[Marxism] The Wrong Side Wins: Democratic Elections in Historical Perspective [pertinent article!]

[Mike Friedman <mikedf@xxxxxxxx>]

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp11022004.html


November 2, 2004

The Wrong Side  Wins
Democratic  Elections in Historical Perspective

By  GARY LEUPP

In April 1848, the French held a national  election based upon universal
adult male suffrage. This seems  unremarkable today, but at the time, it was
a bold innovation.  Neither Britain nor the United States had ever held such
an election;  in even the most enlightened western countries, property
requirements limited the franchise. In France, a country  of 30 million
people, only 170,000 had been eligible to vote  under the constitutional
monarchy of Louis Philippe. In this  election, nine million voted.

The petite bourgeoisie and  wage-workers of Paris had rebelled in February,
toppling Louis,  and brought to power a provisional government, influenced
by  socialist thought. It took a series of measures quite radical  for the
time. It abolished the death penalty, banned slavery  in the French
colonies, limited the workday to 10 hours, lifted  restrictions on the
press, promulgated the "right to work"  and established "national workshops"
to support the  unemployed. Tens of thousands of Frenchmen trekked to Paris
to  find work in these establishments. Universal male suffrage was  only one
component of an ambitious program of social change,  which resonated in
radical circles throughout Europe and helped  trigger uprisings in Germany,
Austria-Hungary and Italy. These  were heady times; a month before the
rebellion in France, Karl  Marx and Friedrich Engels had authored the
Communist Manifesto.

The April election was unprecedented  in its democratic legitimacy.
Unfortunately the wrong side won.  The victors rejected rather than embraced
social reform. The  French peasantry voted on Easter Sunday, after attending
mass.  Given the Church's role in primary education and village life  in
general, it played a crucial role in creating public opinion---and  the
Church was profoundly reactionary. Influenced by sermons hostile to the
reforms, the masses of peasants brought to power political parties that were
determined to check the emerging power of the Parisian proletariat. These
parties wanted to retain the democratic gains of the French Revolution of
1789, and prevent  the return of absolute monarchy, but they feared the
consequences  of empowering the working class. The new regime thus excluded
significant worker participation, and eliminated the national  workshops,
ordering workers who had applied for jobs in these  to instead enlist in the
army. This prompted a worker uprising  that Alexis  de Tocqueville called
"the most extensive and most singular  insurrection that has occurred in our
history..."

 In the "June Days"  tens of thousands of workers rose up to reject the
results of  the "democratic" election. The conservative National  Assembly
in response awarded dictatorial powers to General Eugène  Cavaignac,
commissioned to suppress them. (His forces killed  about 3,000 of the
insurgents, and deported 4,000 to the French  colony of Algeria.) The
Assembly revoked the universal suffrage  which had brought itself to power,
and paved the way for the  nephew of Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon
Bonaparte, to win  the presidency in December. Three years later, the
president  seized dictatorial powers, and as Napoleon III restored the
Empire.  But after his capture in battle in 1870, and the announcement  that
the Prussians would march on Paris to accept the French  defeat, the workers
of Paris again rose up, repudiating empire  and monarchy and calling for a
republic rooted in the toiling  classes. This time they actually held power
for two months before  their Commune was drowned in blood.

 "Parliamentary  Cretinism"

The moral of the story is this:  elections (even the freest) do not
necessarily have anything  to do with freedom. The freely cast vote of an
individual whose  opinions themselves are shaped by an oppressive social
structure  may easily become a vote for more oppression. The Weimar Republic
in Germany (1919-1933) was from a constitutional standpoint among  the most
democratic the world had known, but it morphed into  the Third Reich through
the legal electoral process. Good decent  people, not knowing what they do,
can vote in the worst sort  of leaders, including fascists. In November
1932, Adolph Hitler's  Nazis won 30% of the vote in Germany, more than any
other party.  Hitler was soon appointed Chancellor.

