An early attempt to give expression to a modern demos with access to political life occurred in the so-called Putney debates during the English civil wars of the 1640s. In contrast to the const.i.tution-writing convention of 1787 in Philadelphia where there would be many delegates representative of the modern elites but none from the demos,23 at Putney the lower cla.s.ses and the poor were present and democratic arguments were advanced. Those debates also saw the appearance of a new and self-conscious presence defending the political hegemony of nascent capitalists.24 The events at Putney have been preserved in a verbatim account of actual debates when the demand for political membership was put forward. The debates reveal a moment when, by their own actions, people were struggling to become "the people," to create themselves as political actors. The exchanges were triggered when the spokesmen for the rank and file of the revolutionary army, representing the views of the Leveller movement, proposed that the army demand the nation"s adoption of a written const.i.tution ("An Agreement of the People") ensuring that ordinary men would be guaranteed the right to vote. That would have meant the abolition of the prevailing property qualifications then governing elections and parliamentary representation. Most of the officers, including Cromwell, the army"s leader, opposed the demands; in the person of Henry Ireton, Cromwell"s son-in-law, they would have an articulate spokesman.
The crucial importance of the debates was to expose the tensions between political democracy and economic power, between demotic claims on behalf of political equality and an elite defending the principle that political inequality was the natural, even logical reflection of economic inequality: between a claim that economic status should not determine political inclusion and a claim that economic status should dictate political status. Underlying these tensions was a further disagreement as to whether the nation was to be tended in the spirit of commonality, equality, and shared power, or governed by those who represented newly emerging interests-mercantile, professional, smaller landowners-intent on challenging the older dominant groups of aristocracy, established church, and wealthy landowners.
The Leveller position was put forward in a famous speech by Colonel Thomas Rainsborough: I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore . . . I think it"s clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under. . . . [E]very man born in England cannot, ought not, neither by the law of G.o.d nor the law of nature, to be exempted from the choice of those who are to make laws and for him to live under, and for him (for aught I know) to lose his life under.25 Ireton responded by rejecting the view that natural right supplied a ground for "disposing of the affairs of the kingdom, and in determining or choosing those that shall determine what laws we shall be ruled by here." Only persons with "a permanent fixed interest in the kingdom," he argued, were qualified to serve as electors and as representatives. The reason: "those who shall choose the law makers shall be men freed from dependence upon others."26 Ireton then went on to identify those who represented the permanent interest of the society as "the persons in whom all land lies, and those in corporations in whom all trading lies. This is the most fundamental const.i.tution of this kingdom, and which if you do not allow, you allow none at all."27 The Levellers" appeal to natural right, he warned, put all property at risk: any man might "take hold of anything that a[nother] man calls his own."28 If "you admit [as electors] any man that hath a breath and being" along with those itinerants who are "here today and gone tomorrow,"29 if those who had no property were allowed to vote, then there could be no guarantee that they would not "vote against all property."30 Ireton also added a rea.s.suring note that those who had no property would nonetheless have an "interest" under rule by the propertied, for they would be protected and enjoy the freedom "of trading to get money and to get estates by" and would eventually join the ranks of the propertied.31
X.
In Ireton"s argument wealth signified independence, autonomous actors. Dependence, in contrast, meant being compelled by need and circ.u.mstance to submit to the superior power of another. When power is organized in the form of an economy based upon private capital and the division of labor, then ipso facto the lives of most persons will be directed by others. Dependence is thus inst.i.tutionalized as inequalities of reward and, consequently, of power. A future task of intellectual elites is also set: to provide the ideology (e.g., meritocracy, freedom) by which inequality would be acceptable and consistent with principles of democracy and equality, thereby countering Rainsborough"s argument that elections without a property qualification empower those who represent numbers but little or no economic or intellectual power.
Thus two forms of power were being pitted against each other. One claimed that superior economic power should translate directly into political power; the other that political life involved transactions among equals, a formula which required that social status, economic power, and religious loyalties be suspended temporarily so that citizens might deliberate as equals-a formula that realists would dismiss as magical while egalitarians would see it as magic realism, as a moment of possibility when the powerless are empowered and experience independence.
In the centuries that followed, the economy of capitalism became increasingly powerful, both as a system of production and as a system of inequalities. While, unquestionably, the new economy would raise the "standard of living" of the "ma.s.ses," it would also succeed in translating concentrated economic power into political power. Rather than a purely economic system supplying "goods and services," capital acquired political attributes. Faced with that reality, the magic realists, in desperation, would introduce their trump card, the threat of revolution. This meant arousing the dependents, organizing their numbers, and confronting the realists with their worst nightmare-instability, uncertainty, and, worst of all, the subordination of economic to demotic power-compounded by a wholly novel development, a new species of leader who, instead of hoping to join the governing elite, opted to remain with "the people."
