Democracy Incorporated Part 9

XI.

In a culture where names are invented mainly with an eye to their commercial appeal rather than to any historical a.s.sociations, one revealing exception appears in the names of our major political parties. The Democratic Party-curiously, Republicans think it disparaging to call it the "Democrat" Party-can fairly plausibly claim to be the party comparatively more faithful to the "demos," to poor people, minorities (racial, s.e.xual), trade unionists and workers generally: to persons whose sole form of power lies primarily in their numbers. Throughout much of Western history they were referred to simply as the Many, more recently as "ordinary people" or "folks," an undifferentiated aggregate that stood in sharp contrast to the clever Few who were possessed of distinguishing marks such as pedigree, wealth, and education. The Republican Party tends to attract and reward the wealthy, the better-educated, most business people, especially corporate types: persons whose power derives from their ownership and control over the means of creating and producing the main forms of social power. These forms include the material (cars), the immaterial (the media, popular religion and culture), the financial (banks, investment firms), and the technocratic (managerial, legal, academic)-resources that are readily convertible into forms of political power: organizing electoral campaigns, orchestrating the media chorale, "mounting legal challenges," conducting lobbying, financing and staffing policy tanks, and temporarily lending their talents to governing the nation, though, without conscious irony, only after first placing their wealth in a "blind trust."

Those party labels and the differences they represent are consistent with a long-standing historical opposition between the advocates of democracy and those of republicanism. Managed democracy represents the triumph of the latest version of republicanism.

The distinctions were invented centuries ago, appearing first in ancient Athens. The Greeks formulated it as a contrast between those who supported the idea of having political offices filled by ordinary male citizens (the demos) on the basis of lot and election, and those whose ideal was a leader-oriented democracy of outstanding men, typically aristocrats (aristoi), supported by a deferential citizenry. The demos stood for the idea of "the people" in their civic capacity, as a collective actor, not, as later, a pa.s.sive electorate. The trauma of the Peloponnesian War produced a profound antidemocratic reaction among the Athenian political and intellectual elites. For centuries thereafter and down to the present their ideas colored virtually all descriptions of democracy while inspiring numerous versions of elitism. The demos was categorized as fickle, tumultuous, irrational; envious of the wealthy, the talented, and the well-born. Above all, the "people" became a byword for the tendencies that good governance should hold at bay. After the demise of Athenian democracy elite strategy aimed at discouraging the demos from ever again becoming conscious of its powers.

It was not until the English civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century that the political and intellectual elites' picture of the demos was challenged by modern democratic ideas of equal rights and popular political partic.i.p.ation. Although those ideas made their way to the American colonies where they were established as a persisting and powerful presence, English political influences also brought the idea of aristocracy and along with it the notion that "higher" birth, great wealth, and (some) education justified rule of the Few. While the ent.i.tlements of n.o.bility failed to take hold in the colonies, the dichotomy between elite and rabble persisted, exacerbated and seemingly confirmed by popular revolutions, first in the colonies and then in France.32 When James Madison declaimed, "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian a.s.sembly would have still been a mob,"33 he was expressing a political elite's fear of the type of popular pressures for direct democracy that had prevailed in Athens. The fear of a.s.sembled numbers was a fear that popular power might "level" all civilized distinctions of wealth and ability. Yet the pressing "weight" of numbers represented the only form of practical power that the Many possessed to challenge its history of exclusions. Despite the obvious fact that the labor of the Many and their military service were essential to the existence of society, throughout Western history-and most other histories-the vast majority of the members of society were excluded from virtually all of the advantages a.s.sociated with "civilization": literacy and education, safe living conditions, a steady income, adequate diet and shelter, the protection of the law, public office, and political representation. Inevitably, exclusion provoked rage, rioting, demands for equality, and occasional rebellion. The rabble had good reason to be tumultuous.

During the English civil wars of the seventeenth century the excluded found their own voice and a political ident.i.ty. But little more than a century earlier, republicanism had begun to revive and, in antic.i.p.ation of the democratic stirrings of the next century, to search for a modus vivendi that would overcome the ancient division between republicanism and democracy, between the Few and the Many.