 The promotion of "democratic  elections" as an end in itself can mask
support for highly  repressive social systems. The U.S. State Department
routinely  validates as "democratic" polls held throughout Latin  America,
while always singling out Cuba as an antiquated tyranny.  So long as a
nation conducts polls involving more than one party,  resulting in a
leadership acceptable to Washington, it's either  a democracy or making
strides to become such. It doesn't matter  how undemocratically wealth is
divided. It doesn't matter if  some parties are banned, or targeted for
legal or extra-legal  attack, or if a handful of media moguls and corporate
sponsors  shape the vote. Perhaps people are required by law to vote, even
if they find the balloting a farce; this allows one to boast  of "record
turnouts" validating whatever outcome.

 Marx, among the most astute  commentators on the French election of 1848,
dismissed faith  in "democratic elections" in class-divided societies  as
"parliamentary cretinism, which holds its victims spellbound  in an
imaginary world and robs them of all sense, all memory,  and all
understanding of the rough external world." He called  it "a disorder which
penetrates its unfortunate victims  with the solemn conviction that the
whole world, its history  and future, are governed and determined by a
majority of votes  in that particular representative body that has the honor
to count them among its members" He certainly supported workers' demand for
universal suffrage, suggesting (somewhat too optimistically)  that in
England, since the proletariat (as of 1852) formed "the  large majority of
the population," the "inevitable result" of suffrage would be "the political
supremacy  of the working class." But he emphasized that the voter's  views
are themselves produced by a surrounding power structure  that constrains
the "freedom" of any ballot.

Herbert Marcuse, the doyen  of New Left scholars in the 1960s, examined the
U.S. as a "one-dimensional"  society, in which citizens seduced by a
consumer culture possible  only in an advanced capitalist society could rest
content with  the delusion that they were truly free, and that their
political  choices (pro-capitalist Democrat versus pro-capitalist
Republican)  were adequately diverse. "Under the rule of a repressive
whole," he wrote, "liberty can be made into a powerful  instrument of
domination. Free election of masters does not abolish  the masters or the
slaves. Free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not
signify freedom if these goods and services sustain social controls over a
life of toil and fear---that is, if they sustain alienation."

The dominant paradigm in Marcuse's  heyday was "the Free World vs.
Communism." "Freedom"  was shorthand for free markets and capitalism, and so
the Free  World could comfortably include Suharto's Indonesia, Mobutu's
Zaire, Franco's Spain and a host of brutal dictatorships. But  political
democracy (freedom in the exchange of ideas) was considered  the optimal
corollary for capitalism (freedom in the exchange  of commodities, including
labor-power). It is the same today.  The often-repeated U.S. policy goal is
to promote political democracy  and free markets, although not necessarily
in that order. Since  capitalism (in China, for example) is held to
inevitably lead  towards American- style political institutions, the
flourishing  of markets receptive to foreign capital is itself reason for
cordial diplomacy, businesslike relations, and the discreet handling  of
"human rights" issues. The freedom of U.S. capital  almost always trumps the
freedom of the Third World proletarian.

In this country, your location  and economic status consign you to school
systems where your  thoughts and attitudes are largely formed. The needs of
capital  determine your job options and hours. Such factors shape how  much
attention you can pay to the news ---the whole world outside  your immediate
circumstances---and how critically you digest  what you consume. A handful
of corporations feed you the news,  accompanied by assurances that this
transmission is "fair  and balanced." Meanwhile popular culture generally
suggests  you should be "proud to be an American, 'cause at least"  you
"know" you're "free"---even  if you'd be very hard-pressed to argue that
you're freer than  a Swede, New Zealander or Japanese. Influential religious
voices (in today's America and the France of 1848) preach that God Himself
opposes significant social change, and wants you to vote for  His chosen
candidate.

