Topics Justice

Question I was politicized early thanks to growing up in a war zone, and such a childhood imposes certain questions on a child's mind. After growing older and nurturing an increasing infatuation with socialism and anarchism, I am now at a new crossroads - totalitarianism. The reason for this is simple: I have no faith in humanity, nor in the so called 'rationality' of Mankind. In my opinion, people are overwhelmingly ignorant of what is best for them. How can they decide what is best for them without proper education? Furthermore, people are overwhelmingly selfish and short-sighted, how can a society function correctly if the majority of people are unfit to decide for themselves, and when they do so, they do so poorly (see George Bush). Another problem is media. Reading Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" in my teens nourished in me a deep hatred of privately-owned media, and as we all know: propaganda is rife in all societies. Finally, we come to the financial crisis. If I have understood it correctly, economic policies of the past decades were hinged on the belief that the economic system would perpetually correct itself thanks to the rationality of the individual financiers and economists, and that now with this new collapse, economists are for the first time dawning to the fact that humans are irrational after all. So I say unto you, that the representational democratic system, in the US as an example, is in itself largely totalitarian, as the individuals who vote do so rarely and are not told about the changes their representatives enact during their tenures, and that Plato was right all along - that philosophers should be kings. So wouldn't the best method of government be to ask leading people in the society to run for election (ie. no career politicians), and then have them 'train' for this position for 1 year where they live as hobos for 2 months, farmers for 2 months, etc etc, all the time monitored by the society - and finally compete for election (if they accept the offer) through televised debates, each receiving an equal time on all topics. How can democracy be a better system than this? And how can we reconcile our belief in democracy with the overwhelming evidence of the decrepitude of the stolid majority of humanity?

Accepted:
August 11, 2010

Comments

Interesting! The idea of leaders having to undergo training in different professions (and even being a hobo!) is appealing (though whether it is practical is another matter). The case for democracy historically usually does go hand in hand with a case that human beings are indeed reasonable and are capable of rational debate and decision-making. This was the case in the founding of the democratic republic here in the United States, for example. So, if there are compelling reasons for thinking human beings are incapable of responsible, reasonable reflection and voting, a foundational basis for democracy would be problematic. But note that democracy is relatively recent. In 1900 the majority of political life consisted of Empires and not democratic, and while the majority of political states are (at least on paper) democratic today, it is only recently that voting barriers have been removed that restricted voting on the basis of gender or race or property ownership. Also, education (including civic education) is increasing around the globe (between the year 1900 and 1970 the number of universities throughout the world has doubled. So, I suggest: keep giving democracy a chance, and allow education to increasingly flourish and let us strive for fair, accessible sources of knowledge for people to make educated decisions about their society. Without reliable sources of information, democracy is (as you suggest) deeply impaired.

Some of your comments are a little puzzling, however. You seem to entertain (positively) some kind of totalitarianism but then complain that the USA is "largely totalitarian." I suggest that the legacy of totalitarianism (a term which I believe Mussolini introduced to refer to his Italian fasist regime) in the 20th century is sufficiently horrifying (think Hitler, Lenin and Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Castro, etc, etc) to insure that a constitutional democracy is the best (or least worst) political order.