The Limits of Democracy
And the problems with electoralism...
Democracy is a commonly used and abused term that can have multiple versions and interpretations. The term democracy as a general ideal is often used to refer to “rule by the people” and/or “self-governance”, which are loaded and need to be unpacked, and it is often associated with the concept of majoritarianism or “majority rule”.
What is Democracy?
But “rule by the people” is certainly vague in and of itself, as it begs the question of which people are ruling who exactly or the people as opposed to what. And if democracy is supposed to mean a “self-governing society”, then that’s actually more like the concept of an anarchist society if taken literally. Majority rule, for its part, ends up begging some questions of its own and can easily dissolve into something less than actual majority rule due to how existing political systems operate.
“Rule by the people” in the most literal sense would be direct democracy, where the general population can participate directly in the legal process in some manner without an intermediary representative. The common examples of direct democracy go back to antiquity, such as Athenian democracy, and it traditionally was associated with city-states, which is a scale that is naturally more practical to have participatory democracy than a large modern nation-state. This plays into why anarchists like localism, even if they could be accused of often making a fetish for it; the logic holds. Social anarchists often refer to “consensus democracy”, though true unanimous consensus is a hard thing to achieve, and this easily devolves into majoritarianism.
It must also be noted that the historical systems associated with direct democracy tend to be a hybrid system in which there are still representatives or elites, but there are mechanisms built into the law to allow a public referendum or veto. True “full democracy” in which responsibility is approximately as equal as possible is rare outside of intimate small-scale contexts, the family, and with regard to some tribal systems. And even with many tribal systems, people could be ritually exiled or killed for violating the ancestral code of conduct. It’s not lawless.
“Self-governance” can in a sense be considered a trait of civil society, which functions as a domain in which social norms of mutual respect and personal autonomy are naturally upheld without legal enforcement. In this regard, society is naturally “anarchic” in a good way, in the sense of a “spontaneous order” that is relatively egalitarian. But of course, we don’t live in a society in which no one violates the personal autonomy of others. “Anarchy” in the negative sense happens when the social norms of civil society fragment and dissipate.
Furthermore, civil society co-exists with and has at best a mixed if not conflicting relationship with the institution of the state. The state, especially the nation-state, is never literally “the people” and therefore not “ruled by the people”, let alone reflective of the “self-governance” of the whole of society. The notion of democracy in practice then comes to take on a PR function or as a legitimacy ideology for the state. As such, the consent of the governed is presupposed by the state ideology to justify rulership, traditionally in the form of a question-begging social contract theory.
What we really are generally talking about when people refer to “existing democracy” is “representative democracy” or a “democratic republic”, which is inherently an oligarchy system with light democratic mechanisms. The democratic part is that the public periodically gets to vote on representatives for a congressional or parliamentary body and/or the national executive. But from there, things tend to get complicated and there are all sorts of barriers to public input and lack of accountability for leaders, while the terms in which the public’s vote takes place are limited by the party system and mechanisms meant to preserve oligarchy.
In a fundamental way, representative democracy alienates the citizen from decision-making power and their rights of governance. The elected politician is the one empowered to govern, is inherently bound by the institutional incentives and interests of the state upon election into their position, and they can theoretically do whatever they want once elected regardless of what they promised or claimed. In the US, the citizen’s vote is also predicated on an ingrained two-party system, with significant barriers for 3rd parties to be viable, and with the erosion even of primary processes where there is deliberation about who to vote for within each party. Countries with functional 3rd or 4th parties can be seen as marginally more democratic in some ways than the US, though even the 3rd parties in European Parliamentary systems end up facing similar institutional problems to the liberal and conservative parties.
This isn’t to mention the issues with the electoral college system, the fact that a large if not majority sized portion of the population doesn’t vote either out of cynicism or lack of interest (or if they are an ex-convict, they likely can’t vote), the fact that the supreme court is appointed for life by political elites, and so on. The notion that we even have some measure of indirect “rule by the majority” comes into serious question when you really look at how all of this works out in its totality. Once you break down the numbers and proportion how the votes are counted, national elections are really determined by “numerical majorities” of 20% or less of the population in the US, and even that can technically be overruled in some scenarios.