 Over 40% of the American people  describe themselves as fundamentalist or
"born-again"  Christians. Over 40% believe George W. Bush deserves a second
term. Over 40% believe, because they have been misled or simply  want to
believe, that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11. There  is probably much
overlap among these categories of believers,  who receive much encouragement
from sectors of the "free"  press and powerful well-funded bodies who
exercise their freedom  to influence voters. So too, of course, do a
comparable percentage  of anyone-but-Bush voters. However deeply they differ
about the issues, including the war, they have been persuaded by the system
that the system is valid, and deserves the support that they  provide it by
voting. Any vote, after all, is a vote for the system.

 The Hypocrisy  of the System

But some of those best served  by elections, and publicly staunch advocates
of voting, have  in fact worked to skew electoral results. The 2000
presidential  fiasco is just one conspicuous instance. Bush's political
advisor  Karl Rove  began his career with dirty tricks designed to affect
the democratic  process in favor of his candidate for state treasurer in
Illinois.  The very Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William  Rehnquist,
strove to keep African-Americans from voting (Democratic)  in Arizona in the
1960s. The loyalty of such people is not to  Jeffersonian ideals of
political participation, but to getting  the right men serving their kind of
people into power.

 This surely applies overseas.  Henry Kissinger, as Richard Nixon's national
security advisor  and friend of Latin American juntas, treated the choice of
the  electorate in Chile, one of this hemisphere's most longstanding
bourgeois democracies, with contempt. As the Marxist politician  Salvadore
Allende rose to power in 1970, he snapped, "I  don't see why we need to
stand by and watch a country go Communist  due to the irresponsibility of
its people."

 Why indeed? A CIA-backed coup  toppled the moderate socialist and produced
a fascist alternative  warmly embraced by the freedom-loving American
leadership (as  would an alternative to the democratically elected Hugo
Chavez  in Venezuela). U.S. pressure has sidelined the democratically
elected Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. In U.S.-occupied Iraq,  last year,
proconsul Paul Bremer III observed that, "Elections  held too early can be
destructive," adding that while there  was "no blanket rule" against
democracy in Iraq, and  he wasn't "personally opposed to it," it had to take
place "in a way that takes care of our concerns" and  is "done very
carefully." It's obvious that the U.S.-prescribed  path to democracy to
date, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has  nothing to do with empowering the
masses but merely covering  neocolonialism with a fig leaf of "free
elections."

 One final example of this disparate  phenomenon, "democracy." Our word
itself comes from  Greek (democratia, rule by the people), and from the
political  system in ancient Athens, where any adult male citizen could
vote in the agora. No fallible equipment cast doubt on the accuracy  of the
poll. Voting was direct and open. But this admirable form  of "popular" rule
excluded women and slaves. Two and  a half millennia later, in most places,
full adult suffrage is  the norm; men and women of all classes perform the
ritual of  casting ballots for those who claim to represent them. Whether
or not the vote is "fair" from a Carter Foundation  or Human Rights Watch
perspective, it is conditioned by a class  structure limiting its legitimacy
every bit as much as slavery  limited Athenian democracy.

 Who is party to the discussion,  allowed to publicly debate? Who pays to
ensure that a candidate's  voice is heard? Who markets the "facts" under
discussion,  decides what questions get asked? CNN routinely polls its
viewers  (democratically, you might say), posing questions like "Who  do YOU
think should be the next target in the War on Terrorism?"  plainly
indicating to the masses that the war by general consent  is really a war on
"terrorism" and really should continue  and the informed viewer really ought
to prefer one or the other  war expansion choices. Such polls never give one
the option of  saying, "Your question is loaded; I reject all the options
you give me." Similarly the U.S. political system, harnessed  to corporate
power, provides options between which those questioning  corporate power
itself have little reason to choose. One might  of course prefer slow poison
to hanging, but why should one have  to select between such alternatives?
Humanity can do better.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University,  and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author  of Servants,  Shophands
and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan;  Male  Colors: The
Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan;  and Interracial  Intimacy
in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.  He is also a
contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle  of the wars on Iraq,
Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial  Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


 



_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism