3800 words not included in the phd.

Concepts of Democracy: a historical perspective: draft

I want to use democracy in a historically abstracted way to suggest a trend which has a trajectory which can be traced from the Levellers of the English Revolution, through the American and French Revolutions, to the accumulating gains of the nineteenth century and its gradual dissemination around the globe in the twentieth century. Democracy is now the most central and ascendent idea in world politics (Arblaster, p.6).

In practice this has meant that the people as a majority have a rather crude form of control by which they can sometimes curb the excesses of a profit led economy. Nonetheless underlying this rather banal reification of the idea as liberal democracy there is a persistent if unevenly expressed desire for more lofty ideals of freedom, social justice and participation in decision making. The idea that we can reach agreements and resolve conflicts of interest through deliberate communications rather that by resorting to violence and brute force seems to have become a persistent social force.

Within the system of liberal democracy based on representation a government of a dominant class persists through established institutions which comprise, in Althusser's terms, the repressive and the ideological state apparatuses. The ideas of the dominant class are the ruling ideas - and these ideas are reproduced and transmitted by social, cultural and media institutions. These institutions work together, co-ordinated by a covert community of self-interest amongst the dominant class, to manage a consensus which preserves the status quo. This hegemony [A terms introduced by Gramsci to elaborate the Marxist idea of false consciousness by which the population as a whole can hold ideas that are not in their own best interests] preserves the mechanistic interest of capital and suppresses a more rational approach to ethics, human rights and environmental stability.

In parallel with this preservation of the system are the communications that occur between humans to evaluate our conditions and co-ordinate our needs. The definition of democracy I wan to use concerns this second level of communication. Communication that must be relatively unmediated by system interests.

In spite of the persistence of this hierarchy social relations all over the world have evolved in an increasingly democratic direction. A trend which has accelerated in the last thirty years. Our conceptions of democracy are coloured by the representations of the historical instances in which democracy has flourished in its most direct forms. I will now attempt to survey some of these accounts with an emphasis on the second level of communication as discussed above.

The first historically recorded democracy occurred in ancient Greek society. Athens was the most culturally brilliant of the city states of the ancient western world. A constitution produced by Solon in 594BC evolved an increasingly democratic self-government through a series of reforms between 508 and 461BC when the balance of power shifted decisively towards the citizen body and away from the aristocracy. This stage of 'peoples power' lasted 117 years until 322 BC in spite of opposition from the leading intellectuals of the day, including Aristotle and Plato. In fact, according to Anthony Arblaster, no contemporary defence of Greek democracy survives.

[The case against has monopolised the attention of the classical studies which have been at the heart of our most prestigious universities. We should remember that European universities were first instituted in the 12th and 13th centuries in order to train cadres for the state.

The main objections from Plato and Aristotle seems to have been that this was a government of amateurs. They argued for the value of specialised knowledge against the untrained intellect and incompetence of the poor. see Euripedes's 'The Supplicant Woman', and Plato's 'Protagoras'].

Ancient Greek democracy took two principle forms: The first was the assembly, or Ecclesia, was open to all the 50,000 or so citizens. Meeting ten times a year it required a quorum of 6000. The second form was the filling of the majority of state administrative posts by random selection from the citizenry. This included the 'Boule', a council of 500 which was responsible for the day to day running of the city. The Athenian juries consisted of 501 or 1001 people who were also chosen by lottery much like our own much smaller juries. Of course the citizens were all male, owned slaves and with their well-known proclivity for pederast sex, this was no utopia.

[Contemporary uses of the word citizen can still imply the exclusions of the Athenian model. In August 1999 Alan Ryan warden of New College Oxford warns us:

"Democracy is always in danger of degenerating into bread and circuses plus mob rule. An intelligent and wide awake citizenry is about the only long term defence against that danger" (THES.20-8-99 p.17.)

Democratic rhetoric in the West has been based on this exclusive model and been fraught with euphemism and a Machiavellian use of language. A slogan like 'Power to the People' has been be used to justify the rule of landowners. 'The People' is rarely an inclusive label, often it has excluded the common 'herd' (J. S. Mill), the 'swinish' multitude (Burke), the mob, and in more contemporary terms the masses. The struggle for democracy from the Seventeenth century onwards is a struggle about who is to be included in a notion of The People.

