There’s a common theme underlying several of my recent posts - one that I’ve discussed before but which doesn’t get much attention elsewhere. I mean the conflict between democracy and justice.
Why are people supporting shadow cabinet quotas for women when there are equally good arguments for quotas for other under-represented groups? Why isn’t intergenerational justice more widely discussed? Why do people think immigration controls are a good way to raise the living standards of poorer workers when they give less vocal and widespread support to other policies, such as genuine redistribution?
The answer to all these questions is that democracy gives us a set of filters which exclude or weaken some demands for justice whilst accepting others.
I’ll suggest three such filters. There may be more.
1. What groups are large and/or organized and respectable? Democracy is better at meeting the needs of the marginally oppressed than of the genuinely, seriously oppressed. For example, no-one advocated shadow cabinet quotas for women in the 1960s, even though women suffered vastly more injustice then (indeed, they didn‘t advocate them precisely because women suffered so much injustice). It is only as women’s position has improved that discrimination in their favour becomes acceptable.
Or take another example. In the 60s, when unions were powerful, white unskilled workers got a better hearing from governments than they do now, whilst ethnic minorities and women had a bad time. As the power of unskilled whites has declined, so governments now pay them less attention - whether justice requires this or not.
Democracy gives to those who have political power. But those who need justice most, by definition, don’t have political power.
2. Who exists? Future generations don’t exist, or are too young to be organized and powerful. So democracy gives them a bad deal. It also gives a bad deal to other non-voters, such as immigrants or foreigners. National democracy rules out global justice.
3. What’s “credible“? Bashing immigrants is a mainstream policy. Demands for a significantly more redistributive tax system are not. Similarly, quotas for women is mainstream, but quotas for people who went to state school is class war. Democracy - aided by the media you might add - makes some policies respectable and others not. This leads to a feedback loop: people only support policies they are familiar with; parties don’t therefore want to propose new radical policies, so radical policies remain unfamiliar and therefore unpopular.
It would be tempting to give you some Marxist theory about how democracy serves the interests of capitalists. I don’t want to argue against that, but it’s not what I have in mind. Sometimes, it can be right-wing policies that get marginalized: for example, in the 60s and 70s, demands to privatize utilities were regarded as eccentric lunacy - except that in a short time they became mainstream.
All I’m saying here is that under democracy, justice gets a raw deal. And I fear it is too glib to say that this is because democracy is capitalistic or inadequately realized.
In this context, I’m wary of “progressives”. The notion that one can make piecemeal, gradual progress towards justice, I fear, means that one rectifies minor injustices which win votes whilst ignoring larger injustices which the public tolerate.
Why are people supporting shadow cabinet quotas for women when there are equally good arguments for quotas for other under-represented groups? Why isn’t intergenerational justice more widely discussed? Why do people think immigration controls are a good way to raise the living standards of poorer workers when they give less vocal and widespread support to other policies, such as genuine redistribution?
The answer to all these questions is that democracy gives us a set of filters which exclude or weaken some demands for justice whilst accepting others.
I’ll suggest three such filters. There may be more.
1. What groups are large and/or organized and respectable? Democracy is better at meeting the needs of the marginally oppressed than of the genuinely, seriously oppressed. For example, no-one advocated shadow cabinet quotas for women in the 1960s, even though women suffered vastly more injustice then (indeed, they didn‘t advocate them precisely because women suffered so much injustice). It is only as women’s position has improved that discrimination in their favour becomes acceptable.
Or take another example. In the 60s, when unions were powerful, white unskilled workers got a better hearing from governments than they do now, whilst ethnic minorities and women had a bad time. As the power of unskilled whites has declined, so governments now pay them less attention - whether justice requires this or not.
Democracy gives to those who have political power. But those who need justice most, by definition, don’t have political power.
2. Who exists? Future generations don’t exist, or are too young to be organized and powerful. So democracy gives them a bad deal. It also gives a bad deal to other non-voters, such as immigrants or foreigners. National democracy rules out global justice.
3. What’s “credible“? Bashing immigrants is a mainstream policy. Demands for a significantly more redistributive tax system are not. Similarly, quotas for women is mainstream, but quotas for people who went to state school is class war. Democracy - aided by the media you might add - makes some policies respectable and others not. This leads to a feedback loop: people only support policies they are familiar with; parties don’t therefore want to propose new radical policies, so radical policies remain unfamiliar and therefore unpopular.
