Impediments to Progress
The transition from government by force and superstition to
government by reason and consent heralded by the English
revolutions has been impeded by conservative resistance.
The embryo of government by consent in the ancient world
succumbed to the force of tyranny. Against this background,
and unlike that of Athenian democracy, modern democracy and
modern science emerged coterminously from two thousand
years of entrenched aristocracy without the willing or at
least consistently willing cooperation of either monarchy
or church. As Lincoln observed, conservatism can be
characterised essentially as a reluctance to change methods
which are tried and tested. Two millennia of aristocracy
created a formidable basis for conservative ideology,
including a dogmatic version of Christianity.
Conservative resistance to the transition to government by
consent creates all the problems associated with the
organisation of a revolutionary movement to overthrow
tyranny. To begin with, such a movement cannot be a
democracy, for it has no alternative but to organise as an
aristocracy - of virtue. As Rousseau observed, the average
man is something of a coward in respect of the ruling
order. This remains the case with freemen and slaves alike:
when John Brown attacked the arsenal at Harper's ferry the
slaves who failed to rally to this heroic action merely
confirmed this truism, as had most freemen in the English
revolutions two centuries earlier when the regicide John
Cook wrote his last letter before execution: 'we sought the
public good and would have enfranchised the people and
secured the welfare of the whole groaning creation if the
nation had not more delighted in servitude than in
freedom.'
Rousseau, following Machiavelli, concluded from such
observation that men must be 'forced to be free.' This is
an inaccurate and harmful contention, but it well describes
the problematic from which extremism has derived its raison
d'être. The people cannot be forced to be free, but rather
must be led by example and intelligent preparation to
consider their allegiances and by degree to support a
process of change to that point when it is possible to
challenge and overturn the existing state power, and
thereafter to hold onto it long enough to ensure the
destruction or sincere reform of the old order. By such
means a fraudulent aristocracy of virtue (most
aristocracies believe themselves to be virtuous, but such a
claim exercised by those who oppose democratic development
is self evidently fraudulent) may be replaced by a
genuinely virtuous aristocracy, which remains steadfast in
its commitment to develop democratic government among the
people. Jefferson's observation that the whole art of
politics consists in being honest with the people is,
therefore, both appropriate and correct.
All forms of political organisation require leadership:
democracy is that form in which leaders are selected on the
most egalitarian grounds subject to functional requirements
in regard to specialised skills; aristocracy is that form
in which leaders are selected on grounds which are
artificially exclusive in some way, whether by birth,
property, or an exaggeration of the requirements for
special skills. The process of developing democratic
leadership in conditions of repression and conservative
resistance to change is fraught with difficulties because
the task of overcoming these obstacles creates aristocratic
requirements in regard to leadership which are
contemporaneously necessary but in the long run artificial.
Yet these requirements must be met if the democratic
movement is to survive and triumph. The revolutionary
struggle must be developed on an organisational foundation
which incorporates more aristocratic features than will
ultimately be required once government by consent has been
established, and for very good reason, not least among
which is the requirement for secrecy.
That a fully developed form of democracy has yet to be
established in the modern world is in part a reflection of
the fact that these difficulties have never been fully
resolved in the transition to government by consent. As
stated this may be explained principally by the fact that
modern democracy was not developed with the consistent
cooperation of monarchy. A secondary explanatory factor
consequent to this has been that rival sections of the
aristocracy, understood in its broader, interethnic
connotation, have both supported and exploited the struggle
against monarchy for selfish purposes, thus complicating
the process of transition to government by consent. Marxism
and its allies have portrayed this process as determined
alone or at least chiefly by economic causes. There is
something to this view, but it is nevertheless presupposed
by a relativistic, rigidly contrived periodicity in
development which fails to take properly into account the
relation between government by consent and the stable
attributes and self evident truths of common sense, which
are universal and transhistorical in application.
