (whether they call it anarchy, communism, or socialism) are also somewhat aware of this requirement.  But, in the West, such types are unable to influence the mass media and spheres of shared experience anywhere near the extent possible for the corporate elite. The liberal intelligentsia, with its rationalist bent, is reasonably leery about the power of enchantment in public life.   But the need to understand the individual and collective motivations of humanity must force them to rationally explore its sources and power.  This may actually be essential for understanding so much of modern politics and economics.  It may also be the only way of building the type of civil society that can uphold the rational institutions of political democracy. Joe Panzica