Friday, April 04, 2008
Wealth and Democracy (2)
The equality of man and the democratic ideal were ideas that were passed down through the centuries, surviving as ideas even when the political landscape of the world make no room for them. The Roman Republic was formed after kings abused their power, and Brutus overthrew the last king of Rome around 500 BC. The Republic continued through trials and tribulations until 27 BC, with the last century or two filled with political intrigues that would make the slimiest of modern politicians blush. After that, democracy was virtually erased from the world stage for well over a millennium.
Ideas of democracy began to creep back in during middle of the second millennium AD, interestingly enough, in the trading cultures of Venice, the Hanseatic trading cities of northern Europe, and others. Most of these cultures were not true democracies, instead they were monarchies where the rights of the kings and other nobility to rule arbitrarily were limited by the rising middle class. It really took until America and the Revolution for actual democracy, without a king as head of state, to take off.
The Founding Fathers were classicists - they knew well of Greece, Rome, and their heritage of democracy. They found themselves in a unique situation, where their head of state was many thousands of miles away, and yet he still insisted upon the obedience of his distant subjects to his arbitrary rule. In a story we all know well, they created a government out of thin air and founded the first true democracy of the modern era. The concept of might makes right wins again, but this time it was free men defeating the forces of a monarch on the battlefield.
The economy of America at the time of the revolution was significantly based on a combination of trading and agriculture. Thomas Jefferson believed that the ideal state of the American economy and culture was that we should be a nation of gentlemen farmers, people who are educated, genteel, socially and politically active, and interestingly enough, not traders but subsistence farmers. Jefferson didn’t have a lot of respect for traders, as he saw their national loyalty being easily swayed by economic circumstances.
What was different about America from the previous democratically-inclined trading cultures was that America was founded by a subset of British society that inherited the tradition of the equality of man. Those ideas were not homegrown in America out of a preexisting culture, they were brought to America by immigrants. Therefore, a culture primarily based on trading was unnecessary for the maintenance of a democratic society.
However, if Jefferson had gotten his wish, how long would the America he knew, of basic decency and equality, lasted? Probably only until that tradition of equality eroded in future generations. And erode it would, as crops failed, economic circumstances changed, land was sold, and wealthier people purchased estates from the independent landholders. Then, the concentration of wealth in a single class once again rears it’s ugly head, and economic mobility is ended.
Jefferson’s preference for the gentleman farmer was largely a reaction to the oncoming Industrial Revolution. As farming became more efficient, fewer people were needed in the agriculture sectors, so they moved to cities to look for jobs in manufacturing. With this rapid population shift came a new sort of feudalism, where the lower classes were not legally owned by the industrial lords, but they largely were forced to work on terms that were not of their own making. Thus came the slums and degradation of man that Jefferson feared. However, what also came was additional economic mobility, as skilled and talented people from the lower classes were able to make themselves valuable in the new industrial setting. To some extent, the Industrial Revolution that Jefferson saw as likely to destroy his idyllic pastoral society saved it from it’s own limitations, while at the same time fulfilling all of his fears. Importantly though, in the long run it made for a society in which economically mobile people would not accept a fixed ruling class, and thus it perpetuated a society that had a vested interest in the continuation of a democratic government.
As a reaction to the plight of the underclasses of the Industrial Revolution, a new social and economic idea called socialism began to emerge. Along side it, as a reaction to the gruesome warfare enabled by the mechanization of warfare, a philosophical cousin called pacifism became prominent. The idea was that as long the means of production are owned by individuals (or capitalists), those individuals have the ability to exploit the labor of the underclasses to enrich themselves. The workers need only to seize the means of production to emancipate themselves from this exploitation. If the working classes of an entire country could be motivated to work together and do this all at once, the entire industrial structure of a country could be owned in common by the workers of that country, with the ability of anyone to exploit anyone else eliminated by that common ownership. Similarly, pacifism taught that the upper classes exploited the working classes in warfare, by using the working classes as soldiers for the enrichment of the aristocracy. Once the workers were in control of the means of production, there would now longer be incentive for people of different countries to kill each other and peace would reign.