Such a description might perhaps seem applicable to revolutionary France of the 1790s; however, that attempt at creating a modern demos with a revolutionary leadership was directed against the Old Regime of monarchy, aristocracy, and church, against forms of power that were already being undermined by modern science, skepticism, and rationalism.32 For the third moment of democracy, the attempt to resurrect the idea of a demos, we might look to eighteenth-century America, not to the contest over the ratification of the federal Const.i.tution of 1789, nor directly to the revolution of 1776, but to the political consciousness that emerged among the colonists early in the eighteenth century and intensified in the agitation of the 1760s against British taxation and trade policies. An American political system would have its origins in protesting imperial policies only to succ.u.mb later to the temptations of empire.
Our present-day hagiography celebrates Founding Fathers but almost entirely overlooks the emergence of an American version of a demos in the decades before and during the revolution.33 In the years preceding the war for independence new political actors appeared: artisans, workers, small farmers, shopkeepers, seamen, women, African slaves, and native Indians. Typically they were reacting to a particular grievance: a tax, an ordinance, mistreatment of one of their own, a dispute over land t.i.tles-even more broadly, the inst.i.tution of slavery. Under the imperial system there were no official inst.i.tutions in which the lower and working cla.s.ses, women, and slaves partic.i.p.ated or were represented. The typical colony was ruled by a royal governor appointed by and responsible to the British government; colonial a.s.semblies were largely composed of wealthy landowners and well-to-do merchants, while voting requirements invariably excluded those without considerable property or wealth.
If a demos were to form, it would have to act from outside and against the system. Consequently demotic action tended to be "informal," improvised, and spontaneous-what can be called "fugitive democracy." There were demonstrations, protest meetings, pet.i.tions, tarring and feathering of royal officials, burning of effigies, destruction of official residences, and storming jails to free one of their own. Because of property qualifications and financial requirements, few could vote or run for office; hence leadership was frequently provided by middle-cla.s.s sympathizers who contributed organizational skills so that slates of candidates could be presented or committees of correspondence formed to coordinate common action with their counterparts in other colonies.
XI.
Demotic action is typically triggered by felt grievances-not, initially, by a yearning for political partic.i.p.ation. Because of the exhausting demands of making a "living," surviving under harsh circ.u.mstances, dedication to a political life is hardly a conceivable vocation. While governing is a full-time, continuous activity, demotic politics is inevitably episodic, born of necessity, improvisational rather than inst.i.tutionalized. It is "fugitive," an expression of those who lack leisure time and whose work skills in modern times would become increasingly foreign to the kinds of experience and prerequisites deemed essential to governing and, conversely, more hospitable to those with experience in command or possessed of technical qualifications.
A would-be demos is drawn to democracy not because ordinary people expect to rule, but because, in theory, democracy legitimates the expression of widely felt and usually deep-seated grievances, the possibility that those who have only numbers can use them to offset the power of wealth, formal education, and managerial experience.
Foreign observers were impressed by the intensity of political interest among ordinary Americans. During the years from roughly the 1760s to the Const.i.tutional Convention of 1787 an American demos began to establish a foothold and to find inst.i.tutional expression, if not full realization. State const.i.tutions were amended by provisions that broadened the suffrage, abolished property qualifications for office, and in one case inst.i.tuted women"s suffrage. There were also efforts to ease debtor laws, even to abolish slavery.
Those "attacks" on property and the concomitant threat of demotic rule were crucial considerations prompting several outstanding politicians (Madison, Hamilton, John Adams) to organize a quiet counterrevolution aimed at inst.i.tutionalizing a counterforce to challenge the prevailing decentralized system of thirteen sovereign states in which some state legislatures were controlled by "popular" forces. A new system of national power was proposed, at once centered yet with authority coextensive with the boundaries of the nation, and designed to discourage demotic power both by reducing the authority of the states, several of which had enacted legislation favorable to the lower cla.s.ses, and by minimizing the role of the demos in national inst.i.tutions. Only the House of Representatives would be more or less directly elected.34 The theory was this: the less the demotic presence, the more likely that the populace would defer to men of talent, judgment, and political experience-a governing cla.s.s composed largely of lawyers, financiers, and plantation owners who would serve the common good although not necessarily all cla.s.ses to the same extent. Thus was reborn the idea of a republican elite. The aim, which Madison, Hamilton, Adams and several other members of the emerging political cla.s.s bluntly stated, was to ensure that the new regime, while abstractly based upon "the people," would be directed by the representatives of wealth, status (slave-owners), and achievement rather than of democratic majorities.
