by
Christian Michel
[1]
During the next half-hour, I am going to explain why democracy is the worst system of government, with no exception. By contradicting Churchill's famous saying, I know I'm taking a risk because democratic dogma has become so untouchable. By assailing democracy, one is condemned to "excommunication". The heretic cannot be published, has no access to public forums, and, if it is a State, is considered an outlaw amongst nations.
The problem with any examination of democracy is that it is defined in multiple ways. One definition is purely procedural in nature. Democracy is a method of governing characterized by elections; in that respect, it is different from other political systems, like monarchy, dictatorship and anarchy. But "democratic" is also used as a word of praise to label everything that pleases us when reading the newspapers. We use the word "democratic" to describe school reforms we like, "cool" parents, cheap rents, and trade unions that protect us, while we call strict teachers, the Pope and multinationals that lay off employees "anti-democratic". Such a vague concept allows us to shirk any criticism against democracy.
The democratic dogma is taught in every school, and it is praised in every media by every leader, prominent intellectual and artist. In its social democratic form, it is the official creed of our Western societies. But adherence to dogma does not absolve us of intellectual rigor. When Rudolf Rummel and Francis Fukuyama tell us there has never been a war between democracies and Amartya Sen explains that democracy prevents famine, they are confusing correlation and causation. [2] It is not democracy that prevented war after Fachoda. While I have nothing in common with Franco and Pinochet, I accept they did more for their countries' economies than the duly elected Indian and Russian parliaments are doing today.
Prosperity does not depend on the system of government but on respect for individual initiative, private property and contracts. Such a legal system characterizes liberalism rather than democracy. And because I have lived in Switzerland and the organisers asked me to speak about it, I will add that this small country's prosperity is not due to voter turnout but to laws that until recently have protected savings and enterprise. Now that the Swiss have decided to change these laws, they will continue to vote regularly but they will grow poorer and less free. Countries do not become underdeveloped through a deficit of democracy, but through a lack of liberalism. [3]
Modern democracy appeared in Western Europe at the same time as mechanisation. Mechanisation and democracy are the offspring of the great 17th century transformation, when science gave up investigating the essence of things to concentrate on their exterior manifestations. Only that which is measurable is knowable, according to this paradigm. As a result, those who claimed to know something were required to prove that they had quantified it.
This form of science should have limited its purview to material matters; it should have excluded from its field of investigation not only God, Beauty, Good and Evil, but also all human expression that no one would have previously thought to quantify, such as emotion, intelligence and will. But that would have meant underestimating scientists' ambitions. They could not abandon the study of what had been, for Plato, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, both the basis and object of all knowledge. To claim the "scientific" label, psychologists, sociologists and economists had to strive to fit the passions of the soul and the creations of the mind into mathematical models. Science thus lay the theoretical foundations of a materialist society two centuries ago, and this is still the form our society takes: industrial, mechanised, and - democratic.
The government of a democratic society is empowered by the will of the people. But how does one measure "will"? If we are content to add up individual votes at the time of elections as the method of measurement, the process can only have meaning if the opinions expressed refer to homogeneous units. Voting is therefore a production of rigorously standardised homogeneous opinions, much like manufactured components: one set list or one candidate for an election, a yes or a no for a referendum, and this unit is meant to express what you believe in. Votes are counted like square metres with no concern that some represent triangles while others represent circles or rectangles.
The founding equation of our democracies -- one individual = one vote -- creates the fiction of a population of electors shaped by the same mould. At the very moment of casting the ballot that gives legitimacy to the supreme power in society, the individual is reduced to an arbitrary and interchangeable unit. There is no anthropology of democracy. The citizen has no dimension or quality. Yet, evidence shows that some opinions have more weight than others, not only because they come from wiser and better informed people, but because the stakes of voting are higher for them. In a referendum on school reform, why does my vote as a father with grown children count as much as that of a mother with children of school age? Why should I even vote on this issue?
