Freedom to be “wrong”: the only real advantage of democracy
Why the liberal project will fail
Several things came together. A friend sent me this post by N S Lyons. Then, independently, a short conversation on Twitter followed upon the statistics showing that today’s young people get almost all their information from the social media, while old people rely (as they did in the past) on television. And, finally, and perhaps for this post most importantly, my own recent thinking on the following questions: What do you see as the main gain from democracy, as opposed to dictatorship?
Let me start with Number 3. When I thought of that, my answer was: the freedom to read and listen to whatever I want, and to say whatever I want. And I think this is all. I do not believe that democracy leads to higher growth, less corruption, or less inequality. No evidence for any of these things. To put it perhaps too strongly, I think democracy has no effect on any real social phenomenon, but it does allow people, on a purely personal level, to feel better by accessing more diverse information, and to express any option they have. (Note that this freedom applies only to the political sphere, not to one’s place of work which in capitalist democracies is ruled dictatorially.)
But that definition of the advantage of democracy has recently been under the attack by the people who think that social media lead to “fake news”, fragmentation of public opinion, polarization of politics and all kinds of noxious phenomena. And then they paint the picture of some fantasy-world of everybody agreeing on all issues and espousing the liberal values in which they believe. For me, this is precisely the undermining, or the destruction of the most (or the only) valuable part of democracy.
N S Lyons quotes in extenso Polish political philosopher Ryszard Legutko who equates the modern liberal project with the communist project. And indeed the similarities are strong. In both cases, a certain view of the world is supposed to be based on scientific understanding of the way the world works, and everybody who does not see it in such a way must be either “re-educated”, or, if stubbornly clinging to the wrong views, considered morally flawed. Thus the disagreement is with the people who are cognitively or ethically deficient.
I write this as somebody who believes in Enlightenment and economic growth. But I do not believe that people will ever have the same opinion on key matters that relate to the organization of societies. There will be always important differences in values and backgrounds. Any attempt to impose one’s views other than through discussion (while not seriously thinking that one will be successful, see my post here), or to hold others as “morally challenged” if they do not agree, is not only bound to fail. It is wrong. The segmentation of the space for public discourse is not just inevitable; it is, on balance, a good thing. Between a uniformity of opinion that is imposed through the control of the media (epitomized by television) and plurality, or even endless multitude, of views afforded by the echo-chambers of social media, one should choose the latter.
We should not be afraid of polarization and disagreement. They are much better than unanimity. Now, I am not addressing here only an enforced unanimity that comes from having one newspaper and one TV channel (It reminds me of an old Communist joke. “We just introduced the second channel. What is on the second channel? A KGB official who says, “And you comrade, you do not seem to like the first channel?”), but uniformity which comes from the current liberal project.
I remember that in the 1990s, a Dutch friend pointed out to me, the heathen, the advantages of Dutch democracy and called it “vibrant” (as opposed to enforced unanimity). But when “Islamic integralists”, and then Geert Wilders and people like him appeared on the scene, she no longer thought it was so “vibrant”. The same, only more so, is true in France: somehow Islamists, Melenchon, Le Pen and les gilets jaunes although all coming from very different ideological sides, were not compatible with this “vibrancy”. It turns out that “vibrant” meant that everybody would agree with my friend’s fundamental beliefs and that the dispute should center on purely peripheral matters. She represented the pensée unique that followed upon the fall of communism when the liberal view of the world and neoliberal economics were taken to be “normal” and “common sense”, not an ideology.
This was rudely challenged by Islam (which understandably on many issues has an entirely different take), by the financial crisis of 2008, by China’s Sonderweg, the rise of illiberal democracies, Trump’s presidency and then 75 million votes, Russia’s embrace of Euroasianism. It clearly does not reflect today’s realities.