Republican theory emerged as the counterforce to demotic power, thus perpetuating a dualism that had first appeared in ancient Athens. As noted earlier, republicanism promoted the notion of a governing cla.s.s, an idealized aristocracy, virtuous, able, and public spirited. When the theory was transported from Britain to America, it had to accommodate to bourgeois values of wealth and competence and to acknowledge in some degree the presence of democratic ideas and practices.35 In America republicanism had to find a place for democracy, eventually even endow it with sovereignty-if only in the abstract-while contriving obstacles to popular power that simultaneously advantaged the Few (e.g., a property qualification for voting) and defined governing in ways that corresponded to the abilities of a new cla.s.s of merchants, bankers, lawyers, and manufacturers.
Thomas Jefferson, more than any other early national hero, antic.i.p.ated the form that the republican-demotic dualism would take in the "first new nation" and the possible terms of reconciliation. Jefferson defined a republican system as "action by the citizen in person, in affairs within their reach and competence."36 That formula pointed to the split nature of the new system. Although claiming that the people were "const.i.tutionally and conscientiously democrats," Jefferson proceeded to circ.u.mscribe "action by the citizens." Thus while citizens were "competent to judge of the facts of ordinary life," as when serving as jurors, they were "unqualified for the management of affairs requiring intelligence above the common level." In these higher matters their powers should be delegated to more intelligent representatives whom, if necessary, the citizens could remove by elections.37 Jefferson"s a.s.sumption of an unproblematical transition from "democracy" to representative government, from situations (jury trial) where the competence of citizens is deemed adequate to the task, to the ongoing, continuing "management of affairs" where their "intelligence" is "unqualified," testified to a conception of democracy"s limited role even among its sympathizers. The tacit conviction was that when it came down to the actual work of governing, an elite ("intelligence above the common level") was a prerequisite.
While governance might be connected to democracy by elections, the act of voting for representatives and a president would seem more demanding than jury service. Not surprisingly that conclusion was drawn by the Founding Fathers, who proceeded to configure and "refine" elections so as to control their demotic potential and thus take the first step toward managing democracy. The Const.i.tution of the Founders compressed the political role of the citizen into an act of "choosing" and designed it to minimize the direct expression of a popular will. As noted earlier, the citizen would not directly elect the president. Instead the citizen chose electors who would cast votes after deliberating in the Electoral College where, presumably, they were not necessarily bound by the wishes of voters. Similarly the citizen was not invited to vote for a senatorial candidate; senators would be selected by the legislatures of the states. As for the courts, the citizen had no part in the process: justices were initially nominated by a president chosen by the Electoral College and then confirmed by senators selected by state legislatures.
While later efforts at expanding the suffrage may have contributed to improving the lot of some groups previously excluded, such as women, elections mainly posed a challenge to the arts of management. Those arts soon became an integral, even a decisive element in the electoral process. Thus, early on, while the people were declared "sovereign," they were precluded from governing. That distinction, between pa.s.sive sovereignty and active governance, would be contested, defined, and redefined over nearly three centuries as Jacksonian democrats, abolitionists, suffragettes, Populists, and Progressives fought to promote and defend demotic power while the political elites-many of whose representatives early on would defect and transfer their loyalties to the Southern pro-slavery cause-worked to professionalize politics and to make governance a technical art.
XII.
In past centuries, with their economies of scarcity, the struggle for democracy was often described as a war between "the haves and the have nots." The element of truth in that formula throws into sharp relief the crucial changes in the stakes. In times past democracy struggled against the "old regimes." Today in the United States the status of democracy and the role of its adherents are the opposite of what they have been in the past. Put simply, the early democrats fought for what they did not have. Today the challenge for democrats is to recover lost ground, to "popularize" political inst.i.tutions and practices that have become severed from popular control. It involves renewing the meaning and substance of "representative democracy" by affirming the primacy of Congress, curbing the growth of presidential power, disentangling the stranglehold of lobbyists, democratizing the party system by eliminating the barriers to third parties, and enforcing an austere system of campaign finance.
Reforming these inst.i.tutions is not the same as democratizing them: to only a limited extent can the citizenry itself and by itself inject democracy into a political system permeated by corporate power. It can provide the initial impetus but not the sustained will. Or, stated differently, democracy has, first, to find itself, become a self-conscious demos; and, then, it has to reconceive its relationship with its ancient nemesis, elitism.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
Democracy"s Prospects:
Looking Backwards.
I.
Generally when I ride it is the one time when I feel
alone, even though I know people are behind me. I ask people
a lot of times not to be in my line of vision because all I can
see straight ahead is, you know, s.p.a.ce.
-President George W. Bush.
At the critical moment when a volatile economy and widening cla.s.s disparities require a government responsive to popular needs, government has become increasingly unresponsive; and, conversely, when an aggressive state stands most in need of being restrained, democracy proved an ineffectual check. A public fearful of terrorist attacks and bewildered by a war based on deceit is unable to function as the rational conscience of the American state, capable of checking the impulse to adventurism and the systematic evasion of const.i.tutional constraints. A politics of dumbed-down public discourse and low voter turnout combines with a dynamic economy of stubborn inequalities to produce the paradox of a powerful state and a failing democracy.
