Some people were surprised by Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’. However, the Catholic Church is the most obvious entity in European history to take up the cause of the environment. The progressive movement shares Pope Francis’s concern. We should make ourselves familiar with this document, discuss it, and build on it.
(more…)Our Season of Creation
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There is a contradiction between progressives defending democratic principles, and proponents of the traditional family. This conflict is not limited to the well-known dispute between the Democratic Party and Conservatives in Congress. The problem is much older and far-reaching than that, as illustrated in this article by Chandrakala Padia. She concludes that when it comes to feminist issues there is not much difference between liberal theory and the elitist model of democracy. The theorists all assume that the structure of social relations and inequality has no effect on political equality and democratic citizenship. I would argue that patriarchy weakens participation by women and strengthens oligarchy.
Western Women and the Specter of a Traditional Standard
Today, after 200 years of women’s ‘liberation’, the issue is further clouded by the fact that Western women are held to the traditional standard in more subtle ways. It has been argued that the failure to account for the structural difficulties women face in political participation has crippled the development of democracy. Today, as members of Congress strive to return women to more traditional roles, this is a serious problem for democracy. Chandrakala Padia’s article is a good way to begin this discussion.
Theoretical Models of Democracy
Padia states that current political practices are the result of four theoretical models of democracy. The participatory model of democracy, attributed to J. J. Rousseau, is the last of four models, but in her opinion it is the most hopeful model for the democratic citizen. The other three theoretical models will be discussed following the discussion of the participatory model. They are: the Protective model of Bentham and J. S. Mill; the Developmental model of J. S. Mill; and the Elitist model of Joseph Schumpeter.
The Participatory/developmental Theory of Democracy
The participatory/developmental theory is my category, not Padia’s. I’m trying to lessen the confusion of J. S. Mill being categorized under two of the models: Mill developed both the protective model of democracy with Jeremy Bentham, and Rousseau’s classical participatory model. (For Padia, ‘classical’ refers to a model that retains its moral content. By comparison, she says the elitist model has been emptied of its moral content.)
J. S. Mill
J. S. Mill agreed with the protective model of Bentham but he valued participation more than Bentham. Padia calls his model the developmental model of democracy. Mill differs from Bentham in the following way: for Bentham, participation only ensured that private interests of each citizen were protected. But for Mill participation had a much wider function. It is central for the maintenance of a democratic polity and a participatory society. So Mill advocates for adult franchise (including female franchise). He thinks subordination of one sex to another is wrong in itself and hinders human improvement. Therefore, it should be replaced by perfect equality.
However, Mill also agrees with Rousseau on the social inferiority of women. He assumed that wives would always be willing to accept the ‘natural’ arrangements, and failed to see sources of male authority over women outside of legal forms, such as economic authority. He ended up promoting liberty in the political realm and subjugation at home. In Mill’s model, patriarchy weakens participation by women and strengthens oligarchy. He disguises his patriarchal bias by separating the private and public lives of women.
The Patriarchal Influence of Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel
One explanation for this is that both Mill and Rousseau use the patriarchal logic of Plato, Aristotle, and Hegel. These men believed that men by nature possess capacities required for citizenship and justice, while women by nature lack such political morality. For Mill this is a contradiction, because he also argued that individuals develop a sense of justice through participation in a wide range of public institutions. It would be more logical if he had called for women to develop their sense of ‘political morality’ through participation.
According to Padia, “the inadequacies of Mill’s analysis arise from his support for the public private dichotomy. He tries to adorn woman with all political rights, but deprives her of equal status in the family…”
The most charitable excuse that can be made for Mill’s patriarchal bias is the dogmatic influence of the Greek philosophers. In spite of their oligarchical leanings, their writings have become the undisputed foundation of what passes for reason, even in societies that call themselves democratic. This is not rational. Patriarchy weakens participation by women and strengthens oligarchy.
J. J. Rousseau
Rousseau’s indifference to women is also in conflict with his own theory.
Rousseau expects individuals to develop a sense of responsibility through the participatory process. He is convinced that, as a result of participating in decision-making, the individual can be educated to distinguish between his own good and bad impulses and desires, and to harmonize the two states of public and private citizenship. Further Rousseau finds a close connection between participation and control; for the more a man participates the more control he gets over the political process. And it is here that one can see the true meaning of freedom. For unless each individual is forced, through participation, into socially responsible action, there can be no law which ensures everyone’s freedom.
But then he argues that women’s distinct position and functions are those that are natural to her sex. He justifies the absolute rule of men over their wives, the confinement of women to their home after marriage, and a strict moral education for women, so that family life may not be disturbed by transgressions.
The entire education of women must be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to be loved and honored by them, to rear them when they are young, to care for them when they are grown up, to counsel and console, to make their lives pleasant and charming, these are the duties of women at all times and they should be taught them in their childhood…
Misogyny and its Antidote
Rousseau even promotes the idea that the female sex is the source of major evils in the civilized world. Like Mill, he contradicts the essence of his own theories of democracy. These contradictions should be the focus of democrats going forward.
If Patriarchy weakens participation by women and strengthens oligarchy, the recognition and elimination of patriarchal attitudes in democratic theory would begin to address this tendency toward oligarchy. Padia thinks there is reason for hope in a new type of democratic theorist:
Thus we find that both Rousseau and Mill accept the patriarchal suppression of civil liberty, and look on domestic life as having no bearing at all on public life which is one of the many defects of the participatory model. But, I hasten to add, this cannot be said of political philosophers like Carole Pateman, who are also proponents of participatory democracy.