In the modern era the idea of democracy was forged in three dramatic revolutions in England, America and France. Martin Luther's challenge to the hegemony of Rome, in which God spoke directly to individuals, was interpreted by many as symbolically egalitarian. The power of the Latinate clergy gradually diminished after the invention of printing in Germany in 1450. In 1517, when Luther nailed his theses to the church door in Wittenberg, they were printed in German. Within 15 days they had been read out in every part of the country.

The Levellers and the English Revolution.

The English Revolution was being fought against the Royalists by the Protestant New Model Army. Within this army radical democratic ideas had taken hold as pamphlets and broadsheets reached every corner of society for the first time. The democrats were better known as Levellers. At the end of 1647 after the first part of the civil war the army occupied London with the aim of democratising parliament. There began a struggle over who controlled the New Model Army and what exactly the civil war had been for. This gave rise to a series of debates, the most famous of which happened at Putney. Here is a famous quote by the Leveller Colonel Thomas Rainsborough:

"For really I think that the poorest he that is in England, has a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government...." (quoted in E.P.Thompson, 1963 p.24)

But the army grandees insisted that there had to be a property qualification.

This confrontation of the Levellers with Oliver Cromwell's chiefs of staff diffused the tension and maintained the oligarchy of landed and commercial interests. The Levellers had a coherent set of democratic demands that extended beyond reforms of Parliament to such things as the annual election of magistrates and judges. They developed a secular organisation and can be seen as the first democratic political party:

"The English Revolution enormously strengthened the power of a politically innovative parliament at the expense of a smothering reactionary Monarchy." (Bookchin, 1996, p.141)

Although the Levellers failed in England the spirit of democracy that they rekindled migrated across an ocean to the New World.

The American Revolution.

The writings of the Levellers themselves weren't generally known in America in the early eighteenth century. It was the later writing of the independent coffee house Whigs of the 1720s, people like John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who were read, along with the later writing of John Locke. These Whigs went as far as to claim that representative government was intrinsically hostile to human liberty, reviving Leveller demands for universal adult male suffrage. But it was Thomas Paine's pamphlet 'Common Sense', published in January 1776 that most fired the colonists revolutionary fervor. George Washington immediately ordered the pamphlet to be read to his rebel troops.

"Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, 'tis right."

Common Sense profoundly influenced the committee that prepared the 'Declaration of Independence' which was written by Thomas Jefferson later in 1776 and addressed to the rest of the world. It was to be a text of profound influence and inspiration.

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government."

The American Revolution was caused by an intolerable tax burden being imposed by the British. The Boston Tea Party was a key refusal of such a taxation on imports. Following this and other such catalytic actions the settlers on the eastern seaboard refuted imperial domination and organised themselves in a highly decentralised democracy. The New World did not have the weight of the past that existed in Europe. Class difference was more straightforwardly based on wealth and less embedded in manners and cultural identity.

Each town had its own peoples assembly. Beneath this primary body were two other key political structures. The Committees of Correspondence, which assured the disciplined maintenance of an embargo which had been put on British trade, and Committees of Public Safety which, amongst other things, organised the militias. The town assemblies sent delegates (not representatives) to a federal convention which organised the continental army that opposed the British military in their attempt to re-impose sovereign authority.

"The American Revolution was a seminal event in world history, not because it proclaimed the right of revolution, but because it developed the ideological, governmental and popular means to bring about a revolution." (Ryerson, 1978, p.5/256? check source)

The French Revolution of 1789 - 1794

" A revolution that... utterly transformed Western life, from traditional to new ways of thinking, even of dress, speech and everyday manners." (Bookchin, 1996, p.266)

Peter Kropotkin gives two main causes to this revolution: First the inspiration of the ideals of C18th rationalist philosophers [Including people like Rousseau, Mably, Helveticus, Diderot, Voltaire, Hume.] and the influence of the 1776 American Declaration of Rights. Second, repeated famines in the face of the wanton decadence of the aristocracy. Food riots had been gathering pace since 1774.

The conspicuous consumption and corruption of the aristocracy and particularly of the King, paid for by taxing poor peasantry, and the low wages of town dwellers, along with speculations in land and grain were the main causes of the unrest that preceded the revolution.

In the late 1780s an economic crisis had forced Louis XVI to convoke the 'Estate Generale' a medieval parliament which had not met since 1614. It included a one third representation from the lower class 'third estate', the other two thirds being taken by members of the church and aristocracy. The possibility of having a say in national affairs gave the oppressed majority an immense boost of confidence.

