major player on the world stage with responsibilities around
the world, with interests around the world.
-Colin Powell (1991).
While the Founders invested their princ.i.p.al hopes for checking the formation of demotic power by erecting complex const.i.tutional barriers, they also discovered that the large geographical expanse of the nation naturally encompa.s.sed a variety of differences of interest and belief, and thereby automatically rendered the organization of a democratic majority difficult. "Extend the sphere," Madison wrote, "and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other."31 We might call this a vision of the saving weakness of a "disaggregated majority." Later it recurs in different guises. A disaggregated majority is a majority prevented from developing its own coherence. Its majoritarian character is fabricated externally, by its opponents, whose aim is to produce a majority at once manipulable (i.e., electoral), self-justifying ("moral majority"), and for the most part "silent." Richard Nixon was being true to that original conception of the majority when he appealed to "the forgotten American, the non-shouters, the non-demonstrators."32 The disaggregated majority is fabricated to endorse a candidate or a party for reasons that typically pay only lip service to the basic needs of most citizens (health, education, nontoxic environment, living wage), even less to the disparities in political power between ordinary citizens and well-financed interests. Its speciousness is the political counterpart to products that promise beauty, health, relief of pain, and an end to erectile dysfunction.
Following the 2004 elections the political and media establishment discovered or invented the notion that the salient issue had been "values"-not an endless and increasingly b.l.o.o.d.y war, nor a faltering economy, burgeoning deficits, and widening cla.s.s differences.
What was the value of "values"? To obscure more fundamental issues and to divide society along ideological lines rather than cla.s.s conflicts: the religiously obedient Catholic worker, the evangelical African American, the church- and family-oriented Hispanic, the struggling white family with a son in the military because he aspired to go to college: all vote for the party trumpeting values that impose virtually no cost on its affluent and corporate beneficiaries and their heirs.33 There have been other techniques of dispersing popular power without repressing it. During the early years of the republic, it is startling how common were imperialist aspirations, especially among the political notables. One might plausibly presume that in that period political leaders would have had enough daunting challenges to occupy them in firming up a union of fractious states. Yet Hamilton was eager to annex Canada to the new Union, while President Jefferson justified the Louisiana Purchase by claiming that the huge expanse of southern and western land would "enlarg[e] the empire of liberty . . . and provide new sources of renovation."34 Although later commentators would hail the notion of an "empire of liberty," the more revealing phrase was Jefferson"s "new sources of renovation." Jefferson had also famously, if recklessly, remarked that it would be healthy for a society to be shaken up by revolution every twenty years. What could prompt the vision that a nation hardly two decades old needed "renovation"-that is, renewal?
Were these expressions of democratic exuberance or of fears that a democratic self-consciousness, bound to a place, might consolidate a majority, and thus become settled into inst.i.tutions of its own devising? In an effort to forestall that possibility, the imperial idea was broadened to a.s.sociate the geographical extension of national power with new economic opportunity.35 Expansion would mean subst.i.tuting economic opportunity and independence for political involvements, and trading compet.i.tiveness for equality. For a brief moment expansion seemed to encourage democracy. So long as geographical expansion was not aided by centralizing technologies, or incorporated into the framework of a national market, or subjected to a national administration, it could provide s.p.a.ce for local forms of democratic self-government to emerge.