Carole Pateman
According to Pateman, the concept of participatory democracy comprises three ideas:
- “Individuals and their institutions cannot be considered in isolation from one another.” for we may add the improvement of an individual importantly depends on his membership of a wider whole. Indeed, says Pateman, what is required is the maximum participation of people in all spheres of society; for it would on the one hand help in developing individual talent, and, on the other, lend richness and variety to the fabric of participatory society.
- “Spheres such as industry should be seen as political systems in their own right, offering areas of participation [in] addition to the national level”. And here the authority structure should be so organized that maximum workers may participate in decision-making. This would slowly lead to the abolition of the permanent distinction between the owners and the owned.
- Participation means not only taking part in elections, but also having an effective voice in the making of decisions. it also means that people have the power to change their own decisions if they do not yield the desired results.
One Democratic Ideal is Still Missing: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
Even though these points provide key features of democracy, Chandrakala Padia finds that an important component is still missing. Participation should be regulated by the three cardinal ideals of democracy–liberty, equality, and fraternity.
A mere extension of the range of participation does not guarantee that the working together is making for a desirable goal.
Still, Padia gives Pateman the credit for insisting on the ideal of sexual equality. She asserts that neither the equal opportunity of liberalism, nor the active participatory democratic citizenship of one and all can be achieved without radical changes in personal and domestic life.
Basic Tenets and Theorists of the Elitist Model
Most writers today adhere to the elitist model of democracy. This is where the cumulative effects of the patriarchal bias, and the oligarchical structures that arise from it, become apparent. The basic tenets of the elitist model can be stated as:
1. It’s the leaders who really matter and not the masses they lead. Michels says the majority are ‘predestined by tragic necessity to submit to dominion of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of oligarchy’.
2. Democracy is merely a method for arriving at political, administrative, and legislative decisions, and is hence incapable of being an end in itself.
3. Active participation of the people leads to totalitarianism. Schumpeter says, “Party and machine politicians are simply the response to the fact that the electoral mass is incapable of action other than a stampede…” The people, Sartori says, only ‘react’, they do not ‘act’. Therefore it would be wiser to accept the facts as they are, because trying to change them would endanger the very stability of the political system.Stability is Emphasized by Elitist Theorists
Stability is emphasized by elitist theorists. According to Schumpeter, stability comes from the long-lasting nature of political loyalties, and flexibility comes from the fact that it’s the elite who wield the power in a democracy. They are supposedly able to overcome any threats to the system by virtue of their superior intellectual gifts.
Joseph Schumpeter
The main proponent of the elitist model is Joseph Schumpeter, who wrote Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in 1942. Mosca, Michels, and Sartori also support this theory. This model contends that the classical (moral) model rested on empirically unrealistic foundations. It asserts that democracy can never lead to the improvement of mankind, and that participation has hardly any value in itself. The purpose of democracy is simply to register the desires of people as they are, not to contribute to their ennoblement.
Democracy is simply a kind of market mechanism: ‘the voters are the consumers; the politicians are the entrepreneurs’. The role of people is merely to produce a government, not to ensure that it be efficient and right-minded. According to Schumpeter: “…the democratic method is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote”.
Bernard Barelson
According to Barelson, classical theory concentrated on individual citizens and ignored the political system. It did not realize that limited participation and apathy have a positive function for the system.
Robert Dahl
Robert Dahl thinks classical theory is invalid and inadequate for his own theory of polyarchy, or the rule of multiple minorities. Following Schumpeter, he says democracy is a political method that centers on the electoral process. Elections are central in providing a mechanism that controls leaders by non-leaders. He says political equality must not be defined as equality of political control or power for lower socio-economic status groups. Political equality means universal suffrage. But he warns of dangers in increased participation by ordinary man. It could lead to polyarchy and decrease stability.
Giovanni Sartori
Giovanni Sartori, who wrote Democratic Theory in 1942, said there is an unbridgeable gap between ‘classical’ theory and reality. He claims the democratic ideal (the ideal of leveling) works against democracy and participation leads to totalitarianism. He recommends not trying to increase participation. Power resides in those who avail themselves of it.
Harry Eckstein
Eckstein said that we must understand the nature of non-governmental social relationships in families, schools, economic organization, etc. He claims that you can’t democratize some authority structures such as socialization in school and family, and some capitalist organizations. They resist change and therefore add to stability.
Participation for the majority is the participation in the choice of decision-makers. The function is protective and protects individuals from arbitrary decisions by elected leaders. This justifies the democratic method, in his view.
Conclusion
The entire body of democratic theory leans toward oligarchy. This tendency has been disguised, even by the defenders of participation. In retrospect, the rise of the elitist model seems inevitable. This model does not limit itself to the supposed flaws of women; it is hostile to the participation of both sexes.
Many of the tactics we saw in the 2016 and 2020 elections, as well as the insulting attitudes about progressive goals, can be explained by the party establishment’s acceptance of the elitist model. Patriarchy weakens participation by women and strengthens oligarchy. The remedy is a participatory model of democracy as represented by Carole Pateman and other feminist theorists. However, its effectiveness would depend on whether we are able to restructure social relations in the home.
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The Catholic Church is being criticized for its recent announcement that it will not bless same-sex unions. I’ve written previously about the problems I see in modern marriage, but that is not what I want to talk about here. The argument I’m making in this article is that the Catholic Church’s stance toward marriage is pro-woman. My focus is not the same as the Church’s focus. My concern is the impact of the legalization of same-sex marriage on a woman’s place in marriage and, through marriage, in society.
