Art Pearl Against the World Part 4: Democracy, what it isn’t

Art Pearl Against the World  4

Democracy, what it is and what it isn’t

 I hope I have established that the world is in terrible shape.

Torn apart by unending wars that have killed thousands, destroyed 
infrastructure, generated swarms of refugees fleeing unmitigated horror with 
fewer and fewer places to go.

The war was not the only thing destroying the environment.

Our modern ways of life, transportation that relies on fossil fuels, other energy
use; pesticides with long half-lives, our diet, land use planning, population 
growth nearing or exceeding carrying capacity, all are taking its toll.

A economy designed to distribute its wealth to an already tiny extremely wealthy
minority dedicated to the principle ‘I got mine, I defy you to get yours.’

A government that doesn’t work unless you believe in doing everything possible 
to keep the rich, ‘healthy, wealthy and safe and everyone else struggling just to
keep nose above water.’

A retreat from social justice, partially because a war requires the demonization 
of the enemy, in this instance Muslims. But also some upticking of home grown 
bigotry inflicted on Native Americans, African Americans and Latinos as 
reflected in the vast Black and Native American overrepresentation in prisons;
Latinos. slightly less so.

What is completely missed in the rare public debates today about the plight of African Americans is that a huge percentage of them are not free to move up at all. It is not just that they lack opportunity, attend poor schools, or arc plagued by poverty. They are barred by law from doing so. And the major institutions with which they come into contact are designed to prevent their mobility. To put the matter starkly: The current system of control permanently locks a huge percentage of the African American community out ot the mainstream society and economy. 'The system operates through our criminal justice institutions, but it functions more like a caste system than a system of crime control. Viewed from this perspective, the so-called underclass is better understood as an undercaste—a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society. Although this new system of racialized social control purports to be colorblind, it creates and maintains racial hierarchy much as earlier systems of control did. Like Jim Crow (and slavery), mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race.

Michele Alexander, (2012) The New Jim Crow, p. 13

The erosion of the only protection the individual has from government – rights of 
expression, privacy, a justice system that guarantees among other things, presumption 
of  innocence, right not to testify against self, speedy trial before jury of one’s peers, a 
lawyer, confronting accuser, protection from cruel and unusual punishment – largely 
justified by the unending wars.

    

We have devolved. Corporations have taken over.  They have taken over government, 
politics, the economy, education, media, sport.  The only possible alternative now is 
democracy.

In the next blog we introduce democracy,

 But first some misconceptions…

 What democracy is not:

 Democracy is NOT multiple parties and voting.

In fact over the years multiple parties and voting have become instruments of fascism.
But even in the years when there was a readily distinguishable difference between the
parties it still was not democracy. The goal of the vote was winning. The goal of a 
democracy Is public good–making the world a better place for everybody, not some
group gaining at another group’s expense,.

Voting in elections, however, is more often about choosing a person to represent one's interest than it is about choosing to take a particular action (as in referenda).  Rarely is there a direct and felt consequence for our personal lives that results from our vote.

E Wayne Ross. A Lesson in Democracy? CUFA, Proposition 187, and the Boycott of California, Theory and Research in Social Education, (1997). 25 (3), p.256

This is the take of Al Smith, the democratic nominee for president in 1928

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections 
are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

speech in Alban

Kathleen Hall Jamison, an American Professor of Communication and the director
of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of     Pennsylvania, sees 
nature of campaigning as a  means of undermining the vote. Although written years
before goes a long way to explain the election of Trump.  

We have now devised a means of campaigning that creates an angry electorate which then vents its anger by voting no, no, no, no. If you go in and just vote no, you're not really licensing someone to govern.

‪                           quoted by Catherine Ellis & Stephen Smith, ‪Say It Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches, The New Press. 2011, p. 198

promising, liberal democratic voting, for example, allows 
citizens to vote only at times, and on matters chosen by others, 
and in voting citizens choose representatives who will then 
determine the content of their political obligation.

Carole  Pateman. Unlike The Problem of Political 
Obligation: A Critique of Liberal Theory, (1979), 
Cambridge, Polity Press, Blackwell, 1985

Majority rule is not necessarily democratic.  

Majority rule is not democratic for the same reasons voting is not. Any decision that favors winners at the expense of losers is undemocratic.

Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations. Democracy is not worked out at the polling-booths; it is the bringing forth of a genuine collective will, one to which every single being must contribute the whole of his complex life, as one which every single being must express the whole of at one point. Thus the essence of democracy is creating. The technique of democracy is group organization. Many men despise politics because they see that politics manipulate, but make nothing. If politics are to be the highest activity of man, as they should be, they must be clearly understood as creative.

Mary Parker Follett. The New State: Group Organization the Solution of popular Government 1923.  (1998 ed)  p. 7

Majority rule could be democratic if both the majority and minority 

if for example agree you generally on the public good but disagree 

on some aspect of the public good and thus both are interested in 

the outcome of a project and depending  on the  results the 

majority may become the minority with neither claiming victory.

 A Constitution is not necessarily democratic. 

There was nothing democratic in the constitution as signed by the 

39 delegates at the convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Slavery was written into 
the constitution in the 60% rule, Women had no role 

nor did white males who didn’t own property. Only with the first 10 amendments, 
The Bill of Rights, did anything resembling democracy become a part of the 
Constitution.

Many totalitarian states have constitutions. The Soviet Union had a constitution, 
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have a constitution like ours ”  the 
law of the land.” They, like the US, are  classified as “flawed democracies” by the 
Wikipedia Democracy Index. Zimbabwe, judged to be authoritarian has a 
much amended constitution.

Safe to say that a constitution isn’t an important factor in determining whether or 
not a state is democratic,

Rule of law is not necessarily democratic.

Tom Paine made the rule of law king, meaning it was an alternative to arbitrary authority.

But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honours, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the Charter; let it be brought forth placed on the Divine Law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.     

                                    Tom Paine Common Sense. 1776

To John Adams the rule of  law was a further guarantee that  new nation would not be subject to authoritarian rule.

A government of laws, and not of men.

Novanglus essays (1774–1775)[editNovanglus; or, A History of the Dispute with America, From Its Origin, in 1754, to the Present Time. first published in the Boston Gazette No.i  this was incorporated into the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780.

The founders did not link the rule of law to democracy. They did not like democracy. What they desired was the rule of the few rather than the rule of the despotic one.  Democracy is the rule of everyone, okay, almost everyone.

 If democracy Is not voting, majority rule, a constitution, or rule of law, what is it? We will explore this on the next blog post…