The Troubles with Democracy Off the Fence: Morality, Politics, and Society The series is published in partnership with the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics, and Ethics (CAPPE), University of Brighton. Series editors: Bob Brecher, professor of moral philosophy, University of Brighton Robin Dunford, senior lecturer in globalization and war, University of Brighton Michael Neu, senior lecturer in philosophy, politics, and ethics, University of Brighton Off the Fence presents short, sharply argued texts in applied moral and political philosophy, with an interdisciplinary focus. The series constitutes a source of arguments on the substantive problems that applied philosophers are concerned with: contemporary real-world issues relating to violence, human nature, jus- tice, equality and democracy, self and society. The series demonstrates applied philosophy to be at once rigorous, relevant, and accessible—philosophy-in-use. Recent titles in the series: The Right of Necessity: Moral Cosmopolitanism and Global Poverty Alejandra Mancilla Complicity: Criticism between Collaboration and Commitment Thomas Docherty The State and the Self: Identity and Identities Maren Behrensen Just Liberal Violence: Sweatshops, Torture, War Michael Neu The Troubles with Democracy Jeff Noonan The Troubles with Democracy Jeff Noonan London • New York Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2019 by Jeff Noonan All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Available A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-7866-0427-9 (hardcover) ISBN 978-1-7866-0428-6 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN: 978-1-78660-427-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-78660-428-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN: 978-1-78660-429-3 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America Contents Introduction: Democracy Today vii 1 Democracy and Self-Determination 1 Democracy as a Social Form: Historical Overview 5 Life-Requirements and Self-Determination 14 2 Liberalism and Democracy 27 Classical Liberalism 29 Egalitarian Liberalism 32 Cosmopolitan Democracy 40 Republican Democracy 45 3 The Real Contradiction between Inequality and Democracy 55 Income Inequality and Contemporary Capitalism 56 Life-Resources, Political Power, and Democracy 65 Inequality as a Life or Death Issue 73 4 Right-Wing Populism as a Threat to Democracy 81 Democratic Deconsolidation? 85 Populism and Right-Wing Populism 88 Unmet Needs and Democratic Solidarity 96 5 Radical Democracy: Agonistic Theory and Horizontalist Practice 107 Democracy and Difference 108 Horizontalism and Democratic Politics 118 v vi Contents 6 Shared Life-Interests and Democratic Self-Determination 135 Intersectionality, Social Reproduction, and the Life-Value of Struggle against Oppression 139 Democratic Solidarity 148 Public Institutions and Democratic Renewal 153 Further Reading 163 Bibliography 171 Index 181 About the Author 187 Introduction Democracy Today Liberal political theorists are anxious that liberal-democracy is in trouble. Political scientists Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk suggest that support for existing political institutions is collapsing in Europe and America. The rise of right-wing populist forces signals a willingness to entertain authoritarian alternatives. In their 2016 paper they claim to have made the “deeply disturbing” discovery that “citizens in a number of supposedly consolidated democracies in North America and Western Europe have not only grown more critical of their political leaders . . . they have also become more cynical about the role of democracy as a political system . . . and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives.”1 They argue that citizens—and, apparently, especially the young—seem to be drifting away from a commitment to liberal-democracy. “In virtually all cases,” they argue, “the generation gap is striking, with the proportion of younger citizens who believe it is essential to live in a democracy falling to a minority. What is more, this disaffection with the democratic form of government is accompanied by a wider skepticism towards liberal institutions.”2 However, they give no argument to support their identification of “liberal institutions” and “democracy.” Thinkers outside the liberal mainstream are also concerned that the liberal-democratic capitalist world has crossed a threshold. Giorgio Agamben worries that we now live in a “state of exception” in which a permanent crisis, fanned by the flames of the “War on Terror” and fear of infiltration by Islamic terrorists, has in effect vii viii Introduction suspended the rule of law and constitutional norms.3 In an analogous vein, Colin Crouch speaks of a “post-democratic order,” in which democratic values decline because citizens are no longer engaged in the drama of self-government. They withdraw to the private sphere and let politicians make the decisions.4 “The people” are reduced to a slogan invoked to justify whatever decision unaccountable executives and politicians take. Elections are bought; politicians are in the pocket of big business; all parties converge toward a formless “center” that simply complies with techno-economic dictates; whole populations are surveyed and monitored; racialized populations are surveilled, policed, imprisoned in penitentiaries or, in the case of migrants, concentration camps, where they can be harassed, beaten, or murdered. Those with some money are free to shop, the rest are monitored and humiliated for the sake of increasingly meager welfare payments. These trends are not inventions, but they are also one-sided. They ignore equally powerful counterevidence coming from other surveys and the street that people are mobilizing to assert democratic power against the undemocratic implications of liberal and capitalist institu- tions and norms. Right-wing populists might be in power, but they have spawned, especially in the United States, a vigorous opposition, also centered on youth. A University of Chicago poll found that 62 percent of Americans ages eighteen to thirty-four—the very age suffering the most from student debt and precarious employment—believed a strong government was needed to handle the economic crisis.5 Belief that a strong government is needed to counter the very undemocratic forces of the market might be illiberal, but it is hardly undemocratic. We know from history that if markets are unregulated, the majority of people suffer; if governments can intervene to ensure better outcomes for the majority, that outcome is democratic. The mistake is to confuse democ- racy with liberal-democracy. I will argue that the future of democracy depends upon finding ways to go beyond the democratic limitations of liberal-capitalist society. Liberalism and democracy agree that people are equal, but democracy, I will argue, goes beyond abstract principle to find ways to ensure that people’s real interests are not only voiced but also satisfied by public policy. The last decade is hardly the first crisis of democracy. There was never a democratic Golden Age, and people have always had to fight for their voices to be heard and their real needs satisfied. Winning Democracy Today ix constitutional rights has been a tremendous step forward for the major- ity of people, but democracy requires more than constitutional rights. It requires social and economic institutions and norms that ensure, so far as possible, that people are not dominated by a minority ruling class or economic forces beyond their control. Democracy is not just liberal political argument and choice, it is the institutionalization of our power as social self-conscious human beings to determine our collective life. It does not solve every problem on its own, but it ensures that everyone’s interests are fully expressed and everyone who is affected by a decision can participate in making it. A more democratic society would still have to choose to transition to clean energy, for example; but in a more dem- ocratic society, the choice would not be swayed by the outsize power of fossil fuel corporations. It is possible to choose badly in a democracy, but that is different from not really being able to choose at all because you have the right to vote but no effective social power. The struggle for democracy, I will show, is a struggle for effective social power. The key task for real democrats, therefore, is to ask ourselves why right-wing populists have been successful. Foa and Mounk find part of the answer, but they do not understand its implications. “Even as democracy has come to be the only form of government widely viewed as legitimate, it has lost the trust of many citizens who no longer believe that democracy can deliver on their most pressing needs and prefer- ences.”6 But it is not “democracy” that has failed to deliver, it is politi- cal parties and corporations that have failed to meet citizens’ needs, all the while encouraging forms of production and consumption that undermine the long-term future of human life on the planet. The solu- tion, then, is to build new political parties and social and economic sys- tems, and that is the unexamined demand beneath the populist upsurge. Democratic activists need to respond with positive ideas that that can win back the people swayed by populist mythologies. If democracy is going to advance, then it needs to solve a problem most proponents of liberal-democracy never address. The democratic value of self-determination depends on collective control over uni- versally required life-resources and major social institutions. Liberal- capitalist institutions have developed to prevent collective control over resources and economic institutions. Where resources are col- lectively owned and controlled, they can be used to produce life-goods that satisfy people’s core needs and enable them to realize their core