Conflicting Views of Reality
Since same-sex marriage is already the law of the land, I am hopeful that this discussion will not be overly threatening to same-sex partners. I’ll start with this: it seems to me that the gay lobby’s insistence that the Church bless same-sex unions is a challenge to the Church’s definition of marriage, more than an attempt to advance gay rights. And as a claim about reality its influence may be all out of proportion to the number of same-sex marriages. I believe it is intended to be a challenge to the definition of marriage because the Gay lobby has already won the right for same-sex couples to marry, and yet they choose to engage the Church publicly. Also gay people represent a small percentage of the population, and a small percentage of that small percentage will be Catholic and/or choose to marry.
The Church’s refusal to bless same-sex unions is also a statement about reality. This reality was defined by the church’s sacrament of marriage long before this issue arose. I hope this discussion will help women see the importance of this debate in their own lives.
True love and same-sex marriage
I wrote an article about same-sex marriage when it was first legalized. I said that the only criterion left in our society for heterosexual marriage is true love. Since it is impossible to argue that same-sex couples are not as capable of true love as heterosexual couples, denying marriage to same-sex couples would be discriminatory. This was meant as a criticism of our casual approach to marriage rather than a defense of same-sex marriage. I’m writing this now because I think there is potential for injustice in the direction we are headed . I think it is important to consider the implications of same-sex marriage for a woman’s place in society.
What does same-sex marriage say about the place of women?
At some point, LGBTQ rights always seem to challenge the place of women. This happens with trans-women in sports, and it happens when the gay lobby challenges the definition of marriage. The Church defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for the purpose of creating children. This is as close as it gets in our society to acknowledging a woman’s place in society. So I argue that in the context of the same-sex marriage debate, the Church’s definition of marriage protects a woman’s place in marriage, and in society.
Most women have trouble imagining how the marriage of same-sex partners can be a threat to heterosexual marriage. Perhaps the main threat is not to marriage but to women. It seems to me that the gay lobby’s demand for the Catholic Church to bless same-sex unions is a renewed attack on a woman’s place in marriage and in society.
Female Same-Sex Families Are Still Vulnerable to Misogyny
But what about female same-sex partners you ask? Don’t they benefit? I would argue that they don’t in the same degree. There are twice as many gay men as gay women. In addition, half of gay women identify as bi-sexual and many of them are already in heterosexual marriages. So for the most part we are talking about male same-sex partners.
Another reason I focus on male same-sex partners is that female same-sex couples remain more vulnerable to harassment than male same-sex couples. At the same time a judge in Utah threatened to remove a foster child from the home of a lesbian same-sex couple, male same-sex couples living in Utah were not threatened.
Worse-case scenario for a woman’s place
Even though gay people make up a minority of the population, the view of marriage the gay lobby espouses, and the way the media amplifies this view, has the potential to make women even less important than they are. When you include the fact that male same-sex partners may adopt children, it becomes clear that same-sex marriage actually makes the presence of women optional in the families they create. But again, this all seems to make sense because of our current understanding of marriage.
The Status of a Woman’s Child-bearing Role Was Already in Question
There is a precedent for the diminished status of women in their role of bearing children. Women are relegated to a peripheral position every time a baby is taken from a single mother and given to a heterosexual couple. In other words, it is generally accepted that a woman can lose her baby by default. This practice may have added legitimacy to the adoption of children by male same-sex couples.
Conclusion
A remedy might be to ask how we can encourage the Church’s definition and protections of marriage for women and at the same time deal humanely with the way people actually live. One way this has been dealt with in the past is to impose sanctions on people who don’t fit the mold. This seems to have had destructive consequences.
These are very old questions and no society has answered them in a satisfactory way. But in the context of the same-sex marriage debate, the Church’s definition of marriage is pro-woman. Our incomplete understanding of marriage is to blame for the fact that we have failed to examine the connection between same-sex marriage and a woman’s place.
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Lately I’ve been thinking about the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. He fasted for 40 days and was hungry, and during this time in the wilderness the devil tempted him three times. The first temptation had to do with Jesus’s hunger. The second temptation, as I understand it, was connected with the human need for validation in the eyes of other people. But the third temptation was something else altogether. Verses 8 and 9 imply that the ‘devil’ has the power to bestow ‘the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,’ if we will only worship him. Jesus’s resistance to these temptations represents the justice of the rupture.
And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,
And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them:
And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (Matthew 4: 1-10)
The Prince of This World
In recent years I’ve begun to think of the earth as surrounded by a closed system and ruled by a sort of cosmic tyranny. I imagine at the head of this cosmic order sits the ‘prince of this world.’ You can call him whatever you want–Matthew called him ‘the devil’. It follows that when Jesus resisted the devil’s temptations, he was waging a cosmic resistance. According to an article by J. Leavitt Pearl, this cosmic resistance represents the justice of the rupture. If I understand it correctly, this resistance remains the central drama of mortal life. It is the fundamental necessity of the entire human race–the only path to freedom.
Who is the God Worshipped by Both Christians and Jews?
I believe that this is what the Christians mean when they say they worship the same god that the Jews worship. There is a cosmic order that wields power over the Earth and her inhabitants, and there is another power directly opposed to the cosmic order. (I am not talking about Jewish or Christian esotericism and the loosely related secret societies that capitulate to the cosmic order.)
The Boundaries Between These Figures Don’t Seem Clear Enough
Unfortunately, the major religions of our day have taken on much of the lore of the cosmic order. This happened quite early in Christianity’s journey through history. Also unfortunate is the fact that the so-called Christian ‘reformers’ failed to recognize this problem. This is doubly unfortunate because it is not only the central problem of religion. It is the central problem of mortal existence. The failure to recognize this fact taints everything, including the current political environment.
