tabled1
HIERARCHIC DEMOCRACY AND THE NECESSITY OF MASS CIVIL
DISOBEDIENCE
by Ted Honderich
This was a Conway Lecture, and and pretty well
sums up my persistent attitude to the governments we know and
perhaps the main thing that is called liberalism. It goes
together with ' What Equality Is Not' and ' What Equality Is'. There is more on its subjects in the 2002 book After the Terror and also in the 2004
book On
Political Means and
Social Ends.
-------------------------
If we make an uncontroversial list of the liberal
democracies, certainly including the United States and Britain, and if
we then try to conceive of or understand them in a general way, we may
arrive at what can be called the
Ordinary Conception of them. It boils down into three propositions.(1)
The people, legitimately influenced during an
election, choose representatives who promise certain policies, and
afterwards the people legitimately influence the elected
representatives.
There is universal suffrage in the election -- one
person, one vote --
and approximate equality in both the influencing of the people during
the
election and their subsequent influencing of the elected
representatives.
The society's actual policies are chosen by the
representatives in accord with their promises, and the policies do take
effect.
The Ordinary Conception is no good.(2) For starters
there is the embarrassing electoral fact that in liberal democracies it
is typically not the people who vote and thereby choose the
representatives, but only about half the people.
There is also the fact, partly having to do with governmental structure
and
perhaps a Supreme Court, that the society's actual policies can rarely
be
regarded as just the the policies promised by the elected
representatives. A third fact is that the choosing of representatives
in the election is far
better seen as made not by individuals, as the Ordinary Conception
supposes, but by groups of individuals with a common interest --
interest-groups. So
with the two kinds of influencing, first of the voters and then of the
representatives.
This is also better seen as done by interest-groups. This third fact is
fundamental.
Indeed the first two facts, about who actually votes and about actual
policies
being different from promised policies, are better described in terms
of
interest-groups and a history of them.
Such a criticism of the Ordinary Conception is not
unusual. If you remain inclined to go on thinking about individuals
rather than groups of them, several
simple reminders may give you pause. One is that understanding and
explaining
anything whatever is typically served by generalization, the use of
general
categories. No one dreams of explaining brain function only in terms of
single
neurons, or of characterizing a Dickens novel sentence by sentence, or
of
writing a history of a war in terms of individual soldiers as against
platoons,
regiments, and armies. The second reminder has to do with organization.
Interest-groups
need not be organized, but some are. A collection of individuals with a
common
interest or purpose achieves more when somehow organized. Fully to
explain
some outcome, you may really have to attend to facts of organization
and
hence groups.
What can be called the Pluralist Conception of the
liberal democracies
also boils down into three propositions.(3)
Interest-groups legitimately influence the choosing
and do the choosing
of representatives who promise policies, and after the election
legitimately influence them.
There is universal suffrage, and there is approximate
equality among the groups.
Actual social policies are chosen by the
representatives, to some degree mindful of their promises, and the
policies take effect to a considerable degree.
This conception is like the Ordinary Conception in
sharing a feature with pretty well all conceptions of liberal
democracy. Almost all conceivers or
definers of liberal democracy introduce into it an idea of equality.
One reason
is etymology, usage, and political tradition, all of which associate
democracy
with equality. Another reason is that democracies involve more
political
equality than dictatorships and oligarchies. A third is that the
definers
of democracy want the kind of government they are conceiving to be true
to
or defendable by certain general principles about equality.
Those who favour something like the Pluralist
Conception of the liberal democracies, however, are also under a
certain pressure: the real world. For one thing, mass communicators
like Mr. Rupert Murdoch have more influence on elections and on what
happens subsequently than, say, London bus drivers, let alone London
beggars. That is to say, of course, that the mass communicators have
more legitimate influence, influence owed to activities in accord with
the rule of law. So those who favour something like the Pluralist
Conception cannot take the liberal democracies to involve any plain or
downright equality. What they say instead, in a variety of ways, is
what is said in the second and vague proposition of the Pluralist
conception: there is approximate equality among the interest-groups.
Is the Pluralist Conception better than the Ordinary
Conception? Above
all, is it better at explaining how a society comes to have its actual
policies? Not much. The conception is vague, and hence far from really
explanatory. It is vague about more than equality. It is vague about
what we are to count as the interest-groups. All that we have so far is
that the voters and influencers divide into such groups, each with a
common interest. We do not know what they are, let alone what degrees
of power or influence they have. Are we to
think of men as such a group? Property-owners? Farmers? People in a
geographical region? Mass communicators? Leftists? Church-goers who are
gun-owners? All is uncertainty here.