There are, of course, a myriad of organisations where decisions are taken by counting votes: the conclave of Catholic cardinals, committees of non-profit organisations, boards of directors, coop association meetings. These groups, however, are of a different nature. They are not political. Firstly, each member, having joined, has formally accepted the principle of taking decisions by majority vote. But how many citizens have signed the constitution of their country? Secondly, the members of an association can always resign, even though it may be a costly decision. That possibility is forbidden to citizens. [4]
Finally, in most cases the members of these organisations know each other and prefer discussion leading to consensus rather than basing their decision on a vote. The most conservative groups willingly practice the type of "face-to-face democracy" so dear to anarchists. [5] Such democracy is all the more effective because these organisations are structured around a precise goal, and debate only focuses on the means for achieving it. The demand for efficiency leaves little room for wild imaginings.
Democracy is thus based on the idea that the people are sovereign. As if the two concepts were mirror images, the disciples of Rousseau replaced the whim of the absolute monarch with the "general will" of the people. In Switzerland, the homeland of Jean-Jacques and a model democracy, everyday political vocabulary bears the imprint of this passing of power from the monarch to the electorate. The newspapers announce a referendum with the words, "the Sovereign shall decide" and the night of an election, their headlines read, "the Sovereign has decided".
In this mirror, democracy reveals its true face. Its goal is not to limit power, but to appoint those who will exercise it. In countries that were traditionally suspicious of royal prerogatives, like England and the America of the Founding Fathers, democrats enclosed popular power in a strict constitutional framework. In countries where an opposing force never asserted itself against the monarchy, democrats saw no reason to erect such a barrier against the electorate. That is why the French Republic experienced an immediate failure in 1792, followed by a succession of crises; the regime was unable to decide between direct democracy and dictatorship by majority rule. [6]
Thus, contrary to true liberalism, democracy does not offer a creative answer to the question of living together. It does not represent a break with the age-old logic of power. Society is based on goals that are supposed to reflect the "general will" and because no goal at this level can ever achieve unanimity, democrats consider it perfectly acceptable to use of force against the recalcitrant.
Never mind what these goals may be (such as becoming a world power, improving citizens' standard of living or propagating a cultural model). The democratic ideology, like modern science, sees itself as wertfrei, or devoid of any reference to values. There is nothing in the ideology of democracy that prevents the majority from reintroducing torture in interrogating suspects, for instance, or from confiscating the property of Jews or any minority. The people express their will and judgement is withheld. How could anyone make a judgement? If it is truly the will of people, wouldn't criticizing it be like contradicting oneself?
Democracy is an absurd idea. The concept of a sovereign people giving itself its own laws is indefensible. No form of power draws legitimacy from itself. Power is grounded in Nature or conferred by God. Even socialism, seeing itself as "scientific", seeks its foundation in a type of natural law. The very concept of a "social contract" assumes the existence of a prior rule, pacta sunt servanda - commitments must be kept. For if one is not certain the other party will honour its commitments, what sense would there be in entering into a contract? And this prior rule itself must be based on a more fundamental one: why should commitments be kept, and so on ad infinitum. Nothing demonstrates more convincingly that legitimacy does not derive from the people than our French intellectuals and artists. They are quick to act illegally in the name of higher principles, like little overwrought Antigones, when the democratically elected government does not do as they wish. [7]
That is why an adjective linked to the word "democracy" is necessary to reveal what other ideology serves to regulate popular rage and aberrations. In an Islamic democracy, the sovereign people may vote all they want on condition that they refrain from challenging Koranic precepts. In a popular democracy, the socialist creed is the frame of reference, just like "human rights" in so-called liberal democracies. These regulating ideologies, however, do not originate in the ballot box. True heresies of the democratic dogma, they explicitly present themselves as brakes and limits on popular sovereignty.
Liberal individualism has been somewhat effective so far in containing the democratic passion for interfering in others' lives. Weak as it may be, its influence remains our best defence against a dictatorship of the majority. If the people were to free themselves from this constitutional constraint, we would achieve authentic democracy -- and that would be the end of our freedoms.
The process of civilisation is the process of thwarting political power. Since humanity's origins, the temptation has always existed to seize by force that which does not belong to us -- women, slaves, money or territories. Politics does not exist to eliminate violence but to legalise it. The only people who suggest making violence illegal are libertarians, and that is why libertarian principles are the most advanced in the evolution of humanity.
