Prepared by Wobbly Squirrel Collective for Why War?
“One conception of democracy has it that a democratic society is one in which the public has the means to participate in some meaningful way in the management of their own affairs and the means of information are open and free. […] An alternative conception of democracy is that the public must be barred from managing their own affairs and the means of information must be kept narrowly and rigidly controlled. That may sound like an odd conception of democracy, but it’s important to understand that it is the prevailing conception.”— Noam Chomsky
The recent Controversy over the Diebold documents has generated serious questions about the existence of free and fair elections in the United States. Throughout this scandal, many writers have equated the existence of such elections with an ambiguous thing that they call “democracy.” This is a word that has been harshly abused. It has been tossed around by rich men writing laws, slandered by the “democratic” party, and dealt its death blow by serving as the justification for a hundred different wars and ‘police actions.’
With the recent passing of anti-protest laws in Miami, the USA-PATRIOT Act, and the potential VICTORY Act, I think it’s high time we sat down to determine just what democracy is, and then figure out whether or not we’ve got it. And if we don’t, and we agree that democracy is a good thing, then I recommend that we do whatever we can to get it.
What Is Democracy?
Most people would agree that democracy entails more than simply the process of elections. Saddam Hussein held elections in Iraq, but since he was the only candidate from which to choose, they hardly qualified as anything close to what we would call "democracy." Here in the United States we usually have two or three candidates to choose from, which I suppose is a bit better than one. Still, the word ‘democracy’ holds more weight than simply the right to choose which wealthy white man will be your ruler for the next four years. Shouldn’t you also have the right to accurate information about that wealthy white man’s past? Shouldn’t you have the right to equal expression of your views about which wealthy white man should hold office, or whether or not there should even be any wealthy white men in power all the time?
Whether or not voting as an institution can ever bring about true change is a topic for another article, but I think that we can all agree that voting is useless if everyone votes for the ‘wrong’ thing. Inherent in true democracy, then, is an enlightened public with informed understanding of the issues and solutions and the tools to express their demands to their supposed representatives.
Political scientist Robert Dahl has identified five major characteristics that a polity must achieve in order to qualify as democratic:
- effective participation
- equality in voting
- gaining enlightened understanding
- exercising final control over the agenda
- inclusion of adults
These characteristics seem reasonable enough; if democracy is ‘government by the people,’ then the people must be able to effectively participate in their government, if a system of voting is used then all votes must be counted equally (sorry, Diebold), the people must know enough about what is going on — and have access to uncensored sources of information — so that they know how to participate in their own best interest, and all adults must have final say over the agenda of their government. Now that we have laid out the main criteria for a democracy, let’s examine if we encounter any problems finding these characteristics here in the United States.
The Democracy Test
Let’s do a little test. Go watch FOX News. Then go and walk on a picket line of striking workers. First the ‘patriotic’ reporters, then the riot-cops’ fiberglass batons, will give you an idea of just how much democracy we can squeeze out of our current system.
Effective participation: you get to choose your master, true, but were you involved in the process of deciding who should run, how many candidates should be elected, what the duties of their offices should be, or what sorts of policies they might make once elected? When you take a class in school, does participation mean active discussion, or a multiple choice test? (Granted, due to the absurd under-funding of public education in America, this question may be less rhetorical than desired.) When voting fails to provide everything that is needed for a citizen’s well being, do they have the right to effective direct democracy to attain their needs? Ask a projectionist from the Somerville Theater in MA, who, along with his co-workers, attempted to form a union to ask for living wage and better working conditions. While walking a totally legal picket line—entirely on the sidewalk—Tim was assaulted by four members of the Somerville Police Department who without warning had unleashed a painful volley of baton blows before they slammed him into a plate glass window, forcing him to go to the emergency room.
Police have become militarized.
This is only one incident. Look at the pictures of nonviolent protesters against the WTO in Seattle being sprayed with tear gas and pepper spray as they huddle on the ground trying to breathe.
In preparation for the FTAA Protest on November 19th, officials in Miami recently approved a provision that will ban congregations of more than nine people in a public space, and prevent protesters from carrying, among other things, bandannas, water balloons, and puppets supported by wooden sticks, and also ban public dancing or music, and banners made out of anything but cloth. The idea that dancing could be illegal (even for just a few days) in a major city of the United States—that bastion of freedom and democracy in the Western Hemisphere—raises serious questions about the nature of democracy in this country. Questions that will probably be further stressed under the rain of teargas and rubber bullets that activists expect to face as they attempt to shut down the FTAA talks. Police brutality and other forces of state repression are effective at limiting the American conception of “participation” to strictly “legitimate” avenues of change; i.e. those with the least potential to actually change something.
