For these are inherent in plebiscitarian Caesarism, or so-called 'Caesarian democracy', with its direct appeal to the masses: demagogical slogans; disregard of legality in spite of a professed guardianship of law and order; contempt of political parties and the parliamentary system, of the educated classes and their values; blandishments and vague, contradictory promises for all and sundry; militarism; gigantic, blatant displays and shady corruption. Panem et circenses once more and at the end of the road, disaster.--Lewis Namier (1958) "The First Mountebank Dictator" in Vanished supremacies, 55.
A few weeks ago, I read Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. (One of the few works by Marx I warmly recommend!) A book I publically bemoaned I had wished I had read it before. In discussion on social media, Michael Rosen, I think, encouraged me to seek out Namier's short essay partially quoted above. This essay is like Marx's focused on Louis Napoleon/Napoleon III. Namier (a historian) himself is, as the first sentence suggests, indebted, in more ways than one, to Max Weber, who had also used Napoleon III as an example of plebisciarian Caesarism.
While thanks to modern media, caesarian democracy is a risk in all democratic systems, as Weber argued, it is especially a danger in political systems where there is an elected president who has broad executive powers, and with norms that allow for even broader extra-constitutional powers in emergency circumstances. I tend to think of these presidential systems (e.g., France, Brazil, Russia, the United States, etc.) as approaching elective monarchies with serious downside risks lurking in the background of devolving into dictatorships/tyrannies. For, once power has been legally obtained, usurping more power, and destroying or corrupting the would be countervailing powers, is not unachievable if the circumstances permit and there is a ruthless will.
Namier offers three important observations: first, the plebiscitarian Caesar is generally most underestimated by those that know him best: political rivals and intellectual/business elites. We might say that a certain kind of functional distance enables the plebiscitarian Caesar. By this I hope to capture the thought that for those whose business it is to judge functional and what we may call situational competence, the would be plebiscitarian Caesar tends to underwhelm. (Often, these elites share an anti-democratic tendency.)
But that is compatible with the further thought that such a would be leader may have the image of good leadership qualities from, as it were, a distance--even if, due to effects of mass modern media, this is not felt as distant at all. And in fact, the rejection by the cadres, intelligentsia or clerks or functionaries and other elites of the would be plebiscitarian Caesar may well be treated as a proxy for good leadership by the larger electorate.
Of course, and this gets me to Namier's second and connected observation, "modern dictatorship arises amid the ruins of an inherited social and political structure, in the desolation of shattered loyalties it is the desperate shift of communities broken from their moorings." (54) The connection between these two observations is that rejection by the cadres/elites (etc.) starts to be a signal in the would-be-plebiscitarian-Caesar's favor once the trust and even legitimacy of existing elites is endangered or broken (by revolution, financial crisis, public health disaster, defeat in war, religious crisis, hyper-inflation, famine, etc.).
To be sure, Namier allows that dictatorship can arise in other ways (he is discussing a particular "modern" kind). And what he says is also compatible with the thought that would-be-plebiscitarian Caesars can be defeated before they rise to power and, perhaps (although Namier does not explore this), even after they have so risen. Namier leaves it unclear how desperate and how broken the community needs to be.
There is a third, more subtle and helpful observation lurking in Namier's analysis. On his view the would-be-plebiscitarian-Caesar re-activates the past in highly "peculiar" ways. There is a particular kind of "imitation" of the past "engendered by historical memory." In contemporary scholarly discussion this is often treated in terms of nostalgia, but I don't think that's quite right. For there is a real desire to repeat the past, but a past that has been now sanitized or, as Namier notes, influenced by legend or myth and without complexity.
Now, rather than closing with commentary on contemporary politics/politicians, I want to close with a concern. I often notice in my best students the following reflex: many of today's real problems (unfolding environmental disaster, redistributive monetary policy, etc.) are theorized and understood in terms of a lack of democracy or imperfectly functioning democracies which are taken to thwart the will of the people. But when I note, say, that most of the problems they diagnosed have been generated by liberal democracies -- including some they admire greatly --, we reach a stale-mate. There is very little room for suggesting that the people can get it wrong or that our ordinary democratic functioning may be the problem without simultaneously becoming or sounding genuinely anti-democratic (or elitist in various ways).
But Caesarian democracy is always a latent possibility. And it is a possibility in virtue of features of ordinary democratic life. For, ordinary democratic politics cannot prevent major economic and natural disruptions to the social order. It can at best mitigate the effects of these, but as we have learned in the last decade, it will do so in ways that are generously described as 'messy.' And while the conditions under which caesarian democracy will achieve victory may not be regular, they are frequent enough that they should be a constitutive feature of democratic theorizing. But that requires we theorize democracy without self-serving myths; denying such myths may not be welcome.
Fascinating discussion. I recall that Clinton Rossiter published a book on "Democratic Dictatorship" that might diagnose a related phenomenon.
And of course, distinguishing between a Ceaserist democratic leader (which seems bad) vs. a temporary democratic dictatorship in case of emergencies (which some regard as good) is contested. FDR seems like a leader who could fit into either or both categories.
Posted by: Benjamin Fischer | 12/08/2020 at 03:57 PM