Politics is content with restraining all-out war by establishing two classes in society: a class that has the right to practice violence and a class that is the victim of this violence. Democracy's innovation in the political order is to allow the victims participation in the theatrics of power of the dominant class. Democracy thus functions as a collective outlet for the libido dominandi, the thirst for power, and that is the source of its universal success. What, indeed, is the meaning of casting one's vote other than declaring, "This is how I want others to live"? This ballot may only account for one-one hundred millionth of the final tally, but it is symbolic. Every child can see in this ritual that he too will have the chance one day to impose his will and his laws on his little friends.
A continuation of civil war by other means, democracy cannot avoid using the language of the military: candidates conduct a campaign, they fight until they are defeated by their adversary and they celebrate victory at their headquarters. I myself do not vote. I cannot help but see in the act of voting the desire to exercise power over one's countrymen, which profoundly disturbs me.
Democracy draws its psychological sustenance from human beings who are still incapable of conceiving of a society without power. Democratic citizens have not moved beyond the slave mentality, and they have only driven out their royal master to replace him with a collective master -- the electorate. For us libertarians, the refusal of any power is the path toward personal emancipation. The only control we desire is self-control. That is why a democratic society is a society of slaves that hide their need for a master, while a libertarian society is a society of masters that have no desire for slaves.
This contrast illustrates two divergent manifestations of power: the power of the masses and individual power. To generate the mass effect typical of herds, crowds and armies, democracy must suppress qualitative distinctions, at least nominally. As such, the citizen has no title, no family, no religious or ethnic roots. Individuals must be indistinguishable from one another to blend into a statistical and impersonal whole, a great leveller that sets the stage for a materialistic consumer society.
In reaction, of course, we watch our contemporaries desperately try to escape such anonymity. The age of globalisation is paradoxically becoming a time when individuals are rediscovering identities denied by democratic citizenship -- regional, ethnic, homosexual, mixed-race, female. The Basque movement next door to us is but one example. Amongst all these distinctions, however, the one that counts the most in our societies is personal wealth, a real obsession of democrats because it corresponds to their completely superficial and quantitative view of the world. [8] Even those who rant and rave about the plutocracy can, in the end, offer nothing better than different models for distributing wealth; they are prisoners of the materialism of democratic thought.
The emancipation of the individual is the other possible manifestation of power -- not the power of the masses, but the power of the mind, which is the power of creation. Emancipation, the bedrock of libertarian philosophy, seeks both prosperity and a society of personal achievement, responsibility and wisdom.
Democracy is underpinned by two ideologies, nationalism and socialism. Socialism is in democracy's DNA. A Scottish economist, Alexander Fraser Tyler, professed this opinion already in 1776: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesses from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy...". [9] There is no representation nowadays without taxation. Our great Frédéric Bastiat was clearly referring to the democratic State when he wrote that it is "the fiction through which everyone hopes to live at the expense of everyone else".
If people are asked what they consider most important in their lives, they usually answer "love, a fulfilling family life and career, good health". None of which can be brought to them by politics. Government officials cannot make us happy. They can no longer even mobilise our energies in today's world by means of a great civilising epic. They have no other function than the legalisation of theft. The entire propaganda machine of the democratic State must therefore convince voters that money is the only desirable value because it is the only one the State has to offer. It is understandable therefore that those who have money are the object of envy and hatred by those who have none.
As Hans-Hermann Hoppe notes, hereditary monarchs and aristocrats have a strategy different from that of democratically elected managers. [10] A monarch can operate over the long-term. Not being subject to an election, he is not committed, as are the people's representatives, to producing flattering results within three or four years whatever the future consequences of such haste. Voters also want immediate results. They cannot put their trust in the long-term because any political promise might be broken by a new majority. Democracy thus places everyone in the position of a tenant eager to take advantage of the goods rented and unconcerned about investing for the benefit of the following tenant. This short-term preference, normal for managers of assets that do not belong to them, has sunk many workers' cooperatives and leftist anarchist economic projects. Owners in a capitalist system are not immune to errors, but, just like hereditary sovereigns, they are at least motivated to leave their heirs an unencumbered property.
We could have avoided the excesses of democracy. Bicameralism, for example, could have included an assembly elected by a voting system whereby every unit paid in taxes would have allowed one vote. [11] Citizens who agreed to pay more taxes would have therefore garnered more votes. This chamber alone would have approved the State budget because its electors would have financed it. The other chamber would have legislated on issues of criminal and civil law, which have little direct budgetary impact; it would have been elected by universal suffrage. But such a democracy would not have avoided the fundamental question, "What allows me to vote in order to impose my preferences on others?"
