The Authoritarian Interlude

Democracy, Values and the Politics of Hubris

Peter Marden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781409468608
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317040835
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Essays in Politics & International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What do we value as a political virtue? What are the core values of democracy in the modern era? What is a democratic culture and can it coexist with a predatory capitalist corporatism? Is democracy just about human rights? What is the nature of public dissent? These are some of the questions posed in this book as Peter Marden extends debates on democracy by critically examining the key role of values often associated with neo-liberalism and the traditions of thought concerning public conceptions of democratic life. Within the volume various normative arguments from prominent political theorists are addressed, particularly those associated with deliberative approaches to the study of contemporary democracy. Marden is motivated by an interest in the language and spirit of democracy as a values-based culture not solely driven by technocratic devices but a genuine reframing of the values necessary to underpin any peculiar democratic practice. Throughout the book examples are taken from the Australian, United Kingdom, and United States democratic experience post-9/11 to explore the dimensions of democratic culture, the nuanced tensions between the individual as an autonomous reflective subject and conceptions of the common good.

Chapter 1
Introduction

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140–41)

The evils of which our democracies’ suffer are primarily evils

related to the insatiable appetite of oligarchs

Jacques Ranciere, Hatred of Democracy, Translated by Steve Corcoran. Verso Press, 2006

The simple and quick response to the question of whether democracy is in trouble is a resounding, yes. In the age of the sound bite, we could leave it there as a statement of the obvious and move on through a series of questions on the themes of: what is the nature of the crisis, who is to blame, and what can we do about it? While this may appear to be the best way forward, the end result would be misleading. The nature of the problems and their complex interconnections defy a bullet-point like narrative.

Such an admission however does not have to come at the expense of clarity, because as we will see, language and politics intersect in ways that can either promote transparency of purpose or construct an elaborate edifice of lies and misinformation. There are some simple yet ambitious things this book is trying to deal with. An underlying and pivotal theme however is the need to engage the discourse on values. There are a number of questions one can pose about the problems of democracy, but some of the questions I pose are considered to be integral to filling the gaps of the usual discourse. What do we value as a political virtue? What are the core values of democracy in the modern era? What is a democratic culture? Can a democratic culture coexist with a predatory capitalist corporatism? What is a tolerant pluralistic public philosophy? Is democracy just about human rights? Is the key to achieving a secure democratic future based on acts of deliberation or through contingent direct action? What is the nature of public dissent and how have the conditions enabling dissent changed?

These are some of the questions posed in this book. I can only arrive at a directional sense of where I believe the best prospects lie. So in this sense I am not writing a manifesto for a new beginning in democratic politics – but rather critically exploring political possibilities. Perhaps the best politics lies in the aspirational, in what we hope to achieve rather than a pragmatic acceptance of what is simply achievable. There is a well-defined strand of normative idealism with both republican and deliberationist approaches to democracy, and this will be addressed in the book. There is a rich tapestry of ideas contained in these approaches that opens a polemic about the nature of politics, yet they both neglect important aspects that a realist perspective brings out. Notwithstanding, the moralistic undertones to my claims about politics and public culture arise not from a desire to shape individuals into one-dimensional moral agents, but to provoke a self-questioning about values in the Socratic tradition that I believe a democratic culture must rest on. Hence, this is largely a reflexive task which begins and endures with the individual through processes of self-examination. In this sense, the best hope for democracy does not lie with establishing procedural rational manifestos, but rather with normative constructions and robust dialogue around the expectations of politics and community. This recognition however must also be accompanied with an immanent critique of the serious limitations between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ concerning the context in which suggested changes need to occur.