For later generations, for whom the notion of empire was becoming a.s.sociated with European subjugation of conquered peoples, "frontier," rather than empire, became the preferred name for expansionism. The change becomes comprehensible once it is realized that "frontier" signified not a distinct boundary or limit but the expression of a dynamic seeking an outlet for potential power frustrated by the lack of available land or opportunity. It then remained to claim that democracy was peculiarly the product of the frontier experience. For the historian Frederick Jackson Turner (18611932), the frontier, the conquest of new s.p.a.ce, had been the crucible of democracy.36 The Western frontier experience, he declared, had been a main force in developing democratic virtues of independence, freedom, and individualism. It had supplied "what has been distinctive and valuable in America"s contributions to the history of the human spirit." Although often mentioned in Turner"s account, Indians never appear as autonomous actors. "Our Indian policy," he smoothly explained, "has been a series of experimentations on successive frontiers."37 His main concern was with the crisis created by the vanishing of the frontier. For Turner the democracy in crisis was not partic.i.p.atory democracy in any collective sense. His crisis was the opposite, the disappearance of individualism. "The free lands are gone, the continent is crossed, and all this push and energy is turning into channels of agitation." Discontent would lead to demands for government intervention; the nation would be "thrown back upon itself" and would face the dangers posed by the differences previously absorbed in "the task of filling up the vacant s.p.a.ces of the continent." A "new Americanism" was emerging, and "it might mean a drastic a.s.sertion of national government and imperial expansion under a popular hero."38 Turner"s pessimism was premature. The idea that democracy depended upon the nation"s being forever on the go was revived after World War II. In the early 1960s, as part of his promise "to get America moving again," President John Kennedy announced a "New Frontier," the "race for s.p.a.ce." Over the next decades Americans "probed" outer s.p.a.ce, circled the globe with satellites, contained communism, and expanded their nation"s power to forestall "domino effects." Before long venture capitalists entered, offering "s.p.a.ce tourists" reserved seats on future s.p.a.ceships. Outer s.p.a.ce was soon overshadowed by the discovery of "cybers.p.a.ce," the domain where Turner"s frontier thesis took on new meaning as its champions proclaimed that democracy had been reinvented. A band of young pioneers, personified in Bill Gates, explored and exploited a hitherto unknown world where physical power was irrelevant. The new frontiersmen were enterprising in the extreme, hypercompet.i.tive, ruthless in their methods ("take no prisoners"), and able to acc.u.mulate staggering amounts of wealth in a relatively brief time. Above all they invented forms of technology that appeared to have the potential for endless innovation: Turner"s utopia, a frontier land that, like the universe, appeared to have no borders. Predictably, the introduction of the Internet was hailed as the perfect expression of democracy: that everyone could enter the Web and voice whatever happened to be on his or her mind = democracy.
The achievement represents the removal of the barriers that make Superpower"s empire possible: the conquest of s.p.a.ce and the compression of time. Endless s.p.a.ce: the fulfillment of Madison"s strategy for dispersing the demos. Compressed time, instantaneous communication, rapid response: the tyranny of efficiency and the subversion of democracy"s requirement that time be defined by the requirements for deliberation, discussion, reconciliation of opposing viewpoints, all of which suddenly seem "time-consuming."
Superpower"s mission of spreading democracy throughout the world would seem to fit into the tradition of American expansionism, the resumption of the Wilsonian crusade to "make the world safe for democracy." But the unstated a.s.sumption behind that genealogy is that democracy has first to be made safe for the world. Managed democracy is that achievement-and it has precedents and antecedents.
X.
The task of elitism in the so-called age of democracy was not to resist democracy but to accept it nominally and then to set about persuading majorities to act politically against their own material interests and potential power.
The solution had been sketched in the seemingly opposed but actually complementary strategies represented by the political ideas of Madison and Hamilton in The Federalist. Stated simply, Madison was so intent upon preventing rule by the demos that his system of inst.i.tutional and geographical complexity seemed destined to end in deadlock. Amidst the welter of contending interests, Madison noted, "justice ought to hold the balance." But, he continued, when politics and governance reduce to interests, "impartiality" is not to be found. Further, "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." Despair not: the geographical expanse, ideological differences, and socioeconomic complexity of the new system would splinter the demos-"the society . . . broken into so many parts, interests and cla.s.ses of citizens"-and thereby prevent it permanently from gaining the unity of purpose necessary to concert its numerical power and dominate all branches of government.39 Madison had, in effect, produced the theory of how-at the national level-to render majoritarianism forever disaggregated and incoherent. The new system might produce majorities, but the elements composing them would be so disparate as to make concerted action unlikely. The downside was that in his determination to enfeeble majorities, Madison appeared to be championing a government tied into knots and hence destined to repeat the colonial experience of impotent and ineffectual rule, the curse of the Articles of Confederation.
