A Grab Bag of Thoughts About Democracy

I think people are too hard on Rousseau. The "will of all" and the "general will" are difficult doctrines that lead to confusion. And Arrow's Theorem must be contended with - saying democracy is "no more than a sum of particular wills" is evading the deep questions. How the sum is carried out matters. But this being said, there is little that makes Rousseau stranger than that of innumerable other 18th century thinkers, Locke looking for lessons of statecraft in the Garden of Eden for instance. Indeed, when one looks into the guts of how Rousseau's system was to work, he was not as married to simple averaging as it might have seemed:

"It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts: which was indeed the sublime and unique system established by the great Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, it is best to have as many as possible and to prevent them from being unequal, as was done by Solon, Numa and Servius. These precautions are the only ones that can guarantee that the general will shall be always enlightened, and that the people shall in no way deceive itself."

If we interpret Rousseau charitably as a precursor to modern ideas about collective cognition, he becomes much more comprehensible. There are many even today who can't wrap their minds around any collective action more complex than simple averaging. And there are many others who cannot understand, but prostrate themselves before collective actions rising out of certain market structures. These men and women don't even have the luxury of being from the 18th century to excuse their confusion.

The received Viennese view of  democracy is that it is not the details of voting that matter, that democratic control works because of Competition for Political Leadership in Schumpeter's words (incidentally, Schumpeter's wacky ideas about the importance of intellectuals is false in most societies, for instance the modern US, and are rather strange reading for the historically minded):

"It will be remembered that our chief troubles about the classical theory centered in the proposition that 'the people' hold a definite and rational opinion about every individual question and that they give effect to this opinion — in a democracy — by choosing 'representatives' who will see to it that that opinion is carried out. Thus the selection of the representatives is made secondary to the primary purpose of the democratic arrangement which is to vest the power of deciding political issues in the electorate. Suppose we reverse the roles of these two elements and make the deciding of issues by the electorate secondary to the election of the men who are to do the deciding. To put it differently, we now take the view that the role of the people is to produce a government, or else an intermediate body which in turn will produce a national executive or government. And we define: the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote."

This is not so far from an ordinary theory of democracy as it seems, and indeed it economizes on our assumptions. It explains why "one party state" is synonymous with tyranny. Rousseau held that politics was an "art". From this, it follows that expert artisans (statesmen) may be - and "may be" is doing a lot of work here! - necessary so that the artifice of government is beautiful. But this is not really much closer to a theory of democracy than Rousseau. It doesn't explain how government institutions loved by none - such as the NSA - remain in power, or how extremely unpopular doctrines, such as net non-neutrality, can be foisted. It doesn't explain how minority cabals - such as the pro-slavery Southern United States before the Civil War - can steal power from majorities (mostly by brinkmanship). Schumpeter would be forced to say that these situations are insufficiently democratic, and in so doing would reveal the secret orthodoxy of his doctrine. This view is also propounded by Karl Popper in a less idiosyncratic form. None of them seem to have been aware or care about the obvious connection between their ideas and the American Pragmatism philosophical movement.

A modern, Samuel Bowles, propounds the idea that liberal ideals (classical liberal, that is. Is democracy not a part of that? Even Schumpeter thought it was, but maybe he means something different than most of history...) comes from older traditions that it subverts. This is hard to understand, since liberal ideology have been part of at least English speaking since the 17th century (if we let them start with Hobbes) - and were dominant for huge stretches of that time. If they are subverting real morals, why would Bowles have first hand knowledge of them? True "recent studies show moral sentiments ... indicated that incentives that appeal to material self-interest often undermine interpersonal trust, reciprocity, fairness, and public generosity." but recent studies also show all sorts of wacky things about diets. More importantly and less sarcastically, Bowles (and Herbert Gintis, though it is well known that they are the same person) have presented studies showing that people who live in market societies actually perform well on on fairness games when not coached not to do well. It seems that liberal society - though not perhaps certain liberal ideologies - works fine - with "trust, reciprocity, [and] fairness" at least.

EDIT: The above paragraph is very sloppy written, it makes it seems that Bowles argues both for and against this thesis. I should make it clear that Bowles is presenting evidence that classical liberal society actually encourages social values. If a society puts its members in contact with a lot of strangers, it will be more stable if people are nice to strangers. I was going to focus this post entirely on non-moderns, but I remembered that Bowles paper and wanted to include something empirical. Unfortunately, I did so hastily, without checking if what I said had any resemblance to what I meant. This is sloppy and silly, so I will re-write the paragraph so as to be slightly more descriptive of what the paper is about:

A modern, Samuel Bowles, examines [note: propounds sounds too much like "defends" to me] the idea that liberal ideals (classical liberal, that is. Is democracy not a part of that? Even Schumpeter thought it was, but maybe he [that is, Schumpeter] means something different than most of history...) comes from older traditions that it subverts. This doctrine is hard [for me] to [even] understand, since liberal ideology have been part of at least English speaking since the 17th century (if we let them start with Hobbes) - and were dominant for huge stretches of that time. If they are subverting real morals, why would [its proponents, people who live at the same time as Bowles] have first hand knowledge of them? True "recent studies show moral sentiments ... indicated that incentives that appeal to material self-interest often undermine interpersonal trust, reciprocity, fairness, and public generosity." but recent studies also show all sorts of wacky things about diets [a point that Bowles does not makes because he's going to need "recent studies" if he wants to do empirically grounded moral psychology]. More importantly and less sarcastically, Bowles (and Herbert Gintis, though it is well known that they are the same person) present studies in this paper showing that people who live in market societies actually perform well on on fairness games when not coached not to do well. It seems that liberal society - though not perhaps certain liberal ideologies [such as?] - works fine - with "trust, reciprocity, [and] fairness" at least. [Are these studies good? Good compared to what? Perhaps I should have said something]

Finally, the ever brilliant Machiavelli propounded a fact of common observation that seems to be missed by intellectual opponents of democracy: that the people are wiser and more constant than leaders. No ordinary person has ever called for regulation or deregulation of electricity (that is, electricity directly, ignoring environmental considerations), since they care nothing about the industry save that electricity is cheap. Democracy is preferred, for Machiavelli, because it is harder for the entire country to fall for a fad than a particular administration, and a king's court is nothing more than a long lasting administration.