Welcome friends!
Oh my gosh, it seems everywhere I look these days conservatism is rearing its ugly head or I suppose more accurately one of its two ugly heads (i.e., social and economic conservatism). It’s actually a little unfortunate because I do have some rather amusing lighter subjects I wouldn’t mind getting into but who has the time? I’m forever having to call out conservatives for their many and various affronts to common sense and decency. It’s like a freaking full time job. Well, I suppose somebody needs to keep an eye on them. They sure can’t seem to monitor themselves in any way.
This time out I first considered writing a piece about conservative TV and radio personality Ted Nugent who was in the news a few weeks ago calling the president of the US a “mongrel.” Oh yes he did. Somewhat idiotic, wouldn’t you say? Hasn’t the science of genetics demonstrated we’re all basically mongrels and have been for many millennia now? I don’t know; maybe Mr. Nugent is an exception. He may come from an unbroken and unadulterated line of provincial conservative jackasses going straight back to the Stone Age. But I guess science has never really been conservatives’ strong point, has it? I think if you mention anything along those lines you’re liable to be branded a liberal elitist egghead. The Republican Party isn’t known as the Stupid Party for nothing. At least Mr. Nugent’s assessment of the President’s racial credentials demonstrates what many of us have long suspected, which is that good old timey traditional racism is indeed alive and well in conservative circles in this country. So it’s nice to get a little confirmation on that. But that’s not really much of a story to hang a blog post on, is it? Newsflash! The conservative movement in the US is not very familiar with basic science and has racist elements! Wha? OK, I’m not very good at sarcasm, am I?
Fortunately I was spared having to write that particular post by an even more obnoxious pronouncement by our economic conservative friends in the form of elderly conservative billionaire Tom Perkins, who managed to get in the papers once again with his proposal we give rich people more votes than other people. Yep, that’s the same guy who was in the news a few weeks earlier arguing that liberals and progressives are like Nazis. I know, conservatives love their irony, don’t they? Here we have one conservative spouting some racist claptrap about mongrels in the White House and another expressing his rather obvious distaste for American style democracy but, hey, in their opinion liberals and progressives are like Nazis. Yeah sure buddy. Whatever you say. But if you follow my humble blog at all you’ll know we’re now getting into one of my pet peeves: the conservative campaign to denigrate and undermine our democratic system. And them’s fightin’ words! So let’s just talk a bit this week about the conservative elite’s hatred of democracy, shall we?
Now I know this discussion may be a little discombobulating or uncomfortable for some of my readers here in the US because we’ve been trained from early childhood to think democracy and capitalism go together hand in glove and since economic conservatives, the sort of conservatives I’m talking about this week, are always gushing about how much they love free markets and so on, one might think there must be some sort of logical flaw in my contention that (economic) conservatives don’t really seem to care very much for democracy. Alas, the association between democracy and capitalism is nowhere near as close as many of us have been led to suppose. I’m afraid it’s quite possible to be a big supporter of capitalism but have no particular love of political democracy or to be a big supporter of democracy but see some serious and potentially troubling issues with markets in some situations. They’re actually eminently separable ideas.
So where does this idea they must always go together come from? Well, I suspect it’s probably more a case of historical coincidence than anything else. Shall we take a little stroll through history? Well boys and girls, a long, long time ago and for a depressingly long time after that we had neither capitalism nor democracy. We had plenty of rich people of course but they made their money the old fashioned way: they killed people, took their land and cattle, and passed them on to their heirs. Let’s just be charitable and call it martial prowess. Of course we also had plenty of politically powerful people. That would be the king or queen and his or her cronies. And it turns out the rich people and the politically powerful people were essentially the same people. So in that sense I suppose we had a pretty harmonious (at one level) blend of economic and political power that lasted for many excruciating centuries and led to all manner of social ills.