Concern over values and an ethics of practice I argue is central to any attempt to understand democracy and its current discontents. Democracy like any other construction of participation and politics has its genuine supporters and enemies. And like many debates and disputes over distinctions they rarely deliver a concise definition that all parties adhere to beyond the tension of tolerable difference. To what extent these debates are representative of a clash of values or differences in approaches to achieve similar ends is not always easy to distinguish. I am tempted however; considering the ever-growing corporate reign over social and political space and the governmentalities of the state; to accept that we are amidst a serious conflict over values, which are grounded irrevocably to class and economic interests. As will become clear, I believe these conflicts to be irreconcilable in part and choices will have to be made over which values should underpin a politics that nurtures a democratic culture. The question then remains: who makes the decisions and for whose benefit?

The so-called ‘War on Terror’ has brought these issues to the forefront of discussions concerning civil liberties and the duties of government, as have the growing concerns of the security state and the invasive presence of surveillance. There is an intuitive sense that disillusionment in what democracy can deliver is widespread. While the great democracies of the modern world are experiencing rates of economic growth and high levels of consumer confidence, there is a sense that this is simply mass society in denial. Long-term unemployment, under-employment, family and social services in decay, increasing alcohol and drug abuse, and the continuing anxiety over the commercialization of essential services are making for a malaise of angst and fear. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008 and the collapse of many financial institutions, combined with crisis of the EU and the endless woes of debt and its perceived impact on investor confidence, are all resounding to a wail from conservative writers and politicians to ‘reign in the debt by austerity measures’ and a tougher stance on public spending. As I write, the United States is in ‘shutdown mode’, mainly due to a fierce ideological war over ‘big government’ with a looming threat that it may default on debt and thus send the world into another serious economic depression. The politics this imbues is not democracy friendly. The endless facile comments from political leaders concerning economic growth with virtually no concern shown for growing gaps in inequality and rising personal debt to underwrite this growth is another source of incredulity, along with the continuous attack on civil liberties sanctioned by an infantile mantra of scaremongering, are ill-winds for a public-centred democracy. When one extends this out to an ever-increasing concentration of media ownership and its shrill neo-conservative celebrities engaged in a war on journalism, the angst deepens. Matched with an increasing surveillance regime of the security state, the freedom to think, speak and act on that agency is not as straightforward as one may have previously thought. It does not take much effort to realize that under such pressure the maintenance, indeed reconstitution of a pluralist democratic space becomes imperative, yet more and more distant.

What I am calling for in this book is not another instrumentalist list of legalistic provisions required for a new blueprint of democracy; although I am mindful that political action requires legal sanction for genuine change to occur. Rather, I am motivated by engaging an interest in the language and spirit of democracy as a values-based culture, one not solely driven by technocratic devices but a genuine reframing of the values necessary to underpin any peculiar democratic practice. Sorting through these values is not a simple task and I do not offer any solace for those expecting some highly innovative normative framework to emerge. My concern is not so much with the functions of democratic governance, or its failure, but with the prevailing acceptance of what constitutes a democratic end. Of course if these democratic ends are aligned with elite interests and presented as a public good, any perceived crisis is negated. Along the way I keep mindful of the fact that a ‘past perfect democracy’ has never existed, except in the realms of metaphysical speculation and idealism. Hence, we may not be able to achieve an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ but we can expose the limitations of the ‘is’ in order to build narratives of possibilities – if politics is not this, then it is nothing.

In many respects, this a call for greater plurality in the sphere of political discourse, of language not defined and constrained by boundaries of acceptability, in terms of what values are considered legitimate for public debate. One brief example is the dominance of market-based values, which are sacrosanct to democratic thought. Thus, any conception or public utterance that diminishes or marginalizes these values and their intractable link with democratic politics is duly negated. Through the process I will take my intellectual cues from many thinkers who have contributed to building an informed democratic discourse, some who have become rather unfashionable, yet close scrutiny of their work reveals potent insight for contemporary times. Berlin, Nietzsche, Foucault, Geuss and other critical theorists figure prominently and many others who inform my analysis to an extent that this is a work rich in philosophical debates as a testament to the complexity and ambiguity of the human condition. Hence, these insights have profound implications for how we do politics and how we experience freedom as individuals.