It would be tempting to give you some Marxist theory about how democracy serves the interests of capitalists. I don’t want to argue against that, but it’s not what I have in mind. Sometimes, it can be right-wing policies that get marginalized: for example, in the 60s and 70s, demands to privatize utilities were regarded as eccentric lunacy - except that in a short time they became mainstream.
All I’m saying here is that under democracy, justice gets a raw deal. And I fear it is too glib to say that this is because democracy is capitalistic or inadequately realized.
In this context, I’m wary of “progressives”. The notion that one can make piecemeal, gradual progress towards justice, I fear, means that one rectifies minor injustices which win votes whilst ignoring larger injustices which the public tolerate.
v. good. I like the feedback loop, a bit like path dependency + noise. You end up with some weird set of of policies (or more generally, not policies per se but set of things that people even think fall within the policy domain) not for any reason that can be rationalised, just because you have a process with persistence that moves in mysterious ways. I think much cross-country variation in policy is explained by that.
the credibility thing is tricky, because there is some genuine variation in what policies are sensible/credible (that is to say, feasible, effective in a cure better than disease sense) ... how does one separate your explanation (bashing immigrants 'mainstream' genuine redistribution 'not mainstream') from the alternative (bashing immigrants actually sensible, genuine redistribution actually not). I don't think that, and think you have picked a good example, but I have no more basis for that than my judgment, which differs from that of others.
Posted by: Luis Enrique | June 10, 2010 at 04:22 PM
Quotas for women is only "mainstream" in the intellectual sewer of the left.
Posted by: Jackart | June 10, 2010 at 05:03 PM
Isn't it a case of democracy being the worst political system, apart from all the others? For all its flaws it has in this country delivered strong improvements in the welfare of many previously marginalised groups.
Interesting what you have to say about immigration, but using your style of analysis I come to exactly the opposite conclusion. 'Mainstream policy' in relation to immigration during New Labour's rule was to have unprecedentedly high levels of it, year after year. How did that policy become 'credible'? Precisely because it was perceived to be in the interests of those who are powerful in our democracy - the middle classes and owners of capital who benefit from lower wages at the bottom of the pile. The interests of unskilled domestic workers were disregarded because those workers are (or were) electorally unimportant.
If the political tide has turned on this particular issue it's probably because Labour has realised that it now needs and risks losing the votes of the people who lose out from high low skilled immigration. I can't think what else accounts for the sudden conversion of Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham.
Posted by: AJ | June 10, 2010 at 05:37 PM
See also
VAN PARIJS, Ph., Justice and Democracy: Are They Incompatible ? , Journal of Political Philosophy, Oxford & New York, 4 (2), June 1996, pp. 101-117.
Download:
http://bit.ly/cygPek
Posted by: Chris Bertram | June 10, 2010 at 05:38 PM
"And I fear it is too glib to say that this is because democracy is capitalistic or inadequately realized."
With that in mind, I'm going to say that this is because democracy is inadequately realised by capitalistic representative government. The real crux of your argument, it seems to me, is point 1 - that power resides largely with organisation. But if 'democracy' is defined substantively as 'equal distribution of political power', the fact that some groups are organised and others not becomes a lack of democracy not rectified by the formal equality of suffrage - and the fact that our economic system generates and augments such disparities renders it undemocratic.
Posted by: Luke R | June 10, 2010 at 09:23 PM
All that and no mention of the phrase "entrenched constitution".
"The notion that one can make piecemeal, gradual progress towards justice, I fear, means that one rectifies minor injustices which win votes whilst ignoring larger injustices which the public tolerate."
Well, better you make the piecemeal progress that the democratic system allows, than storm the Winter Palace.
Posted by: Alex | June 11, 2010 at 04:51 AM
The notion that democracy is incompatible with justice is quite compatible with the notion that it is the best available form of government. Especially when your notion of justice is perfection. Unless I'm misreading him, I don't think Chris is arguing against democracy, merely pointing out some of its characteristics.
Posted by: Luis Enrique | June 11, 2010 at 09:20 AM
This argument is only possible, though, because you're misusing the word 'justice', which rather than being a synonym for Marxist conclusions about the proper ordering of society is in fact a word that denotes an appropriate consequence for a given action.
Posted by: Peter Risdon | June 12, 2010 at 12:21 PM