Fast forward a bit and eventually technology, manufacturing, and trade developed sufficiently for some people to get rich for reasons other than killing other people and taking their stuff or kissing up to those who did or who had ancestors who did. I know, awkward. The annoying new kids on the block had plenty of economic power but they didn’t really have direct access to political power. Change was in the air. And that change took the form of a renewed interest in the theory of political democracy, an idea from the ancient world that had lain dormant for many, many years. So one thing led to another and we ended up with democracies. I assume you know voting in these early democracies was limited to rich people and landowners and so on, right? So I presume that’s when the idea capitalism and democracy must go together first took hold. Historically they both arose in contrast to older forms of economic and political power. By the way, I believe this was probably the first incarnation of the “conservative” and “liberal” terminology. At this time the conservatives were the people who were all about keeping the existing patterns of political power and economic privilege, so supporting the king and the nobility or whatever, while the liberals were all about making sure the new breed of rich capitalists got their share of power and privilege. That’s where modern economic conservatives get off calling themselves “classical liberals.” Anyway, getting back to our story, the advent of democracy got things a bit more in balance again because the people with economic power once again had some access to political power as well.
But nothing stays the same, does it? One thing led to another and we eventually ended up expanding the concept of political democracy to its modern form with essentially all adults being able to vote on certain things anyway. Now how much of that expansion was due to people getting caught up in the theory of democracy and how much was due to the further dissemination of some degree of economic power to a greater and greater share of the population through contemporary methods of production or what have you I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter here. The point is for some reason or other the hoi polloi (i.e., people like you and me) ended up getting a modicum of political power in addition to a modicum of economic power. Now as long as the nouveau riche needed the concept of democracy in their fight against the traditional establishment of their day I suppose they were fine with it but of course as time went on and the old head bashers and their descendants gradually lost more and more of their political and economic clout conservatives’ interest in democracy began to wane a bit.
Fast forward again to the present and it’s now become rather apparent market economies tend to concentrate economic power, or least that’s been the case for the past several decades here in the US, and a whole new shipment of awkward has arrived. We now have a situation in which economic power is highly concentrated in the hands of a relatively small elite but our allegiance to the democratic ideal means at least some political power is diffused throughout the entire population. Well, to a degree anyway. I’m not suggesting for a moment the guy living under the bridge has the same political clout as Mr. Moneybags. Rich people obviously have much better access to political power in our system than do poor people. They pay for campaigns. They dominate the media. They go to fancy fundraisers. They are wooed and coddled by politicians of all stripes. How do you think the Republican Party became so dominant in this country for so many years? But according to some conservatives like Mr. Perkins it’s just not working or not working as well as they think it should anyway. When it comes to actually voting on political candidates they still have only one measly vote, the same as a poor person. So once again we’re having a certain divergence between the people with economic power and the people with political power and that contradiction or instability is now becoming rather apparent in this country at least. At least some wealthy conservatives have plainly started to see democratic government as their primary enemy. They’ve detected some problems in how we apportion votes. They’re aghast they’re limited to the same number of votes as you and me. They’re becoming increasingly concerned with limiting the scope of democratic government. They now apparently see political democracy mostly as a forum for Nazis and commies and other problematic sorts to lead them down the road to serfdom.
OK, enough history. The bottom line is I think we can expect to see a lot more discussion and debate about the legitimacy of democracy and the role of democratic government than we have in some time. So let’s get into it a bit right now, shall we? I know this social conversation is really in its early stages and maybe people don’t really see the need to get into it quite yet but no time like the present.
Now I’ve probably gone over some of this before but let me just start out by making the obvious point that the ethical bases of political power in a democracy are rather different from the ethical bases of economic power under a market system. On the one hand you have people who are more impressed with the ethical credentials of political democracy than with the ethical credentials of the distribution of economic power via any particular market. I suppose most liberals are probably in this group. Anyway, as a liberal I can say the idea everyone in a given social and political system should have a say in what goes on makes a sort of intuitive sense to me. We’re all in it together, right? In contrast, I may have mentioned before I’ve always had some difficulty attributing a huge amount of ethical significance to financial success in particular markets. Yes, it might in some cases show determination or hard work or business perspicacity or whatever, which I suppose are laudable traits, although I’m not entirely convinced those particular traits bestow any particular political wisdom, and actually I’ve always felt plenty of poor people work hard and show a great deal of determination merely to survive. However, it has always seemed to me in other cases financial success might show some things that are not quite as attractive: acquisitiveness, greed, a certain lack of ethical impediment to potential ways of making a buck. In yet other cases it seems to me more neutral forces may be at play: people just being in the right place at the right time, knowing people, inheriting money, being born with some unusual talent, winning the lottery. In terms specifically of voting I don’t really see managing to be rich is necessarily indicative of any special claim to political or ethical wisdom so it doesn’t bother me at all a poor man has the same number of votes as a rich man. Indeed, in my view a poor man might very well be smarter, more knowledgeable, more ethical, more reasonable, more humane, more ... OK, I’m getting boring now .... but you know what I mean, more of anything you name that might be relevant to voting than a rich man. So of course I really couldn’t go along with the idea rich people should have more votes than other people.