The solution to a system that seemed to be designed for deadlock was to craft an inst.i.tution that had, like monarchy, a certain remoteness, an element of popular legitimacy and yet sufficient independent power that it could furnish genuine governance, possess the requisite "energy" to give direction to the nation. The inst.i.tution was the executive, or president; its theoretician, Alexander Hamilton. Unlike the divided legislature, with its numerous and diverse representatives, the executive would possess "unity" or "power in a single hand."40 (The doctrinal inspiration for George Bush"s "unified executive.") The fact that the chief executive was elected indirectly, and by an Electoral College that was intended to be a deliberative body, meant that he would have a significant degree of independence, not only from the legislative branch but from the citizenry as well. It was not until the twenty-first century that the Hamiltonian version of the presidency was fully realized.41 That the current president has come to embody and reflect the expansive notions of power a.s.sociated with empire and Superpower does not mean that he was the first. Harry Truman stated that the world could be saved only if "the whole world [were to] adopt the American system." Truman added, "For the American system" could survive only by "becoming a world system."42 Earlier presidents had justified extraordinary power because the nation was at war. Thus Lincoln, in defending his decision to suspend habeas corpus, cited the ongoing Civil War. Later presidents, such as Wilson and FDR, have also applied expansive notions of executive authority during wartime. In those earlier instances the clear a.s.sumption was that once the emergency was over, the powers would cease to be exercised. There was no strategy for normalizing emergency power by p.r.o.nouncing a new and sweeping doctrine of presidential authority and making it a part of the everyday exercise of executive power. Further, there was no attempt to use a wartime emergency as a pretext for permanently reducing the const.i.tutional authority of the other two branches of government.
Under the present administration the president has claimed the authority to conduct secret wiretaps without the judicial approval required by law; to order the "secret rendition" and detention of enemy combatants; to violate treaties despite the fact that the Const.i.tution declares that treaties pa.s.sed by Congress are "the supreme law of the land." These and other sweeping claims have been defended as exercises of authority belonging to the president as "commander in chief" and as "chief executive." Clearly, these broad a.s.sertions are related to the nebulous character of the "war on terrorism" and to the thoughtless action of Congress when it agreed, unconditionally, that combating terrorism const.i.tuted a "war."
Perhaps the most remarkable of all the efforts to expand executive authority at the expense of the const.i.tutional balance of powers is the practice of "signing statements." When presidents sign a congressional bill into law, it has sometimes been the practice of a president to attach a statement in which he may indicate his understanding of the intention of the bill. President Bush, however, has taken that practice and converted it into a sweeping claim that he can ignore provisions of a bill with which he disagrees. On this basis he has claimed the authority to ignore congressional attempts to regulate the military, affirmative action provisions, requirements that he report to Congress about immigration service problems, whistle-blower protections, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research. He has a.s.serted that he does not have to obey congressional laws forbidding U.S. troops to engage in combat in Colombia; or laws requiring him to inform Congress when he diverts money to start secret operations; or laws prohibiting the military from using intelligence unlawfully collected. Frequently he has deceived Congress by first promoting compromises on legislation and then reneging in his signing statement.43 In the light of these expansive claims to presidential authority to override congressional power and thereby radically alter the system of checks and balances, the successful strategy of packing the Supreme Court with "reliable" justices completes the picture of a dramatically changed political system. Prior to their nominations to the Court, John Roberts and Samuel Alito helped to formulate the rationale for these expansive doctrines while serving the president.44 Although the sum of these actions might seem prima facie grounds for impeachment of the president, they are entirely consistent with the imperial presidency of a superpower.
XI.
If we have to use force, it is because we are America.
We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall.
We see further into the future.
-Madeleine Albright, secretary of state (1998).
The global pursuits of Superpower have a paradoxical effect. They cause the "homeland" to appear shrunken in comparison with its global status, Lilliputian compared to the Gulliver of Superpower. The usage "homeland" itself is revealing of a certain sense of diminution, of reduction to a beleaguered refuge. "Superpower," "empire," and "globalization" all presuppose and depend upon inequalities of power while maintaining the illusion that somehow those inequalities are not retrojected into the homeland, that the refinement of methods of controlling "crowds" or the denial of due process to American citizens is, at worst, an aberration rather than a prerequisite of Superpower and a contribution to inverted totalitarianism.46 In fact empire and Superpower undermine and implicitly oppose two presumably fundamental principles of American political ideology: that the Const.i.tution provides the standard for a government of limited powers, and that American governance and politics are democratic.
Despite the incongruity and inherent tensions between unlimited global hegemony and const.i.tutionally limited domestic power, between arbitrary power projected abroad (unilateralism, preemptive war) and democratic power responsible to the citizenry at home, the implications of Superpower, imperial power, and globalizing capital for democracy and const.i.tutionalism have not been publicly confronted, least of all during the 2004 presidential campaign. On the contrary, the defenders and pract.i.tioners of these extraordinary forms of power profess to be employing Superpower to force the values of American democracy and the inst.i.tutions of the free market upon the world. For their part American citizens are expected to support the project of imposing democracy while remaining in denial of their own complicity in ravaging foreign populations and economies. Americans have conveniently forgotten their own disastrous experiment in imposing democracy at the point of a bayonet when, after the Civil War, the victorious North tried to "reconstruct" the South.
