As you may know, it all got a bit heated over at The Village Pump on the discussion about democracy and the ethics / usefulness of voting in a modern consumer-capitalist society. Not unreasonably, it was suggested that it wasn't an appropriate forum for the debate and seemed to annoy some folk. Hence this thread.
Which isn't to say that I want to continue the bickering that the previous threads decended into. There are those who enjoy that kind of thing, but I'm not one of them. This is a better forum for such a discussion, partly because it's the raison d'être of U-Know and partly because a certain level of debate can be demanded here which is unreasonable to insist upon at The Village Pump; a forum specifically used for "general chunter and banter".
Clearly democracy can be a rather contentious issue, and we're unlikely to reach a consensus (especially given how those other threads developed). But perhaps we can at least reach some sort of understanding this time around and avoid the deliberate mischaracterisations and outright insults.
So to kick things off, let me restate my objections to modern democracy and why I don't believe the system can be salvaged. First up, let's get the "shock/horror!" statements out of the way...
1. I'm not a believer in representative democracy. Or rather, I believe it currently needs to be significantly restricted.
2. I believe the modern consumer-capitalism ideology is every bit as bad as the worst ideologies of history. Including fascism.
Let's qualify those statements.
It's almost heretical to suggest that democracy is at the root of many of our problems. As Orwell says (in an essay where he questions whether the word is even meaningful any more), "It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it". So when people hear you say democracy is itself the problem, they often think you're referring to the way modern politicians have been corrupted and that the real problem is with the individuals or parties involved, not the process itself. However, that's not what I mean. For me, the problem is deeper. It rests to a large extent on the people themselves. Yes our politicians are unfit to govern, but in that respect they are the logical outcome of modern democracy. They represent us perfectly. The old adage that the public gets the government it deserves has never been more true.
The reason is easy enough to understand. I've recently linked to the seminal film, Century of The Self, by Adam Curtis and will do so again, because it helps explain how we reached this dreadful position. While I'm at it, I'd also recommmend Benjamin Barber's book, Consumed, which deals with the same issues.
For over a hundred years the population of the industrialised world has been comprehensively conditioned to believe certain things and behave in a certain way. While those who began this project claimed good intentions (I'm dubious about this claim, but I do kind of understand it), I think it's become increasingly clear that whatever the original plan, it has backfired badly. We've ended up with a culture that is essentially psychotic. If we take the theory of schizophrenia developed by Gregory Bateson (the double-bind theory), consumer-capitalism fits it perfectly*.
The ultimate consequence of this is that people have been trained to pursue their desires at the expense of their needs. And even when, on an individual level, they are fully aware they are doing so. The mind-boggling debt generated both by individuals and institutions points to this. As does the ecologically destructive behaviour engaged in by a society that claims without irony to be "concerned about the environment". People will tell you they consider Climate Change to be a serious issue, yet will vote for the party promising the most economic growth. If offered a choice between a government that demands a reduction in consumption and one that promises an increase, the population overwhelmingly votes for the latter, even while signing petitions asserting that over-consumption is a serious problem.
It's one of the first lessons of psychodynamics that groups do not act as rational agents. As Freud says,
"groups have never thirsted after truth. They demand illusions, and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real; they are almost as strongly influenced by what is untrue as by what is true. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two."
This tendency is even more extreme in a society based upon fulfilling desire rather than satisfying need. And generally manufactured desire at that.
The global free market has become an unrestrained pleasure principle. A powerful force driving us towards an abyss. If the planet were infinitely bountiful, this wouldn't be a problem (or rather, it would be a different, less urgent problem). But it is not. We plunder and despoil the increasingly fragile life-support systems, even though such behaviour is an attack upon ourselves. As Bateson points out -- in his revision of Darwinian theory -- the unit of evolutionary survival is not the gene, it is not the family group, it is not the species... it is "organism plus environment". And the organism that destroys its environment destroys itself.
This is not some abstract theory. To use Bateson's phrase, "if the west has anything to offer the rest of the world, it is a dreadful warning". The systematic destruction of wilderness and consequent loss of biodiversity is a savage attack not only on the planet, but on our own future. Even if we cared not a whit about other lifeforms, our actions betray a suicidal psychosis. They show that we care not a whit about our own survival.
But what has this all got to do with democracy?
Simply put, there is no mainstream political party standing in a western nation that does not eagerly promote this behaviour and promise to continue it. A vote for labour, like a vote for the tories or the libdems, is a vote for the continuation of this ecumenicidal behaviour. People talk about Labour and the Tories having different social agendas. And to an extent they do (though in truth, the differences amount to a few per cent of GDP here or there -- they are not systemic differences). Yes, the poor of the UK, for example (though the same can be broadly said about the main parties in every industrialised nation) might be marginally better off under a Labour government than a Tory one. But they would still be hurtling towards the abyss of unsustainability. They might be in a slightly comfier seat on the coach, but that's hardly going to be significant once they're over the precipice.
Democracy offers the false choice between a handful of psychotic options. This is not due to the corruption of specific individuals or parties, but because our entire culture demands it. The only sane choice is to seek an alternative. In the words of Nietzsche,
"Parliamentarianism, that is to say public permission to choose between five political opinions, flatters those many who like to appear independent and individual and like to fight for their opinions. In the last resort, however, it is a matter of indifference whether the herd is commanded an opinion or allowed five opinions. -- He who deviates from the five public opinions and steps aside always has the whole herd against him.
The best thing we can say is that our suicide is being carried out in stages. It is a slow process and while it has already resulted in terrible crimes and suffering, and will be responsible for more in the coming years, it may yet provide us with a wake-up call before it's too late to salvage anything at all. The spectre of resource depletion will soon become a full-blooded beast. It will rip the heart out of our civilisation, and in so doing will demand we seek alternatives. Unfortunately, the less advance preparation we do, the more likely those alternatives will fail.
Yet still I am hopeful. For a long time I wasn't. I saw the collapse of our current systems and their replacement with increasingly desperate and brutal regimes. Having read Bateson, I now believe that there is still a sliver of light to be pursued. Although he himself wasn't optimistic, he offered a way forward. A return to The Sacred, an understanding that our values dictate our behaviour and those values are not fixed in stone. We don't need to believe in such a profane way of life as industrialised consumerism. But it is only by abandoning our dedication to the manufactured desires of the modern world that we can escape it. There is peace, fulfillment and grace still to be found, but every time we lend our voice to the current madness we make it more difficult to do so. Endorsing our suicidal behaviour at the ballot box is merely a way of reinforcing it.
As the death-throes of capitalism take grip, we face stark choices and a tough road. But I believe we can make the right choices and weather the tough road. To do so, we must radically change how we view ourselves and our world. We must overthrow our current systems. We must seek a return to The Sacred. We must re-evaluate our values.
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* For those familiar with the terminology of group psychodynamics, my theory (which had been met with support from others in the field) is that modern culture has somehow fused it's collective Reality Principle with it's Group Ideal. Startlingly, there is no longer an identifiable, separate Reality Principle and we have inserted a Pleasure Principle in its place. In an individual it would be akin to somehow allowing the super-ego to be completely submerged in the id.
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