Why Modern Democracy Cannot Work
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Commentary
Readers may be surprised to learn that I have not voted for any political party since the late 1990s. One reason for this, of course, is that I have been out of the country since September 2002, and although allowed residency in the various locations where I have lived, as a non-citizen of those countries, I have not been enfranchised and in fact, I am quite grateful for this.
If you were to ask me what my political leanings were, I would say that by nature I am (and ever have been) a nationalistic person. Many people who know me may find this odd – they might say that my obvious nature, as they normally see it, makes them think that I am nothing of the sort. But it’s true: I am a former Conservative voter and despite what anyone may think of me, I am conservative (with a small ‘c’) by nature and inclination, and I seem to feel this more and more as the years pass, perhaps as a result of all the errors I have made which make me averse to certain courses of action when decisions have to be taken. And I have a great desire to see my own country (and others) in a state of peaceful equilibrium where the executive carry out their functions in accordance with the wishes of the people. Unfortunately, I do not think that this is possible. It is hard for me to see how modern democracy can work effectively, or even whether it still is “democracy” at all.
For democracy to work, representatives have to accept that they do not “run” a country. They have to accept that “law” should not be a bloated tome constantly added to by a professional legislature, but rather a basic set of documents whose essential principles enjoy popular support and (most importantly) comprehension.
In our modern state, we look back at the likes of ancient Greece and (maybe) the ancient Hebrews possibly with a sense of amusement that they could have run their legal systems and societies with so few laws; after all, they did not have the modern problems of (for example) online copyright infringement or international trade (although other problems such as peculation were rife). Our legislators seem to feel that these things require a succession of ever more severe legal punishments, one response to which has been the growth of media outside of the normal arrangements of companies and direct sales of products to consumers via the Internet. It does not escape one’s notice that powerful lobbyists seek constantly to have the lawmakers enact legislation in their favour.
There are those who feel, in fact, that they have a “right” to rule others. I will not go into a discussion of those people in depth here, except to say that their behaviour affects the majority of people who have no desire or need to be “ruled”. The would-be “rulers” have assumed powers to which they should never have been allowed access, and nothing seems to make them happier than the idea that they should go about their dubious and deadly business without hindrance from such things as, say, accountability to the electorate.
The other most important requirement for a functional democracy, I would suggest, is a large amount of consensus among the electorate, rather than among (for example) commentators, politicians and academics. These are few in number, and their opinions are largely irrelevant. Moreover, if left unchecked, we see that usually they will squander national resources upon those with whom they have working relationships – businesses of one or another description, or other political allies or other creditors. In many countries, lobbying has become an industry unnaccountable, again, to the electorate upon whom they are essentially parasites.
I will return at a later date to this idea of social parasitism, but will merely note at this juncture that the business of the modern politician seems geared towards profiting from diverting the wealth of nations into the pockets of their associates. If this is not true, I would be very interested to hear how they justify this behaviour, although I suspect that their reasoning would be rather shallow and egregious.
Modern politics seems to go hand-in-hand with a rather hysterical media apparatus. One cannot avoid noticing that, rather than presenting balanced and accurate accounts of current issues, media are instead more involved with trying to convince the viewing public that the government’s line is correct, even when it is manifestly dangerous bordering on the tragic. The reason is to sow disharmony and dissent, to make people argue and disagree, but also to maintain tension and foster a sense of panic, in which rational thinking is difficult or impossible. One only has to look at how currency exchange rates are up and down all the time, and periodically have catastrophic collapses, to see what a powerful tool this is. But truth is not the business of the media; their bottom line is profit and advertising revenue.
The constant desire of Western politicians to involve their countries illegally in the affairs of other nations, either by means of subterfuge or direct assualt, is an insult to the intelligence and decency of all those who are enfranchised in their own countries. War is not the natural state of the human organism: we claim that we have intelligence, but the fruits of intellect are constructive – the rise of technology during the Industrial Revolution had sequelae such as improved sanitation and hygiene and the supply of good food, improved transport and employment prospects, the rise of the modern novel and instantaneous communication. Yet the ability of the industrialising countries to undergo this transformation had already come to depend upon the import of materials which could only be kept cheap by the subjugation of non-industrial nations which were too weak and disorganised to offer resistance to what was essentially the appropriation of their wealth at gunpoint.