Cosmic Resistance and the Baptism of Jesus
J. Leavitt Pearl sees this cosmic resistance in the scripture that tells about Jesus’s baptism.
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy spirit.” In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1:4-11, as quoted by J. Leavitt Pearl)
For Pearl the key phrase is, “He saw the heavens torn apart.” It is too easy for most of us to pass over this phrase. Perhaps we overlook it because it comes with the dramatic description of the Spirit descending like a dove. And this was accompanied by a voice coming from heaven and saying to Jesus, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” According to Pearl, “The tearing open of the cosmic order is the descent of the True Justice of God. The empires of this world rule under the banner of ‘order and justice,’ but this type of ‘justice’ is always only violence and oppression.”
The Gospel of Mark is an Apocalyptic Text
Pearl calls the gospel of Mark an apocalyptic text and describes John as an apocalyptic figure. But his focus is on what happened in the heavens. “…the tearing apart of the heavens is a locus classicus of apocalyptic imagery, found in both…Isaiah 64:1, and…Revelation 6:14.” (The heavens of the cosmic order are not exactly friendly to this tearing apart.)
The heavens of the Biblical world were not only a spiritual domain and the home of God and other spiritual beings. “They were equally the heavens above–the skies, the vault across which the stars moved in their predictable patterns. In other words, the heavens were the domain of order and regularity. Despite their extreme complexity, their interpretation could be mastered by a skilled astrologist.”
When this domain is torn open with Jesus’s baptism, it indicates a “rupture, a radical inbreaking of something genuinely new. But, this arrival of the new necessarily takes the form of a disruption of the delicate harmony of the cosmos, epitomized by the heavens.”
The Justice of the Whole and the Justice of the Rupture
Pearl goes on to explain that these two opposing forces–the cosmic order and the order represented by Jesus–represent two kinds of justice. One is the Justice of the whole. The other is the Justice of the rupture. To further explain his argument, he cites Slavoj Zizek’s book, The Fragile Absolute, and Zizek’s description of the cosmic order represented by paganism:
Against the ‘pagan notions of cosmic Justice and Balance,’ wherein ‘an individual is ‘good’ when he acts in accordance with his special place in the social edifice…and Evil occurs when some particular strata or individuals are no longer satisfied with this place, ‘Zizek contrasts Christianity, which ‘asserts as the highest act precisely what pagan wisdom condemns as the source of evil: the gesture of separation, of drawing the line, of clinging to an element that disturbs the balance of the All’ (118-121, as quoted by Pearl)
One Kind of Justice is Pagan
Pearl tells us that the pagan as described by Zizek is no different from Edmund Burke in his Reflection on the Revolution in France, or white moderates who condemned Martin Luther King Jr.’s tactics as ‘extremist,’ or Fox News pundits who bemoaned the ‘disruption’ of Black Lives Matter protests. They call these revolutionary tactics ‘evil’ because they disrupt a stable order.
Martin Heidegger’s Definition of Justice Contrasted with Jacques Derrida
Pearl admits that the rupture represents a risk but, alternatively, the path of supposed safety leads to the Justice of the whole. This is exemplified by the philosopher Martin Heidegger who interprets ‘justice’ as ‘Compliance–that is harmonization.’ In fact, Heidegger elevates compliance and harmony to ontological principles. The writings of Heidegger were influential in the rise of Nazism.
Pearl contrasts Heidegger’s justice with an alternative account of justice, a justice of the rupture. For this he cites Jacques Derrida, for whom justice is the domain of the future.
Justice emerges as a call or a demand for responsibility to the Other. It cannot be calculated or anticipated, because justice, if there is such a thing, is always a risk, as Derrida notes in, “The Force of Law.” (947)
Justice in Isaiah and the Book of Revelation
The prophet Isaiah, (64:1-2), and the Book of Revelation (6:12-15) each describe a similar view of justice as that of Derrida. It is a justice that casts down the powerful, the oppressors. It is a justice that destroys the class and caste boundaries that order our world, so that ‘everyone, slave and free’ find themselves on an equal footing. For John, any social, political, or economic order that is built on oppression, built on the backs of ‘slaves–and human lives’ (Revelation 18:13) is an order that must be torn open.
My Conclusion and a Warning
I don’t want to end this article without mentioning Pearl’s examples of the risks involved in the justice of the rupture. These include the Terror of the French Revolution and the Stalinism that resulted from the October Revolution. I don’t think any of us are willing to risk such things if we can avoid them, and there are things that must be understood if we want to make these kinds of failure less likely. But they might occur in spite of our best efforts. The challenge to the cosmic order represented by Jesus’s response to his temptations in the wilderness are central to this understanding. We must know which order we serve and which order we fight. Otherwise, failure is almost certain. The cosmic order stands ever ready to creep in and take over from those who remain unaware.
In addition, I have learned since publishing this article that Derrida was a Heideggerian. Also there is an older book with the title of Political Theology. It was originally written by Carl Schmitt. Perhaps the website that inspired this article is reworking this concept. Again, caution is advised.
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America’s political system has been described by Loren Goldner ((Goldner, Herman Melville: Between Charlemagne and the Antemosaic Cosmic Man, Queequeg Publications, New York, NY, 2006)) and others as a Tudor Polity. The jury is still out on whether this was a positive or negative development.
The United States’ System Compared to Great Britain and Europe
Samuel Huntington explains the meaning of America’s Tudor polity in more detail. ((Huntington, Samuel P. “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development, and Politics.” Comparative Politics, vol. 3, no. 3, 1971, pp. 283–322. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/421470. Accessed 20 Oct. 2020.)) Writing in 1966, Huntington praises the American system. But perhaps he would have a different opinion of it today. In fact, it’s possible he had reservations in 1966. On page 412 he says:
Mass participation goes hand-in-hand with authoritarian control.