Economically, the modern state is effectively captured by the interests of capital and the electoral system itself is subject to financial backing and corruption, which has institutional effects that are bipartisan and broad in nature. From a class angle, the working class especially has trouble getting anything resembling meaningful representation in such an environment. In the age of corporate-state partnership, capitalism enjoys a major symbiotic relationship with the state in a way that significantly predetermines the range of what is allowed within the system. Thus, even when populist mavericks get in office, they usually accomplish little.
In this scenario, the citizen is ultimately a passive subject of what the political elites decide, whether or not they vote or regardless of who they vote for. Civil society becomes alienated from the nation-state and its status quo, while simultaneously being dependent on it for what used to be its own functions. On some occasions, the ruling class will grant mercy or pity on the general population in order to save face in a national economic crisis. But it won’t do anything that goes against its own self-preservation and the continuation of the economic system that causes crisis.
After watching enough elections cycles, it should be hard not to develop a healthy sense of cynicism about political campaigns and the words and promises of politicians, whether they are Democrats or Republicans. Presidential campaigns end up amounting to nationalist rallies around one out of two factions of the political elite, the politicians often appeal to sentiment and lofty rhetoric, while the two parties have a well-worn track record of betraying reform and promises of change. A Gen Z aged person or perhaps even a younger millennial might be forgiven for naivety about such matters, but I expect people 40 or over to know better by now.
The Democrats and Republicans often squabble and certainly have their differences, but at the same time they are loosely aligned around core national security and military concerns, and most fundamentally they are aligned with the preservation of the interests of their own class. Both parties selectively use the notion of “democracy” to justify themselves, while the system in which they inhabit is obviously deeply undemocratic, dead set against a number of popular reform demands, overrun with corruption, rigged against the citizen even in violation of its own terms, and in many ways, it is defacto dynastic and geriatric these days. Executive power has also been expanded over the last 20 years since the Bush Jr days, and presidents can now make certain major decisions that make them more authoritarian in function.
It is therefore rather question-begging when people talk about the threat of “the end of democracy” these days, as one might be inclined to ask, “what democracy?”. We still have an election system, no doubt, but it’s been turned into a joke and the US government has lost public confidence in such a way that there is no true consensus these days as to who won which election, and we live in a strange timeline in which congress was stormed by weirdos to no effect. I don’t mean to minimize such things, but it does undermine the pretense that we are a “democratic society”.
The average voter is effectively a captive voter, in which they are contributing a token of consent to a politician within a heavily limited and predetermined context. Everyone who votes for either Democrats or Republicans, at some level, inherently “votes against their own interests”, whether consciously or not. Voting for either the Libertarians or Greens, on the other hand, has never been more than a symbolic gesture or a segue into an education campaign. They are the two main known 3rd parties but have never had real success in a national election. But they do produce different variants of contrarian populist mavericks each election cycle.
Voting in the current political environment is, at best, a calculated “defensive vote” or a close judgement call for “harm reduction”. Even that logic becomes strained under conditions of heightened systemic crisis. But I do not think that voting is “immoral” or anyone effectively exercising rulership directly over anyone else. I just think it’s far less significant in effect than people often think. It’s the least one could do at best and at worst quite marginal if not automatically negated, depending on what area you live in. I see it as amounting to marginal acquiescence to the political system in current conditions. If conditions were different, it would perhaps mean a bit more.
Jesus, I can smell your vote from over here!
Democratic Alternatives
What would be more democratic or counteract these conditions? Some people suggest term limits, which might mildly help some things, though it does not do away with the problems of representative democracy and nationalism. Ranked choice voting likewise may moderately help give a sense of more choice and be more accurate, but it still is limited by the choices presented. Getting rid of Citizens United certainly would not hurt as well, though it still doesn’t inherently solve the problem of state oligarchy. Loosening the arbitrary restrictions on 3rd parties would not hurt either, though the Libertarian Party, America’s largest 3rd party, isn’t really a great option when you look at the libertarians critically. A genuine unified, bottom-up labor party would not hurt, though good luck putting together that coalition today.
Sortition is another interesting example that some people suggest. It amounts to democracy by random lottery rather than vote. Some versions of it amount to a conscription system, while others allow you to opt out. Sortition can manifest as a type of representative democracy where legislative bodies are determined more like how jury duty is. This is more radical than normal representative democracy and, in a sense, it does help alleviate ingrained elitism in politics, though it’s also random and could go in other directions. Some versions of it mix a more Republic style house with a sortition style senate or vice versa, as a hybrid system. If it was weighted by class and perhaps other considerations, it would be a bit extra of a more democratic system of representative democracy. But it is still representative democracy.