The need to critically re-assess our values as an imperative to establish the basis for a humane democratic culture is only part of the picture, albeit a fundamental one. Part of the argument developed in this book is that critical scrutiny must also be applied on the state and its modern incarnation as a multitude of sites of governmentality that in many respects work against conceptions of a public democratic culture. One is tempted here to suggest that such a focus may reinvigorate the classic neo-Marxist discourses on the state/civil society dichotomy, not so. There is little doubt in my mind at least that the modern liberal democratic state is a vehicle of privilege, power, status and class interests. But as with the fact/value dichotomy within philosophical ranks much of what passes for simple dualisms is untenable. Hence, I reject a state-led utopian movement for progressive politics as much as I reject an anti-market approach to the democratic objective. So reforms based on a collective unconscious of grassroots ‘back to village’ ideas and actions are equally remote. My negativity is not based on a total rejection of the values each may bring to the discussion however, but rather on the propensity for fundamentalism to arise in the ranks of those seeking the privilege of political power. Hence, in an obvious homage to Hannah Arendt, thinking and judgment figure heavily in my narrative, particularly the historical contexts in which certain judgments are rendered rational and unassailable. Subsequently, recognition is given to the role of emotion and passion in the formation of political values and how emotional responses to perceived political problems can either reinvigorate democratic life through imaginative thought or nourish authoritarian exclusionist values.

One of the key objectives in the book is to interrogate the possibilities of democratic culture within a liberal framework. This does not imply that liberalism is the only intellectual and moral canvass from which to examine the potential for democratic reform but as argued later, it is the most promising in terms of making a discursive space possible for the necessary discussion, debate and polemic to take place. Is it not? This last question is not designed as provocative rhetoric but as a genuine inquiry into the possibilities of discursive space when the very language of politics, of contested conversation is being seriously threatened and undermined. Modern republican thinkers for example argue strongly that their brand of democracy alleviates the excesses and paradoxes of liberalism, while critics suggest they have not really left liberalism behind. Much of the debate hinges upon conceptions of negative and positive freedom, so considerable attention will be given to this dimension. Liberal democratic authoritarianism is not a tautology but a systemic assault on value pluralism, democratic activism and political dissent. Wolin (2010) uses the term ‘inverted totalitarianism’ to describe a condition that represents a political coming of age of corporate power and the political demobilization of the citizenry. My emphasis on the authoritarian interlude also reflects on aspects of democratic life that are less people-centred and more engrossed in powerful elite interests. From this account one could predictably support the current emphasis on deliberative democracy as a way and means to give expression to this interlude. However, I question the potential of deliberation as an activity of public politics to enrich the democratic experience in a meaningful way, particularly if sources of excessive power are not directly addressed. The focus on deliberative democracy may well be justified as a measure of public engagement, of people participating in the important process of acting in concert to affect change, but unless this results in what Benjamin Constant referred to as a sharing of sovereignty then the sources of power remain unchanged. Public politics is a meaningless spectacle if due regard is not given to purposeful acts of dispossession and exploitation that frequently defines the nature of democratic life. Deliberation as a democratic process to this extent, must be more than a talk-fest by acknowledging and engaging sources of power that undermine a people-centred politics. A genuine public politics must therefore also contain ethical acts and strategies of direct action – however what form this takes is also an area of disputation. The advent of social networking represents innovative forms of public resistance and dissent, yet their effectiveness remains a point of contention among theorists. The digital public sphere may represent a direct threat to entrenched power by subverting normal channels of communication but this too is becoming a battlefield as the internet itself becomes a site for struggle. Either way, it is a reminder that violence and conflict are natural and enduring features of liberal democracy, or more precisely – neoliberal democracy! This will be explored closely later in the book but for now it is worth noting that an emphasis on neoliberal as opposed to liberal is simply to signify a different set of values driving the political agenda which sets it apart from classical liberal concepts attached to the entity known as democracy.