In early modern times the most famous theorist of republicanism was Niccol Machiavelli-who happens to be a favorite author among Straussians.34 In a European world beginning to modernize and to experience the first stirrings of nationalism, Machiavelli concluded that politics could no longer be conducted successfully if it relied on traditional sources of power, remained restricted to hereditary monarchs and n.o.bles, and preserved the dichotomy between elitism and democracy. He proposed a new kind of politics with new players. Effective governance required a combination of skilled elites (the republican principle) and popular support (the democratic principle). Republicanism would depend upon the ability to recruit a select number of idealistic, patriotic young men untempted by the allures of wealth and high privilege but drawn instead toward the idea of power in the service of the common good. They were to be educated in the school of political realism and taught that power was the irreducible means by which a state preserved its existence in a world of predatory rivals. Politics was, first, foremost, and always, about power: how to gain, manage, and increase it. In order to defend the state or advance its interests, rulers must be prepared to flout conventional standards of morality, not for personal gain but for the preservation of the republic.

Machiavelli reasoned that in changing times, when the people, as represented by artisans, merchants, and tradesmen, were beginning to play a part in local political life, a system could not survive for long if it ruled blatantly in the interests of the Few, whether of the n.o.bility or the wealthier cla.s.ses. Machiavelli argued that the old dogmas about the people as a tumultuous mob were mistaken; they were a far more stable element than the vain and fickle aristocrats. Accordingly, a republic's power should be broad-based, founded on the people, although not in the sense that the citizenry was to share in the actual exercise of power. Rather its function was to support the republic's rulers. Citizens should, for example, serve in the militia and, above all, stand with those who were sworn to defend republican inst.i.tutions and were skilled in their management. Toward that end the citizens were to be educated, taught that loyalty was owed to their city or state rather than to n.o.ble patrons. Among the most important elements in the political education of the citizenry was the promotion of a religion that emphasized sacrifice: inevitably the city or state would be at war and would have to defend itself by expanding its power over other states or cities.

At no point did Machiavelli develop a principled argument in defense of popular partic.i.p.ation, much less of democratization of politics. Machiavelli favored the people as a reliable "foundation" for power princ.i.p.ally because they did not demand much. The price of their loyalty and support was simple: to be left alone and protected in what modest possessions they had. Accordingly, one principle Machiavelli insisted upon was that his elite respect the property and the wives of citizens.

The people were not only reliable-far more so as soldiers than the usual mercenaries-but malleable, manageable. The pliant qualities that Machiavelli attributed to the "mult.i.tude" suggested the possibility of a political science that could show how a culture might be designed to suit political needs, in particular how popular allegiance could be secured by a civil religion. Rulers should inst.i.tute religious rituals and observances that sanctified the state, cemented the loyalty and obedience of the populace, and rendered them willing to risk their lives if necessary. Religion should be tailored to political requirements and to the limitations of the people. The appropriate model, Machiavelli argued, was not the meek and submissive cult of Christ but a pagan and more dynamic cult. A civic religion should stage b.l.o.o.d.y spectacles and symbolic violence to stir and toughen the populace. When later the great historian Gibbon remarked of the Roman emperors that they cared less whether a religion was true and more whether it was useful, he spoke the authentic language of Machiavellian republicanism.

Machiavelli believed that the whole question of what kind of inst.i.tutions a republic should adopt and what sort of social and cla.s.s basis it should favor depended on a crucial choice: between a republic that aimed at expansion, as in the Roman example of a small republic acquiring an empire by conquest; and, alternatively, a republic shaped primarily to defend itself and content with the status quo, as was the case of the Venetian Republic. The choice also involved whether a republic aimed at "greatness" measured in terms of power or dominion and wealth, or whether it chose a modest life. Machiavelli favored the Roman example, but the interesting aspect of that choice was the crucial role a.s.signed the people, not only in supporting expansionism but in contributing a dynamic. If people feel both free and secure that their "patrimony will not be taken away and that they may aspire to share in rule then riches [will] multiply and abound." Once they are "convinced" that "what they have acquired" will be secure, the compet.i.tion that ensues brings advantages to individuals and "wonderful progress" to the republic.35 Although Machiavelli admired the Roman example, he warned that it was also a model with a briefer life expectancy than that of a contented republic. That difference pointed to the attraction of the Roman example to elites down to the era of the neocons. The Roman way posed greater risks to the safety of the republic, but, at the same time, it brought the possibility of achieving "greatness" and "glory." Thus, while the republic might end in disaster, its "fame" and that of its heroes would survive. That risky path would inevitably bring the leaders up against the cruelest choices: they must not hesitate to commit horrible acts when the survival of the republic was at stake, a likely possibility on the hazardous road to greatness.36 Elitism thus had a dark side, a fascination with n.o.ble death, with death not for low material ends-that was for the mult.i.tude and the merchants-but for fame, even immortality.