But is it only democracy that is failing? Every day brings fresh evidence that American power is being challenged throughout the world, that its imperial sway is weakening, that its global economic hegemony is a thing of the past, and that it has been sucked into an unwinnable and interminable "war against terrorism." Is failing empire the opportunity for a democratic revival, or does that failure leave intact the tendencies toward inverted totalitarianism?
A democracy failing in what ways? What was democracy supposed to bring into the world that was not there before? A short answer might be this: democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men and women can recognize that their concerns are best protected and cultivated under a regime whose actions are governed by principles of commonality, equality, and fairness, a regime in which taking part in politics becomes a way of staking out and sharing in a common life and its forms of self-fulfillment. Democracy is not about bowling together but about managing together those powers that immediately and significantly affect the lives and circ.u.mstances of others and one"s self. Exercising power can be humbling when the consequences are palpable rather than statistical-and rather different from wielding power at a distance, at, say, an "undisclosed bunker somewhere in northern Virginia."
What is at stake today is the choice between the two forms of politics, Superpower and democracy. The contrasting nature of those two forms was best revealed by the invasion of Iraq. Beyond those stark and familiar facts about the war-the poor planning that preceded it, the hapless attempts to administer the country following the fall of Saddam, the sacrifice of American lives to a shameful cause, and the incalculable harm done to the country and its inhabitants-there was the political loss of nerve among Democrats, the press, and the punditry, a failure so profound as to call into question the health of the political system as a whole. That failure extended to all but a minority of the citizenry; the vast majority waved an occasional flag and then, when possible, heeded the advice of their leader to "fly, consume, spend."
While there are many lessons to be learned from the war"s debacle, there is one that is crucial to any future which democracy, especially partic.i.p.atory democracy, may have. It concerns the primary importance of truth telling and the destructive effects of lying.
II.
If democracy is about partic.i.p.ating in self-government, its first requirement is a supportive culture, a complex of beliefs, values, and practices that nurture equality, cooperation, and freedom. A rarely discussed but crucial need of a self-governing society is that the members and those they elect to office tell the truth. Although lying has figured in all forms of government, it acquires a special salience in a democracy, where the object of deception is the "sovereign people." Under nondemocratic forms of government, where the people are politically excluded as a matter of principle, lying is typically done by the sovereign or its agents, usually in order to mislead those presumed to be enemies or rivals of the sovereign. In modern dictatorships lying to the public was a matter of systematic policy and a.s.signed to a special ministry (sic) of propaganda. Statecraft as an especially bad joke . . .
Self-government is, literally, deformed by lying; it cannot function when those in office a.s.sume as a matter of course that, when necessary or advantageous, they can mislead the citizenry. This is especially true when democracy has been reduced to a form of representative government. Such government is, by its nature, distanced from the citizen. And instead of a representative"s politics representing the citizen, the reverse is true: Beltway politics is re-presented to the citizen. The less viable and flourishing democracy at "home," the less democratic representative democracy and the more prevalent a "re-presented" politics, a politics lacking directness, authenticity. And never more so than in the age of spin doctors, public relations experts, and pollsters.
In the face of declining political involvement by ordinary citizens, democracy becomes dangerously empty and not only receptive to antipolitical appeals to blind patriotism, fear, and demagoguery but comfortable with a political culture where lying, misrepresentation, and deception have become normal practice.
It is only mildly hyperbolic to characterize lying as a crime against reality. Lying goes to the heart of the never-ending questions, what is the world really like? what is in fact happening? Accepting something as true is not the same as agreeing that it is. To witness the role of lying and its consequences, we need look no further than to Iraq and to the death and destruction made possible by misrepresentations. Lying and its variants of deception and misrepresentation are no more simple aberrations than the unprovoked war itself. Lying and irrational decisions are connected, as are lying and unreasoning popular support for the decision-makers.
In a preliminary way lying can be defined as the deliberate misrepresentation of actuality and the subst.i.tution of a constructed "reality." The problem today is that lying is not an isolated phenomenon but characteristic of a culture where exaggeration and inflated claims are commonplace occurrences. For more than a century the public has been shaped by a relentless culture of advertising and its exaggerations, false claims, and fantasies-all aimed at influencing and directing behavior in the premeditated ways chosen by the advertiser. The techniques developed for the marketplace have been adapted by political consultants and their media experts. The result has been the pollution of the ecology of politics by the inauthentic politics of misrepresentative government, claiming to be what it is not, compa.s.sionate and conservative, G.o.d-fearing and moral.