Let us try again.
In the liberal democracies, there are great
differences between tenths of population ranked in terms of wealth. The
tenth of population that is richest has between about 52% (Sweden) and
about 70% or 72% (Britain, U.S.) of the society's total personal
wealth. The poorest tenth has barely any worth speaking of, far less
than 1%(4). So the richest tenth has some large multiple of roughly
60 times as much. As for income, the best-paid tenth has between about
five
times (Scandinavia) and about twelve times (U.S.) as much as the
worst-paid
tenth.(5) It is partly a technical job for economists, and one they
seem
not to have done, but obviously someone's wealth and income can be
combined
into a single summative measure. Thus we can have a new ranking in
terms
of what can be called economic power. Without further ado, let me offer
a
proposition which is certainly an underestimate, maybe a grotesque
underestimate.
It is that the top tenth of population has at least 30 times the
economic power of the bottom tenth.
Economic power correlates with fundamental things.
That is why it is important. The thing relevant now is political power,
understood as power legitimately to influence and to enter into the
process which issues in a society's actual policies. How strong is this
correlation in ordinary circumstances? That will depend on which
determinants of political power cluster together with economic power.
At least most do, partly because at least most of these determinants of
political power can be bought. Let me mention just two different ones:
knowledge itself as against confusion and ignorance, and constraints on
the range of promised policies really on offer in an election, whatever
wider range the law or the constitution may allow.
Without further ado, let me offer another proposition
about the top and
bottom tenths of population in terms of economic power. It is that in
ordinary
circumstances the top tenth has at least 15 times the political power
of
the bottom tenth. There is this hierarchy in political power,
determined
or pretty well determined by a hierarchy in economic power. This is
fast
political science, following on the fast economics. For several reasons
it seems to me no apology is needed. It is the economists and political
scientists
who have to catch up, not we who have to slow down. Real life, and real
death,
have to be thought about, as best we can.
The Pluralist Conception of the liberal democracies,
as we saw, is vague about both equality and interest-groups. This can
now be remedied, by taking a reasoned decision as to what are the
dominant interest-groups in ordinary circumstances, what
interest-groups dominate in the process which issues in
actual social policies. I happen to be no Marxist, or ex-Marxist, or
market-Marxist either. You need not be any of them to conclude that the
dominant interest-groups are best thought of as exactly all the ten
tenths of population in terms of
economic power. We thus come to a third conception of the liberal
democracies, one that is also a lot clearer about equality.
Interest-groups identified in terms of economic power
are dominant both
in legitimately influencing the choosing of representatives who promise
policies, and in doing the choosing, and in the legitimate influencing
after
the election of the representatives.
There is universal suffrage, but gross inequality
among the interest-groups in the influencing and choosing, with the
best-off interest-group or tenth of population having at least 15 times
the political power of the worst-off.
Actual social policies are chosen by the
representatives, to some degree mindful of their promises, and the
policies are somewhat effective.
That is the Hierarchic Conception of the liberal
democracies.(6) Or, as we can say, referring not to the tokens or
particular systems but to the type,
that is Hierarchic Democracy.
It assigns an explanatory dominance to the hierarchy
of interest-groups
identified by economic power, or of course the lack of it. This idea is
not
that the upper tenths have more political power, which is of course
true.
It is that all these groups, including the ones at the bottom with
small
or insignificant amounts of power, dominate the process which issues in
a
society's actual policies. It is all these groups, not other groups we
can
think about, men or Leftists or whatever, that are important. You can
almost
always explain actual policies on the basis of these groups alone. I
will
not try to be precise about or make a quantifying guess about the
dominance
of the chosen interest-groups. As you will gather, I propose not to be
put
off saying what seems to me true by the difficulty of being precise,
and,
more generally, the difficulty of satisfying political scientists.
Let me just glance at one question in this
connection. I have taken voters and influencers only as members of the
ten economic interest-groups. Could it be that voters and influencers
in the top tenth have in the end somewhat less than 15 times the
political power of the voters and influencers in the bottom tenth
because the members of each tenth are also members of other
interest-groups?
The truth is almost certainly just the opposite. Members of the top
tenth
are more likely to be members of other groups that are more rather than
less
influential. They are more likely to be members of more influential
rather
than less influential racial groups, for example. So with geographical
groups
and employer-employee groups.
Consider now Hierarchic Democracy's actual policies,
and, more important, the contribution of those policies to the
satisfaction and frustration of fundamental human desires, desires not
only of its own citizens but also of
people elsewhere. To my mind, there are six of these connected desires.
We all want to live, to have lives of decent length.