The establishment of local electoral sections in Paris to elect representative to the Estate Generale convention, each set up their own assembly supported by a host of radical clubs and societies. This shows that the motor of this revolution was hardly the Bourgeoisie as has often been claimed, even if this was the class that ultimately benefited.

Immediately extralegal assemblies began to meet. 'Committees of Correspondence' to co-ordinated ideas spread from town to town across Europe. [footnote: EPT records 29 Corresponding Societies across England in the 1790s]

In Paris sixty district assemblies had been organised to elect representatives to the Estates General. However these assemblies did not disband after the election but continued to meet. They then moved to the town hall and swiftly became a new council for Paris known as the 'Commune'. This lead to the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789 by an armed crowd. The Bastille, which had been considered an impregnable prison fortress, was the prime symbol of Royal absolutism. Its overthrow signaled a shift of power which echoed into the farthest corners of Europe.

[In France the regional power of the 'ancien regime' collapsed with municipal power being taken over by assemblies of the third estate. France was then run by about 44,000, increasingly democratic, local authorities. This was followed in the countryside by the peasants reclaiming enclosed land, refusing feudal tithes and burning manor houses and chateau.

"They took possession of the lands they had leased from their former lords, and, after planting a May-tree, they danced around it and burned all the feudal documents."(Kropotkin, (1909), 1971, p.430)]

Most of the crowd who had stormed the Bastille and attended the district assemblies were the 'Sans Culotte' named after the artisans who wore long trousers rather than the knee breeches and stockings worn by gentlemen. However in the Convention it was lawyers and the most literate members of the third estate who held sway.

[The Convention responded to the storming of the Bastille by declaring a constitutional monarchy on October 10th. This still limited who was entitled to vote and did not satisfy the Sans Culotte. The right wing of the Assembly then re-organised the sectional boundaries of Paris reducing the number of neighbourhood assemblies from 60 to 48 in an attempt too limit the influence of the most radical sections. These 48 sectional assemblies were fortified by a surge in the number of popular clubs and debating societies. Many of which were open to women. One of the most influential, because it came to have branches across the whole of France, was the Jacobin Club.]

The sectional assemblies and clubs together were able to exert enormous influence on the national convention. If the Convention or the Paris Commune ignored this will of the people they were liable to provoke a 'journee' or insurrection. This grassroots democracy pushed the revolution in an increasingly radical direction, finally resulting in the sacking of the royal palace on 10th August 1792 and the subsequent declaring of a republic.

[Under the pressure of threats of invasion from abroad and counter revolution at home the republican revolution panicked and resorted to the widespread use of terror. In the process thousands of innocent people were guillotined. Ironically it was the Paris sections themselves that had demanded a Revolutionary Tribunal which was the body that led the excesses of The Terror in 1794.]

The republic, led by Robspierre, sought to crush the direct democracy of the sections. Robspierre's most effective action against the sections may not have The Terror of 1794, as we might expect, but was probably the simple expedient of payrolling their officials.

The Sans Culottes, who made up the sections, shared a leveling philosophy expressed in populist slogans, songs and pamphlets. The artists who produced this material were known as the Enrages. Typical of these was Jean Francois Varlet, a gifted songwriter, orator and pamphleteer who argued for the overthrow of the Convention and the establishment of direct democracy throughout France.

The remarkable thing about the French Revolution was that it was largely led by democratic directives issuing from a local level of the 48 Paris sections and the regional assemblies. It seems to have very nearly achieved Varlet's ideal of a 'third revolution' of direct democracy.

English Chartism: 1838 - 1848

The French Revolution had certainly galvanised radicals in Britain but it had also created a state of emergency. Britain was at war, and the appeal to patriotism undermined the case for republicanism, leaving leaders open to accusations of treachery. Nevertheless there was much debate within the many tavern based societies some of which took on the provocative title of Corresponding Societies. [footnote to LCS, EP Thompson.]

In 1932 there was a voting Reform Act which allowed the middle class the franchise on the basis of owning property, this meant just 4% of the adult population were enfranchised. This provoked profound disaffection from the poorer majority who had supported the campaign and gained nothing. It was this that led to the mass support for the six point democratic charter. The six points were: Universal manhood suffrage; the ballot; annual parliaments; constituencies of equal size; payment of MPs and the abolition of the property qualification for members of the commons.

