What Was Democracy? Democracy was once a comforting fiction. Has it become an uninhabitable one?

[xchrom]

http://www.thenation.com/article/179851/what-was-democracy


Works Progress Administration poster from the 1930s

If information technology turns out to have world-historical significance, it is not because of its economic promise, still less because it may facilitate the toppling of dictators. It is because information technology makes plain that the story democracies have told about themselves for more than two centuries has been a bluff.

Democracy, as we know it in the modern world, is based on a peculiar compromise. The word to which we pay such homage means the “rule of the people.” But insofar as we can claim to govern ourselves at all, we do so in a remarkably indirect way. Every few years, the citizens of modern democracies make their way to the polls to cast their votes for a limited set of candidates. Once they have acquitted themselves of this duty, their elected representatives take over. In the daily functioning of democracy, the public is marginal.

This is not what democracy once looked like. In ancient Athens, the citizens constituted at most one-fifth of the population—the rest were women, children, resident aliens and slaves. But those Athenians who did count as citizens had a direct voice in matters of justice and war. The idea that a people should meet in public to discuss what to do was not unique to the Greeks—several indigenous societies across the world deliberated in similar ways—but nothing approaching direct democracy has been tried on a mass scale in the modern world.

The American founders were adamant that it could not be otherwise. The body of the people, John Adams declared, “can never act, consult, or reason together, because they cannot march five hundred miles, nor spare the time, nor find a space to meet; and, therefore, the proposition, that they are the best keepers of their own liberties, is not true. They are the worst conceivable; they are no keepers at all.” Adams was dismissing one of the last gasps of the radical republican tradition—the Anti-Federalists, mostly composed of farmers and minor artisans in the colonies. Their arguments for making political life in America as local as possible were trumped by the founders’ superior propaganda and their vision of a republic that would encompass a much larger territory. Since then, for more than 200 years, almost every political thinker has conceded that the constraints of time and space make direct democracy impracticable. Even those who did not share the founders’ contempt for popular rule—Robespierre, Bolívar, Lenin—have acknowledged that representative institutions are unavoidable.

[Laelth]

1. Our founders created a particularly anti-democratic republic.

Last edited Sat May 17, 2014, 12:54 PM - Edit history (1)

They did so, in part, because a true democracy is quite dangerous to the health and well-being of minorities in a given community. They also did so, I have argued, in order to concentrate power in the nation's stakeholders, i.e. the rich, powerful men who actually created the republic.

The result is the oligarchic and thalassocratic republic we know and love.

What’s important to realize, though, is that this is not a new phenomenon. Our government has never represented the American people, as a whole, nor was it designed to do so.

http://laelth.blogspot.com/2011/01/turning-american-ship-of-state.html

-Laelth

[pangaia]

3. I can thank you, Laelth, as I thanked xchrom, for your post,

and for the same reasons..
I have never come across the term 'thassolocratic.' So, after doing a quick lazy search on Wiki, you now have me interested in looking into the Phoenician, Minoans, etc.

I did not read your entire blogspot post yet (I will), so may I ask, in what way do you use the term above in referring to the US? if you like, you can just tell me to read your entire blogspot post.

[Laelth]

5. I am flattered by your interest.

Thalassocracy (from Wikipedia)

The greatest early thalassocracies (Tyre, Phoenecia, Carthage) were all oligarchies (ultimately). The sea is better for trade than the land, so merchant classes developed more quickly and became more politically powerful in thalassocracies. The UK, for example, is a thalassocracy (protected from continental Europe by the sea and known for its devotion to commerce). The UK ruled the world by ruling the seas. It became the richest and greatest commercial empire on Earth as a result. We, the American children of the U.K., learned well from our mother country. We control the seas, now. Not coincidentally we have the highest GDP of any nation on Earth and happen to be the greatest military power in the history of the Earth. No nation has ever been able to project power across the globe the way the United States can. Our navy is the principal means by which we project power (and protect the trade of our oligarchs).



The United States currently has 10 active carrier groups. Here's the list of other nation-states that have carrier groups (followed by the number of groups they have):

Brazil (1)
United Kingdom (2) - our closest and greatest ally
China (1) - they're building another from an old Soviet hulk - pure junk
France (1)
India (2)
Italy (1)
Russia (1) - and it stays in port most of the time
Spain (1) - and it's a mini-carrier
Thailand (1) - and it's pathetic

That's it. That's all the carrier groups in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_battle_group#Carrier_battle_groups

Carrier groups are the means by which we project power. That's how we protect our trade. That's how we got so rich. A powerful navy is the essence of a thalassocracy, and that's exactly what the United States is--the greatest thalassocracy (with the greatest navy) in the history of the planet.

Hope that was useful.

-Laelth


P.S.: I mis-spelled the word in the post above (and I intend to edit my error). "Thalassocracy" is the correct term. Sorry for the confusion.

[pangaia]

7. Thank you for taking the time for such a full answer.

How can I say this.....? Your explanation was....well... so damn obvious, as the truth always is.. that when asking you the question, it just never occurred to me that would be... the OBVIOUS answer...!

Thanks again. I always enjoy what you have to contribute.

[Laelth]

8. My pleasure. n/t

-Laelth

[pangaia]

2. Thank you for posting this, xchrom..

I have, at the ripe young age of 70, become interested in the American revolution. Better late than never. As always, I find your post intellectually opening.
I am reading '1776' and "John Adams,' perhaps a bit 'popular,' but.. and, for the first time since high school, "Common Sense." Can you suggest what else would be thought provoking...

[marmar]

4. k/r

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. "Of the people.."? No. "By the people..? No. "For the people..? Hell, no.