But Huntington is not referring to the United States in the previous quote.
As in Guinea and Ghana, [authoritarian control] is the twentieth-century weapon of modernizing centralizers against traditional pluralism.
Instead, Huntington’s article contrasts the evolution of British and European systems, which represent two patterns of modernization, with that of the United States. He seems to think the United States is the superior system.
There was a process of political modernization in Europe and Great Britain that involved “rationalized authority, differentiated structure, and mass participation…” But the American system did not undergo any revolutionary changes; it kept the main elements of the English sixteenth-century constitution.
The Americans did take the step of increasing participation in politics by social groups throughout society. They also developed new political institutions–such as political parties and interest associations–to organize this participation. Unfortunately, mass participation doesn’t necessarily result in equality of political power. According to Huntington,
Broadened participation in politics may increase control of the people by the government, as in totalitarian states, or it may increase control of the government by the people, as in some democratic ones. (p. 378)
Mass Participation Versus Direct Democracy
Huntington doesn’t explain what he means by ‘mass politics’ but an article by Yoram Gat argues the United States’ system is one of mass politics. I cite this article because he elaborates on one possible meaning of mass politics.
Due to the symmetry of its decision making process, mass politics has superficial similarity to democracy – a political system in which political power is distributed equally among the members – since both terms describe situations of equality. The difference is that mass politics is defined in terms of formal equality while democracy is defined in terms of equality of actual political power.
This seems to describe our present system more accurately, however Huntington’s approach is important because it focuses on the historical process of modernization.
The American Colonies Fought Modernization
According to Huntington, late medieval and Tudor political ideas, practices, and institutions arrived in the New World with English colonists in the first half of the seventeenth century. The conflict between the colonists and the British government in the middle of the eighteenth century only reinforced the colonists’ adherence to these ‘traditional’ patterns.
The breach between colonists and mother country was largely a mutual misunderstanding based, in great part, on the fact of this retention of older ideas in the colonies after parliamentary sovereignty had driven them out in the mother country ((Charles Howard McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament and Its Supremacy, New Haven 1910, p. 386. As quoted by Huntington, p. 382)).
Huntington concludes that America’s political modernization has been ineffectual and incomplete.
European and English Monarchs of the Sixteenth Century
The absolute monarchs of sixteenth century Europe were not reactionaries. They were actually modernizers who oversaw the transition between medieval and modern politics. (p. 385) There were many political theorists at that time who tried to provide more ‘rational’ justifications of absolute sovereignty based on the nature of man and the nature of society. Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, 1651, was a more extreme doctrine of sovereignty than that of Bodin and the Politiques on the Continent. Bodin and the Politiques looked to the creation of a supreme royal power which would maintain order and constitute a centralized public authority above parties, sects, and groups.
Hobbes and Filmer represent both the secular and religious versions of the doctrine of sovereignty. They argued that it was the subject’s absolute duty to obey his king. Both of them helped political modernization by giving permission for the concentration of authority and the breakdown of the medieval pluralistic political orders.
Mass participation came much later. Since the twentieth century authority has been concentrated in either a political party or a popular charismatic leader. Either one is capable of arousing the masses and challenging traditional sources of authority.
In terms of modernization, the seventeenth century’s absolute monarch was the functional equivalent of the twentieth century’s monolithic party. (p. 386)
Parliamentary Sovereignty
This process also occurred in England with an important difference. James I tried to follow the Continental pattern of the absolutist monarch but Conservatives disagreed. They argued against James I in terms of fundamental law and the traditional diffusion of authority. However their ideas were already out of date in England. Their claims for royal absolutism generated counterclaims for parliamentary supremacy. For example, Hobbes’s and Filmer’s theories of sovereignty provoked Milton’s argument that parliament is above all positive law, whether civil or common. In short, fundamental law suffered the same fate in England as it had on the Continent but it was replaced by an omnipotent legislature rather than by an absolute monarchy.
America
Meanwhile America clung to the old patterns of fundamental law and diffused authority. Huntington makes a statement here that might seem contradictory given our current political situation.
The persistence of fundamental-law doctrines went hand in hand with the rejection of sovereignty. The older ideas of the interplay of society and government and the harmonious balance of the elements of the constitution continued to dominate American political thought. In England, the ideas of the great Tudor political writers, Smith, Hooker, Coke, ‘were on the way to becoming anachronisms even as they were set down.’ In America, on the other hand, their doctrines prospered, and Hobbes remained irrelevant…The eighteenth-century argument of the colonists with the home country was essentially an argument against the legislative sovereignty of Parliament.
American Popular Sovereignty is Latent and Passive
After stating that in America sovereignty was to be lodged in the people, Huntington admits that popular sovereignty is a vague concept. “The voice of the people is as readily identified as is the voice of God. It is thus a latent, passive, and ultimate authority, not a positive and active one.”
The Courts
America’s continuation of the belief in the supremacy of law, as well as its rejection of legislative sovereignty, explains the power of the judicial branch of government in the United States. In England, the supremacy of the law ended in the civil wars of the seventeenth century. The result was that English judges could not oppose any points of sovereignty. However in America, the mixture of judicial and political function remained.
The judicial power to declare what the law is became the mixed judicial-legislative power to tell the legislature what the law cannot be…The legislative functions of courts in America, as McIlwain argues, are far greater than those in England, ‘because the like tendency was there checked by the growth in the seventeenth century of a new doctrine of parliamentary supremacy.’
