“Today, perhaps more than ever, the very meaning of democracy needs to be clarified—its institutional norms and practices, its social and material conditions, its human and political transformative potential.” -Carl Boggs, The Socialist Tradition (1995)
For democratic socialists, the qualifier—”democratic”—is fundamental. It’s not something insouciantly slapped on, but a description of strategy, a core animating principle, and a distinguishing characteristic.
If democratic socialism is to be won—or, more accurately, moved towards— it will be through popular mobilization, persuasion, and the political process. Emancipation will come from below, not be delivered from on high. Indeed, properly conceived, democratic socialism is the expansion and deepening of democracy in all spheres of social, political, and economic life. Democracy not just in terms of procedures, but constitutive principles—equality, agency, self-determination. These are democracy’s radical tenets, blithely discarded by its elite adherents. Reclaiming and trumpeting this richer conception of democracy means returning it to its rightful radical owners, before it was drained of its militancy and potency and claimed by centrist custodians of the status quo.
It’s undemocratic, for example, for a small slice of the population to control the bulk of society’s resources and thus, the destiny of millions. It’s undemocratic to cordon off and deem inadmissible decisions that would “spook the market.” It’s undemocratic for capital to control the material basis for human flourishing. And, if we subscribe to this expansive notion of democracy, undemocratic outcomes that come out of the (procedurally) democratic political process are, paradoxically, still undemocratic.
If you’re perplexed, answer this: Is it democratic for citizens to vote away their own voting rights? Surely the answer is no. It’s similarly absurd to talk of “democratic outcomes”—again, even if these are decided through the democratic process—if they undercut democratic precepts like, say, equality of voice or agency. To cherish democracy is to cherish not just surface-level “rules of the game,” but democracy’s embedded principles.
So say you’re a small-d democrat surveying our society. You come upon this thing called capitalism. And, if you’re thinking clearly, you do a double take because it’s so obviously at odds with the democratic convictions the populace ostensibly holds. In this congenitally hierarchical, authoritarian domain, bosses possess tremendous power over their workers. Capital extracts as much value as it can from labor. Absent a strong countervailing force—a robust welfare state, full employment, effective unionization—workers can 1) toil or 2) experience extreme material hardship. Their choice. (See, it’s voluntary!) The majority of the population at least implicitly supports this economic regime, yet it’s profoundly undemocratic.
The noble aspiration of social democratic incrementalists was to “humanize” capitalism and insulate workers, reform by reform, from the mercurial market that dominated them. (Neoliberalism arrested and reversed this progress decades ago.) But even the social democratic reforms were inadequate: internal relations of the firm must be changed. Sovereignty must be transferred to workers. That’s the genuinely democratic solution, even if crudely democratic measures (the preponderance of people favor capitalism) indicate otherwise.
It’s understandable that non-leftists advance an impoverished conception of democracy. What’s surprising is that leftists let their bloodless espousals go unchallenged, and only haphazardly and sporadically couch their prescriptions and visions in explicitly democratic terms. Jodi Dean even suggests the Left give up on the idea altogether. But this would be an enormous mistake and a victory for the Right. As I said above, the American populace ostensibly believes in democracy. The duty of the Left is to highlight undemocratic realms and assail them accordingly. Call the people to higher ground, if you will.
Democracy can be a stirring, persuasive language to speak in and, at its principled core, it’s radical as hell. Why let our political enemies claim it for their own?
UPDATE: I apologize for my delayed response. I’ve received constructive pushback, both on Twitter (from the fantastic Matt Bruenig) and in the comment section. I’d like to clarify some of my claims.
In my post, I tried to differentiate between a procedural commitment to democracy (accepting the democratic rules of the game) and a robust commitment to democracy (advocating for policies that increase equality and democratize power and, as a result, actively strengthen democracy). The second conception is central to the socialist project. In arguing that majority support for democracy-augmenting policies had no bearing on their status as “democratic” or “undemocratic,” I wasn’t arguing that we should sweep away the traditional democratic process. I was simply asserting that having a robust commitment to democracy necessitates supporting equality-enhancing policies.
What this means in practice is contingent on the extent to which democracy is already present. Help me out, Robert Dahl:
For the nondemocratic countries, the challenge is whether and how they can make the transition to democracy. For the newly democratized countries, the challenge is whether and how the new democratic practices and institutions an be strengthened or, as some political scientists would say, consolidated, so that they will withstand the tests of time, political conflict and crisis. For the older democracies, the challenge is to perfect and deepen their democracy.
