Historical Analysis
Common Sense and Democracy
As stated, the CDRSB view is that consistent international
electoral standards based on common sense are possible.
Rupture of the tenuous relation between common sense,
science and political philosophy during the 19th century
has served to obscure this possibility, but it can
nevertheless be revealed by analysis and review of this
relation within its historical context. The union of
ordinary understanding and modern science properly begins
with the work of Francis Bacon. He broke decisively with
the 'dialectical' methods of scholastic argumentation on
the grounds that little or no material results could be
gained from them of practical benefit to mankind. He
surmised it possible to reach a truthful understanding of
the world for practical purposes provided care is taken to
separate matters of faith and subjective prejudice from
those of reason, and that such understanding be verified on
the basis of trial and error through practical
experimentation. Bacon deduced the mechanical trades of
craft industry and armaments manufacture could provide the
chief example from which principles of scientific method
could be derived. While his approach therefore has been
associated exclusively with induction, a more
representative understanding of his work is gained by
taking this consideration into account as his point of
departure.
Bacon's induction is best presupposed by this broad train
of deductive reasoning, itself presupposed in turn by
longstanding achievements within the English empirical
tradition, dating from Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, and
William of Ockham. The relation between truth, certainty
and scepticism for Bacon in this regard was held fast by
the parameters of practical activity in the service of
mankind, and though he does not explicitly articulate the
notion of self evident truth, it is clear that such
presumptions are implicit to the notion of scientific
method he is advocating. Just as the union of mental and
manual labour and the existence of clear, simple and
indisputable points of departure are self evidently
necessary to the mechanic in addressing the practical tasks
of his trade, so also were they implicit to Bacon's
methodology. It is largely this synthesis of insights which
Locke further develops in his theory of knowledge and
political analysis. Philosophically the self evident truths
of common sense begin in that regard with Locke's activist
refusal to allow scepticism undue influence, while
remaining alert to the errors of dogma. Reid's great merit
was to defeat Hume's revival of the subjective idealist
case against activism by clarifying the commonsensical
foundation of self evident truth, albeit, somewhat
unfairly, including Locke himself in his corresponding
critique of sensationalism. This was the philosophical
foundation upon which American radicalism addressed the
tasks of revolutionary democracy in the struggle against
British monarchy.
John Adams maintained French radicalism did not understand
common sense. This failing affected profoundly the course
of revolutionary strategy: American radicalism sought to
empower common sense by granting the people freedom, and by
so doing, ultimately facilitating their enlightenment;
French radicalism sought to perfect the nation, and guide
the general will towards an enlightened understanding of
freedom. These distinct approaches sprang from different
historical, political and philosophical traditions.
Descartes deduced self evident truth within the rationalist
tradition, without deference to empirical practice, and
without cleanly separating faith and reason. Condillac
pursued with mathematical zeal the sensationalist elements
in Locke's analysis, and in so doing failed to properly
grasp the standpoint of common sense. French rationalism
did not enjoin political philosophy and scientific method
to the experience of craft industry. In conformity with
Bacon's esteem for the mechanical trades Locke saw
philosophy as the 'humble underlabourer' to science; French
rationalism did not fully emulate this approach both
because it had not fully dealt with the heritage of
medieval scholasticism, and because the people did not
possess the skills of self government and industry which
the English had acquired.
By 1815 an irony of world historic proportions had emerged
from this circumstance: while American democratic success
rested on Bacon's break with the dialectical methods of
medieval scholasticism, the defeat of French democracy
found expression in an attempt to resolve the problems of
social progress by reinstating the dialectical method in De
Stutt de Tracy's school of ideology. This reopened the
radical door to attempts at rejecting Locke's victory over
idealism. By such means European enlightenment
professorialism could conveniently overlook Kant's failure
to properly account for Reid's demolition of the Humean
scepticism which had woken him from dogmatic slumber.
German idealist attempts to reunite what Bacon had laboured
throughout his life to separate - faith and reason -
thereafter revived, reaching their apotheosis in Hegel's
wholly speculative disdain for common sense.
English philosophical realism from this point took second
place, certainly in Germany, to the study of what
G.D.H.Cole termed the 'mumbo jumbo' of dialectics.
Positivism, social determinism, Marxism and interpretivism
emerged from this confusion of method to dominate social
science for over a century, despite countervailing
tendencies, such as Thomas Hodgskin's advocacy of English
philosophical realism through the very appropriately titled
founding newspaper of the British working class movement:
The Mechanic. These are relevant, antecedent factors which
help explain how the stable attributes of common sense, and
with this, the sovereignty of subjective reason, were
submerged by determinism and relativism in social theory
and gave rise to the present impasse of postmodern nihilism
in which it has remained for several decades, while common
sense realism, the guiding philosophical method of American
revolutionary radicalism, has only recently been
reappraised as worthy of serious analysis.