By contrast, American courts are still ‘guided by questions of policy and expediency.’ (p. 394) This explains the prominent role of lawyers in American politics.
Conclusion
Perhaps the most interesting idea brought up by Huntington is that political modernization in Europe and England was driven by the need for change. Modernization began when the needs of the time met the simultaneous impossibility of change. It can be argued that today in the United States there is an urgent need for change, including the need to combat climate change and preserve arable land and clean water. Yet reactionary forces are cooperating with each other to make change impossible. This is a strong argument for modernization.
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I criticized some of Loren Goldner’s statements in a previous post, but now I want to praise his ideas for other reasons. I appreciate his explanation for why American radicalism differs from European radicalism.
America’s Unique Connection to the Old Testament
Americans have a different historical perspective than Europeans. In Goldner’s words, we have a different “mythical-historical self-understanding.” ((Herman Melville: Between Charlemagne and the Antemosaic Cosmic Man, Queequeg Publications, New York, New York, 2006)) This has led to misinterpretations of American politics and political figures.
Analysts have assumed that both American conservatives and radical socialists lack a “pre-capitalist frame of reference.” This implies that they don’t have an imagined feudal idyll to look back to or a post-capitalist future to look forward to. According to this interpretation, it is impossible to see the present as a mere transition from one state to another as Marx did. But Goldner thinks this “misses something fundamental about America’s mytho-historical self-understanding. Americans do have a pre-capitalist frame of reference, but it’s not feudal. It’s “in the imagery of Old Testament prophecy, in the fundamental myth of the New Covenant in the wilderness. It’s in the relationship between Egypt and Israel and Babylon, in the perception of the peoples encountered in the New World as Adamic man in Paradise.”
In other words, America’s founders didn’t recognize the past of the Holy Roman Empire or Greco-Roman antiquity as being relevant to their experience. Their model was drawn from the Old Testament. It comes from a deep identification between early American experience and that of the Jews ‘going out of Egypt’.
This has had both positive and negative consequences. The most negative consequence has been the tendency to identify peoples of color as representatives of fallen man. The Europeans also projected the Adamic myth on other peoples, but they had no direct dealings with the ‘primitive’ element as the Americans did.
Europe’s Myth of the Cosmic King
[The European myth was] first the myth of the ‘cosmic king’ of the feudal and later absolutist state, culminating in the ‘Sun King’ Louis XIV, and then the pseudo-mythical resurrection of the shattered cosmic king, victim of regicide: the Napoleonic myth. In Europe, the centralist state haunted the ‘poetry of the past’ of the conservative right, but also, through the phenomenon of Bonapartism with its ambiguous legacy, an important part of the left, far more indeed than Marxists at the time or later cared to concede, particularly when, in the twentieth century, Bonapartism fused with the myth of the ‘Third Rome’ and appeared to many American and Western ‘Ishmaels’ to preside over the first ‘socialist’ state in history. (pp24)
This focus on the cosmic king is unique to Goldner and will be examined later. My focus here is the importance of the Old Testament in America’s mytho-historical ideal.
The Indo-European Myth
Goldner mentions additional sources and thinkers that I have used in this blog, for example he cites Melville’s mention of Sir William Jones. Jones is important to Goldner because in 1780 he demonstrated that Sanskrit was an Indo-European language. (pp 49) Indian scholars have objected to this claim. In fact they have objected to the entire Marxist view of India. But Goldner is trying to situate Melville in a broader historical movement of ideas with which he was obviously acquainted. To accomplish this Goldner sketches the history of what he calls the myth.
This is probably a good place to mention my use of Edward Moor’s book, The Hindu Pantheon. In previous articles I have discussed Hindu deities as described by Moor without providing his controversial background. Moor is controversial today because he worked with Sir William Jones in India when India was still a colony of the East India Company. On the other hand America’s understanding of Hinduism has had a Western bias from the beginning. Hindu symbolism, or an American interpretation of it, influenced American culture in a negative way when the medical profession adopted of the caduceus of Hermes. Now back to Goldner.
Georges Dumezil and the Source of Western Literature
Since the 1930s, figures such as Georges Dumezil have uncovered a remarkable coherence of myth within the Indo-European cultural sphere, and in world mythology generally. Dumezil’s work on Indo-Iranian, Greek, Roman and Scandinavian mythology have amply confirmed the quip that ‘the first half of the nineteenth century discovered that all of modern English and French literature derived from German and Scandinavian folktales. The second half of the nineteenth century discovered that all German and Scandinavian folk tales were derived from Indian mythology.
For Goldner this illustrates the importance of India and Egypt–not just Athens or Jerusalem–for the origins of science, religion and art, (pp 87,88). For me it represents another source that I have in common with Goldner–Georges Dumezil.
All things considered, it was probably natural for Marxism to be part of the progressive conversation after all. Hopefully we can develop the ability to acknowledge our diversity, discover our similarities, and use this knowledge to build something better–something uniquely American.
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The foundation of the ancient Greeks’ project for civilization was to turn the female sex into a subject population. But there were unintended consequences. This article argues that there is a connection between Plato’s war on women and the end of monarchy.
Philo
We have evidence that the Greeks were toying with the idea of subjecting women before Plato, but it was Plato who influenced Philo, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher born in 25 BC. Philo used allegory to harmonize Jewish scripture, mainly the Torah, with Greek philosophy.
If we were to judge Plato by today’s standards for hate speech we would conclude that he was a hater of women. However we don’t judge Plato or any other misogynist by that standard. One reason the world accepts Plato’s animosity toward women is that Philo enshrined it in the Bible’s creation story.