We want them for ourselves and for those close to us. In the hierarchic
democracies, and mainly because of those systems of government, the
lives of the poor are shortened, by something
like six years.(7) This fact comes together with another one more
awful,
that the hierarchic democracies in the economically developed world
continue
to have a large role in securing cut-off lives for people elsewhere,
say
parts of Africa. The life expectancy for males in a number of African
countries is not about 72, as in Britain and the United States, but not
much over
40. In Sierra Leone it was recently 39.4. It is as if these men were a
different
species.(8)
We all want not only the means that make for lives of
decent length, but the further means that make for a certain quality of
material life. The hierarchic democracies in the developed world
deliver, for some of their citizens, only
food and drink for something like subsistence. They deliver wretched
rooms,
if rooms at all, and grim environments, chronic bad health, no means of
travel, nothing much to sweeten life. Our hierarchic democracies, too,
continue
to be more than implicated in the grisly deprivations of this kind
suffered
by other societies, say river blindness and child labour.
We all want freedom and power, of various kinds. To
speak of political
freedom, what the hierarchic democracies give to their own citizens is
gross
inequality. That is the nature of these political systems. If we need
to
remember that this inequality is better than dictatorship or oligarchy,
we
also need to remember that it is appallingly inferior to other possible
systems
of democracy. As for the contribution of our own hierarchic
democracies,
say the United States and Britain, to freedom and power in many other
societies,
two policies are followed. Our governments seek to advance Hierarchic
Democracy
where that suits the interests they serve, and they support
dictatorship
and oligarchy where that does so. Latin America has been invaded by the
United
States about 100 times in this century.(9)
We all want respect and self-respect. In a number of
our hierarchic democracies over the past decade, to mention but one
relevant fact, millions of men and
women have been denied the minimal dignity of a job. Most of the
governments in question have not taken perfectly possible direct
action, historically proven, to alleviate this destruction of morale.
It is as if the New Deal had never happened. Their international
economic policies have entrenched poor countries and peoples in the
debt and poverty that perpetuates something near to denigration and
self-denigration.
We all want to be together with other people. That
is, we want satisfactory personal or familial and also wider human
relationships. These are in important ways dependent on the
satisfaction and frustration of the fundamental desires already noted.
In the hierarchic democracies, to speak only of the desire for a sense
of membership in a society, it is frustrated for many by poverty and
powerlessness.
We all want, finally, the goods of culture. No one
would prefer ignorance or incompetence or shallowness. whatever disdain
they may pretend for what has been denied to them. For some in the
hierarchic democracies, education is made difficult, entertainment
trivial, and group traditions unsustaining. Again these facts are in
connection with the frustrations already noted. With this desire for
culture, and with the desire for human relationships just mentioned,
there is little need to speak of the grim contribution of our
hierarchic democracies to other societies.
So much for a brief account of the contribution of
the actual policies of our hierarchic democracies to the satisfaction
and frustration of fundamental desires. The account should not come as
a surprise. It is something that might
have been expected of systems of government and societies which are
instances
of Hierarchic Democracy, systems dominated by the general fact about
grossly
unequal economic and political power. It is worth remarking, too, that
these
contributions of our systems of government make up an argument for the
correctness
of the Hierarchic as against any other conception of them. These are
not
contributions which suggest that our systems are correctly described by
either the Ordinary Conception or the Pluralist Conception.
Something needs to be added. The contributions of our
hierarchic democracies to the cutting-off and deadening of lives would
remain criminal if, as so many have hoped, those contributions were
slowly decreasing. That is, the situation would remain criminal if it
were slowly improving. The truth is that since about 1979 the
conditions of life of which we are thinking have been worsened. England
has been dragged down by vicious politicians. The United
States has used still less of its wealth to help even unlucky
Americans, let
alone anyone else.(10) We pass by a certain dismal truth too quickly
now,
like the Oxfam photographs. The truth is that since about 1979 the poor
have
been made poorer while the rich have been made richer. No amount of
callous
dissembling touches the fact. It is still made plain even by some of
the
research departments of the governments of selfishness in question.(11)
As
a result, the poor are dying younger than before.(12) Samuel Johnson
was right
to say that a decent provision for the poor is the true test of
civilization.(13) We might add that reducing an indecent provision for
the poor is the true test of barbarism.
The account given of Hierarchic Democracy's
contributions to satisfaction and frustration, as you will have noted,
has not been a merely factual one. It has implied a moral judgement.
Let me make that judgement or feeling more explicit by setting out a
principle from which it derives. That is the Principle of Equality.(14)
In one bare formulation, it is as follows.