Innocents at home, Terminators abroad . . .
CHAPTER TWELVE.
Demotic Moments.
I.
We of the United States, you know, are const.i.tutionally
and conscientiously democrats.
-Thomas Jefferson.
America, the world"s first land of opportunity to become a democrat . . .
-SSW.
Morning/Mourning in America.
-SSW.
. . . a mourning over the failure of a project that nonetheless cannot be relinquished.
-Jurgen Habermas.
Any prospect of revitalizing democracy in America should not a.s.sume that we can start afresh. It is not morning in America. The first step should be to reflect on the changes of the past half century that have distorted the cultural supports of democracy and eroded its political practices while preparing the way for a politics and political culture favorable to inverted totalitarianism.
Inverted totalitarianism marks a political moment when corporate power finally sheds its identification as a purely economic phenomenon, confined primarily to a domestic domain of "private enterprise," and evolves into a globalizing copartnership with the state: a double trans.m.u.tation, of corporation and state. The former becomes more political, the latter more market oriented. This new political amalgam works at rationalizing domestic politics so that it serves the needs of both corporate and state interests while defending and projecting those same interests into an increasingly volatile and compet.i.tive global environment.
Antidemocracy, executive predominance, and elite rule are basic elements of inverted totalitarianism. Antidemocracy does not take the form of overt attacks upon the idea of government by the people. Instead, politically it means encouraging what I have earlier dubbed "civic demobilization," conditioning an electorate to being aroused for a brief spell, controlling its attention span, and then encouraging distraction or apathy. The intense pace of work and the extended working day, combined with job insecurity, is a formula for political demobilization, for privatizing the citizenry. It works indirectly. Citizens are encouraged to distrust their government and politicians; to concentrate upon their own interests; to begrudge their taxes; and to exchange active involvement for symbolic gratifications of patriotism, collective self-righteousness, and military prowess. Above all, depoliticization is promoted through society"s being enveloped in an atmosphere of collective fear and of individual powerlessness: fear of terrorists, loss of jobs, the uncertainties of pension plans, soaring health costs, and rising educational expenses. Unlike the n.a.z.is, who made life uncertain for the wealthy and privileged while providing social programs for the working cla.s.s and poor, inverted totalitarianism exploits the poor, reducing or weakening health programs and social services, regimenting ma.s.s education for an insecure workforce threatened by the importation of low-wage workers.3 Employment in a high-tech, volatile, and globalized economy is normally as precarious as during an old-fashioned depression. The result is that citizenship, or what remains of it, is practiced amidst a continuing state of worry. Hobbes had it right: when citizens are insecure and at the same time driven by compet.i.tive aspirations, they yearn for political stability rather than civic engagement, protection rather than political involvement.
That the issues of empire, its consequences for civic values and the practice of liberty, partic.i.p.ation, and equality, were never raised during the 2004 elections attests that empire"s tacit precondition-of an uncurious and apolitical citizenry-is being consolidated.4 Empire prefers a pa.s.sive but patriotic subject. While much has been made of the deep divisions allegedly at work in the electorate, the fact remains that the 2004 election attracted a modest turnout of roughly 60 percent of eligible voters. This suggests that inverted totalitarianism does not want or need active citizens, only periodic ones, a citizenry on call.
One shouldn"t expect empire to promote liberty, partic.i.p.ation, or equality other than as versions of economic opportunity. The object of its managed democracy is not to persuade the citizens but, depending on the objective, to neutralize or incite them. Managed democracy is not the creature of a tyrannical majority-as the Founders feared. On the contrary. Managed democracy thrives not on active suppression but on an electorate so evenly divided as to prevent the formation of a strong majority will. While an evenly divided electorate stymies the formation of effective majorities, it enhances the power of corporate lobbies, that is, of determined, single-minded, lavishly financed minority wills that operate independently of electoral results. Near deadlock diminishes the legislature"s ability to exercise vigorous oversight of the executive and opens the way for an unprecdented a.s.sertion of executive power, especially if a legislature is riddled with corruption.
II.