Worker’s councils embody democracy in perhaps a more direct way than any of such options, especially in a class-based context in which there is some semblance of “worker’s democracy”. Such institutions may have difficulty scaling, but they can also be federated, and they could have a relationship with a broader labor party. Unfortunately, such conditions in their original historical context went in the direction of coalescing into nationalism in the USSR. But the worker’s councils certainly more directly represented the working class than Leninist party rule. It would seem that council communism is a bit of a lost trend of history that nonetheless has a seed of something valid to it, in my estimation. But it’s a tall order.
Worker’s co-ops can be considered an economic organizational version of doing things that is more directly democratic. Co-ops can range from an outright collective to something not that different from a normal business, but with perhaps some profit-sharing mechanisms or marginal common investment by employees. Worker’s decision-making and management is generally there in some measure. There is a case to be made that many co-ops can give certain benefits to workers, though they can have their own complications. Co-ops also in and of themselves do not overcome capitalism, they function on competitive markets as an alternative business model. Much like how national-scale states are especially alienated from the citizens, co-ops also generally are of small to medium scale, or they risk becoming more and more just like normal corporations, just with perhaps a friendly worker package.
Labor unions can be useful, though they technically are less direct than co-ops and generally manifests as an economic organizational version of representative democracy, with the union leadership as a middleman. Sometimes union leadership ultimately is in a symbiotic relationship with the corporation, and it’s often moderate if not sometimes conservative in character. What labor unions can do that co-ops can’t is potentially provide benefits and job security to people working jobs in the main normal economy of today. In their more radical form, unions can be a more significant vehicle for economic change. But corporate and political corruption has unfortunately also besmirched the reputation of unions. Unions at least need reform.
Municipalism and localism is often taken up by those with a special interest in participatory democracy, as it is logistically true that the local or municipal level is the context in which participatory democracy most practically can function. Some anarchists such as Murray Bookchin end up advocating this sort of position. The problem with localism in general, however, is that ultimately it cannot put up a proper opposition on the stage of national level politics, short of perhaps taking the path of secessionism, which isolates geopolitically from the nation-state. Some anarchists talk of federation, though it’s not clear if this amounts to the defacto creation of a nation-state or at least a constitutional system that functions as a “meta-law”.
Democracy can also perhaps sometimes be questionable as an end in itself. Just because something is “popular” or even decided upon directly by the majority of the population, or even a large section of the working class, doesn’t mean it is inherently a good decision or compatible with civil society let alone any sense of cosmopolitanism. A cliche example to this point would be the hypothetical scenario where the population got to vote on stoning all red heads and the majority voted to do it. In such a case, who cares about democracy? I’m with the red heads. Or what if a significant section of the working class decided to support reactionary nationalists, or to re-institute the old regime of racial segregation? Does who decided it really matter?
Thus, even if we don’t intend to defend the rule of elites (and the classical liberal and conservative arguments against democracy are generally quite overtly aristocratic elitist perspectives), “majoritarianism” isn’t inherently a good thing even when it kind of prevails. As a matter of principle, if the majority happen to be Christian, theocracy would still not be cool, or if the majority happen to be white, white nationalism would still not be cool. Some people may actually use the term “democracy” to refer to the very thing that would oppose such cases of majoritarianism, democracy as a sense of a cosmopolitan open society. One does not necessarily have to adopt a minoritarian elitist position to oppose majoritarianism, but the defense of democracy or “popular governance” certainly is complicated by questions of principles or values that make “pure democracy in all things” undesirable even from a radical perspective.
Furthermore, the ideology and decisions of a large section of the working class can very well contradict socialist ideas or in some cases simply be authoritarian and conservative. The working class is also internally divided, with the middle class and poor having different positions of relative autonomy and comfort, and in some regards with professionals and managers having a different function and power than normal workers. The blue-collar working class also often resents both the poor and intellectuals of higher status than them. While the “professional managerial class thesis” does not reflect a class in the Marxist sense, it does somewhat identify a gradient of economic and sociopolitical status that can have some explanatory power.