We should have effective policies which make well-off
those who are badly-off -- policies which will remove individuals from
the class of the badly-off -- and we should seek to act on these
policies partly by having certain practices
of equality.
The principle depends on definitions of being
badly-off and well-off, which can be stipulated in terms of
satisfaction and frustration of the fundamental human desires at which
we have glanced. The principle applies to human beings generally, and
the policies which it mentions are not necessarily policies of
democratic governments however conceived. The policies are these: (i)
increasing the total of means to satisfaction, (ii) transferring means
from the well-off without significantly affecting their position, which
is certainly possible, (iii) transferring means which do affect their
position, and, no
less important, (iv) the policy of reducing demands by social
contributors, including entrepreneurs and the like, for favourable
economic incentives or inequalities.
The Principle of Equality seems to me the foundation
of a decent morality. It may bring to mind what is perhaps the
best-known political philosophy of the late 20th Century, that of John
Rawls, and in particular his principles of justice.(15) Let me
distinguish the Principle of Equality and say a word or two for it.
It is not subordinate to or constrained by any other
principle. The principle which is most like it in Rawls's philosophy is
subordinate to a principle of traditional individual liberties,
including a liberty having to do with private property. Rather, the
Principle of Equality incorporates a limited respect for such
liberties. This is primarily a matter of its attention to
the fundamental desire for freedom and power.
Further, the Principle of Equality differs from the
particular principle in Rawls's philosophy which is most like it, the
Difference Principle. This specifies allowable and obligatory
socio-economic differences or inequalities between people. The
Difference Principle states, in sum, that we may and must have any
socio-economic differences or inequalities which make a worst-off group
better-off than it would be without those differences. The idea behind
this is that some people may demand favourable socio-economic
inequalities in return for their contributions to society, but other
people benefit from the contributions. The most familiar variant of the
principle in ordinary political thinking is that we are to have any
inequalities in wealth which make the poorest less poor than they would
be without the inequalities. That is a thought close to `the
trickle-down theory'.
The Difference Principle seems to me wonderfully
indeterminate. It is a
striking instance of the hesitancy and uncertainty of liberalism. What
I
have in mind is that, despite some of Rawls's remarks to the
contrary,(16)
it appears to justify, indeed oblige us to have, wholly different
possible
societies. This depends on what silent assumptions are made about the
demands
of social contributors. Hence it makes no determinate recommendation
about
societies. Let me show this.
Imagine a society where social contributors simply do
not demand favourable socio-economic inequalities for their
contributions, which is to say extrinsic incentives, and where
socio-economic goods are distributed absolutely equally. This society
would have the full support of the Principle of Difference. So,
on the given assumption about certain demands, the principle justifies
a
society of utopian egalitarianism. Now imagine a society in which
social contributors
are more rapacious than social contributors in our societies. They
demand
rewards that are in excess, whatever degree of excess, of the rewards
demanded
in our own societies. It is a society of whatever degree of
socio-economic
inegalitarianism. This, it seems, is also justified by the Difference
Principle.
The Principle of Equality, if it has not been so
impressively elaborated as Rawls's principle, is in this crucial
respect different. It is fundamental to it, as remarked, that we reduce
demands by social contributors for economic rewards. It recommends the
formation of and reliance on intrinsic rather than
extrinsic incentives. It is therefore greatly less indeterminate. As
you
will have gathered, I take it to be more morally defensible than
Rawls's Difference
Principle and his liberal political philosophy generally.
Let us take stock. We have an understanding of the
liberal democracies, the Hierarchic Conception. We have an idea of the
contributions of our hierarchic democracies to fundamental
satisfactions and frustrations, and of the worsening situation. We also
have a principle by which to judge these political systems and their
contributions, the Principle of Equality. That brings us to the
question of whether those of us whose moral convictions are in some
accord with the Principle of Equality should support Hierarchic
Democracy. Should we be Hierarchic Democrats?(17)
One alternative that may come to mind is support for
what there is reason to call Egalitarian Democracy, which is to say
people's democracies or the Communist system. Another idea, certainly a
better one, is support for Third Ways in politics and economics, Third
Ways being compromises between Hierarchic and Egalitarian
Democracy.(18) These are not the alternatives I wish to consider. My
main reason is not that Egalitarian Democracy has been disproved by the
battle between West and East and the fall of Communism, as some
absurdly say,
or that both these alternatives may seem utopian dreams. In fact, I am
attracted
to Third Ways. Rather, one of my reasons has to do with a certain
concern
for means rather than ends, with the means to getting one or another of
certain
governmental and economic systems rather than a specific system chosen
in
advance as the end.