While the principle of popular partic.i.p.ation in decision making is fundamental to democracy-and we shall return to it-thoughtful partic.i.p.ation is dependent upon certain commonplaces: first, the availability of knowledge in the form of reliable factual information and, second, a political culture that values and supports the honest effort to reach judgments aimed at promoting as far as possible the best interests of the whole society. There is a third principle, intellectual integrity. One aspect of it is the responsibility of those who, as teachers, publicists, researchers, and scientists, practice truth telling as their vocation. It is not a vocation to which many pundits, talk show hosts, for-sale journalists, and think tank residents are committed.2 The public vocation of truth telling cannot be consistently practiced without public and private respect for, and defense of, intellectual integrity.
Totalitarian regimes viewed intellectual integrity as subversive and imposed ideological or political orthodoxy upon all intellectual pursuits and professions. Under the Bush administration there have been repeated instances of governmental or corporate attempts to distort or suppress unwelcome expert reports and scientific findings. As President Bush testified, "One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq with the war on terror."3 A common thread connects false claims about WMDs with denials of global warming. The one insists that there was evidence; the other denies that there is evidence. Both are denials of actuality; both are irrational decisions of huge consequence; and both are aided by the lack of intellectual and public integrity among our scandal-ridden corporate and governmental leadership.4 III.
I know what the president thinks. I know what I think.
And we"re not looking for an exit strategy [from Iraq].
We are looking for victory.
-Vice President d.i.c.k Cheney.
Lying is more than deception; the liar wants the unreal to be accepted as actuality, so he sets about to establish as true what is not actually the case, not really real. A lie by a public authority is meant to be accepted by the public as an "official" truth concerning the "real world." At bottom, lying is the expression of a will to power. My power is increased if you accept "a picture of the world which is a product of my will."6 Of course the skilled liar should not be taken in by his own lies; that would be self-deception. Yet the skilled liar might also become a habitual liar, the success of one lie encouraging another with the result that a leader is tempted to try to make untruth into a reality-as with, for example, the vice president"s feverish efforts to press the CIA to dredge up evidence of WMDs where there was little or none.
It is a virtual cliche that in unusual circ.u.mstances, and especially in extraordinary ones, it may be necessary for leaders to lie to or mislead or conceal facts from the public when lying serves the broad interests of the nation. Throughout Western history questions of when to lie, what form a lie should take, and whether it is or was justified usually presumed that lying was a dispensation allowed only to elites who, theoretically, are more politically knowledgeable and experienced than ordinary citizens.7 It seems, however, paradoxical to say that democracy should deliberately deceive itself. Supposing, nonetheless, that elites, instead of simply enjoying access to greater or more reliable information, claimed for themselves a special order of rationality that allowed them access to a higher, extra-ordinary Reality and enabled them to see deeper, beyond the actuality experienced by the average citizen. Would that result in a conception in which lying was not a minor deviation but a reconst.i.tution of "reality"? If, for example, the initial reason for invading Iraq (WMDs) was exposed as a lie but the ruling elites then claimed that a higher purpose was to promote democracy in the Middle East, would that justification amount to a claim that elites possessed the substantively superior form of reasoning required by those who contend with problems whose complexity and possible consequences far exceed the experience of the ordinary citizen?
IV.
Perhaps the most influential justification for political lying as a higher form of reason, and for lying as the prerogative of a special type of political elites with access to a higher reality unknown to ordinary mortals, was set down by Plato more than two thousand years ago. His justification for lying has contemporary echoes in the systematic lying of the Bush administration, and those echoes have an intellectual genealogy. Plato was awarded canonical status by Leo Strauss, while Straussians and the neocons, who played a decisive role in deceiving the public about the reasons for attacking Iraq, have similarly canonized Strauss. From canon to cannon-fodder . . .
Rulers, according to Plato, "will have to give subjects a considerable dose of imposition and deception for their good."8 Plato"s ideal political system is founded upon sharply defined and enforced political inequalities designed to ensure that a specially educated cla.s.s of philosophers would monopolize political decision making and the practice of lying. Thus the crucial distinction, one that is cultivated and enforced, is between those whose exceptional mental endowments and subsequent training enable them to glimpse true reality and those who are judged to lack ability and therefore denied "higher" education.
The ideology that sanctions these inequalities is the so-called n.o.ble lie.9 The inhabitants are to be told that although they are all descended from a common "mother," they are a.s.signed, according to a hierarchical principle, to one of three cla.s.ses: the ruling, or golden, cla.s.s of philosopher-guardians, where true knowledge and the ability to rule exclusively reside; the military, or silver, cla.s.s; and the farmer-artisan, or bronze, cla.s.s.10 Political power and authority are reserved to the specially educated golden cla.s.s, and they alone are allowed the prerogative of lying. Plato"s justification of elite rule is set out in his famous Allegory of the Cave.11 It contrasts the unreality of the images by which the Many live and the true reality that only the Few can approximate.