This is the background against which this method, with the
benefit of hindsight, can be used evaluate the relation
between democracy, common sense and social progress. Its
enduring merit can be demonstrated by the coherence of
understanding which can be derived from its application to
the facts of history in regard to the transition from
government based primarily on force and superstition to
government based on consent.
On this understanding it may be asserted that despite the
prevailing wisdoms of social relativism and determinism,
the basic principles of government by consent remain, as
they always have, evident to all persons able to reason
clearly and, as Bacon advised, independently of religious
doctrine - that is to say, those able to use their common
sense, understood especially in its modern connotation,
which developed more widely among the British following the
English revolutions. These are: first, that all persons
have an equal right to life, and with this the right to
self defence; second, that all persons have an equal right
to express their opinion and make collective decisions;
third, collective decisions if and when necessary should be
taken by majority vote held without fear of coercion, that
is, by secret ballot; fourth, that where for practical
purposes it is necessary to grant powers to certain persons
to act on behalf of the community such delegates should be
chosen by lot, excepting where special skills are
indispensably necessary, in which case they can be chosen
by majority vote; fifth, that accordingly the tasks of
democratic decision making should be tackled intelligently
and by as many persons as possible and should be publicly
funded to this purpose; sixth, that redistribution of
inherited wealth, including by taxation, serves the general
democratic interest and is the most socially just way to
fund government spending.
These principles are universal in application and can be
grasped by anybody honestly willing to use their common
sense. Paine saw his country as the world, and his religion
as the vocation to do good because these principles express
the common, ancient and ultimately irrepressible standpoint
of the human race. They derive from the evolutionary
predispositions of human intellect and instinct being so
strongly in favour of social relations based on consent
that they have more usually overcome the advocates of rule
by force even in prehistorical time, when science, logic
and the debate of ideas were at their most primitive levels
of development. They have accordingly been realised to one
extent or other in most forms of government which rest on
some form of consent.
Inheritance tax may be the oldest form of tax - certainly
it was collected by Roman emperors and feudal kings alike.
Redistribution of inherited wealth is recognised as
necessary justice in the Bible for the Jewish people, the
first nation in recorded history to have developed a
democratic form of government, and was practised in ancient
Greece by the use of sortition. Random selection of
delegates to vote by secret ballot in the court of last
appeal - a jury - was the first step taken by Solon to
establish democracy. From Athenian democracy to Magna
Carta, trial by jury has long been established as the
final, and ultimately only lawful means by which a
government can be held accountable to the people, given
that juries themselves can decide whether or not a law
should be enforced.
Athenian democracy was presupposed by both the right, and
obligation, to bear arms. This right is among the oldest in
English law, and dates from 837 when Anglo-Saxon communal
law, itself an embryonic form of democracy, was enforced
throughout much of Britain. Locke regarded the right to
self defence as the first law of nature. The right to bear
arms has been established in the Swiss republic since 1291,
and was also upheld in the Italian medieval city state
republics. Machiavelli and James Harrington regarded an
armed citizenry as necessary for a democratic state. These
are the reasons why the oldest modern republic continues to
uphold for all its citizens the English protestant right to
bear arms formally granted 'for all time' in 1689. In a
country in which over 80% of the land is still owned by the
aristocracy the central demands of revolutionary Chartism -
'a vote, a gun, and an acre of land' - mirror these basic
and necessary principles of government by consent.
The Chartist demand for a secret ballot was taken to and
enacted in Australia first, and thereafter was established
in the UK, the USA and the world. Athenian democracy paid
all citizens to attend assembly meetings the equivalent of
half a day's wage each month. This resulted in a
predominance of the urban lower classes within the
political process to such an extent that Aristotle and
Plato alike defined democracy as 'rule by the poor.'
Aristotle explicitly recognised that most democratic states
paid their citizens to participate in the political
process.
Alternately the correlation of these tenets with government
by consent is also confirmed by way of their absence in
social orders based predominantly on rule by force. Rome,
for example, in clear contrast to Athens, forbade the right
to bear arms for the plebeian population; King Charles II
tried to restrict the right to bear arms to the rich; Jews
were denied the right to bear arms throughout the medieval
period and this prohibition was among the first steps taken
by the Nazi regime. In 411BC when aristocrats temporarily
overthrew Athenian democracy and established an oligarchy,
one of their first acts was to pass a law that no one
should receive pay for political activity. In the 4th
Century BC Demosthenes declared that failure to pay
citizens to attend the Assembly would signify the end of
democracy.
Aristocracy has always sought to concentrate power and
wealth to the few through inheritance. These longstanding
prohibitions aimed against democratic progress by tyranny
demonstrate why a state fully incorporating the basic
tenets of government by consent - a democracy - does not at
present exist in fully developed form. Put at its simplest,
the struggle against tyranny which has existed throughout
all human history has not come to an 'end,' because freedom
has not yet been established in accordance with the self
evident truths of common sense. Aside from difficulties
particular to time and place this can be explained by
taking account of the following principal factors which
affect or impede democratic progress on a general
basis.