With socialism, nationalism is the other pillar of democracy. For if the people are sovereign, it is necessary to define what we mean by "the people". Democracy, the offspring of mechanisation, only works if the people are unified and act uniformly. [12] When all efforts at normalisation fail and society ends up with citizens with diverse qualities, these citizens must be divided into homogeneous groups in little subsidiary democracies, which is the politically correct form of ethnic cleansing. In Switzerland, the archetype of this constitutional model, these subsidiary democracies are called "cantons".
Free men have no need to be stuck in such political enclosures. This tribal practice, however, is the inescapable consequence of democracy. Under other systems, either the people do not control their leaders, which is the case in monarchies and authoritarian regimes, or the leaders do not control the people, as in a liberal system of government. In neither case does it make much difference which religious or ethnic group the leaders belong to. However, when they have an allegiance to a part of the population that sees itself as different ethnically or culturally, and when institutions grant these leaders the right to intervene in people's lives and the upbringing of their children -- then it becomes vital to every citizen that these leaders be on the "same side".
Those who belong to an ethnic or religious minority cannot democratically overthrow the majority; they have little opportunity to make themselves heard (what would be the sense of democracy if the minority governed?). They must therefore choose a future of resignation, which is characteristic of second-class citizens, or secession. Lebanon, Israel, Yugoslavia and the Caucasus illustrate the inability of democracy to create conditions in which different types of people can live together.
Even when all citizens belong to the same ethnic, cultural and religious group, the organic link between socialism and nationalism still plays out. When a system grants one part of the population the right to steal from the other part, the thieves must limit their own number and tax the maximum number of victims. A large majority is therefore unnecessary and unlikely in a social democracy. It would weigh too heavily on a small minority. And, in fact, the legitimacy of our governments currently relies only on 51-53% of voters, which does not even represent the majority of electors. The number of electors is itself deceptive because a growing number of foreigners are settling in our countries and collecting benefits from the welfare State, cutting into the amount that goes to citizens. It is clear that extending the redistribution of wealth to immigrants is, if not a cause of racism, then at least a way to rationalize its expression. The foreigner is "eating our bread". Isn't it obvious? When citizenship is a subsidised activity and the famous "social cohesion" really means parasitism, the more parasites there are, the less everyone gets. Social democracy cannot avoid creating a disturbing and dangerous gap between "aliens" and "us". [13]
Human evolution has moved beyond the twin ideological monsters of nationalism and socialism, on which democracy is based. While nationalism inevitably grows out of socialism, their long-term coexistence is untenable. In Switzerland, where xenophobia gives rise every ten years to referendums that seek to limit immigration, one counterargument is that foreigners will pay for the pensions of native Swiss retirees. But who will pay immigrants' pensions when they reach retirement age unless the country brings in new immigrants? Authoritarian measures, like a tax-funded pension scheme, have pernicious effects that other arbitrary measures must correct, and so on. The only stable and fair system is one that calls upon the conscience of every individual, independent of artificial considerations like citizenship. If native and foreign residents earned their living by serving others and ensured their livelihoods without calling upon State violence, xenophobia would lose any rational basis and reveal its vile nature.
The policy of "national preference", advocated on both the left and right, makes democracy totally incompatible with humanity's technological and economic integration. Only three countries have an authentic democratic culture: England, literally isolated; Switzerland, protected by its mountains; and the United States, beyond the ocean. In those countries, whatever the citizens decided would take effect. The vicissitudes of the world did not derail the application of election platforms. That is no longer the case. The Swiss do not elect the president of the United States, but he has more influence, unfortunately, over their future than does their own Federal Council. And no one votes for technological breakthroughs, consumer preferences, stock market prices, economic growth or the revolution in social mores. People create these events, but outside the political arena. As Jean Guéhenno notes, "The relationship of citizens to the body politic faces a serious challenge by the infinite connections established outside of it; as a result, politics, far from being the organising principle of men's lives in society, appears to be a secondary activity, an artificial historic construction unsuitable for solving practical problems". [14]
A recent avatar of democratic ideology that is presented as progress toward greater freedom is "participative democracy". The city of Porto Allegre in Brazil serves as a showcase. According to this new vulgate, every municipal project is sent to citizens' committees for discussion, suggested changes and recommended options. A Geneva town councillor wants to submit the site of the former central food market to a test of participative democracy. City residents will be asked how they would like to see the building used. Everybody in Geneva, however, knows that the site is available. A watchmaker has already applied to move its workshops there. Several organisations want to use the space for non-profit cultural purposes. These initiatives come from people who took the trouble to analyse the public's needs, and they commit to implement the project.