The third main reason why a genuine democracy has not yet
been established is cognitive difficulties of leadership
within radicalism in comprehending the transition to
government by consent consequent to monarchic resistance
and the negative effects of aristocratic factionalism, most
especially if we assume these effects may sometimes have
been deliberately designed to create such problems. In the
early period of transition low educational levels, poor
research and communication facilities in conditions of
little or no freedom of speech or assembly comprised
formidable obstacles. In later periods, including to the
present day, even though these earlier obstacles were
overcome new difficulties have emerged. The self-evident
truths of common sense need to be understood directly at
the centre of socio-political and economic life. Greater
complexity in modern conditions can obfuscate cognition,
for example due to problems of verbal overshadowing in the
social sciences.
The fourth main reason why a genuine democracy has not yet
been established is that the process of self clarification
within radicalism has been impeded not only by purely
cognitive limitations, but also by limitations which can
more adequately be explained as opportunism. Opportunism
denotes the tendency to evade, ignore or actually frustrate
the need to formulate and implement political strategies
which accord with the long term general democratic interest
for essentially short term, selfish reasons by leaders who
claim, hypocritically, to be democrats.
Opportunist behaviour can be best characterised, as Lenin
observed, as movement along the line of least resistance.
Such tendencies have developed more especially in modern
conditions in which well paid Left career structures have
been established as a powerful motive for involvement in
radical politics by a sycophantic, educated elite.
Totalitarianism has strengthened these tendencies since it
rests on servile organisational premises, not freedom of
criticism. These influences are also systemic to
representative democratic politics and its associated party
system of competitive elitism, which has always easily lent
itself to opportunist practices, though this aspect has
been more developed in the era of mass media communications
and advertising. Today the most appropriate aptitudes for a
British Member of Parliament to possess, as one Tory
commentator has observed, are chiefly those of the car
salesman. Difficulties generated by opportunist practices
which impede democratic progress have become greater due to
all the above factors combined.
The most decisive factor determining the conditions in
which progress from government based on force to government
based on consent takes place concerns the standpoint
adopted by the existing ruling power in relation to such
change. Clearly the most optimal conditions will best be
achieved if the ruling power adopts a positive approach to
this transition. Even in these circumstances however
progress will be necessarily to some extent or other
gradual in nature. As Jefferson noted, Solon's reputation
as the wisest statesman in history sprang not only from his
support for democratic reform but also from his deliberate
purpose in ensuring such changes kept pace with, and did
not exceed, the developing experience and abilities the
people had acquired in the exercise of self government. The
exceptionally good fortune the Athenians enjoyed in having
such a leader help to explain why their democracy developed
to be so advanced for its time, and why even over two
thousand years later Jefferson and Paine considered it the
model towards which political progress should aspire.
Alternately the least favourable conditions for a
transition to government based on consent are those in
which the ruling power uses force to oppose progress. To
some degree or other this will require an aristocratic form
of organisation of those persons most concerned and willing
to bring about democratic reform. The emergence of
revolutionary leadership will be decisively influenced by
the vagaries of this problematic in their relation to
individual competence, theoretical understanding, and
chance. For example the more tolerant the existing power is
in relation to such activities the more developed and
considered will be the nature and level of popular support
for such change, and thus the more stable and assured will
be its prospects for success. The less tolerant the
existing power is in relation to such activities, the less
developed and considered will be the nature and level of
popular support for such change, and thus the less stable
and assured will be its prospects for success. Similarly
the more adequate given conditions of production and
consumption are, the more sober and considered will be the
nature of popular support for democratic progress, while
the less adequate they are, the more volatile and desperate
this support can be.
In this way it can be seen that historical, economic and
geographic aspects of social existence each also exert some
influence on the prospects for development, though not in
the orderly, chronological sequence which Marxism proposed.
Among the most important in this regard is the proximity of
virgin territory: as Locke made clear, the ability of the
people to withdraw their consent to be ruled under any
given government is determined at its most basic and
fundamental level by the existence of some such opportunity
to withdraw from the given territory of that regime. In
this way it can be seen that the stable attributes and
basic standards of common sense have been shaped by the
fact that government in most human societies has,
irrespective of the particularities of their internal mode
of organisation, been based, at this most minimal but also
most essential of levels, on consent, since most human
societies have been nomadic hunter gatherer in character.