The role of the media has often been to bolster the position of the robbers rather than to question the moral and legal basis of their behaviour, and the performance of newspaper and television reporting over the past few decades has completely undermined their own credibility; it has been said that Western media nowadays are so subservient to their governments that when the latter control access to information, any outlet which questions the source too closely will be frozen out of the loop – but this rather begs the question of whether what they are reporting is “news” at all!
Then there is the question of political parties. One would like to think, in an ideal situation, that they exist to represent the views of their members; a healthy society, one would imagine, has a spectrum of viewpoints, and ideally they would all have something constructive to contribute. Yet there has, for a very long time, been a situation arising in which legislatures are dominated by single parties, often for very long periods, who use their time in power only to alter the country to suit their particular political slant.
We often hear that a newly-elected government wants to enact “reforms”, but since World War Two, irrespective of the alleged political leanings of those concerned, measures seem only to have been in one direction – to reduce freedom of virtually every aspect of an individual’s life, including even their freedom of thought and reasonable speech, by means such as controlling access to basic information, enmeshing businesses in increasing amounts of bureaucratic regulation, restriction of movement and setting different groups against each other in one way or another, for example allowing large numbers of people to enter the country so that competition for jobs is exacerbated. In the UK, one side-effect of the expansion of the tertiary education sector was a glut of graduates for whom economic recession destroyed any hope of a career, or at the very least gave such a hope major setbacks. The resulting competition between candidates can thus be used to keep salaries down – but how can an economy thrive when disposable income is curtailed? Indeed, how can any economy grow when everyone is competing with everyone else to offer services for the lowest price?
Personally, I would dearly love to know (and I know that others feel similarly) just what it is that makes certain groups in human society feel that they are somehow more entitled to a greater share of society’s benefits than others; what makes them feel that they are somehow so wise that the counsel and opinions of those they are elected to serve are somehow meaningless and can be ignored; what right they have to ruin economies by pointless adherence to dogma, why they think that the wealth of their country should consistently be funnelled into the pockets of big business and why it is that the likes of pension funds are ripe for plunder? Why is it that the defence industry has become a sacred cow, but car manufacturers and the people who grow our food are somehow not worthy of support? And why should the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries be allowed to affect the way in which health systems and food legislation are enacted?
As I said at the beginning, I have not voted for any political party for many years, and with good reason: they simply cannot represent my personal interests. Only I can do that. I may have a lot in common with the person next to me, but I remain an individual with idiosyncrasies and responsibilities, and these things are my concern and mine alone, my inalienable right, so to speak. There is no place in my life for anyone to make decisions for me. I do not authorise elected representatives to drop bombs on the inhabitants of other countries. I do not authorise them to print money so that the value of the currency declines with time. I do not authorise them to raid the pension funds for which so many worked so hard all their lives. I do not authorise them to create “false flag operations” to justify unwarranted aggression against other nations. I do not authorise them to pervert living organisms or pollute the environment for contemptible levels of profit. And I do not authorise them to do any of these things at my own personal expense! This is not “democracy”, this is not the reasoned self-government of the people, it is naked plutocracy.
The final point I would make here is a technological one. Democracy is all about expressing one’s opinion by voting, yet consistently and (I would suggest) increasingly, politicians see the expression of the people’s political will as a barrier to their personal self-aggrandisement and aims, whatever they may be. It is amazing that in the twenty-first century, we still depend so much upon paper ballots, but we cannot have an election station in every house to ensure that as many people as possible are allowed to express themselves because technology is so easily perverted by those with the motivation and access to the means.
It seems to me that if “democracy” is to have any meaning, the people must take back power from those who have saught to abuse it, and make sure that their duties and capabilities are severely restricted in the future. They must ensure that public servants at all levels are subjected to scrutiny to avoid abuses of position and power. And perhaps most important of all, to forever divorce those who seek public office from the unwelcome influence of private money and to forbid gross lobbying of the kind which emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Although the ancient Greeks had open elections, the number of electors – a small group, but representative of all levels of society – was restricted and voting was by the use of coloured stones or ostraka. It was simple and unambiguous, and unlike some modern elections we could mention, was tightly observed and could not be rigged – something more greatly assured by limiting the number of electors allowed to cast votes on any particular occasion, and by ensuring that different people voted on different occasions. Although restricted, democracy had meaning for the Greeks.
Maybe it’s high time that we rediscovered that meaning.