If, instead, neighbourhood meetings are organised, the kind citizens will come up with nice ideas, all the more easily because they will not be the ones to carry them out. However, the municipality, emboldened by these cut-and-dried suggestions, will grant itself a budget financed by taxes and its officials will take over the project, elbowing out the initiatives of the people, such as the watchmaker's and the non-profit organisations'.
And that is precisely the goal of government officials. Personal power grows out of action, not talk. Participative democracy encourages citizens to chat away, paving the way for action by government officials. What a contrast with liberalism, whose empowering slogan is "Laissez faire", "Leave them to do it"!
One objection to emancipation and individual empowerment is that some people would not be responsible enough to take care of themselves. They would fail to educate their children, to plan for retirement, to abstain from dangerous substances. But this argument does not hold coming from democrats, of all people. If all adults are allowed to vote on how others should live their lives, how come they are deemed too immature to manage their own?
Two democratic virtues are commonly recognized. Firstly, democracy supposedly humbles leaders, who must solicit votes from citizens, even if these voters are unconcerned, senile or illiterate; everyone's ballot carries equal weight. The Roman general Coriolan refused such humiliation. Who would want to have his competence assessed by those who are less knowledgeable? If students were to judge their teacher, they would not be able to evaluate him on the basis of his knowledge but rather on the basis of his personality. Is he warm, charming, indulgent? Should he teach that the sum of a triangle's angles is not equal to two right angles, the students would not notice or only much later (but "much later" in politics means that millions of people have already suffered a wrong).
It now becomes clear why acting and politics have so much in common. Throughout the world, show-biz stars engage in politics, and the reverse is also true. Because if a problem is too complicated to explain to the population, the only way to gain people's support is to appeal to their feelings. And aren't actors skilled at creating illusion and manipulating emotion? In his day, Plato was already complaining about "theatrocracy". He was well aware that emotion and passion clouded judgement, and that one of politicians' vulgar and irresistible temptations was to use them to paralyse thought -- because thinking means resisting. [15]
The second virtue of democracy, underscored by Hayek, is its educational aspect. The obligation to solicit votes means the politician must report to voters and inform them about his intentions. But a political platform covers actions in many different fields. The voter decides on the basis of two or three positions, even though his vote will help impose all of them on the country, including positions this voter was indifferent to or did not particularly support.
That is why some countries use referendums to consult the population one issue at a time. Swiss citizens, for example, are asked to vote on about 30 issues a year, of which the majority, of course, is none of their business. Why should we all vote on issues such as the opening hours of shopping centres, the right of the Vatican to appoint a bishop in Geneva or the establishment of a new taxicab company in town? Is it not up to the parties concerned to decide, the employers and employees, the consumers and neighbours? Abstention to these referendums is massive and rightly so. The only ones who go to the polls are whiners and frustrated tyrants, all zealous democrats, who cannot stop intruding in the lives of other people who only wish to be left alone.
One example will illustrate the nonsense of these referendums. This one asked Geneva voters recently whether they wanted an automobile tunnel under the lake that cuts through the city. The tunnel would spare commuters from France and the canton of Vaud endless traffic jams. But these commuters do not vote in Geneva. So a brigade of bearded and parka-clad rabble-rousers, who said they only got around on bicycles and lived for the most part too far from the tunnel to be inconvenienced, started campaigning against its construction and managed to get it prohibited.
The liberal, or just, solution (the words are synonymous here), would have been to ask users if they would agree to pay for the tunnel and to compensate inconvenienced residents. Who other than users and nearby residents could legitimately say yes or no to this project?
At least organizing a vote in the tangible world takes enough time for citizens to inform themselves about the issue. But what about online referendums in which voters would take decisions about everything at any moment in a process of "continuous democracy"? After a horrible crime, we can count on the reestablishment of the death penalty, and after the discovery of a judicial mistake, the death penalty would no doubt be abolished, and so on as mood swings and nonsense influence decisions.