Imagine men living in a cave set deep in the ground. From childhood they have been kept immobile by chains; because they can see only what is directly before them, they a.s.sume it is reality. Behind them is a fire with a track built along it. Imagine also some persons carrying artificial objects of wood or stone, some resembling human figures or animals, whose shadow images appear on the wall. The "prisoners" cannot see themselves or other prisoners; they see only the shadows cast by the fire on the wall facing them. "Such prisoners would recognize as reality nothing but the shadows of those artificial objects."
Plato continues: Suppose, however, one of the cave-dwellers is spirited outside the cave and thrust into bright sunlight. Dazzled at first, he believes the "real" world is illusion but, after becoming accustomed to the light, realizes that now he sees the world in the light of true reality-that is, he has knowledge, and what he had formerly believed to be reality was illusion. The vast majority of mankind remain imprisoned in the cave and incapable of grasping the true nature of things. Their best hope is to accept the power of those versed in the true philosophy. Plato darkly concludes: by nature the ma.s.ses prefer an illusory reality, and so they may turn on the philosopher, making him a martyr to the truth. Thus the ma.s.ses fear the truth, and their instinct is to cling to the unreal.12 But what is real? For Plato it was not the world of tangible objects, of everyday experience, things we touch, sense, and experience: these are too ephemeral or subjective to be true or real. Or perhaps too accessible, for they const.i.tute the everyday world shared by those who are looked down upon as common. The truly real is immaterial idea, intangible, unchanging, and belongs to a different and higher order of being. Knowledge of it gives privileged access to the meaning of the world and the nature of the Good. The Few alone are capable of grasping reality but only after they have undergone a rigorous intellectual discipline presided over by the true philosophers. Since the Many are incapable of knowing reality, the Few make no effort to elevate the level of common political understanding. Instead the Few divulge what is politically expedient and in a vulgarized (i.e., untrue) form, such as a myth, which the ma.s.ses can comprehend.
Democracy was, of course, anathema to Plato, not least because it stands for the regime where those who rule tend to be guided by experience of the tangibles of everyday existence, by "common" sense.13 Although there are no contests for political power in Plato"s scheme, in another sense his republic is all about politics, the politics of who defines and controls access to "reality," and what the role of truth and lying is in that politics. Plato a.s.sumed that the small scale of his imagined state would make it easier for his elite to control the extent to which, and in what form, the Many would benefit from a reality they could never understand, much less truly know.
To press the point: supposing the elite found themselves in a democracy instead of Plato"s Republic. Further, supposing they had been sufficiently influenced by modernity to be somewhat skeptical of the existence of "Reality," might they not go down to the cave and seek control of the images cast on the screen, especially if they could ally with those who were in the business of manufacturing images and determining their content?
V.
A politics that aims at commonality places a high premium on trust among the partic.i.p.ants or between representatives and the people they represent. Trust, in turn, requires not only that the partic.i.p.ants and representatives convey the considered views of the citizenry, but that they accurately represent the actualities of the political world to the citizenry. Trust is the precondition of an authentic politics. An authentic politics is not univocal; there will always be contested views about actuality, and how it is to be understood and acted upon. But it makes a great deal of difference if the parties concerned can a.s.sume that each has made a good-faith effort to speak truthfully.
Although it would be naive to suggest that democracy eliminates lying, arguably its politics tends to encourage authenticity. A smaller political context is more congenial to nurturing democratic values, such as popular partic.i.p.ation, public discussion, and accountability through close scrutiny of officeholders. A smaller scale brings with it modest stakes and a consequent scaling down of power, of expectations, and of ambitions. Precisely because public discussion, debate, and deliberation are fundamental to democracy, deliberate misrepresentation is more easily exposed.
Democratic deliberations deepen the political experience of citizens, but they are time-consuming: time is needed for the expression of diverse viewpoints, extended questioning, and considered judgments. When the pace of life is slower, there is "plenty of time" and a greater possibility of considered judgments and the likelihood of durability, of more lasting decisions, of a public memory.
VI.
Attuned to slower rhythms once dictated by long distances and slow communications, democracy now struggles against a context where scale is defined and dominated by Superpower, globalizing capital, and empire; by aggrandizing forms of power that are equipped with the means of annihilating the barriers created by distance. And because distance serves to consume time, those powers have succeeded in annihilating conventional time as well, a precious resource of democracy. Decisions, like weapons, are rapid-fire, with the crucial result that while there may be a transcript, there is less likely to be a memory.
Another result, whose political implications will be explored later, is that the nature, indeed the very notion, of actuality-what the public world is really like, what its inhabitants are really experiencing, and what the effects are of response-time measured in instants-becomes virtual at worst, abstract at best. These unprecedented powers and the scales they can command appear as especially favorable to elitism, to the quick-witted and manipulative, but uncongenial to democratic values and deliberative practices.
