Why do we care to subject ourselves to democracy (majority rule)?

John Stuart Mill was smitten by the proportional system of representation, and while I believe he made many useful contributions to economics and political theory, on this he was wrong.

The reason he was wrong was he forgot why we have a state in the first place.

There is no better analyst of the state than Hobbes. Despite the many misunderstandings about his work, he was above all a defender of individual liberty. But he averred, and rightly so, that this could not be defended without a really strong state.

Recently I found an old edition of Sabine’s History of Political Theory in a used bookshop, and while browsing through it today, I found a fascinating piece which deserves careful scrutiny.

EXTRACT

[Hobbes's] resulting estimate of government was wholly secular and quite coolly utilitarian. Its value consists solely in what it does, but since the alternative is anarchy, there can be no doubt which a utilitarian will choose. The choice has little sentiment behind it. The advantages of government are tangible and they must accrue quite tangibly to individuals, in the form of peace and comfort and security of person and property. This is the only ground upon which government can be justified or even exist. A general or public good, like a public will, is a figment of the imagination; there are merely individuals who desire to live and to enjoy protection for the means of life. [Sanjeev: Note that the concept of public good that is used in economic theory is not intended in this sense.]

This individualism is the thoroughly modern element in Hobbes and the respect in which he caught most clearly the note of the coming age. For two centuries after him self-interest seemed to most thinkers a more obvious motive than disinterestedness, and enlightened self-interest a more applicable remedy for social ills than any form of collective action. The absolute power of the sovereign—a theory with which Hobbes’s name is more generally associated—was really the necessary complement of his individualism. [Sanjeev: It is a shame that people forget that the REASON why Hobbes advocated a strong state was purely self-interested - for the sake of the individual. Hobbes is, in my opinion, the world's most misunderstood philosopher.]

Except as there is a tangible superior to whom men render obedience and who can, if necessary, enforce obedience, there are only individual human beings, each actuated by his private interests. There is no middle ground between humanity as a sand-heap of separate organisms and the state as an outside power holding them precariously together by the sanctions with which it supplements individual motives. That Hobbes made them the premises of his system and followed them through with relentless logic is the true measure of his philosophical insight and of his greatness as a political thinker.

The reason I want us to focus on Hobbes is to understand WHY there is a state. Once we understand that, we can then ask WHAT FORM this government should take.

On this, Hobbes had no particular opinion, although through his actions he preferred monarchy. In that sense, Hobbes and the Mahabharata are on the same page.

And when we think of Locke we will do well to remember that, as Kendall wrote, “on the really crucial issues Locke is a Hobbesian, a fairly docile pupil of Hobbes” (John Locke Revisited, by Willmoore Kendall).

So why democracy?

Well, Locke was merely trying to fit Hobbes’s Leviathan into a majority-rule sovereign. As Kendall notes:

Locke is, when the chips are down, pretty straight Hobbes: the denizens of Locke’s civil society have, “operationally” speaking, no “indefeasible” or “inherent” or “natural” or “in alienable” rights; to suppose them to have such rights is to overlook the character of the “deal” they make when they emerge from the state of nature into civil society, and the character of the arrangements under which they live in civil society. For their “rights” in civil society are merely the rights that are conferred by the majority, and withdrawn at its pleasure—or worse still, by the legislature in which the majority, perhaps a majority long dead, has chosen to repose its trust. The majority or the majority’s government, moreover, creates those rights and their correlative duties; it is not only under no obligation to make those rights and duties congruent with the rights and duties of the state of nature (i.e., of the law of nature), but it is also free to set completely aside any supposed “standards” of right and wrong laid down by the law of nature.

This is serious stuff, for as Kendall notes, Locke is NOT the “spokesman for unalienable individual rights” but the “philosopher of majority-rule authoritarianism“.

Locke’s individual member of society is duty-bound to obey every law of the legislature in which the majority has placed its trust, and because, and only because, it emanates from that source. No one can relieve him of this duty except a revolutionary majority, by withdrawal of its “trust” from the existing legislature and replacement of that legislature with another.

There is, in this formulation, very little difference between Hobbes and Locke. And while I may differ in some detail, I agree with the key argument.

This, then, is the reason we have democracy: to substitute the Leviathan with majoritarian rule – WHICH WE WILL THEN OBEY.

Yes, we need Jeffersonian reinforcement of individual liberty, and the right to rebel (which Lock also maintained), but in the end we are stuck with the laws made by a majoritarian government (hence the CRITICAL importance of the constitution).

Locke, of course, broke tradition – of thousands of years – by justifying majoritarian rule. Democracy had been (in many cases justifiably) rejected by leading philosophers. Indeed, till relatively recently in human history, it has been hard to find anyone to accept democracy as a viable form of government. [E.g. "By the start of the twentieth century, then, writers on both the left and the right were calling into question the efficacy of representative democracy." A Short History of Western Political Thought, W. M. Spellman, p.136.]

Once we recognise this simple link: SOCIAL CONTRACT > LEVIATHAN > MAJORITARIAN LEVIATHAN,  then we are done. True, checks and balances are needed. But the basic purpose of democracy is to create a Leviathan.

I trust readers (particularly PR votaries) now have a far better understanding of the role and purpose of democracy which is purely the following:

a) ability to vote out a sovereign without killing him; and

b) greater legitimacy of the government.

It is in this context that any discussion of the system to elect a democratic government can be undertaken. The system must deliver us a Leviathan.

Remember that there is NO theory of democracy which arises naturally from the state of nature. Democracy is not a “natural right”, either. It is MERELY a TOOL OF LIBERTY, like a pair of scissors is a tool of a tailor. The sharper the scissors the better.

The faith we repose in democracy is reminiscent of the Levellers.

Addressing small tradesmen, artisans, soldiers, and poor urban laborers, between 1645 and 1649 the Levellers called for universal manhood suffrage without property requirements, a written constitution, freedom of religion, equality before the law, and an end to military conscription. They also demanded a representative assembly that held lawmaking and executive power, and defended the right to resist any magistrate who failed to carry out his delegated trust. [A Short History of Western Political Thought, W. M. Spellman, p.80]

This was NOT what Hobbes and Locke were arguing for.

I’m quite comfortable with the Levellers, and have praised them here. But it is important to not get enamoured by democracy for its own sake. That is the key message of classical liberalism. Democracy is valuable only to the extent it gives us a state which can defend our life and liberty. If it fails to do that, we owe it no allegiance.