Hayek is wrong on that count. Information about public affairs does not need democracy to circulate. Elected or not, government officials base their relationship with the media on the command: "Do as I say, but don't say what I do". Except for liberals. A liberal government that does not intervene in people's lives has no need to censor information because no one wants to overturn it, and doing nothing, it never has a mistake to hide. Similarly, it is not necessary to be a citizen to engage in debate about society. One-third of Geneva residents are foreigners, as I was myself; they do not have the right to vote but they do stay informed, and many do get active in social issues.
Where Hayek is right, however, is that democracy is education. The lesson it teaches is that one can get what one wants from State violence. Does civilisation need this lesson?
St. Augustine wrote somewhere that everyone loves truth, even liars, because they want their lies to be the truth. Democracy is a lie we love. We all want it to be true that those who vote exercise power, that their representatives protect the general interest, that the laws they pass mark out what is permissible and what is forbidden.
But even the leading lights of the State and intelligentsia can no longer make us believe what is so obviously contrary to judgement and experience. Two centuries of revolution around the world confirm, without exception, that the people's representatives confiscate power and do not give it back. They quickly confuse their own interests with the general interest. Their legislation does not mark the border between the permissible and the forbidden -- this distinction has already been made by the prescriptions of morality and the Law -- but between those who are permitted and those who are forbidden. Democratic law does not say, "Thou shalt not kill". Instead, it designates certain people who have the right to kill -- soldiers and State police. Democratic law does not order, "Thou shalt not steal". It says that only certain people have the right to steal -- tax and customs agents. What does "power to the people" mean when the people enjoy fewer rights than their supposed servants?
Some human beings have a mission in life. They are inspired by a great calling and call upon the people to follow them. Alexander the Great; Saint Louis, King of France; Elizabeth I of England; De Gaulle are some names that come to mind. The European aristocracy, from which monarchs were drawn, was brought up with the conviction that its members were the chosen ones -- chosen not by those beneath them, but by a superior authority. Even though many aristocrats did not live up to this calling, they collectively shaped the noble standards by which to judge civilisation.
Tocqueville demonstrated that without this high calling, democracy is only a sluggish mass, a "troop of timid, industrious animals whose government is their shepherd". No country in the world corresponds better to Tocqueville's famous depiction than the nation with the most accomplished democracy -- Switzerland. For half a century, it has been the dreamed-of homeland for people without dreams, neat and tidy, right-thinking, without passion or conflict, where submission is a virtue, informing a duty and journalism a form of propaganda for the system. [16]
As it is unlikely the Swiss are genetically different from the rest of humanity, and as the population is divided into four languages and cultures, we have to accept what they say about themselves -- that the only cultural trait they have in common is democracy. And these timid and industrious people who get up early but wake up late have democracy to thank for their bland ideas, which is logical after all. How can they blossom when every three weeks they have referendums to allow or not allow people to do what they want? How can anyone be eccentric, inspired or innovative?
To take just one example, many visitors wonder why Geneva, one of the world's richest cities, headquarters of a host of banks and international organisations, has no great architecture to take pride in. But when one needs ten authorisations from penpushers and approval by a referendum of philistines to build on one's own land with one's own funds, the result is architecture to please philistine penpushers.
The conflict between democracy and creativity is obviously not limited to the field of art. It extends to everything that affects our lives -- science, commerce, law and so on. Democracy replaces other forces that hindered the creativity of our ancestors: the weight of tradition, religious taboos, prohibitions against women and lower castes from taking initiative. The reason individuals live in society is to benefit from others' inventions and endeavours, even if we do not understand them or know how they work. Respect for the right of property suffices to protect those who consider these initiatives harmful. However, precisely because we are not able to grasp the impact of certain innovations, whether they be artistic, economic or technological, allowing the mass of citizens to suppress them reduces civilisation to its smallest common denominator of human understanding. At least the aristocracy formed a literate and bold élite, which proved itself capable of great achievements because it was not forced to serve up mediocrity to the democratic religion.