Replace “countries” with “areas,” and there you have it. In the political sphere, consolidation and deepening are the orders of the day. In the economic sphere, and in most other spheres of our lives, the transition is inchoate, or yet to begin. This, then, is one of the central tasks for socialists: To sketch out and struggle for a society in which democracy is on the march and domination is beaten back.
It’s understandable that non-leftists advance an impoverished conception of democracy. What’s surprising is that leftists let their bloodless espousals go unchallenged, and only haphazardly and sporadically couch their prescriptions and visions in explicitly democratic terms.
We do. We call it fairness. And when we do, we’re sneered at and told The Free Market Shall Solve Our Every Problem.
“That’s the genuinely democratic solution, even if crudely democratic measures (the preponderance of people favor capitalism) indicate otherwise.”
I was trying to make something sarcastic to this statement, but I couldn’t come up with something both biting and funny enough against something that is so genuinely scary.
So I’ll just say that your hard and fast distinction between ‘Capital’ and ‘Labor’ is at least 150 years out of date – if it was ever true at all. This fallacy is also the root cause why you can’t, and will never ever be able to get any traction politically.
(that is, not toward an end you desire. Demagoguery with lip service towards ‘social democracy’ is easy enough, but your end of the revolutionary coalition is always the second against the wall once you win)
your hard and fast distinction between ‘Capital’ and ‘Labor’ is at least 150 years out of date
I’m inclined to agree.
My mom was labor all her life, by standard descriptions. Secretary, factory worker, store clerk. Never even management, much less capital.
And yet she owns a valuable chunk of General Electric stock, from her years of working there, in which she always invested part of her paycheck in company stock. Her wealth consists almost wholly of her house and her stock.
ayiyi. talk about putting all your eggs in one basket!
Agreed. Fortunately GE really is one of the world’s most solid companies, with a unique capacity for developing high quality managers for their varied operations. (Good to Great has a nice discussion of this.) But, yeah, I’d like a more varied investment portfolio.
they said the same thing about westinghouse, ya know? And then they let the finance guys run it instead of the engineers…
Of course, working at a large company for a large part of your life, complete with their matching your stock purchases, is a less and less common occurrence.
But everyone who has a pension, whether defined contribution or defined benefit, is tapped into capital. So do folks with an IRA.
We have some fundamental disagreements about foundational definitions. I won’t argue them, but just try to make them clear so it’s clear where our differences are and why they’re so likely to be truly irreconcilable.
We disagree about whether workers need to have sovereignty transferred to them, or whether they are in fact already sovereign.
We disagree that what I might call a levelling democracy can remain democratic in a meaningful sense, or whether it necessarily devolves into a tyranny of the majority. (Something from Aristotle is relevant here, but I can’t find my copy of the Politics.)
We disagree on whether democracy includes only public collective decision-making, or whether it includes private decision-making as well. E.g., voting with one’s feet is understood by some as an intrinsically democratic action, and there is no compelling logic that limits this to simply moving between polities, but it includes as well moving between churches, social organizations, and, yes, business organizations. But that latter then necessarily includes making that decision based on the actor’s assessment of prospects for personal gain, which means overly stringent constraints on opportunities for gain may in themselves be undemocratic.
I’m not asking anyone to agree, and I don’t have the time or energy to engage in argument in defense of these views. I only note them as at least some of the deep points of contention, that some hold those views, and that Shawn, of course, holds very different views.
A useful delineation, James—thanks.
But it is democratic to tell me how I can live my life, what type of food I can eat, what products I can injest, what kind of transportation I can use and how to raise my kids?
Sounds like mob rule to me.
“That’s the genuinely democratic solution, even if crudely democratic measures (the preponderance of people favor capitalism) indicate otherwise.”
I’m struggling a bit with this claim. When you say this, do you mean they favor the idea, or the reality.
Either way, I’m not sure its true, at least not unproblematically so. My recollection is that ‘capitalism’ as a term doesn’t poll very well. Questions about ‘the free enterprise system’ often do better, but are generally phrased in terms of the US economy versus other places, so its hard to know how much of that is a judgement of economics or of the relative merits of one’s country of birth. People generally want regulation, protections for consumers and workers, social insurance, and all manner of other ‘interventions.’ And they believe we are more equal and more mobile than we are, and want us to be even more equal still.