Aristotle
This story led some religious leaders to conclude that nothing is due women for their role in reproduction because they are merely repaying their debt to God. This seems to have been the goal of Plato’s student Aristotle who added his own special touch by denying women credit for their part in the creation of life. (This points to the importance of childbearing in the status of women.) The suspicion that certain influential men claimed God as a partisan gendered being with the sole aim of ruling will disturb many readers, but for those who merely want to defend biblical religion there is a solution.
The Bible
There are three ways to read the story of the Fall of Man. It’s a model for the way society should work; it’s a description of the way things are; or it’s warning or a prediction about a human tendency. The second and third possibilities are more revealing than Plato could have imagined. It reveals patriarchal intention.
The last two possibilities are never used to interpret the Fall of Man, although they are used to interpret other biblical stories. The Tower of Babel for example is interpreted as an explanation for different languages and a warning against hubris.
But it is ironic how well the story of the Fall of Man describes human behavior, regardless how we choose to interpret it.
Customs that Guard Against the Subjection of Women
It’s likely that human societies have always had some degree of patriarchal authority. However ancient cultures purposely remedied the disadvantages of women. For example, according to the biblical creation story, equality between men and women is established in marriage. In ancient times this protection was accomplished through customs involving the extended family.
Bride Wealth
The fundamental understanding of ancient cultures was the value of children (and their mother) to the marriage and to the extended family. This value was acknowledged in various ways. One was the custom of bride wealth. Another was the dowry. (Hardship can lead to a breakdown in this custom. In some parts of the world today the dowry justifies the abuse of women).
Matrilineal Kinship
Another custom that has been shown to benefit women and their children is matrilineal kinship. This is a system in which lineage and inheritance are traced through women.
The structure of matrilineal kinship systems implies that, relative to patrilineal kinship systems, women have greater support from their own kin groups and husbands have less authority over their wives. 1
Sara Lowes tested the hypothesis that matrilineal kinship systems reduce spousal cooperation and found that men and women from matrilineal ethnic groups cooperate less with their spouses in a lab experiment. However she also found that matrilineal kinship has important benefits for the well-being of women and children. The children of matrilineal women are healthier and better educated, and matrilineal women experience less domestic violence and greater autonomy.
Matrilineal kinship is not only a remedy for the inequality of women in marriage (Lowes didn’t measure for the effect of bride wealth or bride price), I believe it was the original system for royal succession in Egypt. I base this on the tendency of pharaohs to marry their sisters. Marriage to sisters was not a natural part of matrilineal succession. It was a way for an ambitious pharaoh to escape the limits of matrilineal succession, which makes it impossible to form dynasties. The only way around this obstacle would have been for the son of a pharaoh to wed an heiress. However even this would have gone against custom, if not law. Furthermore, succession by the offspring of a sister (the daughter of the former pharaoh) probably broke the law as well. Normally the son of a pharaoh’s daughter would not have been eligible to succeed him.
This patriarchal strategy can be demonstrated in other countries besides Egypt. The Achaean invader Menelaus married Helen, a kidnapped heiress, because without her he had no right to be king. That’s why Helen’s rescue by Paris led to the Trojan War 2.
Finally, Patrilineal systems inevitably lead to a narrowing of the gene pool for succession. This narrowing of the gene pool has played out in the lineage of European kings. This breakdown in the system of royal succession points to a departure from ancient custom and law.
Plato’s Anti-Democratic Focus
Plato did not only weaken the monarchal ideal. His writings are anti-democratic. Patriarchy weakens participation by women.
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I’m not trying to end to our conversation with people in these categories. I’m trying to clarify the position of progressives by comparison with competing voices in the “progressive” movement. I put progressive in quotation marks because there are non-progressive participants in this movement. In fact, there are categories of participants that we may not be aware of. I’m thinking of socially conservative Marxists, progressive Trump supporters, and the Greeks. Everyone who differs with us is important for purposes of comparison if nothing else. But who are the progressives’ friends?
We can learn from our exchanges with them if we have the courage to ask hard questions and disagree when necessary. But if we keep silent about our differences the conversation can’t help but be empty and purposeless, and it will become vulnerable to special interests. The consequences of capitulation on our part will no doubt be very unpleasant.
Aside from enriching our debates, many of these ‘voices’ have served our causes. One individual in particular has worked hard to advance our agenda for the environment. We could not have accomplished the things Pope Francis has accomplished in such a short time and I plan to remember what he has done and honor him for his service to us. However, I think the time has come to identify what is American in the progressive conversation and for that matter, what is progressive about it.
Occupy Wall Street and Marxism
Since Occupy Wall Street burst on the scene we’ve seen a lot of Marxist rhetoric from the alternative media. Most people who subscribe to these channels don’t know anything about Marxism except that it claims to be a solution to our present troubles. Likewise, they don’t know anything about Occupy Wall Street.
Unfortunately, it is likely that the agenda some of our allies are espousing will keep everything the same. For example Caleb Maupin, a “Marxist” on YouTube, has been insisting that Marxism has always been socially conservative. This is a direct challenge to progressive support for Roe v Wade. Similar to right-wing pundits, he resorts to a litany of Margaret Sanger’s racism and Malthusianism to justify his position and to ‘prove’ that Roe v Wade was a misguided piece of legislation from the beginning.
