Uncontrollable Passion. - Review - book review

Reason, May, 2000 by Loren Lomasky

A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, by Benjamin Barber, Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 293 pages, $26.95

A Place for Us: How to Make Society Civil and Democracy Strong, by Benjamin Barber, New York: Hill and Wang, 166 pages, $22.00

As the Berlin Wall fell and expectations rose across Central Europe a decade ago, the newly released subjects of the Soviet empire began to contemplate normalization of their lives. Among the many avenues of free activity opening to them, the one that most fully comprehended the scope of the ongoing transformation was joining the company of the world's democracies. Throughout the century, no other political ideal has possessed comparable resonance with peoples everywhere. From Woodrow Wilson's crusade to make the world safe for democracy through today's fractious wrangling in East Timor and elsewhere, the aspiration for satisfactory social institutions within which ordinary men and women might carve out decent lives typically expresses itself as the desire for democracy.

The world's enduring love affair with democracy is familiar. But it is not without puzzles. How can an occasional trip to the polls by those citizens who bestir themselves every couple of years to pull some levers bear the moral weight that has been built into the democratic ideal? What's really so special about democracy? Turning to the writings of the great modern political philosophers deepens the puzzle. For with very few exceptions, democracy is presented as a distinctly secondary desideratum, a means toward other goods more directly prized.

In the writings of John Locke, the first great liberal theorist, the paramount end of political association is vindication of individuals' rights to life, liberty, and property via maintenance of civil peace. Because men see the world from distinct perspectives, they will differ in their views concerning how best to uphold that peace. In practical affairs a choice must be made whether to go this way or that, and it only makes sense that, all else equal, the body politic move according to the will of the greater rather than the lesser faction. And that, crucially, is all. There is no imputation of wisdom or virtue to majorities as such. Lest they become tyrannical, legislative bodies are to be constrained in their operations by the antecedent rights of citizens and tamed as much as is feasible by divided institutions of sovereignty and a robust shield of law. With some additions and modifications, this is the scheme anticipated by the Declaration of Independence, promulgated by the Federalist Papers, and succ essfully enshrined in the Constitution. Our central institutions were designed to be democratic, but warily so.

Winston Churchill's is the best-known statement of the pragmatic case for democracy: Democracy is the worst form of government--except for all the rest. We prize democracy not for what it is but for what it is not. Reshuffling the occupants of Westminster or the White House via periodic elections may not guarantee streams of statesmanlike benefactors, but at least it seems to relieve us of rule by Ceausescus, Pol Pots, and Saddams. Through voting we have an opportunity to "throw the rascals out," and if their offices are quickly reoccupied by a new cohort of rascals, well, we shall in due course be able to hand them their walking papers too.

Political theory is incapable of providing a convincing theoretical justification for preferring a regime of democratically elected nonentities to rule by a virtuous meritocracy pledged to serve the common good (the latter is more or less Aristotle's idea of the best form of governance), but those aren't the choices on offer. Benevolent despots tend to remain much more reliably despotic than benevolent, and Lockean rights typically receive short shrift at their hands.

Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore remains a mecca for free transactions, but one had best not speak too openly whilst within reach of its gendarmes. The nepotistic corruption of Suharto's Indonesia was conveniently overlooked while the country had its run as a high-achieving economic dragon. But after paper values collapsed and streets erupted in ideological and ethnic strife, strongman rule looked distinctly less attractive. Pinochet restored to Chile vigorous economic health and representative institutions, but at least 3,000 unaccounted-for corpses remain for his admirers something of an embarrassment. As Madison notes in the Federalist Papers, human beings are not angels, and so we do best to clip the wings of our governors. The great advantage of democracy in this respect is that rule by timeservers is preferable to rule by tyrants.

Running parallel to the tradition of political philosophy in which democratic institutions serve as means to other goods is a powerful subcurrent that understands democratic activity as intrinsically valuable, a necessary constituent of the good life in society. This alternative tradition, given its deepest modern expression by Rousseau but with roots in Aristotle's philosophy and the civic republicanism of the Renaissance, is deeply suspicious of liberal individualism. It derides as "atomistic" the view that the common good is nothing more than the sum of individuals' separate preferences. Unlike buyers and sellers in the market, say proponents of this view, we do not approach each other as solitary extenders of quids to exchange for quos. Rather, we are essentially gregarious animals, and that means that what we do together matters at least as much as what we might do severally. Politics, then, is not simply an overarching framework within which individuals angle to secure private satisfactions but rather a domain in which we come together as beings who achieve a sense of meaning and purpose, who transcend the limitations of solitary selves, through constructing a common identity as citizens.