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.
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