The expansive liberal ideology creates unnecessary conflict by insisting that on all important political and social issues people must share the same opinion, and by denigrating those who do not. Very often they dream, especially if older, of the return of a world of three American TV channels and two weeklies that always had the same news and the same cover page. This allegedly created a consensus of sensible people. But it did so only because others had no say. That world, I think fortunately, will never return because the Internet has made it impossible. But rather than thinking that this is a bad development, we should embrace the freedom to think whatever we want, and to say whatever we want (however strange it might seem to others). For this is probably the only real advantage of democracy.
The main staple of liberalism is the idea that liberalism has moral superiority above everything else and thus considering its mostly hypocritical and abstract values as universal and superior, i.e. not only the right and legitimacy to decide what is ‘true’, but anything that does not fit the limited bourgeois political and ideological framework is automatically subjected to some sort of vile and hypocritical smear campaigns to discredit anybody who does not toe the line. The self awarded and envisioned moral superiority of liberals allows them to specify the levels of tolerance, even up to the point to decide that liberal intolerance of dissent is some form of tolerance. It is the perverted logic of opportunism and superiority. Opportunism and hypocrisy are the centers of gravity of bourgeois liberalism, while liberalism reserves the authority based on assumed moral superiority to shape society. It’s closest bedfellow is fascism. Marx also presciently described these capitalist accommodationists when he diagnosed the essence of petty-bourgeois sophistry in his critique of anarchism, which merges with liberal ideology on essential points…..’the petty bourgeois is made up of on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand. This is so in his economic interests and therefore in his politics, religious, scientific and artistic views. And likewise in his morals, in everything. He is a living contradiction…’ That perfectly applies to the western liberal upper middle class - the epitome of opportunism. Always acting like on the one hand and on the other hand but always on the side of power. It is a permanent autocratic wagging the finger to repressively guide others within the self prescribed sphere of liberalism. Western Liberalism historically has produced violent imperialism, since liberalism is based on the cynical and false belief that hypocritical western values are superior and universal and thus need to be spread across the globe and imposed on non western peoples - politically, culturally, economically and militarily - by any means necessary utilizing oppressive and violent approaches. Liberalism is the worst disease ever proliferating among human societies - it has been causing endless wars, exploitation, colonialism and inhumanity in its smug entitlement of superiority and domination. Liberalism is deeply fascist in its essence and close to the Nazi ideology of the theory of the master race - it did not need to adopt it - it has the same agenda since the belief in white supremacy is part of its core without explicitly stating it. There was a reason why bourgeois liberalism gave rise to Hitler. Liberalism is an elitist bourgeois ideology of a privileged strata of people and there is vast historical evidence of relentlessly and endlessly asserting its so called values on a global scale by all kinds of violent measures. While capitalism is incompatible with democracy liberalism is not - it is the perfect political fit for predatory neoliberalism. The measuring stick of western liberal societies is unfettered individualism, i. e. individual freedom - what’s good for me is good, what’s good for society does not count. That principle is perversly equated with civil liberties, democracy and freedom.
The message in liberal democracy is to keep the status quo and don't talk seriously about the ideals of the french revolution, which were liberty, justice and equality. The only thing that came to pass in some limited form is the political freedom of speech and the perverted joke of what they call personal freedom. What good is freedom of speech if no one is going to listen because the ordinary citizen does not have a platform and their so called elected repesentatives are totally disconnected. Freedom of speech is a travesty at best. It is like talking in a soundproof cell.
On top of that, social and economical justice and equality are something we only can dream about in western liberal societies. We are no further with real democracy than more than two centuries ago. Other than the Paris Commune in 1871 and the Bolsheviks under Lenin in the early days of October 1917 no one ever politically, socially and economically tried to realize the goals of the french revolution. Political liberalism based on the enlightenment is a bourgeois elitist trap to lure people into the illusion of freedom and democracy.
Your definition of "liberalism" seems to differ from mine. I think Mill's "On Liberty," which defends intellectual pluralism and the right to be wrong, is the classic statement of liberalism. Although I agree that many who call themselves liberals today seemto have lost trust in democracy.