Locke was therefore correct to identify these attributes as
predominant in his state of nature.
Topography exerted similar influence: as Hegel observed,
the indented coastline and mountainous terrain of the
Hellenic peninsular created favourable conditions for the
emergence of defensible city states based on maritime
trade, making conquest by force alone more difficult,
unlike in the river plain empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
This improved the prospects for democratic development,
since the cosmopolitanising impact of trade and commerce
tend to break up aristocracies, which generally require
relatively insular conditions of hereditary land ownership
to maintain their homogeneity. This tendency occurred in
both ancient Greece and the modern period.
Among those seeking to bring about change against the will
of a ruling power which has set itself against democratic
progress there will exist a range of different approaches
to the problem at hand. The least radical among them is
likely to seek a modest change to the status quo so
insignificant as to ultimately be of little or no
consequence; the most radical will seek extreme changes so
recklessly disregardful for matters of practical experience
in relation to the given level of development as to be
wholly unrealistic and utopian. There is a case for
suggesting these tendencies will broadly correspond to
complex, interwoven but nevertheless distinct group traits
within the general population on grounds of age, social
class, sex, intellectual ability and practical experience.
The aristocracy of wealth and birth will tend to favour the
status quo more greatly than the poor. The most poverty
stricken and desperate groups of the population may tend to
vacillate from hopeless servility to violent rebellion in
their allegiances.
The most significant, stable correlation of such traits is
likely to be found among groups sympathetically acquainted
through background and education with the skills,
scientific knowledge and expertise of craft industry in
their relation to the lives of ordinary people. These
groups will be best placed to understand the problems of
social development independently of religious belief and of
their own immediate needs, that is to say, they will be
best able to use their common sense in ways which accord
with the most optimal approach to constitutional reform in
regard to the general democratic interest. It is this group
which is most likely to possess that combination of talent
and virtue best able to strike an intelligent balance
between the requirements of stability and change in their
relation to the given level of understanding and
organisation among the population and the practical
exigencies of political struggle and conflict which prevail
at any given time. These group traits can be discerned as
common to the process of transition to government by
consent in most countries throughout the modern period.
They can be seen in Locke's recognition of such a natural
aristocracy, more clearly so in Jefferson, and
notwithstanding the influence of European revolutionary
extremism, also in Lenin's analysis of the relation between
the 'non-party masses' and politically advanced workers.
To this understanding of the relation between group traits,
social development and democratic progress may now be added
the great complexity of individual strengths, weaknesses
and idiosyncracies of conservative and radical leaders at
any given time and place. History is made from the
interaction of all these elements combined, and is of
course in consequence very complex and largely
unpredictable. Nevertheless the transition from government
based on force to government based on consent is not merely
part of an unending cosmological cycle, as Machiavelli
assumed. Rather it comprises a process of adjustment from
one relatively abnormal form of social organisation less
favourably disposed to meeting the aspirations of common
sense to a more normal form in which such standards can be
more harmoniously accommodated. For this reason it is of
practical importance that democratic leadership should not
seek to exploit the truth but rather to uphold it.
Upholding honesty in political affairs is also of great
importance for self evident reasons in developing the
aristocracy of virtue that is necessary to lead the people
by example in challenging the old order. This helps explain
why Locke, Jefferson and to a great extent Lenin all alike
placed a high premium on and upheld the existence of truth
in the realm of politics.
Against the background of these general insights the
transition to government by consent in Britain, America and
Europe can be examined in more detail in their relation to
electoral practice. In this way the basic truths of common
sense understanding in regard to democracy can be revealed
as recurring issues of vital and necessary concern to the
radical movement, not merely relativist abstractions. The
legitimacy and importance of these principles can be
supported by the evidence of historical process in so far
as this shows failure to realise them is not the result of
any reasonable demonstration of their impracticality or
intrinsic deficiency but is rather a consequence of the
complex but nevertheless discernible interaction of the
factors and difficulties outlined above.