It is still not clear how many diverse local groups came out in support of the Charter over the whole of Britain. At its height it was well over 400 involving hundreds of thousands if not millions of the disenfranchised. The new immigrant Frederich Engels recognised that this was the world's first national proletarian movement. It was in fact a movement which was concentrated in the towns and was especially strong in towns dominated by a single industry. Politically the main strategies were the mass petition and the monster rally. By 1848 the petition had between three and six million signatures and required three cabs to transport it.

Chartism was driven by a popular rationalism, its rallies were often accompanied by brass bands and quasi religious torchlight processions. Newspapers, journals and texts dedicated to the cause abounded and were avidly consumed. Issues of the day were hotly debated in market squares, taverns and clubs. As well as this Chartism had its cultural activities:

"Chartist branches at the local level, like those of the Owenites, provided a substantial menu of recreational, educational and religious activities which amounted to an alternative culture.... ...It was more than a political campaign; it was a living experience, based upon a democratic radical culture, where the emphasis was placed on mutuality, self-respect and a profound sense of independence." (Wright, 1988, p.139)

On a national level groups were federated by a Convention which it was hoped could take over the reins of power on the French model.

Although Chartism ultimately failed to achieve the goals of its charter it did leave a profound legacy of class consciousness and dignity which fed into the subsequent successes of the unions and co-operative movement. Chartism reached its peak with the great rally on Kennington Common on 10th April 1848. All across Europe it was the year of revolutions.

"The working class was established as an essential and articulate force in British politics, whose effect was to be felt increasingly throughout the second half of the century, in both local and national affairs." (Dorothy Thompson, 1993, p.72)

This effect seems to have been due to the lively debating activity and strong cultural base of Chartism which allowed members to feel the dignity disallowed them in the economic sphere.

The 1867 reform Act enfranchised a further 4% (30% of adult males in towns). The third reform Act of 1884 did bring the working class into a nominal majority of the electorate, although 40% of adult males were still disenfranchised and had to wait to the end of the First World War to achieve political rights. In 1928 women finally won the right to vote which raised the voting population to around 95% of the adult population. These massive gains in political rights were undercut by the increasing cultural and ideological hegemony of the middle classes.

In reaction to the upheavals of 1848 an educated Bourgeois public appropriated a set of pre urban cultural traditions (filtered by good taste and literary modes) and constructed a national culture and identity which was then promoted through the mass education and mass media. The unificatory role of the sovereign was replaced with a national consciousness built of images with popular resonances. In the following years any cultural autonomy achieved by the new urban lower classes which was to be systematically undermined. By the time the working class became a majority of the electorate they were in the main willing followers of the cultural traditions of the 'great and good'.

Influential bourgeois socialists Karl Marx and Friederich Engels had rejected legal formalism and put aside questions of democracy. Socialism became 'materialist' based and had little to do with processes by which the participants could need to reach mutual understandings on what new world they desired to create.

"The expanded concept of the political was not matched by a deeper understanding of the functional modes, forms of communication and institutional conditions of egalitarian will-formation." (Habermas, 1996, p.478)

Marxists have assumed that 'convivial forms of life' emerge spontaneously. This assumption has led to a critical aporia in revolutionary democratic theory.

Democracy has suffered from two main obstacles. Firstly an over emphasis on representation as a way of dealing with large scale national democracy and secondly a separation of politics and culture. The first can already be found in Paine and James Mill (1820) but it is not even their radical version of representation that prevails. The English parliament is still largely an archaic construction and carries much of the ethos of that early aristocratic period with it. An ethos, antagonistic to the modern revival of democracy, in which representation is interpreted as a kind of paternal role to be played by an elite (see Burke, 1774 p.80). Democracy was adopted in a diluted form to mean rule by a community of the powerful rather than rule by individual despots and arrogant oligarchies. In the bourgeois mind more radical forms of democracy seem to be a threat to liberty rather than a means to liberation.

The second obstacle has led to a view of democracy which excludes culture and a depoliticised concept of what was good taste. Once the principle of democracy was established in the C19th the cultivation of a passive majority that would easily be influenced and lead became the main aim of middle class reformers. This was achieved through means of culture and education which became the means of inculcating the values of citizenship and exclusion. [refs]

The historical accounts of democracy pay little attention to the contribution of culture although this may be changing [see Culture and Revolution 1990].