Throughout this book examples will be taken from the Australian, United Kingdom, and United States democratic experience post-9/11. This is an obvious point of departure since much of the discussion of the changes to global politics and its national variants stem from this one tragic event. I do not simply posit that the strategies and practices of governmentality changed in one epiphenomenal moment as a concerted response to a real and imagined threat. Neoliberalism as practiced under Thatcher and Reagan prepared the ground extremely well for what was to follow. Hence, the neoliberal road is paved with many assaults on progressive agendas, in particular the great shibboleth of the welfare state. Rather, more ominous is what has become acceptable in the public mind as to the duty of government and the values now being ushered in to underpin this new security conscious democracy. There is presently a concerted attack on welfare in many democratic states, with many changes being ushered in by stealth that have the combined impact of negating preceding rights and benefits, especially for the aged and young unemployed. In some cases, these attempts to demolish any semblance of a social contract and the obligations of state are met with a roaring silence.

The politics of fear can only genuinely be successful if the mainstream media is compliant and soft on the role of the state. The electronic media has particularly assisted in the creation of ‘moral panics’ over a range of issues but specifically those related to national security. An array of ‘shock jocks’ continue to perpetuate public fear with impunity while serious publicly funded media are thwarted in their research endeavour by the continuous reduction in funding. The poverty of political debate within the pages of most broadsheet newspapers is an indictment of how investigative journalism has diminished in terms of confronting power. With few exceptions, the pages are often full of the endless serve and volley of political leaders making statements of propaganda. The result is a noise of opinion, a deficit of facts and little if any critical analysis. The media is irrevocably ‘embedded’ in the values debate and any discussion on the future of democracy must incorporate a scrutiny of mass communications and the formation of public opinion. One of the underlying questions of the book is: What is the nature of dissent in modern liberal democracies? Freedom of speech and the right to actively dissent has been a cherished shibboleth of liberalism, so what does this new authoritarian variant regard as a legitimate response to such dissent? One illuminating case is the response to the Occupy Movement and to the advent of WikiLeaks and whistleblowing generally, both are given due emphasis later in the book as compelling moments of how public democratic demands are interpreted as threats to elite constructs of democracy. The democratic possibilities of social network internet communications technology also receives due critical attention as concerns are growing over the corporate management of this phenomenon, and the libertarian promise such technology may hold for a renewed political space.

The institutions of the ‘secret security state’ and the discourse of ‘perpetual war’ have to also be viewed alongside the continuing attack on public democracy by financial market elites and vested corporate interests. These sources of anti-democracy are interconnected and merge to form a hegemonic presence in contemporary political reality, often subsumed under the rather innocuous banner of neoliberalism. Yet the narratives that underpin this movement from the early days of inception to the contemporary era are often presented in the language of neutrality and rational social science. The political objectives are often disguised by rational appeals for scientific logic and ‘common-sense’ economic reality, aided by globalization narratives promoting the values of global free trade and the movement of finance capital. Subsequently, neoliberalism occupies a central part of this commentary as both a repository for a specific anti-democratic economic rationalism, and for an accompanying political discourse defined by the maintenance and protection of power networks to secure an elite form of neoliberal democracy devoid of genuine public politics. The capacity to transcend the current dogma relating to the constituent elements of democratic life as fed to us by political and corporate elites is dependent on our commitment to a pluralistic civility, an equal share of the inclination to listen as well as to speak. This has as much to do with ourselves and our own moral compasses than with any external guiding agents whether market or state. However such recognition does not negate the intervening role of each, indeed it may well make such intervention imperative.

