Setting the People Free by Dunn John;Dunn John;

Author:Dunn, John;Dunn, John; [Dunn, John;Dunn, John;]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780691180038
Publisher: Princeton UP
Published: 2018-09-15T05:00:00+00:00

4

Why Democracy?

IT IS TEMPTING TO BELIEVE that democracy has won its present eminence for either or both of two reasons. Some prefer to attribute its victory to its evident political justice, its being plainly the best, and perhaps the sole clearly justifiable, basis on which human beings can accept the apparent indignity of being ruled at all. Others find it easier to believe that it owes this eminence to the fact that it and it alone can ensure the well-protected and fluent operation of a modern capitalist economy. Neither cheery view, unfortunately, can possibly be right. Democracy in itself, as we have seen, does not specify any clear and definite structure of rule. Even as an idea (let alone as a practical expedient) it wholly fails to ensure any regular and reassuring relation to just outcomes over any issue at all. As a structure of rule, within any actual society at any time, it makes it overwhelmingly probable that many particular outcomes will turn out flagrantly unjust. The idea of justice and the idea of democracy fit very precariously together. They clash constantly in application. Any actual structure of rule will face incentives quite distinct from, and often sharply at odds with, the requirements for the fluent operation of a capitalist economy. But democracy, quite explicitly, thrusts upon its sovereign and notionally equal electors the right, and in some measure the opportunity, to insert their own preferences directly into the operating conditions of the economy, in the attempt to do themselves a favour. As a bargain, this has many great advantages. But no one could reasonably see it as a safe recipe for ensuring the dynamic efficiency of the economy at the receiving end.

If we want to understand how democracy has won this eminence, we must set aside these presumptions and think again and less ingenuously.

Let us take again the four questions which must have reasonably accessible answers. Why, in the first place, has the word democracy changed so sharply in meaning from the days of Babeuf to those of Donald Trump? Why, in the second place, is the form of government to which it now predominantly applies, through all its striking variation over time, culture, and political economy, always so different, both from its Greek originals, and from Robespierre’s or Babeuf’s dreams? Why, in the third place, has that drastically different form of government won such extraordinary power across the world, so rapidly and so recently? Why, in the fourth place and somewhat more elusively, should this highly distinctive regime have picked this word of all words for its political banner? The first two questions are quite easy to answer, once you recognize that their answer depends on the answers to the last two. The third question today (now that the victory is in) is also relatively easy to answer, at least in outline. Once it has been answered, it also gives us the vital clue to the fourth question’s answer. What is not possible is to answer that fourth question on its own, and solely through its own terms.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.