Our conception of a democracy without event-making figures runs counter to a plausible but fundamentally mistaken critique of democracy developed by a notable school of Italian theorists Mosca, Pareto, and Michels. These men in different ways seek to establish the impossibility of democracy. Their chief argument is that all political rule involves organization and that all organization, no matter how democratic its mythology, sooner or later comes under the effective control of a minority élite. The history of societies, despite the succession of different political forms, is in substance nothing but the succession of different political élites. Democracy is a political form that conceals both the conflicts of interest between the governing élite and the governed and the fact that these conflicts are always undemocratically resolved in favour of the former. To the extent that these élites make history, their outstanding leaders are heroes or event-making figures even in a democracy.
The whole force of this argument rests upon a failure to understand the nature of ideals, including political ideals. In addition, the critique overlooks the fact that the problems of political power are always specific and that they allow choices between courses of conduct that strengthen or weaken, extend or diminish particular political ideals. Finally, it underestimates the tremendous differences between societies, all of which fall short in varying degrees of the defined ideal of democracy, and the crucial importance of institutions in the never-ending process of realizing ideals.
In virtue of the nature of things and men, no ideal can be perfectly embodied. There is no such thing as absolute health, absolute wisdom, absolute democracy, an absolutely honest man—or an absolutely fat one. Yet when we employ these ideals intelligently we can order a series of flesh and blood men in such a way as to distinguish between them in respect to their being healthier, wiser, or fatter. And so with states. There is no absolutely democratic state, but we can tell when states are more democratic or less democratic. Ideals, in short, are functional. They are principles of organization and re-organization but cannot be identified with any particular organization as it exists at any place and time.
If we define a democratic society as one in which the government rests upon the freely given consent of the governed, it is obvious that no society is a perfect democracy, even one in which the members are so few that they can all meet in one place without delegating power to representatives! For we never can be sure that consent is freely given, that is, not in bondage to ignorance, rhetoric, or passion. Further, the division of labour requires that decisions be carried out by individuals and not by the assembly. There can be no guarantee that these decisions as well as the discretionary powers they entail will be carried out in the same spirit as that in which they were authorized.
What follows? That democracy is impossible? No more so than that a man cannot be healthy because he cannot enjoy perfect health. The defects when recognized become problems to be remedied by actions, institutions, checks, and restraints that are themselves informed by the principle or ideal of democracy. The remedies are of course imperfect, fallible, and unguaranteed. But we do not therefore reject them. We continue to improve them—if we are democrats. And we test by the fruits of the process the validity of the unrealizable democratic principle that serves as our functional guide.
Mosca, Pareto, and Michels make much of the fact that when power is delegated in a democracy and when political organizations arise, as they must in a society sufficiently complex, the decisions of the government may reflect the interests of the governors more than the interests of the governed. This is indisputably true.
What follows? Not that democracy is impossible but that it is difficult. It is more difficult under certain social and historical conditions than under others. But as long as we hold to democratic principles, again the remedies consist in thinking up of specific mechanisms, devices, and checks which (1) increase the participation of the governed in the processes of government, (2) decrease the concentrations of powers—educational, religious, economic, political—in the hands of the governors, and (3) provide for the renewal or withdrawal of the mandates of power by the governed. Again, the remedies may be defective. But if we believe that those whose interests are affected by the policies of government should have a voice in determining those policies, either directly, or indirectly by controlling the makers of policy, the direction which the never-ending task of democratizing process must take is clear. Whether it does take that direction depends greatly upon us.
That there will always be a governing élite to administer government is true...The governing élite will always have more power for good or evil than the medical élite. But it need not be more permanent or even as permanent as the medical élite. So long as the governing élite operates within a framework of a democracy, we have a choice between élites. Where élites must contend with out-élites, the victor must pay a price to the governed for victory. How high the price is depends in part at least on how much the governed ask.
The great limitation of the thought of Mosca, Pareto, and Michels is their failure to appreciate the differential advantages of the specific institutions available in a democracy that enable us both to select élites and to curb them. They overlook the concrete ways in which the governed through pressure groups, strikes, public debates, committee hearings, radio discussion, telegrams to newspapers and their representatives, petitions, mass meetings, primaries, and elections actually contribute to moulding the basic policies and decisions of the government in a democracy.
...
The amount and quality of freedom and democracy in a society are determined by many things—economic organization, education, tradition, religion, to name only a few. But they depend just as much upon our willingness, to fight for them as upon any other thing.
