[Benjamin R. Barber] Strong democracy Participatory Politics

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.The consumer is a creature of great rea-reason and prudent fear could have on the natural bonds that tieson devoted to small ends.His cherished freedom is chained to themen together i n society.When fear alone compels compliance (asmost banal need.He uses the gift of choice to multiply his optionswi th Hobbes's sword), when fellowship depends on private interesti n and to transform the material conditions of the world, but neverand civility is a matter of private penalties and private rewards, thento transform himself or to create a world of mutuality with his fellow"nothing is left which engages the affections on the part of the com-humans.monwealth.[Yet] these public affections, combined with man-The consumer's world is a world of carrots and sticks.But is hu-ners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correc-man society really held together solely by Hobbes's strange mixture2 7tives, always as aids to law." Karl Marx offered the same criticismof cold prudence and hot terror? Edmund Burke, who linked thei n his Manifesto, where he described how the bourgeoisie had "tornexcesses of the French Revolution wi th the excesses of the Frenchasunder" the natural ties of the feudal world and left "no otherphilosophes, remarked wi th bitterness that their "barbarous phi-nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callouslosophy"'cash-payment.' "is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings.Laws are toTo identify liberal man as governed by need is to portray him asbe supported only by their own terrors, and by the concern which eachsmall, static, inflexible, and above all prosiac as a greedy little var-individual may find in them from his own private speculations, or can spareto them from his own private interests.In the groves of their academy, at the2526.That minimalist and anarchist critics such as Robert Paul Wolff and Robertend of every vista, you see nothing but the gallows.Nozick perceive states based on extortion as illegitimate is quite understandable.Infact, the anarchist critique of government presumes that political society is coercive.25.Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (London: Dent, n.d.), p.27.Burke, Reflections, p.318.308.Thin DemocracyThe Argument against Liberalism2524at their potential best (to help them become better than they are).mint unable to see, for all his ratiocinating foresight, beyond his ap-Recognizing this, we must continue to believe with Reinhold Nie-petites.A creature of appetite, or of reason indentured to appetite,buhr that "democracy has a more compelling justification and re-liberal man is seen as incapable of bearing the weight of his ideals.quires a more realistic vindication than is given it by the liberal cul-Freedom becomes indistinguishable from selfishness and is cor-2 8ture wi th which it has been associated i n modern history."rupted from wi thi n by apathy, alienation, and anomie; equality isIt is the aim of this book to develop an alternative justification: toreduced to market exchangeability and divorced from its necessaryassociate democracy with a civic culture nearer to the themes of par-familial and social contexts; happiness is measured by material grat-ticipation, citizenship, and political activity that are democracy'sification to the detriment of the spirit.Perhaps this is why the mira-cle of American democracy has produced dropouts as well as bene- central virtues.We must do so too without falling victim to eitherthe nostalgia for ancient, small-scale republics that has made soficiaries, malcontents as well as successes, lost souls as well asmany communitarian theories seem irrelevant to modern life or tomillionaires, terrorism as well as abundance, social conflict as wellthe taste for monolithic collectivism that can turn large-scale directas security, and injustice as well as the forms of civility.democracy into plebiscitary tyranny.These weaknesses are tied to the thinness and provisionality ofThe form of democracy that wi l l emerge in the following analy-the liberal defense of democracy.For that defense is negative rathersis we wi l l call it "strong democracy" to distinguish it from its thin,than affirmative and can conceive of no form of citizenship otherrepresentative cousin manages to complement some of liberal de-than the self-interested bargain.But it is not enough for us to bemocracy's strengths even as it remedies a number of its deficiencies.democrats solely that we might be free; despotism may also offer aBefore we can explore this alternative, however, we need to know acertain freedom, as Voltaire and Frederick the Great tried to prove.good deal more about liberal democracy.The rough metaphorIt is not enough for us to be democrats solely to secure our interestsworked out above of politics as zookeeping is in fact predicated ontoday; tomorrow our interests may be better served by oligarchy orcertain preconceptual premises ("Newtonian politics"), epistemo-tyranny or aristocracy or by no government at all.It is not enoughlogical convictions ("Cartesian politics"), and a political psychologyfor us to be democrats this year because we do not believe i n any-("apolitical man"), all of which are intimately associated with thething strongly enough to impose our beliefs on others; next year weschema they engender and with many of its more visible blemishes.may uncover foundations for those beliefs that destroy our self-re-straint.Every prudential argument for democracy is an argument The next four chapters, which constitute the balance of Part I , arefor its thinness; every defense of democracy i n lieu of something thus devoted to an elaboration of thin democracy and its dilemmas.better invites one to search for the missing "something better"; Part I I will offer an alternative form of politics i n the participatoryevery attempt to cut man down to fit the demands of hedonism and mode strong democracy.economics makes hi m too small for civic affiliation and too mean-28.Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (New York:spirited for communal participation.Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), p.xii.What we have called "thi n democracy," then, yields neither thepleasures of participation nor the fellowship of civic association, nei-ther the autonomy and self-governance of continuous political activ-ity nor the enlarging mutuality of shared public goods of mutualdeliberation, decision, and work.Oblivious to that essential humaninterdependency that underlies all political life, thin democratic pol-itics is at best a politics of static interest, never a politics of transfor-mation; a politics of bargaining and exchange, never a politics ofinvention and creation; and a politics that conceives of women andmen at their worst (in order to protect them from themselves), neverThe Preconceptual Frame 27Chapter Twoa theorist launches his arguments and to which he can safely returnwhen a given philosophical voyage of discovery fails or is aborted.It is a kind of conceptual grid by whose fixed and permanent coor-The Preconceptual Frame:dinates both the location and the velocity of every idea i n a theorycan be measured.Newtonian PoliticsPerhaps the most obvious example of an inertial frame is the"ether" on which Newtonian physics was once thought to depend [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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