There is nothing unusual about this concern. It is in
fact often the case that we can and should make up our minds about a
means before we have made up or can possibly make up our minds about a
specific end. There may be a strong or even overwhelming case for
trying to move in some general direction, toward a set of possible
outcomes, between which we have not made a final choice, and may never
have the chance of making a final choice. These outcomes, as in the
present case, may have as their most important characterization just
that any of them would be more morally tolerable than the situation in
which we are.
Should we then adopt some means, other than or in
addition to just the means of Hierarchic Democracy, of moving towards
better systems of government and societies of moral decency? More
particularly, should we adopt means other than legitimate ones? That
is, should we adopt means other than those in accord
with the rule of law? Still more particularly, should we, in our
hierarchic democracies, not limit ourselves to influencing voters and
governments by activities in accord with the rule of law?
The questions may lead you to think of a worn answer,
violent revolution, where that is a hierarchic democracy's being
replaced by means of force by an egalitarian democracy. But, as already
implied in what was said of means and ends, I do put aside the worn
answer. Another reason for doing so is a
belief that, whatever has been true in the past, a kind of compromise
with our hierarchic democracies is now and will continue to be
essential to progress towards moral decency. The supposed means of
violent revolution is in fact now no means at all, since it is bound to
be defeated by violence and repression. It would be wrong on this
ground alone, without reference to anything about means and ends or to
any evils or shortcomings of Egalitarian Democracy itself.
Hence there remain two possible additional means to
moral progress. One means is another kind of political violence. In at
least its defiance of legitimacy, it is in conflict with Hierarchic
Democracy, but it is not aimed at replacing it by Egalitarian
Democracy.(19) The second means, of which I
shall have more to say, is mass civil disobedience and non-cooperation.
It
too, since civil disobedience departs from the rule of law, is in
conflict with Hierarchic Democracy. But it too does not aim at
replacing Hierarchic by Egalitarian Democracy.
Mass civil disobedience in general, for present
purposes, is to be understood as consisting in actions by very many
people in a hierarchic democracy, actions aimed at change in the
society's policies but not the establishing of Egalitarian Democracy.
The actions are illegal but non-violent. Also, those who commit the
offences in question do not seek to conceal the fact, and they do not
seek to avoid the penalties.(20) Mass non-cooperation, for present
purposes, consists in actions with the same aim, but legal ones. The
particular civil disobedience and non-cooperation which is relevant, of
course, to speak more precisely, is the kind directed to the
satisfaction of fundamental human desires
which is so morally imperative and which is called for by the Principle
of
Equality.
What will come to mind as historical examples of
civil disobedience are
the Civil Rights campaign against racial discrimination and the
campaign
against the Vietnam War, both in the United States, and the campaigns
against
that war and against nuclear arms in Britain. As for non-cooperation in
the
past, it has mainly consisted of strikes, including general strikes,
and
boycotts, notably boycotts of products and services, including national
products.
What also need to be kept in mind are certain
historical struggles which do not fall under our narrow definitions,
since they have not taken place in hierarchic democracies. They are
entirely relevant, and in a way of greater importance. They include the
successful struggle for independence in India led by Gandhi, seminal
for the tradition of civil disobedience. Above all they include the
recent Eastern European demonstrations, occupations and marches.
Since 1989 these have precipitated nothing less than political and
economic
transformations, non-violent revolutions. The occupation of Tiananmen
Square
in Beijing may also come to have a large significance.
What is the general strategy in mass civil
disobedience and non-cooperation? An idea owed to Rawls is too
restricted and elevated. It is the idea of civil disobedience as a mode
of address, an appeal within a nearly-just society to that society's
shared sense of justice.(21) Clearly there is no need to
restrict civil disobedience to nearly-just societies in certain senses
of
that term. It might even be out of place in such societies. Perhaps,
however, Rawls does not actually intend much restriction, since it may
be that the nearly-just societies in his sense do actually include the
United States and
Britain. Such, I am tempted to say, is the moral world of liberalism.
It
is also clearly not necessary for civil disobedience that there exists
in
a society something which actually deserves the name of a shared sense
of
justice. I doubt that anything ever does. The idea is too elevated.(22)
Still, the general strategy in mass civil
disobedience and non-cooperation does include a moral appeal. It is an
appeal to act on what many already feel
to be wrong, or an appeal to come to feel that something is wrong. But
to
say no more would be to underdescribe the strategy, and make less
likely a
proper judgement of civil disobedience and non-cooperation. Mass civil
disobedience
and non-cooperation is not just supplication.