Yet there are grounds for believing that while the American empire may persist, American hegemony is weakening. The debacle of Iraq, the mounting American casualties, pictures of soldiers without limbs, Iraqi casualties so numerous that the American military is loath to report them, the destruction of that society"s entire economy, educational system, and culture have by this time begun to shame the American conscience. The huge cost of the war, the escalating share of the national budget claimed by defense spending, the spiraling national deficit, mounting foreign debts, looming oil shortages, a fitful economy, and a shredded social net suggest that the nation can no longer afford to subsidize grandiose imperial ambitions, that retrenchment of American power is necessary. From midsummer of 2005 to the spring of 2007, public opinion surveys consistently indicated that a majority of Americans were losing confidence in the president and beginning to doubt the merits and public rationale for the invasion of Iraq. That finding is of a piece with a spate of articles, books, independently produced movies, and occasional TV shows critical of "the mess in Iraq," and with the public criticism by retired generals of the administration"s handling of the war.5 Even some conservative supporters began to question the administration"s loose spending habits and appet.i.te for foreign adventures.
The twilight of empire will not necessarily spell the demise of inverted totalitarianism. The fact of terrorism, combined with the imaginary it has a.s.sumed in the national consciousness, will provide justification enough for retaining the security apparatus, subsidizing the defense industry, and nurturing "the fear factor," while accustoming the citizen to a legal regime that sanctions extraconst.i.tutional powers, including the torture of prisoners and domestic spying. Nor is it likely that the Republican Party will abandon its goal of attaining a permanent majority, much less renounce the alliances it has cultivated with corporations, religious groups, conservative intellectuals, and powerful lobbies.
III.
Granted that the invasion of Iraq was politically immoral, duplicitous, and stupid, the blame game is at bottom an unwitting acknowledgment of the shallowness of the political culture of American democracy and of the persistence of antidemocratic tendencies. For the public disenchantment with the Iraq war unintentionally reveals how deeply leadership-dependent the democracy has become.6 Fault is attributed exclusively to the White House, never to the citizenry for its unthinking support of the venture. If, by luck, the war had been won as quickly as the administration a.s.sumed-or purported to a.s.sume-it would be, would "democracy" have even blinked? Not only did the citizens endorse the president"s war by reelecting him; in 2000 that same citizenry had watched supinely as the Bush team defied the electorate and achieved a political coup. Strong democracy"s Weimar?
Much as one is justified in blaming Bush and his coterie, one also needs to figure in the culpability, complicity, and apathy of the citizenry. And that brings us back to the question of how shallow or deeply entrenched in U.S. politics, economy, and society is the democratic ideal of shared power, civic involvement, and egalitarianism. Does "democracy" truly describe our politics and political system, or is it a cynical gesture used to camouflage a deeply manipulative politics?
IV.
Not only does the people have no precise consciousness of
its own historical ident.i.ty, it is not even conscious of the
historical ident.i.ty or the exact limits of its adversary.
-Antonio Gramsci.
Throughout most of Western history democracy, far from being the establishment, was virtually unknown. With the exception of ancient Athens, where democracy generally prevailed from, roughly, 450 to 322 BCE, no example of a democratic regime appeared during the subsequent two thousand years. Even in the Const.i.tution of our Founders democracy was only one element and by no means the most valued. Only in the twentieth century were there political regimes that were democratic, when judged by formal criteria such as a universal franchise for all adult citizens, legal rights to which all citizens were equally ent.i.tled, a free press and political parties, and comprehensive public educational systems.
Broadly postulated, the struggle for democracy went through three distinct moments widely separated in time. The earliest sustained attempt at inventing a demos occurred in ancient Athens. There a popular challenge was mounted against prevailing notions that the political domain was the exclusive prerogative of the "well-born" and wealthy. Athenian democracy initiated a more inclusive politics open to all adult male citizens regardless of wealth or n.o.ble lineage. From that conception there emerged the idea of a demos, a politically engaged and empowered citizenry, one that voted, deliberated, and occupied all branches of public offices.8 The emergence of a demos also provoked pejorative characterizations: the rabble, the vulgar, the unruly.
"Democracy" (demokratia = demos + kratia, or power) stood for rule or power of the people, the political supremacy of an entirely new presence, and also for a certain defiance in an Athens continually beset by cla.s.s conflicts: on one side n.o.bility, wealth, and education; on the other small farmers, artisans, and merchants.9 It was also closely a.s.sociated with equality (isonomia) and expressed through such practices as election of officials by lot, the accountability of officials, popular jury courts, and the powers of the popular a.s.sembly (Ekklesia). Citizens were paid for attendance at the a.s.sembly and for partic.i.p.ation in jury service. There were no property qualifications for voting or officeholding.