These new tempos make for strange bedfellows. Thus modern technology and communications represent the means of "hurrying time" in the sense that less time is required to achieve a desired end-for instance, a Wall Street speculator can communicate instantly with a Shanghai banker. But the believer in a Last Days eschatology is also in a hurry, convinced that the world is hurtling toward a Last Judgment. Oddly, neither the speculator nor the apocalypse-lover is much given to reflection: he hasn"t the time to waste or "tarry" if he is to attain his end in time.
The powers that subvert reality-especially everyday reality, the tangibleness vital to democratic deliberations-can also be the nemesis corrupting the judgment of power-holders ("we make our own reality," as the Bushman boasted). Unreality is related to the dominant tendency toward abstraction and the belief that statistical measures can be a shorthand for reality rather than an obfuscation. For example, today there is general agreement that inequality is on the increase in our society.14 In today"s media-speak growing inequality is frequently described by being measured in economic terms, as differences in income or as what percentage of the population owns what percentage of the national wealth. While these measures reveal sharp economic differences between the wealthy and the poor, as well as a decline in the percentage of national income going to the middle and lower-middle cla.s.ses, there is a crucial sense in which the abstract terms (e.g., "below the poverty line") are the expression of a mentality that "doesn"t get it." Its "methodology" is unable to convey the "feel" of the grinding impact of poverty on the daily lives of "the millions who lack health insurance."
Put starkly, the crucial political issue of our times concerns the incompatibility between the culture of everyday reality to which political democracy should be attuned and the culture of virtual reality on which corporate capitalism thrives. Despite claims that the opportunity to be stakeholders, or to form start-ups, to revel in consumer choices, or just to get rich demonstrates the democratic possibilities of capitalism, there is no political affinity, only a disjunction between democracy and a system that a.s.sumes inequality among investors and reproduces inequality as a matter of course, depends upon individual self-interest as an incentive, practices a politics of misrepresentation, and hence is inconsistent with such democratic values as sharing, caring, and preserving.
The fate of democracy is to have entered the modern world at the same moment as capitalism, roughly during the seventeenth century. As a consequence the course of each became intertwined with the other. This meant, among other things, that the attempts to establish a democratic culture were an uphill struggle. At first democracy and capital were occasional political allies pitted against the stratified order of monarchy, aristocracy, and established church. Then, as each became more politically self-conscious, more aware of divergent concerns, each began to define an ident.i.ty and pursue strategies that reflected the reality of opposed interests, contrasting conceptions of power, and disagreement as to what degree of equality or inequality each could tolerate without compromising their respective systems.
The persisting conflict between democratic egalitarianism and an economic system that has rapidly evolved into another inegalitarian regime is a reminder that capitalism is not solely a matter of production, exchange, and reward. It is a regime in which culture, politics, and economy tend toward a seamless whole, a totality. Like the regimes it had displaced, the corporate regime manifests inequalities in every aspect of social life and defends them as essential. And like the old regimes, the structure of corporate organization follows the hierarchical principle of gradations of authority, prerogative, and reward. It is undemocratic in its structure and modus operandi and antidemocratic in its persistent efforts to destroy or weaken unions, discourage minimum wage legislation, resist environmental protections, and dominate the creation and dissemination of culture (media, foundations, education).
VII.
The tendencies toward inverted totalitarianism do not stem solely from the "Right," and that is one reason why a reversal presents a formidable challenge. Twentieth-century liberalism, or neoliberalism as it was later called, was instrumental in promoting a strong, controlling state, a conception essential to Superpower; it gave limited, even lukewarm allegiance to democracy, except as a demand for equal rights. To be sure, among liberals in the first half of the twentieth century one of the main justifications had been that only a strong, centralized government could effectively control corporate monopolies, punish corporate misbehavior, and promote social welfare. Significantly, that progressive thrust virtually disappeared once the United States prepared for World War II, but not before liberal reformers had discovered that social programs and, later, the war effort were deeply dependent upon a new type of elite of skilled managers.15 These tendencies continued after 1945. The Cold War and the Marshall Plan for Western European reconstruction both required the expansion of state power and managerial expertise. However, from the end of the Truman administration in 1953 to the end of the Clinton administration in 2001, and with the exception of LBJ"s presidency, liberal administrations were unable to sustain much enthusiasm for using state power to promote new social programs or even for promoting civil rights.16 In place of President Kennedy"s stern rebuke, "Ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country," the new mantra would be "liberal on social issues" (gay rights and women"s equality) but "fiscally conservative," except for defense spending. By the end of the century the Democratic president, who had failed to enact health care reform but did succeed in promoting a tough welfare reform, could boast that his administration had achieved the conservative goal of a budget surplus. Shortly thereafter, deficit spending, which had been a prominent element in financing New Deal social programs, was adapted to a Republican strategy for promoting tax relief for the rich while discouraging social spending.