At this juncture it is important to sketch out some preliminary thematic directions to similar arguments in a growing literature, and to point out significant differences in approach. In my earlier book The Decline of Politics (2003) I attempted to identify, through an exploration of the key works of Arendt, Habermas and Foucault – the multifaceted shrinking of the public sphere through increased corporatization and the neoliberal state. The concern here was the changing nature of political life of the citizenry in their ability to participate in a meaningful way in determining the shape and daily practices of life in an advanced liberal democracy. In 2008, Sheldon Wolin’s Democracy Incorporated was published, which followed similar themes, but focused mainly on democracy in the United States. In that work he proposed the terms ‘inverted totalitarianism’ and ‘managed democracy’ to describe the power structures impacting upon our traditional understanding of how democracies are supposed to work. I will explore some of these themes latter in the book, but for now it is necessary to sketch out some important differences. While there is general agreement by critical theorists that democracy is undergoing transformations the conceptualization of these forces are varied. Some emphasize the critical importance of capitalism itself by pointing to the class based functioning of global inequality as capitalism increasingly globalizes, such as the regular contributors to Monthly Review. Others have taken a more sociological look at the pathologies of modernity such as narcissistic lifestyles of indulgence and unbridled consumption as producing a culture of acceptance and wilful compliance, which in turn produces a fetish for acquisition and a disassociation from the political life (Hedges, 2009, Berman, 2010). Some have focused on the increasing militarization of democratic politics and the dominance of foreign policy over domestic policy setting (Johnson, 2010).

There are also now appearing a plethora of books and commentaries on the woes and corrupt practices of global finance capital as representing a failure of democratic politics, as economic hardship continues to rise with the most vulnerable in society (Crouch, 2004; Madrick, 2011). Crouch (2004) for example argues that a more apt term to describe contemporary democratic woes is ‘post-democracy’. He argues that western liberal democracies are moving into a stage of post-democracy where the formal institutions of democracy continue to exist but the pervasive culture of participation and engagement which sustained an active democracy is increasingly exhausted. The decline of manufacturing and the traditional working class, as well as the advance of economic globalization, has hollowed out processes of democratic engagement to produce an isolated, disconnected and self-referential political class cut off from the public they claim to represent. The result is a politics dominated by elites where influential corporate interests are the only group within society able to make their voice heard. Their pervasive, though often unseen, lobbying activity shapes the priorities of government while engagement with the wider public is increasingly shaped by ‘spin doctors’ and other advertising professionals. Crouch (2004) argues that these are tendencies which suggest that democracy is more a legacy of the past than part of our future.

Osborne (2007) also highlights the problems with the rise of a political class lacking any of the traditional values aligned with democratic politics. According to Osborne (2007) this new class now stands at the pinnacle of the British social and economic structure. It sets social conventions, and demarcates the boundaries against which both public and private behaviour is defined. Unlike the old Establishment, the political class depends directly or indirectly on the state for its special privileges, career structure and increasingly for its financial support. This visceral connection distinguishes it from all previous British governing elites, which were connected much more closely to civil society and were frequently hostile or indifferent to central government. The class is represented by self-serving governing elites that only concern itself with the business of government and no sense of obligatory ethic concerning the citizenry. A managerialist language pervades which has become arcane, always self-referential, often concerned with the techniques of voter manipulation and relying on the anti-democratic assumption that there are matters which ordinary people are either incapable of understanding, or which it would be too dangerous for them to know. Another dimension of this language is its capacity to thwart scrutiny concerning truth by obfuscation and political-speak. The language of this political class is characterized by the use of short but artfully constructed sentences which create in the mind of the hearer the impression of being easy to understand, but which are designed to mislead. Osborne argues that we need to understand these changes to the political landscape in Britain by recognizing a dramatic shift in the values oper...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Paradoxes of Liberalism
• 3 Liberalism and Value Pluralism: The Precarious Equilibrium
• 4 Deliberation and Democratic Justice
• 5 The Nuances of Judgment
• 6 Dissent and the Politics of Defiance
• 7 Exceptionalism and Entitlement
• 8 The Shadow of Narcissism
• 9 Technocrats, Cabals and Non-representation
• 10 Deliberative Democracy and the Ecological Imperative
• 11 Techno-Democracy and the Limits of Communicative Reason
• 12 Towards a Democratic Culture: A Reflexive Intent
• 13 Democracy and the Imagination
• References
• Index