All conspirators know that anyone who is aware of the operation must be mixed up in it. Their involvement is the guarantee that they will not denounce the plot and declare themselves innocent. Democracy does not tolerate innocence. If the government embodies the will of the people, how can the people not be responsible for the government's foul acts? Even those who voted against the government are colluding with it because, by playing the game, they have legitimised a system that allows arbitrary legal actions, police violence, tax extortion, military and customs aggression against foreigners. For a long time, serfs, colonised peoples, women and Jews could at least declare themselves victims of the government's crimes, they were its victims. By becoming voting citizens of a State, they became accomplice in it. It is impossible to maintain one's moral integrity and to participate at the same time in the legitimisation of political power.
Anyone who sits at a gambling table has no grounds to complain when things turn out badly. If unsavoury politicians on the right or left manage to win elections in Europe or religious fundamentalists win in Africa -- and recent experience proves it possible -- what can democrats complain about when they have accepted the election verdict in advance? [17] They also would have imposed their laws if they had won. A gun can be used defensively; a ballot is always an offensive weapon. Instead of this archaic democratic war that only leaves temporary victors and revengeful losers, why can't we be free to live according to our values, whether Islamist, communist, capitalist or whatever, within communities to which we feel a sense of belonging?
And if one of these communities stipulates that decisions are taken by a majority of members, this rule acquires authentic legitimacy because those who accept it have formally approved it by becoming members. And they have the right to put a stop to the community's power over them simply by resigning. To argue that the constitution has power over those who reject it is an internal contradiction of democracy, because it acknowledges that the legitimacy of power does not depend on the assent of those over whom it is exercised. If a democratic government can coerce those who reject it, democracy has no argument against tyrants of any kind.
At the beginning of this speech, I recalled the 300-year-old link between modern, quantitative science and democracy. But the scientific method, based on cognitive and rational logic, did not immediately replace all other forms of knowledge. For example, we still encounter magical practices today in our modern societies. They are not crazy. Magic is not the hallucinatory representation of a reality that would otherwise be obvious. As Ken Wilber wrote, magic is an often approximate perception of a primitive level of reality based on emotion and sexuality. Politics, which appeals to primitive feelings of predation and power over others, has taken longer than our other perceptions of the world to move to a rational stage.
We adore our idols. It is reassuring to believe that things we control, like amulets and charms, have more power than they really do. The institution of the democratic State is a remarkable example of modern idolatry. By ritually celebrating elections that are played out like a great social mass, the State allows us to participate in a religion that will influence the idol in our favour. If we make the idol an offering of the right ballot, it will bring us security, lifetime employment, a guaranteed pension, free medical care, environmental protection and a good school for our children. All these favours will rain down on us. We will not have to do anything to earn them. What could be more magical than that belief?
Some illusions are so sweet that it takes a long time to get over them. The democratic illusion has been luring us longer than others, not only by flattering our desire for power, but also by presenting the successes of other ideologies as that of democracy: the successes of liberalism, which attaches rights to every human being, and those of capitalism, which generates prosperity. The priesthood of government officials and its protégés are able to perpetuate their exploitation through this myth of the people's political power upon which the democratic order is based. The best way to protect oneself from their violence, and especially to protect one's soul, is to deny their basis for power. Don't give it legitimacy. Don't vote. Refuse to be part of their system. A just society will not be built from above by the magic of a good government, but from below by the emancipation of each individual, one conscience at a time.
Living together requires norms. For us libertarians, the universal norm is simple: it is the respect for each human being and the beliefs and materials goods to which he is attached. Libertarians do not live in a hole, forgetful of others. The society we are building, without precedent in history, is a society without political power. This ideal is both very modest, because it renounces the great epics of princes and States, and very ambitious, because it requires everyone's commitment on a daily basis. It is a society that replaces politics with politeness, citizenship and civic duty with civility.
Notes:
[1]
This paper was presented at the World ISIL Conference
to mark
the 200th Anniversary of Frédéric Bastiat,
1st-5th July 2001, at Dax, in South Western France.
This version is based on the one posted by the author,
cmichel@cmichel.com, on his site
Liberalia:
http://www.liberalia.com/htm/cm_not_democrat.htm -
the author also published it
in French.
[<-]
[2]
Rudolph Rummel,
Understanding Conflict & War,
Sage Publications,
1975.
Francis Fukuyama,
The End of History and the Last Man,
London,
Penguin Books,
1992.
Amartya K. Sen,
Poverty & Famine,
An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation,
Oxford University Press,
1984.