Little did the socialists know that their cries were largely falling on deaf ears. As the industrial revolution progressed, the economic mobility of the new social structure became more apparent to the working class, and many people did in fact make substantial economic gains. Even more importantly, tribalism is an instinct that dies hard in animals such as ourselves, and the socialists’ calls for a unified society of workers at peace with all other such societies did not resonate with the populace. There were many in the socialist movement that thought a war such as World War One would never happen, as the workers would refuse to fight. Much disappointment and disillusionment with the suitability of mankind for a socialist society ensued. Much has changed in the last ninety years.
Socialism appeals to many segments of society. The underclasses like it, because they are told that they are being exploited, and that under the new system, they will get their fair piece of the economic pie that they are being denied today. The intellectuals like it because they knew very well that society cannot self-organize into a headless anarchistic workers paradise. Someone will need to be in charge, and they see it as their natural place to be the ruling class. However, it is clear that an economic system like socialism, where the end of economic mobility is looked at as a feature rather than a detriment, has two glaring flaws. One, it is entirely unsustainable. Without economic mobility, there is no incentive for innovation or personal effort. Socialism can only last until the wealth of the previous capitalist society is expended. Two, given the end of economic mobility, the structure of society devolves back to that of a perpetually oligarchical state. Democracy only lasts as long as the population has an incentive to insist that they have a say in the government. If the masses have no economic power and no hope to gain that power in the future, democracy is doomed.
A society with economic mobility contains both the incentive to maintain a democratic society, and seed of it’s own destruction. The inequality of wealth created by that economic mobility is what gives rise to the socialist idea, and the nature of democracy itself allows segments of society that would gain from socialism to institute portions of their agenda.
Similarly, the wealth, leisure time, and personal freedom that result from economic mobility are primary drivers of cultural achievement. The Athenians developed philosophy because they were wealthy enough to have time to reason and teach rather than being stuck in constant manual labor. Sculpture, architecture, painting, music, literature - many of our greatest cultural achievements were only possible because a wealthy society, based on economic freedom, allowed the concentration of wealth and the surplus resources to allow creative people the time to be creative. Cultural achievement is allowed by wealth, which is allowed by economic freedom. They come together for a reason.
On the flip side, great wealth allows sufficient leisure time that the uncritical segments of society need entertainment as well. Standards fall to the lowest common denominator, and mass entertainment venues make up in quantity what they lack in quality. As entertainment becomes more significant in life, self-destructive tendencies take hold in some portions of the population, while many become so insulated from the harsh realities of the world that they are unwilling to fight for the preservation of the society that allowed the accumulation of their wealth in the first place. Culturally, too, wealth contains the seeds of it’s own destruction.
Diffusion of wealth through economic freedom rather than political fiat are necessary to the maintenance of individual freedom, respect for the rights of man, and cultural advancement. Diffuse wealth is not the natural state of man. It is only through a few early trading cultures that the link between wealth and freedom began to be known. Then, it was only through the wisdom of our Founding Fathers that a government built to encourage that freedom became reality in America. We are now seeing in America attacks on that freedom from every side, internal and external. It is up to us, those that understand the link between wealth, freedom, democracy, cultural achievement, and respect for our fellow man to reinforce that link everyday. We must try to preserve the good in our culture while fighting the self-destructive tendencies that are inherent in it. Only by doing this can we hope to preserve freedom and self-determination for our children and for future generations.
Comments
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If great wealth contains the seeds of its own destruction, I wonder if we can do more than forestall an inevitable collapse.
On the other hand, maybe what we need are frequent economic cycles that force us back into a need for more work to survive. Having destroyed our wealth by a foolish sense of entitlement, we could then work to rebuild it.
In a sense, then, maybe we need more socialist programs and New Deals to plunge us deeper into an economic depression so we can build that much higher after the nadir.
Somehow, I don’t like the track that thought is taking....
Nah. What we really need to do is remove obstacles to people’s seeing the links you describe. I personally think that checking accounts, credit cards, direct deposits, and automatic drafts remove the clear link between productive work and wealth. We need to go back to cash.
