The unfinished democracy
In theory, power in representative democracies comes from the people — in practice, it often amounts to elite rule with little or no input from citizens. It’s time to consider alternatives. Part 1 of 2.
In a democracy, “we” are supposedly the sovereign power. So why doesn’t it feel that way? Citizens tend to find themselves at the mercy of powerful and wealthy interests, which are glossed over through constant manipulation. Every four years, in an act of resigned duty, they vote for the “lesser evil,” only to be largely helplessly at its mercy until the next election. So does democracy deserve the good reputation it enjoys in the eyes of those to whom it enables a career? Most people are generally reluctant to question it fundamentally, as they cannot imagine any alternative to forms of political, military, or religious despotism. Yet intellectual history is full of enlightening critiques of democracy and inspiring suggestions on how things could be done better. The philosopher Hannah Arendt, for example, made a surprising recommendation with regard to the nature of revolutions. In times when we are increasingly suffering from incompetent or unwilling political leaders, it is advisable to look for alternatives or at least modifications to the existing system. It is not a question of abolishing democracy, but of a genuine return of “state power” to the people, from whom it supposedly emanates according to the Basic Law.
[This article posted on 11/28/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die–unvollendete–demokratie.]
Not good, but good enough?!
Democracies are not perfect, of course, as we occasionally hear, but democracy is nevertheless the best of the imperfect forms of government. Reasons for this are rarely given. The fact that it is not the best seems to be enough to consider it sufficiently good and, in any case, “excellent.”
This has not always been the case, and it was not the worst people who saw things differently. For a long time, democracy was considered a form of political decay. In any case, even democrats seem to have doubts from time to time. Democracy, it is argued, must not become populist, and the majority must not become tyrannical.
And yet the following principle should apply: “All state authority is derived from the people.” This is stated in Article 20 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, which, after the provisions on fundamental rights (Articles 1 to 19), is the first article describing the state order (federal and state, Articles 20 to 37). However, power is exercised
(only) “in elections and votes [!] and through special bodies of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary” (1). The bodies then always act—by declaration—“in the name of the people,” which does not always have to correspond to the “will” of the people. Bertolt Brecht put it this way with regard to the Weimar Republic:
(2)
“State authority comes from the people.
— But where does it go?
Yes, where does it go?
It has to go somewhere!”
In Brecht’s version, the ‘outcome’ of power does not end well.
“There lies something that is dead as a doornail.
But that is the people!
Is that really the people?
Yes, that is really the people.”
Every delegation makes abuse possible. And so it is not only the protection of minorities or the rights of the individual that is required through an appropriate legal system, separation of powers, and “democratic” control.
The basic principle is that the people must be protected from the “state power” that they have temporarily assigned to the organs of the state under a strict separation of powers. The protection of the constitution is above all the concern that all “state power” not only emanates from the people, but actually serves them and returns to them.
The experience of the “downfall” of the Weimar Republic was particularly influential in many respects for the constitutional safeguarding of popular sovereignty (3).
However, there are some strange distortions here. The Weimar Republic did not fail because of a rebellious people, but because of the betrayal of its (popular) representatives (4): in 1933, as is well known, all “bourgeois” parties except the SPD and KPD voted in favor of the Enabling Act. Prior to this, the Reich President’s Decree for the Protection of the People and the State had suspended fundamental rights and paved the way for dictatorship. State organs staged a coup against the people and their decisions. The Reich President and the Reich government, the state apparatus consisting of the administration and the judiciary, the police and the military, but also institutionalized (university) science and the public media, stripped the people of their power. If we want to learn anything from this, it is that the constitution must not be protected against the people or against their more or less legitimate representatives. The constitution must be protected against “state power” for the good of the people (5).
And then there are the parties. In the rather prominent Article 21 of the Basic Law, the parties are assigned a special role in the exercise of popular sovereignty. Section 1 states:
“The parties shall participate in the political process of the people.”
In the meantime, the participation of the parties has turned into a party democracy. This is lamented by some, but at the same time defended as better than “nothing.”
The status quo is not ideal, but many see no alternative, especially those who are deeply rooted in the party system and often move directly from school or university into the party apparatus, owing their entire career to the party.
According to surveys, citizens distrust party politicians (6), but in practice they can only choose from among their ranks those to whom they must cede power (7).
It is as if convinced atheists had to decide every few years whether to attend Catholic mass or Protestant services. Some extravagant individuals then choose—often to annoy the bigwigs—sectarian free churches, which the churches naturally warn against with sect protection officers.
In search of the essence of politics
For Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), one of the great and influential figures of 20th-century political philosophy, it was already clear in the 1960s that “with their monopoly on the nomination of those who are even eligible for election, the parties can no longer be regarded as organs of the people’s power, but rather as very effective means by which this power of the people is restricted and controlled. That the representative system has in reality been transformed into a kind of oligarchy…“ (8).
These ”forms of government are indeed democratic,“ but the conduct of public affairs ”lies in the hands of an oligarchically constituted group selected by the parties.”
The elites of the parties, however democratic they may appear, are convinced “that no people has ever been capable of governing itself, that the will of the people is inherently anarchic” and that “every government is fundamentally ‘hostile’ to the people” (9). No one has “ever doubted that in this relationship between the people and parliament, the role of the people is to support parliament and that actual action remains a privilege of the government” (10). For the representatives of the people, their “political life” takes place in parliament, i.e., “among their peers.” They only have to try from time to time to keep the voters on board. These election campaigns then reveal the “obvious dishonesty of almost all dialogues between voters and representatives” (11).
This is not exactly a plea for the form of parliamentary democracy that prevails in most Western countries. Not only is it not the best of the imperfect forms of government, it also threatens to dissolve the specifically political.
In her philosophical magnum opus Vita Activa or The Active Life (1960), Hannah Arendt distinguishes between working and producing, and assigns the field of politics to acting: acting is essentially political action, namely the shaping of one’s own life in the political space we share with others. We are political beings (ζῷον πολιτικόν, zoon politikon) (12). Unlike the representation of economic interests, political action cannot be delegated. It is itself part of human life, and no one can let others live their life for them.
Like one’s own way of life, political action, namely the shaping of the social community in which we live, can be more or less successful. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Hannah Arendt examined the elements and origins of totalitarian rule (13). These are signs of political decay that we must prevent in our political actions. Even parliamentary, representative democracy “represents” a dangerous curtailment of the political, which can lead to new forms of totalitarianism, such as a (social) technological expertocracy of the Great Reset (14). Hannah Arendt speaks of the “fundamental evil” of dissolving political action “into administrative tasks that are best handled and decided by experts” (15). Follow the science! is not political action.
However, signs of decline can only be discussed with reference to an ideal or normal state. Good, healthy vision allows us to understand blindness. For political action, this raises the question of a constitutional form of politics that does justice to its essence.
In 1963, Hannah Arendt attempted to define more precisely the essence of the political and the constitutional form appropriate to it. She did so in her book On Revolution (1965). She recognized the essence of political freedom in what constitutes a revolution. For Hannah Arendt, revolution and political action are closely linked.
When we talk about revolutions, we usually think immediately of the French Revolution of 1789 and the American Revolution of 1771 that preceded it. Hannah Arendt also takes these landmark revolutions of the late 18th century as her starting point. She examines their similarities and differences—always with the intention of revealing the essence of politics. In many ways, the French Revolution set the pattern for the revolutionary movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, for example the Russian October Revolution of 1917.
But it differs from the American Revolution in that its starting point was completely different. In France, the people were suffering terrible hardship and bitter poverty. According to Hannah Arendt, the people of France were “driven by hunger.” “Le peuple is the key word to any understanding of the French Revolution…” (16) and the people were the “unfortunate,” those plagued by misery. It is the “social question” that determines the course of events. The overthrow of the regime and the takeover of power by the people was supposed to achieve the “liberation of the people from poverty and hardship.” There were no clear ideas about what form popular rule should take. Above all, there was a lack of practical experience to draw on.
In America, on the other hand, the starting point was completely different. According to Hannah Arendt, there was no bitter poverty among large sections of the population in the British colonies (17). It was not a question of liberation from poverty and hardship, but of political freedom and self-determination, of which people already had a clear idea and which was already being practiced on a small scale.
For the thirteen British colonies that broke away from the British Crown, the main concern was to present a united front to the outside world and against the “mother country.” Their extensive independence was to be preserved. They had also been largely self-governing under the Crown. The conservative Edmund Burke (1729 to 1797) spoke of “wise and salutary neglect” by the British, which allowed the colonies in the West to “take her own way to perfection” (18).
In the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union of 1777/1781, the thirteen colonies declared themselves a confederation of sovereign states. When the Constitution was later drafted by the Philadelphia Convention, which was intended to unite the thirteen republics into a single entity with its own state organs, the goal of the Founding Fathers remained to secure the extensive sovereignty of the federal states. They spoke of the separation of powers and the balance of powers (checks and balances) in order to prevent the newly constituted organs from becoming too powerful (19).
The advantage of a common “foreign policy” must not jeopardize the sovereignty of domestic political action. It was thus expressly Thomas Jefferson’s (1743 to 1826) plan “to make us one nation in all foreign relations and preserve us in our differences in domestic relations” (20). However, the main concern was to preserve and consolidate political freedom.
The council republic is invented
This found expression in the political life of the communities, where citizens administered themselves in town hall meetings. The self-government of the townships is the basis of the reorganization following the Declaration of Independence of the thirteen colonies. Hannah Arendt quotes Alexander von Tocqueville (1805 to 1859) as saying that “the American Revolution, with its doctrine of popular sovereignty, broke out in the townships and from there took possession of the state” (21).
The townships were the elementary republics on which the Constitution of the United States was based. In them, according to Jefferson, “every man in the state” could become an “active member of the community government and personally exercise a large number of rights and duties.” From these “small republics, the great republic should draw its principal strength” (22).
Jefferson’s solution was the “ward system” (“divide the counties into wards”) (23), which Arendt translates as a “district system” of “elementary republics” comprising approximately 100 citizens, who then make and implement their political decisions independently. Jefferson also uses the term “councils” (24) and outlines how these councils can be integrated into the American state apparatus:
“The elementary republics of the councils, the district republics, the state republics, and the republic of the union should be organized in a series of levels of power, each of which, enshrined in law, possesses the powers that fall to it, and all of which are integrated into a system of truly balanced checks and balances for the government.” (25)
The decisive importance of the lived popular sovereignty of the wards or councils for the Constitution of the United States is illustrated by an evocative remark by Jefferson: “As Cato ended every speech with the words Carthago delenda est [Carthage must be destroyed], so I end all my speeches with the warning divide the counties into wards,” (26) i.e., into “elementary republics.” Hannah Arendt recognizes in this what would later be called the council republic:
“Jefferson’s plan (…) anticipated (…) with almost uncanny precision those councils and soviets that were to appear in every revolution of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.” (27)
In the councils, i.e., the councils, popular sovereignty is realized, not delegated! It does not take the form of representative democracy and must not take it for fear of self-abolition.
Jefferson prophesied:
“If the people ever cease to care about public affairs, we shall all, you and I, and Congress and the assemblies, the judges and the governors, as we stand here, be devoured by wolves.”
That would be a form of government in which political action is reduced to elections and delegation. A people that delegates its sovereignty and does not actively shape its political life is politically disempowered. It is a “misunderstanding to equate the terms republic and democracy.” The founding fathers of the American Constitution of 1787 start from “the imprudence of democracy” (29).
Sources and notes:
(1) Article 20: “(1) The Federal Republic of Germany is a democratic and social federal state. (2) All state authority is derived from the people. It is exercised by the people through elections and votes and through special bodies of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. (3) The legislature is and the constitutional order, the executive, and the judiciary are bound by law and justice. (4) All Germans have the right to resist anyone who attempts to abolish this order if no other remedy is possible.”
(2) Bertolt Brecht, Paragraph 1 of the Weimar Constitution, in: Bertolt Brecht, Collected Works
(3) The National Socialists never formally abolished the Weimar Constitution; it was effectively suspended—it remained in force de jure, but had no validity or effect. Human dignity remains untouched by many things if it is understood to be subject to the protection of the people and their health. Self-interest must never take precedence over the common good. Solidarity is therefore the limit of dignity, which remains untouched when it shows itself in solidarity.
(4) In the Reichstag elections of November 1933, which led to Hitler’s chancellorship, the NSDAP received “only” 33.1 percent of the votes cast, the SPD received 20.4 percent, the KPD 16.9 percent, and the Center Party 11.9 percent. The left wing, consisting of the SPD and KPD, received significantly more votes than the NSDAP. “The people” were therefore by no means fascist in their outlook, but the state apparatus was willing.
(5) There is evidence that the legislative and executive branches repeatedly act in violation of the constitution.
(6) According to Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer, “political parties are considered the most corrupt institutions on earth” (David Van Reybrouck, Against Elections: Why Voting Is Not Democratic, 2016).
(7) Individual candidacies are possible, but essentially ineffective. The composition of parliament is determined by the second vote and thus by the parties.
(8) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 347
(9) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 347. Hannah Arendt refers here to Marice Duverger, Les Partis Politique (1952), whom she also quotes.
(10) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 349
(11) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 356
(12) Vita Activa was first published in English in 1958 under the title The Human Condition.
(13) This is the title of the book published in German in 1955 and translated by her herself: H. Arendt, Elements and Origins of Totalitarian Rule, 1955
(14) Cf. The Great Reset program of the World Economic Forum with its 8 Predictions for the World in 2030, i.e. in just under six years:
1. You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.
…
3. You won’t die waiting for an organ donor.
4. You’ll eat less meat.
…
8. Western values will have been tested to the breaking point.
(15) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 350
(16) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 94
(17) Of course there were poor people, but the living conditions of the vast majority of the population were much better. And above all, there was “the terrible, degrading misery of the black slaves” (op. cit., p. 85), who, however, remained politically “invisible.”
(18) “When I contemplate these things; when I know that the Colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.” (Edmund Burke, On Moving His Resolutions for Conciliation with the Colonies, House of Commons, March 22, 1775)
(19) Cf. James Madison’s Federalist Article 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”
(20) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 119
(21) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 215
(22) Hannah Arend, op. cit., p. 324
(23) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 319
(24) For example, in his letter to Cabel dated February 2, 1816, cf. Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 325
(25) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 325
(26) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 319
(27) Ibid
(28) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 306. In this vein, Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes in op. cit., III 15, p. 121: “As soon as public activity in the service of the state ceases to be the main concern of citizens, and they prefer to serve it with their money rather than with their persons, the state is already close to its downfall.”
(29) Hannah Arendt, op. cit., p. 289
Heinrich Leitner, born in 1958, taught philosophy for more than ten years, including at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, before moving into IT. Most recently, he worked in IT management at a large federal agency. He has now been pursuing philosophy again for several years and runs the website Philosophisches zur Zeit (Philosophical Thoughts on Current Affairs).