It is a kind of coercion, although what might be
called coercion by persuasion rather than coercion by force. It is a
refusal to continue in helpful compliance with injustice, often a
refusal to continue in self-injuring behaviour.
It brings pressure on a society, and more particularly its government.
It
expresses moral hatred, hostility, disgust or exasperation, a
determination
to condemn or shame a government and a society, to press them them into
decent human sympathy and into action on it. It is also part of this
coercion,
of course, that mass civil disobedience makes life harder for
governments,
their servants, and others. It may cost police time, reduce profits,
disrupt
order, and at least threaten incidental violence and damage. Officially
peaceful
demonstrations are very likely to include broken windows and broken
arms.
So we can contemplate, at least for a moment, two
possible means to moral progress -- mass civil disobedience and
non-cooperation, of which we now have an idea, and the political
violence of which I have had less to say, the kind which has the same
aim of moral decency in our societies, rather than the old aim of
creating an egalitarian democracy.
What is always said against the political violence is
that it is violence, the illegal use of force, and violence that kills
and maims. No one in their senses could try to minimize the fact.
Still, if it looked like it might work, it would not be so easy to
think about as is commonly supposed. We are all constrained by a
customary morality that owes much to those who benefit
from it. Hence we are mesmerized by violence and distracted from any
real
contemplation of other things. We concentrate on violent death to the
exclusion
of lives cut off or ruined legitimately. Unspeakably more decent living
time
has been subtracted from the 20th Century by the institutionalized and
legal
frustration of fundamental human desires than by all of the political
violence,
even if war is included in it.
But we need not think for much more than a moment
about the kind of political violence in question. At any rate we need
not try to think about it except in the special case of violence on
behalf of the political freedom and independence of a people, which
liberation struggles can call on singular resources of determination
and sacrifice, and are often enough effective. We need not think of the
rest of the kind of political violence in question because it does not
look like it might work. The situation is in this important respect the
same as with violent revolution, the attempt to replace Hierarchic by
Egalitarian Democracy. The political violence which we now have in mind
would kill and maim, and then almost certainly be defeated by the state
and its supporters.
What would make it wrong would mainly be the effects
of the state violence and repression used in opposition to it, and the
absence of any compensating gain. That the opposition to this political
violence arguably would be wrong would not diminish the wrongfulness of
this violence. An act of mine does not become right, although there are
philosophers who try to think so, if it leads to disaster only through
someone else's anticipated wrongful opposition.
Why would the governments of the hierarchic
democracies and their natural supporters almost certainly win? One part
of the reason is that they are better
at violence, through practice. Another more important part of the
reason
is that the fighting would drive out truth. Fighting would disarm one
side,
the side against the indecencies owed to or contributed to by
Hierarchic Democracy.
Fighting would disarm this side of its best weapon. That weapon is
truth,
including what can be called moral truth. No one attends to grim
life-expectancies
elsewhere or river-blindness or racial self-denigration when there are
tanks
in the street and children are being killed.
To turn to mass civil disobedience, you will
anticipate that part of what can be said for it is that it is unlikely
or not greatly likely to be met by state violence. In speaking of state
violence, I mean more than the use of riot police and the intelligence
services. State violence in this sense, although I shall not pause to
define it, is likely to involve the army and to carry a significant
possibility of civil war. To say mass civil disobedience is unlikely to
be met by state violence is to assume something about a sense of
proportion on the part of the governments of hierarchic democracies. It
is also to assume they have a sense of the possible penalty that may be
paid for using state violence against civil disobedience. State
violence against it, as the Left has rightly calculated before now, may
win some support to the cause of those who are civilly disobedient.
Should we be hierarchic democrats or should we
instead supplement voting and legitimate influencing with the influence
of mass civil disobedience? Before answering, I should like to look
quickly at one matter. It concerns a proposition of mine that will have
been anticipated, that mass civil disobedience unlike the related
political violence does allow truth and moral truth to be heard and to
have their rightful effect. Some will say disagree. They will
disagree since this disobedience, as already noted, is in fact not just
supplication. It is a kind of coercion, a confrontation, which despite
its
commitment to non-violence carries the threat of incidental violence.
Historically,
mass civil disobedience has issued in incidental violence by
demonstrators.
It is possible to insist in reply that mass civil
disobedience does allow truth to be heard, indeed makes truth heard. It
itself, the main fact of it, is not violence. It is not such an
abandoning of our conventions for dealing with disagreement as to
madden both sides and leave no thought but defence and retaliation.
What is often stressed in this connection by lawyers and the like who
are sympathetic to civil disobedience is one of its defining features,
that it is open and public and that those who engage in it do not
attempt to escape the penalties for their offences. This, the lawyers
say,
shows the restraint of respect for law. This misses the point a little,
as
lawyers are likely to do in political philosophy.