It is also important for progressives to speak frankly about Roe v Wade and how it constrains our conversation. The right for a woman to obtain an abortion–which is a medical procedure and not technically a political issue–is a very low bar as far as women’s rights are concerned. It is sad that we are forced to continually fight for it. Unfortunately, the fight for Roe v Wade, which is already the law of the land, is as progressive as we are allowed to be in this political climate. I regret this situation while I acknowledge the fight as necessary. I also regret the way we are forced to be cheerleaders for abortion in response to conservatives’ obsession with it.
Was Occupy Wall Street Socially Conservative?
I believe Maupin was associated with Occupy Wall Street, which also claimed to have a Marxist foundation. Was OWS proposing socially conservative policies too? This possible association is pretty enlightening, given that OWS temporarily took over our conversation in its early days. Were they proposing their own agenda for the conversation?
This leads me to wonder whether the mutual admiration expressed between OWS and Vatican II Catholics indicates a deeper alliance than we realize. Again, this is not a rejection of their ideas. It is a request for clarification.
For progressives, social conservatism usually implies control of women. This is not a progressive position.
Reproductive Rights Are Not Faith-based
Some will say that women have always dealt with social control and the country has more important things to worry about at this time. That may be true, but what if the problems we are facing are a result of our culture’s control of women? I’ve written about this in the past and I will write more in the future.
Marxism on Population Control
Another Marxist, Loren Goldner, claims that humans don’t have population limits like other species do because humans continually interact with the environment to create new environments.
The universalism of Marx rests on a notion of humanity as a species distinct from other species in its capacity to periodically revolutionize its means of extracting wealth from nature, and therefore is free from the relatively fixed laws of population which nature imposes on other species.3
This is clearly a matter of faith and I completely disagree with it. I also believe it is contrary to the progressive agenda which advocates slowing population growth as much as possible and finding ways to care for the population we do have. It is my understanding that this is the reason we fight for better management of the environment.
Marx and Engels Use Class Analysis for Male-Female Relations
Goldner’s praise of Marx and Engels on the importance of quality relations between men and women falls into this discussion about how humanity creates its own environment. Basically Marxists deal with this issue under the heading of class. This of course, diminishes the standing of women. On the contrary, I would argue that male-female relations are in a class of their own.
Male-female relations should be decided by customs within the extended family, not by Marxist theory or work arrangements. However, Marxists don’t want to talk about this any more than capitalists do. They would prefer to discuss same-sex marriage and gender rights. That way, they don’t have to make any changes to the fundamental position of women.
Same-Sex Marriage and Trans Rights
I agree that discrimination against gays and trans-people must be illegal, but the interesting thing in this development is the lack of attention to the position of women. Why do we see this convergence of the left and right on women?
It is clear to me that right-wing talking points, regardless of whether they come from the right or the left, cannot refute the current progressive movement. Our agenda is the only sensible response being offered at this time to the realities of human existence. But if the “Marxists” are successful in winning over the progressive movement, nothing will change because their policy proposals are identical to the Right and the Democratic establishment in the only ways that really matter. They negatively influence our relationship with nature and the way our culture deals with women.
Loren Goldner on Marx and Civil Society
Goldner envisions the following options given our current predicament:
The fundamental question before the international left today is whether or not Marx was (as this writer believes) right to think that civil society could be abolished…on a higher level (which preserves and deepens the positive historical achievements of civil, that is, bourgeois society) and not on a lower level, as happened in Soviet-type societies. The second question, which follows hard on the first, is: if Marx was wrong about the critique of civil society, and was in fact a protototalitarian, what, if anything remains valid in his critique of political economy and its programmatic implications?…
I haven’t yet said anything under the heading of progressive Trump supporters. It seems to me this category overlaps with the people who supported Jill Stein in 2016 and those who are now arguing that Trump is better on foreign policy than Biden. It also overlaps with those who have been refuting the DNC’s claim of Russian interference.
I agree that the DNC is an embarrassment in many ways, but their opponents’ arguments verge on support for Putin, who is seen by many Christians as a champion for Christianity. I would argue that there is one good reason to vote for Joe Biden and it can’t be rationalized in order to drum up support for Trump.
Trump’s Covid Response
During the covid19 pandemic Donald Trump has actually carried out policies that he knew would kill more people in blue states, and especially people of color. In other words, he has not only admitted to homicidal tendencies, he has acted on this impulse. Any progressive who argues that we should consider Trump as a candidate should not be trusted. We don’t know if Joe Biden will be better, but at least he has not admitted to being homicidal!
Unfortunately, the DNC is replaying Hillary’s 2016 choice of a vice presidential running mate. Biden’s new running mate, Kamala Harris, is like a clone of Tim Kaine in her unpopularity with progressives. Therefore I think it is possible that the Democrats don’t want to win in 2020 and that they didn’t want to win in 2016. The only choice left to us is to turn out in such large numbers that Joe Biden wins in spite of himself.
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We tried to defend the property rights of American Indians but the establishment made a point of laughing in our face. We raised the money and the votes to put our candidate in the White House but they ran their stable of corporate stooges against us. Now they want us to vote for their candidate even though he’s given us nothing. We asked Joe Biden to promise to undo welfare reform and we got him spouting Rhaum Emmanuel’s talking points on income tax caps. We refused to fall for their tricks when they tried to turn the races against each other, but they’ve killed George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and many others, and we’ve seen the videos. What would you call a system like that? Certainly not democracy.
We’ve tried it their way. We did everything by the rules because this is our country and we care what happens to it. But we flattered them by working within their system. They didn’t deserve such a compliment. They should be laughed at, scorned, held up to our children as an example of evil, and then ignored. And if the mobs burn everything down, we’ll tell our children that’s what happens to people who love injustice.
A word to the wise for our fearless leaders. You deserve this. I would recommend that you don’t retaliate with more injustice.