M-TH: Democracy and the Tyranny of the Majority

[LeoCasey]

I have the feeling that this exchange has reached the limit of usefulness,
given James H.'s inability or unwillingness to do more than decry, again and
again, the "distrust" for the people and popular decision-making which he
imputes to Justin and myself without the slightest textual evidence.

On the issue of American racism and its populist moments, we are left with
this:
<<Most of the current sociological material you cite suffers from a
failure to look at the historical dynamics of the class and race
struggles in the South. Like many sociological treatises on race, they
dehistoricise it, and flatten it out as an essentially contradiction-
free situation, which could not be further from the truth.>>

What I cited is the most current left and Marxist historical analyses on the
nature of American racial slavery and Jim Crow segregation. That James H.
could characterize the work of Eric Foner, C. Vann Woodward, James MacPherson,
Edmund Morgan or Eugene Genovese as ahistorical sociology shows that he has
never read any of it, but wants nonetheless to dismiss it with vapid
generalization. (There is a sociological literature on American racism, but I
cited none of it.) Note that James H. cites NOTHING in the way of any
substantive research -- sociological, historical or whatever -- in support of
his position that American racism was entirely the product of elite
manipulation, and that he entirely evades any discussion of the populist
character of the genocide conducted indigenous peoples or the anti-Asian
racism on the West Coast. But he clearly wants to get past historical
questions quickly, and move on to philosophical issues not subject to
empirical verification.

James H. tells us that he accepts the label of "Rouseauian" as a complement,
and that anyone who rejects the Rousseauian argument of the natural innocence
and goodness of people must believe in the "natural badness and guilt of the
people." The possibility that someone might reject altogether Manichean world
views where people are either naturally good and innocent or naturally bad and
guilty never strikes James H. as a possibility. In the (perhaps vain) hope
that this argument can be moved beyond James H. imputations of "distrust" of
the people, let us take a look at Rousseau's concept of the "general will"
which James H. so happpily accepts as his own. Here is a passage of a study of
Rousseau I wrote in another context: 

In his important study of the evolution of the concept of 'general will',
Patrick Riley has shown that Rousseau, following the lead of Montesquieu,
borrowed this notion from the theological writings of 17th century French
moralists. The Jansenists Antoine Arnauld and Blaise Pascal had been the first
to use the concept in an attempt to resolve a contentious question on the
nature of divine justice and mercy:
if 'God wills that all men be saved' -- as St. Paul asserts in a letter to his
disciple Timothy -- does he have a general will that produces universal
salvation? And if he does not, why does he will particularly that some men be
saved?

Gradually, this notion of the general will acquired a civic meaning,
especially at the hands of Malebranche, until Montesquieu adopted a completely
secular concept in his _Spirit of the Laws_. However, Rousseau had read the
moralists as well as Montesquieu, and was fully cognizant of the theological
connotations of the term as divine will. Indeed, in this respect the general
will was particularly well-suited to Rousseauian political theory as a balance
to his other secularized theological concept, amour-propre, which had
originated in moralist discourse as the sin of human pride against the divine
will.

Traces of the theological origins of the concept of general will can be seen
in Rousseau's formulation of it as an expression of popular sovereignty.
Rousseau was not the first thinker, of course, to develop the idea of popular
sovereignty -- that the rule of the people was the only legitimate form of
rule. But his particular formulation of popular sovereignty as the general
will still stands as a significant watershed in political thought because of
its radical, uncompromising nature: for Rousseau, the only legitimate form of
rule was the direct and immediate rule of the people. And in this context, the
attributes assigned to the sovereign general will are not all that different
from those of the divine will.

In the opening chapters of Book II of the Social Contract, Rousseau delineates
these attributes of the sovereign general will. "Sovereignty, being only the
exercise of the general will, can never be alienated," Rousseau notes, and
"can only be represented by itself." Moreover, the general will is
"indivisible". Finally, the sovereign is infallible: "the general will is
always right and always tends toward the public utility." What is interesting
about these three attributes is not simply that they assimilate the qualities
of the divine general will into the body politic's general will, but that in
so doing they recreate in that human general will the essential characteristic
of Rousseau's state of nature -- unalienated relations of immediate and direct
presence.
Therein lies the key to one of the more perplexing aspects of Rousseau's
political theory: his critique of and antipathy towards representative forms
of rule. Since alienation and the loss of presence were synonymous for
Rousseau, any form of representation (re-presentation), be it political (as in
a legislature) or artistic (as in the theatre), was in principle wrong. The
general will constructed in accordance with the principles of the state of
nature must, therefore, be one of direct popular rule without representation.
It only exists when the people meets collectively, as the decision-making
sovereign. Similarly, just as man in the state of nature is unalienated as an
'absolute whole', so too must the general will be one. And if these two
conditions are met, then the general will -- like man in the state of nature
-- will know its true needs.

Note how faithfully James H.'s discourse has reproduced the Rousseauian
theology of the general will: for him, as for Rousseau, the people in their
general will are infallible, indivisible, and inalienable. Note, too, the
utopian character of the Rousseauian general will which James H. adopts -- it
can not be represented, but must be expressed in an immediate and direct way.
For those who see "revolutionary politics" in terms of the eschatology of the
"new Jerusalem" in which all alienation and representation is swept asunder,
and the wonderful and pure wholeness of the people is restored in a conflict-
free world, for those whom the political sect functions in the same way that
the religious sect functions, awaiting the second coming and the establishment
of heaven on earth, Rousseau is a rich vein of rhetorical tools. For those who
want to engage in political struggles for democracy and liberation as they
actually take shape around us, this is all quite irrelevant.

In the Manichaean world view of James H., those who reject Rouseauian
conceptions of democracy as utopian and romantic, are rejecting democracy
altogether, as if Rousseau (and James H.) have some sort of intellectual
monopoly on the concept. Moreover, those who suggest that notions of the
natural goodness and innocence of the people are naive, and that refusals to
come to grips with the possibility of tyrannies of the majority is, underneath
all of the romanticism, a refusal to come to grips with the realities of
racial, gender and sexual oppression, must believe in the polar opposite, that
people are naturally evil: you are either a Rousseauian or a Hobbesian. What
an incredibly impoverished view of political theory and political struggle.
Heaven (or general will) forbid, that one dispense altogether with notions of
natural goodness and natural evil, and attempt to understand the ways in which
human beings are the products of culture. 

Leo
 


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