Thoughts on Politics

 

My political position is complicated. In general, I consider myself a political realist, a political rationalist of sorts. I think a primary function of government or any governmental type body is the education of the sovereign, the citizens or members of a community, as to the requirements of reality. Of course, what one takes these requirements to be is often more like interpreting a text than a detective determining a set of facts pointing to a definitive solution. I also find it analogous to parenting: you have to make decisions (policy) based on an imperfect grasp of reality about a future one can never predict. I was confident that the Christian Gymnasium was the right choice for my daughter. I had what I took to be good reasons. It was a disastrous choice. Same with my decision to stay with her in Germany. Was a great choice for a while, until it wasn’t. Germany’s decision to rely on booming Chinese markets and cheap Russian energy for their economy, and America for its defense, seemed perfectly logical at the time. Events have refuted it most terribly, but at the time it seemed rational. Political-decision-making is like that.

     My tastes are democratic, but I don’t think democracy really makes sense except at the local level (agreeing with none other than Aristotle). The departmental meetings at the university I work for would be an approximation. I could imagine a democratic form of politics among the villages I knew in Thuringia, had they had any powers of government. For democracy to work, you need a degree of economic equality; you need trust and thus familiarity among the people – actually a sense of community among the people; you need a minimum level of competence among the members of the community. Communication should be face-to-face to a significant degree. You need a public space in which community members can speak and act freely. None of this is given in a large nation state. My ideal form of political society would have the main focus of government at the community level (which assumes, of course, there are communities, which is hardly the case anymore). This of course assumes a lot of economic autonomy at the local level, which is also not the case. Thus, given the economic and social realities of my time (global capitalism), genuine democracy, my preferred form of government, can’t exist. For evidence that it used to exist in parts of America, see Tocqueville.

     It is said that we live in a democracy. Well, I guess it depends on how you define democracy. Given the social and economic realities of my time, I end up defending this “democracy” because it allows more freedom and dignity than other options, though not as much as genuine democracy. Call it liberalism (classical liberalism – in that sense Reagan was a liberal, Lockean liberalism). I think of liberalism partly as a political ideology to protect the upper class from the dangers of tyranny ("kings") and the lower classes ("the people"). To prevent tyranny, it is necessary to be able to vote a government out of office, even if the electorate cannot be considered fully competent and the political communication is skewered by the vast inequality in money and power. Elections are like voting for the CEO of a corporation; he might manage the corporation differently from his predecessor, but he takes over a going concern that he cannot fundamentally change. A country with its corporate economy is like that. Elections can't change much, all things being equal (not equal anymore with pop-fascism competing against liberalism for power); but they can prevent tyrants. The protection of rights, the freedom of inquiry, and the principle of equality under the law are important aspects of liberalism I embrace and don't want to lose. Again, the playing field is far from level in reality, and this distorts everything. In Germany, there is a public media – it could be better but it ensures a modicum of fact-based, neutral (within the limits of the mainstream parties) reporting (so much superior to the corporate media in America). The first principle of the German Grundgesetz is the protection of the inviolability of human dignity – that is right on, although what capitalism understands by human dignity is not pure by any means. In Germany the social market economy is prescribed by law: basically, the state has the duty to correct the worst injustices of capitalism, which is embraced for its productivity and contribution to a better standard of living for all. This was not an idle claim for several decades but other realities are making that argument more problematic than before. Liberalism is in desperate need of reform. How to free up the state and civil society from the corporate economy to allow some consideration of the common good?

      What are the alternatives at the level of the nation state? I suppose a Hungarian-type “democracy,” or “illiberal democracy,” which is even less a democracy than liberalism. A ruling party takes over the media, the courts, the economy at the highest level – and then holds elections that are more of less hopeless for the opposition. While the media controlled by those in power practices making the population stupider, those in power enrich themselves and monopolize all positions of political and economic power. Putin would the ultimate goal of such a regime, a kind of modern version of Mussolini’s fascism. Everything that makes it possible for me to live in liberalism is stripped away.

     Soviet style socialism is also not an option for me. If I have to live in a nation state – and I have to – I think a degree of “socialism” highly desirable, although what form this would take could vary. The relative equality of the socialist countries, even at a low economic level, is not something I would criticize, though with a bit more rationality and a bit less central control a higher standard of living could have been achieved. What makes Soviet style socialism impossible for me is one-party-rule based on a philosophy that is considered absolutely true, like a secular theocracy. With the secret police, monopoly over the media, and the monopoly over the economy used to prop up the power-holders. I system in which just thinking certain thoughts or writing certain things could land you in jail. But I don't think one-party rule or even one-man rule as under Stalin is a necessary feature of socialism as such. 

      So I end up defending liberalism, even though I think capitalism is just a totalitarian in many ways as Stalinism, if not as violent, and think capitalism is starting to correspond less to liberalism and more to the pop-fascist version. Well, is it not as violent? A global economy requires certain conditions in the Middle East or West Asia that has led to horrible oil wars. The normal functioning of the global economy is predicated on the ability to make war to secure its preconditions. And the violence behind the factory systems in countries that do no allow unions, etc, etc. etc. The violence is just outsourced. 

     The pop-fascists are like a Satanic parody of a political movement I always wanted: one that would transform from global capitalism to a more local economy based on some rational definition of real needs, economic security, and dignified work. (I wrote something about my views on capitalism in an earlier entry.) People need home, roots, community, tradition – not only, they also need freedom, etc. Simone Weil gets it right in her book, The Need for Roots. But if for no other reason than self-defense, countries will – tragically! – also need a state. How to balance the requirements of justice and humanity, which I think requires strong local economies and communities with human scale technologies, with survival in a world of potential and actual bully states (of which my country is sadly one) is a problem I have never been able to solve.