Athenian democracy was said to place a high value on freedom (eleutheria). While some critics, such as Plato, satirized it as encouraging the lowliest citizens to take on airs beyond their "place," more generous commentators, such as Aristotle, interpreted democratic freedom as meaning "to rule and be ruled in turn."10 The precondition was that the Athenian demos should give itself democracy, not have it bestowed by a great lawgiver or benevolent conqueror or Founding Father.11 Athenian democracy had serious shortcomings. Women were excluded from politics, and, despite a large population of foreigners in Athens, it was extremely difficult for them to acquire citizenship. Hence the citizen body consisted of a relatively small percentage of the Athenian population; some scholars have estimated it at 14 percent. Further, a large slave population, vital to the economy, had no political voice. Most important, the flourishing of the Athenian economy became strongly intertwined with the transformation of a city-state into an imperial power with an appet.i.te for expansion. The imperial thrust was novel for having its power base in the dynamic of a demotic democracy, bursting with self-confidence and enthusiastic for conquest. "They were," according to one of their opponents, "born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others."12 Athenians proved to be harsh conquerors, demanding tribute to support their empire and even tolerating the slaughter of a rebellious population that had surrendered.13 Inevitably Athens overreached and was challenged by an alliance headed by Sparta. The Peloponnesian Wars (430404) led to the collapse of the Athenian Empire. It was preceded by several military reverses, climaxed by a disastrous expedition against Syracuse, an adventure stoked by the demagoguery of political rivals, each seeking to outbid the other by firing up ma.s.s enthusiasm.14 Although its democracy survived attempted coups by disgruntled aristocrats and oligarchs, its imperial reign was over. After 324 BCE Athens was incorporated into the Macedonian Empire.
V.
What had gone wrong? Broadly, the problem lay in the transformation of political ident.i.ty from a city defined by circ.u.mscribed power to an ident.i.ty unconfined and imperial. Its preimperial ident.i.ty was best expressed when, to protect themselves against invaders, Athenians built a wall around their city. We might interpret the wall as defining a political s.p.a.ce and symbolizing the scope and limitations of demotic rule. The enclosed s.p.a.ce was commensurate with the everyday commonsense capability of a demos for exercising power while preserving democratic egalitarianism. City politics, because of its immediacy, represented a set of practices that a citizenry could comprehend. Rather than pursuing power on a scale without predefined limits, with its paradox of being necessarily abstract while practiced as ruthless Realpolitik, the city had once cultivated a politics where it was possible to be both democratic and rational.15 One of the striking effects of imperialism upon Athenian democracy was a hardening and increasing ruthlessness of the citizens. They themselves became pract.i.tioners of Realpolitik. Athenians never pretended to justify their domination over conquered peoples by claiming to bestow the benefits and values of democracy. "As the world goes," an Athenian envoy instructs the representative of a city that refused to submit, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."16 The a.s.sumption was that within the city"s walls democracy could be preserved undistorted by empire; meanwhile its power was being expanded outwards where, clear-eyed and unconstrained by democratic inhibitions, it could practice domination.
A twofold moral might be drawn from the experience of Athens: that it is self-subverting for democracy to subordinate its egalitarian convictions to the pursuit of expansive politics with its corollaries of conquest and domination and the power relationships they introduce. Few care to argue that, in political terms, democracy at home is advanced or improved by conquest abroad.17 As Athens showed and the United States of the twenty-first century confirmed, imperialism undercuts democracy by furthering inequalities among its citizens. Resources that might be used to improve health care, education, and environmental protection are instead directed to defense spending, which, by far, consumes the largest percentage of the nation"s annual budget. Moreover, the sheer size and complexity of imperial power and the expanded role of the military make it difficult to impose fiscal discipline and accountability. Corruption becomes endemic, not only abroad but at home. The most dangerous type of corruption for a democracy is measured not in monetary terms alone but in the kind of ruthless power relations it fosters in domestic politics. As many observers have noted, politics has become a blood sport with partisanship and ideological fidelity as the hallmarks. A partisan judiciary is openly declared to be a major priority of a political party; the efforts to consolidate executive power and to relegate Congress to a supporting role are to some important degree the retrojection inwards of the imperial thrust.