Democracy is difficult, and it is made more difficult because many who call themselves democrats are totalitarians in disguise. The moral is not to call off the struggle but to struggle all the more.--Sydney Hook (1943) The Hero in History (chapter 11; emphases in original).
In the 1930s, Hook and James Burnham had collaborated in organizing the American Workers party and in various Trotsky-ite circles. But in the quoted passage, Burnham's The Managerial Revolution (recall here) and The Machiavellians are Hook's clear (albeit unnamed) target. Burnham helped co-found the revival of American conservatism. Hook's journey was more complex in part because he never quite severed his ties with pragmatism.
From the vantage point of the development of professional philosophy and the partial merger of pragmatism and analyic philosophy, Hook's writings are important because they help us understand the character of naturalism and the criticism of dialectical materialism (recall) that became standard within analytic philosophy (in part through the efforts of Ernest Nagel) as well as point us toward the character of political philosophy in the Pre-Rawlsian era in which it is often said, falsely, that political philosophy did not exist.
Despite its archaic and somewhat misleading title, as Hook notes "The Limits of the Hero in History" would be just as apt, The Hero in History is a fun mixture of the philosophy of social science/history, social theory, and political philosophy. In fact, one finds in it all kinds of moves one tends to associate with others. For example, I had to think of Popper while reading Hook's criticism of Spencer and Hegel that their positions are "irrefutable because it does not risk anything by venturing specific predictions. It represents the triumph of metaphysics over empirical method in the study of history." (chapter 4.) There are more resonances with Popper not the least in that Hook also denies that one must tolerate those that wish to overthrow democracy through armed means (chapter XI).
The key distinction in the book is the hero as the eventful man and the hero as event-making man (chapter IX). Despite the gendered language, Hook allows women as heroes. In fact, Catherine II is the exemplar of an eventful person (and, in chapter X, Lenin the exemplar of an event-making man). And Hook's main point is, as is clear from the quoted passage at the top of this post, that in democracies one should be quite resistant to (would-be) event-making heroes in politics.
There are in fact at least three reasons for this democratic suspicion of the event-making political persona: first, the politician who thinks of himself as event-making often is very naive and has a impoverished view of social causation. In chapter 9, Neville Chamberlin at Munich is held up as the kind of dangerous innocent who completely misunderstands his own role in social affairs. It's a devestating portrait.
Second, and unsurprising, is the demagogue, who uses "the very instruments of democracy to debase its quality." This is about as good a definition of a demagogue I have encountered, except that I am inclined to think that a demagogue also expresses the permanent risk of such debasement. In addition, the demagogue acquires "a contempt for the group he leads by virtue of the methods by which he corrupts them."
Third, in a proper functioning democracy, what counts as a hero, should be go against the invidious distinction between leader and masses and should glory, what (recall here; and here) Francis Hutcheson calls, "Heroism, in all stations." In fact, Hook goes beyond this by claiming that a statesman exercises leadership merely by 'proposing' policy. But that its acceptance is in the hands of individuals and their representatives. And they will do so if they are properly educated or enlightened. From this Hook infers that
A successful democracy, therefore, may honour its statesmen; but it must honour its teachers more—whether they be prophets, scientists, poets, jurists, or philosophers. The true hero of democracy, then, should be not the soldier, or the political leader, great as their services may be, but the teacher—the Jeffersons, Holmeses, Deweys, Whitmans, and all others who have given the people vision, method, and knowledge. (Chapter XI)
This quoted claim suggests a kind of intellectual elitist counter position (remniscent of Lippmann) to the elitist school of Pareto, Mosca, and Burnham. But as the passage quoted at the top of this post suggests (and as reflects Hook's pragmatist and organizing background), democratic education can also be moulded from the bottom up, including through all kinds of pressure groups and political activism/organization (which are themselves schools of political education). And the multiplicity of ways in which such moulding takes place is the effect not just of the nearly infinite diversity of "human capacities" (that Hook posits), but also the never finished task of democratic renewal.
In fact, Hook articulates the point in terms of a kind of democratic faith:
A democracy should encourage the belief that all are called and all may be chosen. All may be chosen because a wisely contrived society will take as a point of departure the rich possibilities that Nature herself gives through the spontaneous variations in the powers and capacities of men. These variations are the source and promise of new shoots of personality and value. The belief that all may be chosen, acted upon in a co-operating environment, may inspire the added increment of effort that often transforms promise into achievement.
It follows, that if this creed is lacking, or if some are left behind, our society is not well-ordered.
Comments