XII.

Machiavelli's teachings made their way to England, filtered first through Elizabethan dramatists, including Shakespeare, and then developed more systematically in the seventeenth century by political theorists, such as James Harrington and Algernon Sidney.37 During the civil wars of that century republicanism fused with Puritanism to produce an ideology hostile to the claims of kings and aristocrats. The advocates of republicanism proposed a blend of Machiavellian competence with Puritan notions of an "elect" to produce a new variant of elitism, actors as confident of their skills as of their rect.i.tude.

That combination later migrated to the American colonies where it was preserved among New Englanders, beginning with John Winthrop, the first governor of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony, continuing with John Adams, and absorbed by aristocratically inclined Southern politicians, such as Jefferson and Madison.38 A republican elite led the opposition to colonial rule, directed the war against Britain, drafted the Const.i.tution, staffed the new government, and established a party system. During the formative period from colonial times to the Jacksonian era, when fundamental political inst.i.tutions and practices were being settled, republicanism dominated American politics.

With the possible (and ambivalent) exception of Jefferson, the American republicans were steadfast critics of democracy. When they decided that it was time to draft a new const.i.tution, they treated as axiomatic that a modern political system had to make concessions to democratic sentiments without conceding governance to "the people." Accordingly they composed a masterful translation of republicanism that drew a line indicating what was to be allowed and what excluded from the democratic aspirations aroused by the struggle for independence from Britain. While they recognized the "people" as a political presence, they proceeded to dilute the potential of democratic power by constraints intended to filter out any grand schemes. An elaborate system of checks and balances, separation of powers, an Electoral College to select the president, and, later, judicial review were designed to make it next to impossible for popular majorities to inst.i.tute policies actually in the interests of the majority. Only the House of Representatives was to be directly elected by eligible (white male) voters; the Senate was to be indirectly elected by the various state legislatures.39 And it was hoped that the Electoral College would play an active role in the selection of presidents and not merely register popular votes. The framers of the Const.i.tution were the first founders of modern managed democracy.

The republicans a.s.sembled at Philadelphia demonstrated their grasp of how, in a popular government, the electoral system could be stacked so as to prevent its being used to promote a populist agenda, and nowhere more clearly than in the provision governing the most crucial power a democracy can have, the power to change its const.i.tution. Article V stipulated that an extraordinary majority was required for const.i.tutional amendments: a two-thirds vote of both houses and ratification by three-fourths of the state legislatures or by three-fourths of special state conventions.40 That naked empowering of minorities amounted to a subversion of the Const.i.tution's grandly democratic preamble, "We, the People of the United States . . . do ordain and establish this Const.i.tution." Small wonder that, later, when the New Deal attempted to improve the lot of ordinary and poorer citizens, its efforts were attacked by modern republicans as an a.s.sault on the Const.i.tution and its protection of property rights.

A major tactic on the way to managed democracy was to encourage what might be called "discouraged democracy." A prime example was the device of requiring extraordinary majorities that became a staple of ant.i.tax and -spending forces beginning in the latter part of the twentieth century. Not only did the device increase the power of highly organized minorities, but it served to discourage a majority from using its power to promote social programs intended to meet basic needs and improve the lot of poorer citizens. Voter apathy is importantly a consequence of low expectations that their government will respond to their needs. Why bother? Perhaps because inequalities are not confined to differences of wealth, status, life prospects, and conditions of existence; such inequalities translate into inequalities of power. Arguments about taxation are, at bottom, arguments about the distribution of power.

While low voter turnout might seem a reflection of low civic morale and a dangerous symptom of democratic decline, republicanism would view it in a positive light. A certain amount of nonvoting is especially welcome if it deters the most desperate, those who are likely to be swayed by "populist" demagoguery.41 When Republicans and conservative Democrats work methodically to reduce or eliminate social programs, the result is tantamount to a deliberate strategy of encouraging political apathy among the poor and needy.