It is not law that is being in a way respected by the
civilly disobedient who break it, not law in general, not something
which includes the law of a tyrant-state or an oligarchy. What is
respected in a way by the civilly disobedient is the law of, exactly, a
hierarchic democracy, and, really, a
hierarchic democracy itself. It is accorded a respect for the reason
among others that Hierarchic Democracy too, as implied earlier, must be
regarded as a possible means to a society of moral decency and a less
imperfect democracy. This respect cannot be missed by the adversaries
of the civilly disobedient. It is what leaves room for truth, makes
perception and reflection possible.
But saying this, I suppose, misses another point,
perhaps as philosophers are likely to do. We need not seek just to
argue our way towards the conclusion that civil disobedience leaves
room for truth and hence for moral progress, argue that there is
something that makes for such a fact. The historical record
by itself establishes the fact. Alabama and Leipzig come to mind. They
not
only left room for truth to be heard, but got it a hearing it had not
had
before.
I therefore do advocate, without reserve, mass civil
disobedience and also non-cooperation. This seems to me a moral
necessity.
We ought to engage in and support such mass civil
disobedience in order to resist further advances in social criminality
by our governments, new pieces
of it: vicious taxation, yet more repressive pieces of legislation
about
assembly or ways of living, more turning of hospitals and universities
into
profit-centres, more vandal roads, more profiteering by privatization,
more
corruption on the part of elected representatives, more hypocrisy about
wars
and refugees, more indifference to famine.
We ought to engage in and support disobedience not
only on such new issues as they come up, but also disobedience against
the standing conditions of the societies of Hierarchic Democracy:
shortened and cut-off lives in them and outside them, stunted lives
including some that might almost be better if they were shorter,
constraint and weakness in place of freedom and power, denigration and
self-denigration, the impeding and wrecking of human relationships,
ignorance and vulgarity in place of culture.
We ought not to pay tax. We ought to strike and march
illegally. There ought to be demonstrations against our elections in
hierarchic democracies, before, during, and after them. It is possible
both to vote and to advocate voting, and also to damn a way of voting,
and the cheat built into it. We ought to
find new forms of civil disobedience.
So with mass non-cooperation, in connection both with
new evils and standing evils. We ought not to buy from the corporations
and companies which do so much to frustrate the will of our
representatives when those representatives remember some of their
promises. Those of us who are attracted to an inner core of religion
should withdraw from churches, which in their meekness accomodate the
true immorality of our societies. We ought to find new forms of
non-cooperation.
This, you may say, is utopian. Well, that is a right
of philosophy, a right which has served us all very well. And I am not
sure it is utopian. It was easier to be sure about that before the fall
of Communism, before the civil disobedience that precipitated a
once-impossible thing. There is an old saying, perhaps a saying of the
Left. It is that only power can defeat power. Sometimes those who have
said it have had in mind that state power can only be defeated by the
power of violence. That proposition has been refuted by the fall of
Communism.
Hope of decency in our societies, hope with reason,
depends on the thought of many people coming to share a moral feeling.
You will know that I speak of disgust and condemnation, and also guilt.
It is possible that many will come to share that feeling, and that it
will issue in civil disobedience and
in non-cooperation. The globalization of information may do us a
service here,
despite the controls on it. So may education, and argument, and the
realization
that economism is not an answer to the right questions about societies,
and
the greater economic success of such more egalitarian economies as
Japan,
and the experience of immiseration coming to the aid of insufficient
moral
imagination, and the fact that those who drag down societies also lose.
It is possible to hope, with reason, and I do.
For more on a central subject
here, see What Equality Is Not,
Fortunately, and
What Equality Is.
HOME
Notes
1. I am grateful to A. B. Atkinson, Robin Blackburn,
Kiaran Honderich,
and David Zimmerman for help with this paper. They will be relieved to
hear that they bear no responsibility for what is said in it.
2. Perhaps the Ordinary Conception is now asserted
only by politicians.
(Even most of them, by the way, have given up the conception of liberal
democracy as rule by the people, which was not true even of ancient
Athens.) The Ordinary Conception is not far from one of the polyarchies
contemplated in R. A. Dahl,
A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago, 1956), Ch. 3 and Appendix, and
not far from from models II and IIIb in David Held, Models of Democracy
(Cambridge,
1987), p. 70, p. 102. See also H. B. Mayo, An Introduction to
Democratic
Theory (New York, 1960), Ch. 4.