Weetabix | 4/4/2008 11:15 AM CDT -
Given the cycles of history, collapse is inevitable. That doesn’t mean it is around the corner or even anywhere on the horizon. I think we can sustain a reasonably comfortable life for a good amount of time. I don’t see how intentionally crashing things, thus making people needlessly suffer prematurely, does anyone any good.
And personally, I think adopting the other team’s agenda to speed up the crash makes us morally culpable in that inevitable suffering. No thanks.
What I do think we can and should do is encourage the cultural and moral good in our society without dwelling on it’s impermanence. We can do tremendous good both in the short and long terms by bucking up those who form the backbone of decency and knowledge in our society. Teach those who are willing to listen what a good culture is, how to get it, and how to preserve it.
Are your efforts going to turn the tide of history? Probably not. But in that case, you and everyone like you will be nudging society to a better path. Together we may very well be able to make a difference.
American Farmer | 4/4/2008 12:49 PM CDT -
Forgot my tongue-in-cheek smiley. I don’t actually propose hastening our own demise.
Your reasons in paragraphs 3 & 4 are:
- why we homeschool,
- why I’m a Scoutmaster,
- why I comment on blogs like this,
- why I try to gently persuade libs near the fence,
- why I look for people to introduce to shooting,
- et cetera.I’m witchoo.
Weetabix | 4/4/2008 12:58 PM CDT -
PS - Two very good posts.
Do you find, as Mrs. dT once noted, that your more in-depth posts generate fewer comments than the on the spur of the moment ones do?
You had so much good history and such solid conclusions in these two that I didn’t really know how to comment substantially. I didn’t see anything to add to your quite capable treatment.
Weetabix | 4/4/2008 01:02 PM CDT -
Pretty much all of my posts are spur of the moment, so I don’t really have a way to compare.
American Farmer | 4/4/2008 01:55 PM CDT -
I need some spurs like yours.
Weetabix | 4/4/2008 01:57 PM CDT -
Unless I read your post (and history) wrong, the fall comes due to greed, malice, and ignorance.
I am not sure anything can be done about the malice part. Some people just seem intent on destruction. I am also pretty sure that you can not eliminate greed. We all have a desire for more. Ignorance seems to be the one that can be dealt with through education, of course.
That said, if you remove the ignorance, the the new found knowledge may show people that the ideas feeding the greed and malice are, in fact, wrong.
Cobar | 4/4/2008 08:22 PM CDT -
Cobar, I’m afraid that I must disagree with you. Socialism, Fascism, and Progressivism are all closely related and all daughters of a philosophy which denies inherent nature (or the Biblical view of Mankind, for the Christians). The error of Progressivism in its many forms is the idealistic idea that human nature can be changed. The main draw of socialism is entirely idealistic, i.e., equality of outcome and “fairness”. Their chief criticism of capitalism is its inequality of outcome. The fact that it works in real life is dismissed as mere pragmatism. They believe that it is better to fail for “pure” motives than to succeed with “evil” motives.
Papapete | 4/7/2008 06:53 AM CDT -
In the 2nd paragraph, you mention democracy making a slow comeback in Europe, specifically in Venice and the Baltic-Hanseatic League. Where (or how) do the cantons of Switzerland fit into this picture?
I know that their democracy also took some time to develop into a republic, bu in some ways, they have a government that is still more democratic, and less socilaistic, than ours. Not to try to sugar-coat things, they also have problems, especially dealing with issues such as asylum-seekers and immigration (particularily WHO is immigrating...)cas | 4/7/2008 01:55 PM CDT -
I don’t know that much about Swiss history. Was it really democratic, or was it just a confederation of small feudal states?
American Farmer | 4/7/2008 02:10 PM CDT -
Weetabix ... while I would have no problem at all with a return to cash, I’m afraid the largest obstacle would be our government, which seems to exist mostly to extract as much wealth from us as it can. Cash is anethema to the IRS, since they are not able to track it at will—making them force banks to disclose large withdrawls of cash.
pete in Midland | 4/10/2008 10:30 AM CDT