This antipopulist tactic marks a sea change in American politics. Recall that the administrations of Eisenhower and Nixon both followed periods of extensive social reforms that had primarily been the work of Democrats (the New Deal, 193240; the Fair Deal, 194552; and the Great Society, 196368). Yet neither Republican president sought seriously to roll back programs that were widely perceived as beneficial to the country as a whole. That consensus prevailed until the Reagan election of 1980. Thereafter the consensus disintegrated and gave way to a radically different understanding. Rejected was the principle that what legitimized a government as democratic was not solely an electoral majority but the use of governmental power to serve the needs and aspirations of ordinary people. Instead the effort was undertaken-princ.i.p.ally, but not solely, by Republican politicians-to hammer home the astounding principle that a democratically chosen government was the enemy of "the people." Reagan promised, accordingly, "to get government off the backs of the people." During the 1990s politicians of both parties educated the populace in antigovernment ideas. Democrats and Republicans alike then raced to see who could propose the most drastic cutbacks in social welfare programs. Government that had prided itself on serving the Many was dismantled in favor of "a leaner government." Predictably this counterrevolution was made easier during the 1980s and 1990s by a spate of ideologically inspired, wildly exaggerated, and racially divisive attacks upon "welfare cheats" and "Cadillac welfare queens."

The successful counterrevolution was doubly significant. Whatever the merits of corporate capitalism, it is not a system whose benefits are equally distributed. It is instead a system that, as a matter of course, produces striking inequalities. The results are evident in the greater concentration and extremes of wealth, a deeper divide between cla.s.ses, in terms of health care and of educational and cultural opportunities, than at any time in recent history. The wide disparities serve to expose the counterrevolutionary strategy that motivates the champions of managed democracy.

Counterrevolution means, not a return to the past-the powers fostering it are too dynamic-but a closing off of a demotic direction and the nudging of society toward a different direction where inequalities will be taken for granted, rationalized, perhaps celebrated. Not the least of the counterrevolutionary conditions promoting cultural, economic, and political inequalities are the ingenious barriers that the Bush administration erected to prevent future administrations from alleviating inequalities. By enacting tax measures that according to virtually every account primarily benefited the wealthiest, and by ama.s.sing ever-increasing government deficits to astronomical proportions, that administration has effectively prevented a future democratically oriented administration from enacting social programs for the Many. The aim of the counterrevolutionary strategy is the permanent inst.i.tutionalization of a counterdemocratic state. Meanwhile military spending is nearly four times greater than the expenditures on social programs; yet neither party would dream of proposing an amendment specifically limiting or controlling military spending-only one prohibiting same-s.e.x marriage.

The antimajoritarian provisions of the Const.i.tution and of various state const.i.tutions are typically touted as a salutary check on the excesses inherent in the practice of majority rule. The "tyranny of the majority" and the specter of "socialism" are the knee-jerk reaction of think tank apparatchiks, business leaders, and Republicans whenever the possibility emerges of government regulation of business practices, or the possibility of real programs for advancing the opportunities of average citizens. Yet the fact is that the most serious incursions into the political and civil liberties, for example, have come not from tyrannical majorities representative of the poor, the needy, or the struggling middle cla.s.ses but from the representatives of elites, the Justice Department, legislators, judges, police, prosecutors, and media, which, with some honorable exceptions, play sycophant to the powerful.

The crucial problem lies not with rapacious majorities poised to plunder the privileged but with discouraged majorities that have had their hopes raised when social programs to their advantage have actually been enacted, only to see them rolled back or left underfunded.

CHAPTER NINE.

Intellectual Elites against Democracy I.

[T]he rule of a tyrant who, after having come to power

by means of force and fraud, or having committed any

number of crimes, listens to the suggestions of reasonable

men, is essentially more legitimate than the rule of

elected magistrates as such.

-Leo Strauss1

As we saw in the preceding chapter, historically the idea of elite rule conceived democracy as its ant.i.thesis and natural enemy. With the emergence of the modern state, postmodern technologies, and post-Cold War complexities elitism's claims, that governance demands a special order of skills lacking in ordinary citizens and should be entrusted to the Few who possess them, would seem irrefutable, especially when democracy is seen as increasingly anachronistic. Today, when the appeal of democracy is being touted by ruling elites and exploited as an instrument of American power, elite contempt is prudently camouflaged, or perhaps sublimated, as managed democracy.

In its belief that the Few should more or less monopolize power, political elitism displays its elective affinity with capitalism. Both believe that the powers of high office, whether in government or business, should be reserved for those who earn them by their personal qualities and exceptional talents-demonstrated under highly compet.i.tive conditions-rather than for those who gain power by virtue of popular approval. In the best of worlds, political elites would be entrusted with power and rewarded with prestige; capitalist elites would be rewarded with power and wealth. Because both represent the best, they are, in that view, ent.i.tled to power and reward.

In theory, the two forms of elitism should be at odds with each other.2 Political elites are ent.i.tled to power, in part, because they possess functional skills but also because they are supposed to be "virtuous," that is, disinterested, principled, and, above all, dedicated to the true interests of the society. Business elites, on the other hand, not only are presumed to be self-interested but work in a context where self-interest is the prevailing motive, even inculcated as principle, and where the common good is more of a side effect or unintended consequence than a guiding principle of decision making. Where "trust" is crucial to the relationship between elites and those they often refer to as "the ma.s.s," distrust is operative in the relationship of corporate leaders versus shareholders and the public at large. The tensions between the two versions of elites run far deeper. As recent revelations have shown, corruption is close to being a constant of corporate life. Given the integration of a corporate ethos with that of high-level government offices, one might expect the weakening of disinterestedness and the emergence of a more arrogant and secretive executive branch, one nearly tone-deaf to conflicts of interest. As we shall see, the uneasy alliance between disinterested and self-interested elites shows signs of fraying, suggesting that in the era of the corporate state elitism is merely a cover.

The peculiarity of elitism in the United States is that while the practice of it is securely established in political, corporate, cultural, intellectual, and professional life, and their relationship to democracy much on the minds of elitists, it seems rarely to concern democrats.3 Although elitism has been a staple topic in the literature of the social sciences for more than a century, and of political theory for more than two thousand years, politically its existence seems unproblematical today even though it challenges directly the democratic principles of equality and shared power. The phenomenon of Superpower makes the issues more urgent, as Superpower is distinctively the creature of elites and the ant.i.thesis of democracy.

II.

More members of this year's freshman cla.s.s at the University

of Michigan have parents making at least $200,000 a year

than have parents making less than the national median of

about $53,000, according to a survey of Michigan

students. At the most selective private universities . . .,

more fathers of freshmen are doctors than are hourly

workers, teachers, clergy members, farmers, or members

of the military-combined. An important purpose of

inst.i.tutions like Harvard is to give everybody a shot at the

American dream.

-President Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University4

There are two domains where the contradictory aims of Superpower elitism and anti-Superpower democracy are most evident and crucially important for both: education and elections. Neither elections nor democracy is the source of the legitimation to which elites appeal; today, instead, education is the core legitimating principle of elitism. For its part, democracy is ultimately dependent on the quality and accessibility of public education, especially of public universities. Education per se is not a source of democratic legitimacy: it does not serve as a justification for political authority, yet it is essential to the practice of citizenship. The difficult task of public education is to combine civic education with the development of civilized sensibilities and socially useful types of competence.

Education that is civic and populist is not a formula that accords with the requirements of American hegemony as elites conceive it. They envisage public education for Supercitizenship, education for the ma.s.ses, as increasingly privatized and specialized rather than civic and civilizing. Privatization entails a concerted strategy for breaking the monopoly of public education at the primary and secondary levels and encouraging "private" corporations to establish and operate schools, including public inst.i.tutions; financing is provided by public funds that might otherwise support public schools. Technical education-that is, the creation of "a skilled workforce"-has been the task a.s.signed to the two-year "community colleges," the inst.i.tutions that serve as the terminal point where formal education ceases for a student body overwhelmingly drawn from lower-income families.5 Conversely, private inst.i.tutions-prep schools, colleges, and universities-are elevated and a.s.sume the function of public inst.i.tutions, virtually monopolizing the preparation of ruling elites while receiving substantial public funds and subsidies. The public is privatized, the private "publicized."

III.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger talked about the

Vietnam War and conducting foreign policy in the 21st

century in a question-and-answer session with 40

[Princeton] undergraduates. . . .