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[3]
A recent and well-researched work illustrating this thesis
is Hernando de Soto's The Mystery of Capital,
Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else,
Basic Books,
2000.
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[4]
Paradoxically,
it is in countries where democracy is most recent
that at least a part of the population
has approved the constitution by ratifying it during a referendum.
In countries with older democracies,
the citizen has not agreed to anything.
Logically and legally, one could say
that he cannot resign from an organisation which he never joined.
Political ties are thus nothing other than force.
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[5]
See, in particular,
Murray Bookchin,
The Ecology of Freedom,
Cheshire Books,
1982.
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[6]
This concept of popular sovereignty flouting the law
was perfectly exemplified in the French National Assembly a few years ago
when the opposition criticized the government for violating the law.
In a scathing response, the government said:
"You are legally wrong because you are politically in the minority".
This is the democratic version of the "The State is me"!
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[7]
In cases of censorship, awarding of subsidies
or expulsion of illegal immigrants, for example.
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[8]
See René Guénon,
Le Règne de la Quantité et les Signes des Temps,
NRF-Gallimard,
1945.
A new English translation
(The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of Time)
is due for publication in September 2001 at Sophia Perennis Et Universalis.
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[9]
Tyler continues:
The average age of the world's great civilisations has been 200 years.
These nations have progressed through this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage.
Alexander Fraser Tyler,
quoted by Doug Newman on the Web site
www.geocities.com/fountoftruth
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[10]
See Hans-Hermann Hoppe,
The Political Economy of Monarchy and Democracy
and the Idea of a Natural Order,
as well as his Les élites naturelles, les intellectuels et l'Etat
(trans. François Guillaumat),
two texts published on the Liberalia site
(www.liberalia.com).
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[11]
Democracy would pride itself on levying only one tax -- a personal income tax.
But we know that the shepherd wants to hide
the shears with which he fleeces the sheep.
Customs duties, VAT and various other excise taxes and duties
are much easier to collect because they seem painless.
They also have the advantage of more heavily penalising the poor,
who are less vigilant and have less influence over government officials.
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[12]
Here again, the comparison with a monarchy is enlightening.
The monarch reigned over peoples with different mores and customs,
and had no allegiance to any of them.
The army was often comprised of mercenaries, and no one found it odd
that a Saxon marshal commanded the French army of Louis XV
or that the Duc de La Rochefoucauld served as governor of Odessa
(it was even this governor who built the famous stairs at the port
immortalized in The Battleship Potemkin).
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[13]
In fact, the ideology of citizenship offers only one alternative:
with me or against me, my country or death.
That is the only thing that counts.
It matters little to me that you are
a musician, good father, gardener or banker.
All that matters is your passport.
The Jacobins were quick to give this interpretation of citizenship:
"Be my brother or die".
The gentle community of citizens is on clear display
in the obscene expressions of joy when election results are announced,
especially in the country that has inscribed "fraternity" on its motto.
(Winners celebrate at football matches,
but the stakes aren't the same, are they?
The losing team is not going to suffer years
of power, laws, taxes, censorship and arrogance.)
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[14]
Jean Guéhenno, The End of the Nation-State,
trans. Victoria Pesce Elliott,
University of Minnesota Press,
1995.
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[15]
My generation is the last one that had political heroes.
My friends pinned posters of Mao, Trotsky, Che Guevara, De Gaulle
on their walls.
All bastards, of course, but magnificent bastards.
In our time, notice how buffoons have come to power,
an unfailing sign that we are in a democracy.
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[16]
Swiss law now forces bankers to inform the police
about any unusual financial transaction by their clients.
All you have to do is skim the press and listen
to a few radio and television shows
to realise the eagerness of Swiss journalists
to support all the freedom-killing proposals.
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[17]
Wendy McElroy is right in saying she would not have voted
in the German elections of 1932 and 1933,
which brought the National Socialists to power,
even if her vote had contributed to barring them from the chancellery.
Her vote would have served to legitimise
the system that gave such brutes the right to accede to power.
Wendy McElroy,
Why I Would Not Vote Against Hitler,
an article that first appeared in Liberty, May 1996,
and was reprinted in The Voluntaryist, No. 85, April 1997,
available at http://user.aol.com/vlntryst.
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