Another piece of legislation created by and for the protections of the “democratic” system in the United States is the Patriot Act. This reactionary measure is supposed to fight terrorism by targeting security risks inside the United States. It gives the Department of Justice the right to track the library records of individuals, supposedly to identify potentially dangerous citizens by the books they read. What freedom is there in scaring people away from learning? The Patriot Act also severely restricts and eliminates the rights of immigrants, and has already resulted in the detention of hundreds of immigrants, including a graduate student at MIT who was dragged out of a lecture he was teaching by FBI Agents with sub-machine guns because he was enrolled in three classes and writing his doctoral thesis instead of taking four classes, as his visa required. The detainees are not allowed to speak to family, friends, or a lawyer, and are not even told what they have done wrong. In a country almost entirely populated by immigrants, the Patriot Act targets modern immigrants and executes a direct violation of basic human rights. In the works is the Patriot Act II, named the Victory Act, which would allow citizens to be stripped of their citizenship and detained indefinitely. All in the name of protecting our democracy, of course. When the government has the right to essentially eliminate anyone they see as a threat—i.e., anyone who has the potential to change things—effective participation is simply absent.
Equality in Voting: Yes, everyone’s vote is equally counted and disregarded. I guess that's a start...
What does voting accomplish?
Enlightened Understanding: This is perhaps the most troubling of Dahl’s characteristics, since it implies the horrid notion that the public should be informed about important issues before they forfeit their rights to respond to their elected “leaders.” The media, TV, newspapers, and magazines, are the most influential parts of society in determining the public’s opinion and—theoretically—facilitating their enlightened understanding. But a glance at the cover of the New York Times, or worse, a half-hour segment of CNN news, casts a healthy dose of fear into those who seek a truly democratic society. Noam Chomsky writes: “The role of the media in contemporary politics forces us to ask what kind of a world and what kind of a society do we want to live in, and in particular in what sense of democracy do we want this to be a democratic society?” (Chomsky, 2001, p. 6). The recent war in Iraq shows how powerful the media’s influence can be. We all believed them when they told us that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and by the time we all realized they didn’t, the NY Times had moved on to a different topic and the nation’s attention span for trivial things like truth and freedom had been exhausted. There are alternative sources of information in America, (Indymedia, Infoshop, Democracy Now!), but the state takes great pains to try to limit their effect. The Independent Media Center in Seattle was raided by police during the Seattle WTO protests to prevent the IMC from disseminating important information about police violence to the protesters in the streets. In general, the extent of our enlightened understanding is whatever understanding the elite that control the corporate media want us to understand, essentially: work, consume, don’t worry about it.
Control of the Agenda: When was the last time that you marched down to congress and told them that you think they ought to be discussing education, healthcare, and housing, rather than whether to spend $400 billion or $450 billion on being an empire next year? The general failure of lobbying groups like the Sierra Club and PIRG have shown us that lobbying is more or less token participation allowed by the elite to appease the masses. The fact is that we as citizens have little or no control over the agenda of our government. In general we elect people who elect other people who will then theoretically vote for legislation that will theoretically be enforced sometime ten years down the road. Is this really the most efficient and participatory form of government that we can muster?
Inclusion of Adults: Even nominal adherence to this principal is a recent phenomenon in the United States. Minorities and women can now vote, (but has it really done much in the way of relieving patriarchy or systemic racism?) Still, many adults are not included in the political workings of the country. The homeless and impoverished often do not (or cannot) register to vote, they have no say in the nation’s policy, and if they attempt to organize as a movement of people, they will invariably be crushed by tear gas canisters covered up by a biased media. Arguably, the most vulnerable members of our society have the most need to petition the government for a redress of their grievances, but in our system of profiteering exploitation, they have the least ability to do so. Many people wonder why the working class rarely votes; why should they vote if they get screwed by the system no matter which wealthy white man stands as the figurehead of the system?
Direct Democracy
Thus, despite what many peace-activists chant at rallies, ‘this’ is distinctly not ‘what democracy looks like.’ (I am often amazed at these activists ability to continue this chant even as the heavily armed police force them onto the sidewalk.) So what does democracy look like? As the CrimethInc. Writers Collective put it, “More important than any other resource is the raw awareness that you have the power to change the world. This is the hardest one to develop and share, and the most essential. It doesn’t help to give your endorsement to political representatives, social programs, or radical ideologies when the fundamental problem is that you don’t know your own strength. Self-determination begins and ends with your initiatives and actions, whether you live under a totalitarian regime or the canopy of a rain forest. It must be established on a daily basis, by acting back on the world that acts upon you. Whether that means calling in sick to work on a sunny day, starting a neighborhood garden with your friends, or toppling a government.” Democracy is a camping trip with friends, a Palestinian tearing down a portion of The Wall, a campfire sing-along, a banner dropped from the side of a bank, a minimum wage-strike, a homeless squatter reading Emerson by flashlight. Use democracy, don’t let it use you.
“We own half the world, oh say can you see?
And the name for our profits is ‘democracy!’
So like it or not you will have to be free
Because we’re the cops of the world.” — Phil Ochs