3. The Pluralist Conception, partly because of its
contained claim about equality, is not to be identified with several
accounts of democracy with similar names. See, for example, R. A. Dahl,
Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy (New Haven, 1982). On pluralism
generally, see Held, op. cit., Ch. 6.
4. It is possible, as A. B. Atkinson has remarked to
me, that the poorest tenth has less than 0%. That is, its debts are
greater than its assets.
5. E. N. Wolff, International Comparisons of the
Distribution of Household Wealth (Oxford, 1987), esp. pp. 153, 127,
137; A. B. Atkinson, `What Is Happening to the Distribution of Income
in the UK?', Proceedings of the British Academy, 1992; Atkinson, L.
Rainwater, and T. Smeeding, `Income Distribution in European
Countries', Discussion Series of the Microsimulation Unit at the
University of Cambridge, forthcoming; D. Kessler and E. N. Wolff, `A
Comparative Analysis of Household Wealth Patterns in France and the
United States', Review of
Income and Wealth, 37, 3, September 1991.
6. The Hierarchic Conception, and also the Ordinary
and the Pluralist Conceptions, are set out more fully in `Hierarchic
Democracy', New Left Review, 207, 1994. There are some differences
between what is said here and in that article.
7. The life expectancy of American black males was
recently 7.4 years shorter than for American white males. For black as
against white females, it was 5.5 years shorter. Source: US Bureau of
the Census, Statistical Abstract of
the United States: 1991 (Washington, DC, 1991). I am not able to
produce recent
British statistics in support of the uncontroversial claim that the
lives
of the poor are shortened, because life expectancies by social class
are
no longer available from the relevant government research department,
no
doubt for political reasons. For older statistics, see my Violence for
Equality:
Inquiries in Political Philosophy (London, 1989), p. 2 ff., p. 204.
According
to these statistics, men in the 5th social class had life-expectancies
about
six years shorter than men in the first social class. It is very
unlikely indeed that the situation has improved.
8. United Nations Demographic Year Book, 1991 (New
York, 1992), Table 22, p. 460 ff.
9. Eduardo Galeano, `A Child Lost in the Storm', in
Robin Blackburn, ed., After the Fall (London, 1991), p. 252.
10. My account of the governments in question is
given in Conservatism (London, Boulder, 1990).
11. For an excellent summary of increasing income
inequality in Britain, see Atkinson, `What Is Happening to the
Distribution of Income in the UK?', cited above, and also Atkinson, L.
Rainwater, and T. Smeeding, `Income Distribution in European
Countries', cited above. See also F. Levy & R. J. Murnane, `U.S.
Earnings Levels and Earnings Inequality: A Review of Recent Trends and
Proposed Explanations,' Journal of Economic Literature, September 1992,
and Income and Wealth, a report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation,
February, 1995.
12. British Medical Journal, 30 April 1994.
13. Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill
(Oxford, 1934), Vol. 2, p. 130.
14. The Principle of Equality is stated more fully in
`The Problem of Well-Being and the Principle of Equality', Mind, 1981,
reprinted as Ch. 2 of my Violence for Equality: Inquiries in Political
Philosophy (London, 1989). The article also considers more fully the
six fundamental human desires mentioned above.
15. A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass. and Oxford,
1971. For other objections to the theory, see `The Use of the Basic
Proposition of a Theory of Justice', Mind, 1975. It has been remarked
to me, by the way, that the present paper leaves out consideration of
the thinking of the New Right. Indeed it does. One reason is that I am
no longer inclined to dignify by discussion such a view as that a
perfectly just society may be one in which people are starving and have
no moral right to food, the perfect justice being owed to the fact that
the distribution of goods in the society has a certain history. That, I
take it, is propounded in Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, New
York, 1974.
16. Op. cit., sections 13, 26, 48.
17. It is only weaker general principles and
considerations having to do with equality that issue more or less
automatically in support for only Hierarchic Democracy. Sometimes there
is not enough difference between the supposed premises
and conclusion to make a real argument.
18. See, for example, Blackburn, op. cit.
19. Cf. the discussion of Democratic Violence in
Violence for Equality: Inquiries in Political Philosophy.
20. See the excellent collections edited by H. A.
Bedau, Civil Disobedience: Theory and Practice (New York, 1969) and
Civil Disobedience in Focus (London, 1991).
21. Rawls, op. cit., sections 55, 57, 59. They are
reprinted and discussed in Bedau, Civil Disobedience in Focus.
22. I take it, a little uncertainly, that what is
said of a shared sense of justice in A Theory of Justice is heavily
qualified in Rawls's Political Liberalism (New York, 1993). See, e.g.,
pp. xvi, xviii, 8.
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