Significantly, the liberal administration that embarked upon the disastrous unprovoked war in Vietnam and would engage in extensive government lying, as The Pentagon Papers would reveal, was also unabashed in advertising its elitism, especially during the Kennedy years, when the country was rea.s.sured that "the best and the brightest" and the "wise men" were in power.17 In the footsteps of Alcibiades, this persuasive elite brought us the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Gulf of Tonkin lie.
The Reagan era marked the beginning of a new conception of the presidency, one that reinforced the twentieth-century tendency toward presidential domination of the political system. It was symbolic that Reagan attained the presidency by defeating the one president who had promised the American people that he would never lie to them. In 1985 Reagan"s administration proceeded to violate the law by covertly supplying weapons to Iran and, in further violation, diverted some of the profits derived from the arms sale to the Nicaraguan "contras," despite a congressional restriction on such a.s.sistance. Then the administration proceeded to lie about the transactions.18 Reagan would come to symbolize the emergence of a political culture in which lying was merely one component in a larger pattern wherein untruthfulness, make-believe, and actuality were seamlessly woven.
The Reagan formula featured a president with little comprehension of, indeed little interest in, most of the major issues of the day but with an actor"s skill in a.s.suming a symbolic role, that of quasi-monarch. That same formula also aimed at replacing the idea of an engaged and informed citizenry with that of an audience which, fearful of nuclear war and Soviet aggression, welcomed a leader who could be trusted to protect and rea.s.sure them of their virtue by retelling familiar myths about national greatness, piety, and generosity. It was demagoguery adapted to the cinematic age: he played the leader while "we the people" relapsed into a predemotic state.
Ronald Reagan converted a life of inauthenticity into a political art form by which the artist internalizes the inauthentic but expresses it as authenticity, the artful as artless. He had begun his career as a sports broadcaster who, without viewing the actual baseball game, "re-created" it for an invisible radio audience, embroidering the bare facts with colorful and imagined detail. Next followed a career of "real" acting. Reagan came not only to identify himself with his various roles but also to imbibe and reuse bits of wisdom from a.s.sorted movie scripts. Then came his stint as paid apologist ("host") for General Electric, extolling the virtues of capitalism, technological progress, the free market, and a notion of government whose princ.i.p.al-almost sole-responsibility was national defense.19 All that was required of the audience was to suspend disbelief.
Inauthenticity need not imply deceit or insincerity. Rather it could simply mean imagining and believing in the imagined-which is what actors do. Reagan believed in all of the dynamics we have previously a.s.sociated with inverted totalitarianism: unqualified admiration for the marvels of technology, free market corporate capitalism, and even a deep eschatological belief in the coming of Armageddon.20 What was the image of Reagan standing triumphantly beside the ruins of the Berlin Wall but that of a latter-day Joshua tearing down the walls of Jericho before entering the promised land?
The roles Reagan played in his earlier career were an apprenticeship for his original contribution to American government, the creation of a "performance president" who fashioned illusion (a tough leader who had learned to throw a crisp salute) from inauthenticity (almost persuading himself that he had been present when inmates were freed from concentration camps).21 With little or no interest in policy and the details of governance he took on the task of evoking nostalgia, overlaying the present with an idealized past, warmer, believing, guileless, "a shining city on the hill" that provided an illusion of national continuity while obscuring the radical changes at work.22 The other element characterizing his administration was a presidential entourage that included hard-nosed, ideological zealots and operatives from the corporate world and the public opinion industry. These agents were intent on expanding the powers of the president, reducing governmental oversight of the economy, overriding environmental safeguards,23 and dismantling welfare programs; simultaneously they expended vast sums in order to build up a military sufficiently intimidating to stare down an "evil empire," causing it to collapse, exhausted, unable to compete, its power spent from being outspent.24 The Bush II administration, with its peculiar amalgam of futurism and originalism, would press inauthenticity to extremes. It brought grandiose notions of expanding American power, of creating a new imperium, and, while professing reverence for an original Const.i.tution, systematically undermined const.i.tutional protections for individual rights and const.i.tutional limitations on presidential power. Above all, endless lies and misrepresentations: about Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the number of Iraqi civilian deaths, global warming, ad infinitum.
The culmination of inauthentic politics was The Great Hoax concocted by the Bush team. While rhetorically exploiting democracy in support of imperial ambitions abroad, it undermined at home the process by which the democratic ballot bestows legitimacy. In both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections Bush"s minions employed tactics that revealed a chain of corruption extending from local officials to the highest court, all with the intention of thwarting the popular will.25 The long-run consequences may prove more significant than the clouded elections: a popular distrust of the significance of elections themselves.