Second, if Athens was the first historical instance of a confrontation between democracy and elitism, that experience suggests that there is no simple recipe for resolving the tensions between them. Political elites were a persistent, if uneasy and contested, feature of Athenian democracy and a significant factor in both its expansion and its demise.18 In the eyes of contemporary observers, such as Thucydides, as well as later historians, the advancement of Athenian hegemony depended upon a public-spirited, able elite at the helm and a demos willing to accept leadership. Conversely, the downfall of Athens was attributed to the wiles and vainglory of leaders who managed to whip up popular support for ill-conceived adventures. As the war dragged on and frustration grew, domestic politics became more embittered and fractious: members of the elite competed to outbid each other by proposing ever wilder schemes of conquest. In two attempts (411410 and 404403) elites, abetted by the Spartans, succeeded in temporarily abolishing democracy and installing rule by the Few.
VI.
According to its elitist critics, a democracy is an incomplete political system because its theory contains no justification or provision for recruiting or attracting great leaders, men who are exceptional and distinguished from the demos by their grasp of what is required for a society to be well-governed and flourishing.
Elitism is typically not a claim about a practical division of labor where the question is how we get from here to there, with the demos deciding where "there" is and the elites supplying the expert know-how. In part the problem centers on whether elite positions of power and decision making are open or tracked, that is, whether or not there are privileged paths to membership. In part the problem also concerns the level of political sophistication of those who are not in the elite but, as citizens, are called upon to judge the performance of elites. The danger lies in the circularity that circ.u.mscribes the division of labor whereby elites control the means (e.g., elite preparatory schools and universities, the popular media) and mostly determine the criteria by which they are to be judged.
There is an additional problem, one underscored by the fatal overreaching of Athens, both on the part of the demos and on that of its elite. To overreach involves not only stretching resources beyond their limits or underestimating the pitfalls likely to be encountered but entertaining delusions of grandeur that, typically, are fueled by a conviction about elite ent.i.tlements. Overreaching is about crossing the line separating rationality from irrationality. Thucydides vividly portrayed how the gullibility of the demos and its susceptibility to flattery, as well as the inability of its leaders to control either the ma.s.s emotions that they had aroused or their own ambitions, produced disastrous misjudgments: overestimations of the Athenian capabilities and underestimations of its foes.19 Thucydides uses these episodes to contrast political rationality with demagogic leadership swept along by an out-of-control demos. He depicts Pericles, who led the city during the earlier and successful phases of the war, as the model of political rationality and a virtuoso at restraining the dynamics of the demos: For as long as he was head of the state during the peace [i.e., an interval during hostilities], he pursued a moderate and conservative policy; and in his time Athens" greatness was at its height. When the war broke out, here also he seems to have rightly gauged the power of his country. . . . He told them to wait quietly, to pay attention to their marine [i.e., navy], to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a favorable result.20 Then, after the death of Pericles, the citizens, did "the very contrary," according to Thucydides. They "allowed private ambitions and private interests" to prevail. Where Pericles had "led the mult.i.tude instead of being led by them," the new leaders catered to the "whims of the mult.i.tude," each outbidding the other in vying for popular approval. The result was "a host of blunders" culminating in a disastrous defeat in Sicily.21 We might restate Thucydides: By its nature imperial conquest imposes a heavy, perhaps unbearable demand upon human rationality, not just upon virtue. There are too many unknowns, contingencies, unpredictable consequences as well as a vast scale on which things can go wrong. The kind of power that democracy brings to conquest has been formed in a local context and according to well-understood norms and traditions. In order to cope with the imperial contingencies of foreign war and occupation, democracy will alter its character, not only by a.s.suming new behaviors abroad (e.g., ruthlessness, indifference to suffering, disregard of local norms, the inequalities in ruling a subject population) but also by operating on revised, power-expansive a.s.sumptions at home. It will, more often than not, try to manipulate the public rather than engage its members in deliberation. It will demand greater powers and broader discretion in their use ("state secrets"), a tighter control over society"s resources, more summary methods of justice, and less patience for legalities, opposition, and clamors for socioeconomic reforms. It is unlikely that the restraints of rationality can be expected to come from the demos, for its emotional state will have been deliberately inflamed by its leaders, and, more important, the magnitudes of empire and (what amounted to) global war will exceed the demotic ability to comprehend situations, strategies, and likely outcomes alien to their experience. The practical judgments of ordinary life, which under normal circ.u.mstances might supply a "reality check" to power, are beyond their depth, suggesting that democracy cannot simultaneously pursue Realpolitik and practice demotic politics. For their part the leaders, rather than being able to focus on various choices and their likely consequences, are trapped by the popular moods they had fostered and are tempted to respond by ever more grandiose proposals. The upshot is that there is no reality check for the demos on the elite or for the elite on the demos; neither can control the recklessness of the other but can only encourage it.