We find that there is an element of “labor aristocracy” even among the working class. People who work for minimum wage or less than enough to survive on without either living with family or spouses or simultaneously receiving some form of government aid are not in the same economic position as someone with a nice tech job or a doctor or a lawyer. The middle class and rich among the labor force generally enjoy more opportunity for leisure time, or even if they don’t, their experience of work isn’t so much of a pure “survival mode” as it is for the working poor. Workers outside of management can also experience themselves as passive recipients of the employer’s decisions, while management can be taken in by corporate ideology and narcissistic pretense. While it is true that people do inherently have different skills and talent levels and are more or less versatile in life, the assumption of meritocracy in the labor force can be blinding and crippling. Reality is much more arbitrary than meritocracy.
What one finds quite a lot of in the workplace is nepotism and favoritism. Office jobs often defacto involve a type of social power game to get ahead. Some work environments can be incredibly competitive between workers, especially if it involves commissioned sales. Companies increasingly tell their workers to think of themselves as running their own business when they are not running their own business. Hustle culture is often encouraged and not uncommon among some workers, where an exorbitant pride is taken in one’s amount of work or one’s status or one’s profession of choice, done in an elitist way wielded against others in society. Labor is not in and of itself democratic in nature, and it is itself economically and culturally divided.
There is, indeed, something pretty undemocratic about the average workplace. Corporations can often be seen as functioning very much like governments, except their jurisdiction is over their employees during contractual hours. The idea of workplace democracy is thus appealing. Though it isn’t always clear that workplace democracy is necessarily desirable, if it means more responsibility with little to no payoff for some people, or if it turns into the rerun of the problems with representative democracy. Both co-ops and unions can be helpful devises, but they don’t address the perpetuation of the labor system itself, which comes prepackaged with an uneven power dynamic and compels people to trade their time for survival.
The practicality of voting
In either case, my point is to highlight the different ways in which both political and economic power function to contradict the pretense of a democratic society and place strict limits on what’s possible within the context of the current system. Representative bodies become alienated from their constituents and take on independent institutional interests of their own, the power of capital significantly impacts and is reflected by political elites, the general distribution of resources is significantly disproportionate to production and is dominantly skewed toward the monopolization of quite small portion of people. It would, in an important sense, be democratic to counteract such tendencies, and it’s a cruel joke to call it democracy.
My purpose is not to tell anyone else to not vote or to shame anyone for voting, but to emphasize the practical reality of what we are dealing with regarding elections in current conditions. Without building significant counter-institutions and genuinely working towards something that can more properly be called democracy, voting simply amounts to very little but saving face or stopping a more rapid decline into some sort of accelerationist nightmare. If people are going to vote, they should do it while being conscious of the context and limitations of it, and they should be honest with themselves about why they are voting and what they hope to accomplish.
“Tailism”, where a radical political group attempts to enter or influence either the Democrats or Republicans, does not work very well due to the conditions I describe. Libertarians have traditionally often engaged in tailism with the Republicans (though sometimes they’ve done it with the Democrats in recent years), while the DSA takes a strategy of tailing the Democrats. Ron Paul started as a libertarian and became a Republican congressman, but he has never been able to effectively push his agenda in congress, while Bernie Sanders started as an independent and became a sort of “useful idiot” for the Democrats who ultimately deflects his base back to the center.
The idea that you’re going to transform the existing duopoly from within is quite a stretch. The power structure and the institutional incentives are against that. The idea of going along with a political campaign because of the “vibes” or the inspirational tone of the rhetoric is superficial. A lot of the existing alternatives to the main parties are also a minefield. Aside from the Libertarians and the Greens, there are numerous small socialist parties, both old and relatively new, that simply have no real influence. A real alternative party that can do better than that would have to be built for electoral politics to especially mean something, and organizational means outside of electoral politics would have to be pursued alongside it to have a real mass politics.
Vote if you want, how you want. But don’t shame other people for not voting for the perpetuation of the same ruling elite that has betrayed you time and time again. Don’t indulge in the convenient delusion that we have a functional democratic system or put all your eggs in the basket of relying on political leadership to make decisions or play into cyclical populist intrigues that get recuperated or fizzled out as trends. Actual full-on enthusiasm for any of these politicians foisted on the public is a step too far from any adult political realism at this point. At least be real about what you’re really doing if you’re going to play this game of so-called “democracy”.
As Lemmy once said, “It’s time to play the game…”.