On the other hand you have economic conservatives who I think generally place greater ethical significance on economic power. These people believe financial success implies all manner of laudable traits and behaviors and that rich people are superior to everyone else in some universal sense, although some of them might use a mangled sort of utilitarian argument to reach this conclusion if they don’t really comprehend the philosophical limitations of the form of utility used in economic theory. For these people it makes no sense rich people should be limited to the same number of votes as poor people. They feel political power should be distributed like any other good or service in a market economy. In a market system the most trivial desires of the wealthy take precedence over even the most vital concerns of the poor. Why should rich people not expect the same consideration in the political realm? It should be the same ethical argument, right? If you can afford to spend more on voting then you should have a greater say either because you evidently perceive it to be more important than other people or because you have established a sort of ethical right to do so by virtue of having done whatever you needed to do to obtain the necessary funds to enable yourself to spend more even though you actually feel no more strongly or perhaps even less strongly about it than poor people.
Alongside this issue of the ethical foundations of different power structures I think we also have some empirical issues about which I believe opinions tend to differ. One of the big issues in this context is what type of power structure is more stable. Again, on the one side are liberals like me who associate social stability mostly with democracy. As I’ve explained before, I think democratic systems have a number of traits that encourage stability. You know, the good thing about democracy is it gets everyone involved and talking and buying into whatever we end up doing at least to some degree. That’s not to say you can’t still have problems. You might have minorities that can never muster the political clout to defend themselves in the political arena and so on, so you might need some additional measures, but it’s better than the alternatives. And with democracy you can change things up in response to new developments. It’s flexible. Nothing is ever finished and carved in stone.
On the other side of the aisle you again have the economic conservatives. Now I think many of these conservatives view democracy as a great destabilizing influence that must be curtailed and limited as much as possible. In contrast, they see market systems and their resulting allocation of economic power as the epitome of the just society. According to this perspective, political democracy is little more than a source of capricious interference with the ethically more significant distribution of economic power. To these people, the ideal and most stable society is one where you set up certain economic and legal structures and then sit back and allow the market to function like a magical piece of clockwork we need never revisit or adjust again.
So you see what I’m saying, right? We’re not really all on the same page here. To put it bluntly, some of us like democracy and some of us don’t. And that’s basically one of the fundamental disagreement between liberals and economic conservatives. For liberals like me, if we get ourselves into an unstable situation involving the distribution of economic and political power then we must give precedence to democracy and if that means revising in some way the distribution of economic power to bring things back into line then so be it. For conservatives the response to this type of instability would be to maintain the existing distribution of economic power at all costs and to instead revise our system of distributing political power, perhaps by changing the number of votes as suggested by Mr. Perkins or perhaps by doing away with voting entirely as advocated by the fascists of the not so distant past. It’s a rather different debate than the one that separates liberals and social conservatives, which involves liberal trying to preserve a sphere of personal liberty in the only context in which it makes sense to do so: the context in which one’s actions do not significantly impinge on other people. Anyway, when I talk about doing battle with the two headed monster of contemporary conservatism this is the sort of thing I’m talking about. It’s a rather serious issue, don’t you think? You should join me in defending the liberal ethos. Contribute, volunteer, talk to people, run for office, write inane blog posts. Do whatever the hell you like, but please do something. Do it for democracy and liberty.
References
Tom Perkins’ big idea: The rich should get more votes. Charles Riley. February 14, 2014. CNN Money. http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/14/investing/tom-perkins-vote/index.html?iid=Lead