VII.
Over the next two millennia democracy did not exist in Europe.22 The politically entrenched cla.s.ses and interests succeeded in keeping the middle and lower cla.s.ses out of politics. Although a few wealthy bourgeois might occasionally gain entry into the charmed circle, this moment might be described as one in which the particulars excluded the generality of the population from politics. They succeeded in establishing forms of power that functioned as principles of exclusion. The Few were declared to be "distinguished," set off from the Many by special family genealogies, large fortunes, or privileged access to the sacred. They were, so the logic ran, ent.i.tled to rule. The Few thus represented the elements const.i.tutive of a political realm that was as much defined by who was "out" as by who was "in." Power was often sanctified-kings were anointed; popes by virtue of apostolic succession were invested with a "holy office"; and aristocracy was declared an essential element in the hierarchical order of "higher" and "lower" decreed by the Creator. Accordingly, authority was claimed to be wide or general in its scope but particular or restricted in its source. This presaged a continuing tension between power and authority: power was dependent upon organizing cooperation, enlisting the generality of human and material resources in society, while authority claimed to derive from sources said to be rare or special-from Holy Scripture, from G.o.d, or from a great Lawgiver, a Moses or Founding Fathers.
VIII.
The succeeding moment, which may be said to have lasted until the mid-seventeenth century, occurred when the Many came to understand that if they were to regain entry into politics, they had to relearn how to be a political "people," a demos. During this same period the charmed circle of the governing Few was being challenged and reconst.i.tuted as a distinctively modernizing and secularizing elite. This was the phenomenon of "civic republicanism." It appealed in the main to those with special skills that were largely independent of birth or ecclesiastical rank: bankers, scientists and engineers, skilled administrators, military leaders, and political advisers boasting of the strategizing talents immortalized by Machiavelli. At the beginning whatever these new auxilliaries of power may have lacked in authority, they more than compensated with their command of new forms of knowledge and skill focused upon material power rather than ecclesiastical authority or dynastic claims.
A modern version of the demos, of necessity, followed a route different from republicanism. It had to arm itself as a threat rather than as a Machiavellian protege with a resume. A demos represented power consciousness on the part of the Many. For that power to crystallize, the ordinary people have to change themselves, somehow finding ways and means to go beyond their immersion in the daily struggle to exist. The demos becomes aware of their potential power: raw numbers, physical strength, and individually scant resources in desperate need of aggregation. Demotic politics means a change from being objects of power to becoming agents. Because a demos has no allotted place within the system, it is compelled to challenge the exclusionary politics of the Few and demand as a matter of right entrance into the political realm and partic.i.p.ation in its political deliberations.
By definition "the people" was an inclusive notion. Accordingly early democrats appealed to general principles of inclusiveness (e.g., the "natural rights of all mankind"), to what was common (e.g. equally human) rather than to what distinguished one person or cla.s.s from others. Eventually, but not universally, the Many succeeded in becoming political citizens and thereby an accepted element in political life, although by no means the predominant one. We may call this the struggle by which an inchoate people or "mult.i.tude" attempts to convert itself into a demos, into a politically self-conscious actor confronting societies in which wealth and inequality were being reinforced in terms different from those employed by the sacred and privileged hierarchies of the past.
In early modern western Europe and America of the seventeenth century the princ.i.p.al inst.i.tutional form by which social forces gained expression was through representation in legislatures. Representation was pretty much restricted to the n.o.bility, the higher clergy, and substantial landholders. This meant that when the "lower" or excluded orders tried to gain entry into politics, they could not a.s.sume, as the Athenian demos had, that they would take over the legal and political inst.i.tutions in their entirety and proceed to democratize them. Accordingly, the ambitions of the early modern demos had to be limited to gaining a foothold, which meant representation in a particular branch of the legislature rather than control of a whole system. The sense in which they could const.i.tute anything other than an incomplete demos would be determined by how much of itself the new demos would or could commit and how determined the opposition would be.
IX.