Collective Effervescence and Capacity Building in the Struggle For Democracy

Anthony Mansueto

President and Senior Scholar, Seeking Wisdom

The uprisings which have gripped the Arab world, from the Masreq to the Mahgreb may or may not lead to authentic democratization and the emergence of development strategies which do more to promote the development of human capacities across the Arab world. What they have done is to expose definitively the vacuous character of the dominant Western discourse on democracy, on both the Left and the Right. Neoconservatives who justified the brutal and destabilizing invasion of Iraq as the spark that would ignite a wave of democratic revolutions across Dar-al-Islam are denouncing the uprisings as a “virus” which must be “crushed.” The Left, meanwhile, which (quite correctly) denounced both the invasion and its pretext has embraced the uprisings as if they reflected an unambiguously popular and progressive movement for democracy and social justice. Everyone, meanwhile, seems ready to criticize Obama’s handling of the situation.

Reality, as always, is more complex. There are, however, three things which we can say with some certainty. First, the uprisings reflect political-economic and political-theological contradictions specific to the development patterns and civilizational and subcivilizational projects of each of the countries involved, and need to be analyzed in this light. This is a topic we hope to take up in another context.

Second, the uprisings demonstrate (as did the crisis of the Soviet bloc, the growing popular and middle strata discontent in China, and the fall of most of the old military dictatorships in Latin America) that it is quite impossible, in a world with rising rates of literacy, to govern effectively without authentic popular consent and a legal system which guarantees basic liberties, such as freedom of religion, freedom of expression (speech and press), freedom of assembly, right to petition etc. This is for the very simple reason that a literate demos not only possesses reason, but is aware that it does, and is thus aware of its capacity and thus right to participate in deliberations in the public area. Neither the old Leninist party-state and its national-popular-“democratic” clones in the Third World nor US supported right wing dictatorships and “controlled” democracies (pre-insurrection Egypt, interestingly, could be classed as both!) represent stable structures in the present period, regardless of their economic records, though good performance, as the case of China, certainly buys more space than mediocre performance, as in the case of Egypt.

This is a Durkheimian moment for the Arab world, which, through the collective effervescence generated by massive street demonstrations, has discovered for itself the democratic ideal. Things will never be the same again, not for the populist left, not for the Islamists --and not for liberals who prefer the marketplace to the democratic public arena as locus of regulation and resource allocation.

This said, the conditions for anything like authentic democracy are very far from existing anywhere on the planet, even in countries which have achieved a much higher standard of democratic participation and legal protection for civil society than those in the Arab world. And here, again, there has been dishonesty on both the Left and the Right. On the one hand, as the dialectical tradition from Plato, up through ibn Rusd, and on to Marx, and his interpreters have argued, democracy in a context of underlying economic inequality is a recipe for plutocracy. This does not mean that it is impossible to effectively protect free expression and the existence of a relatively autonomous civil society even where fundamental economic inequalities persist. The United States, Europe, and other advanced capitalist countries have done precisely this. Nor does it mean that such protections do not represent a real achievement. On the contrary, we will argue that they should represent the principal immediate aim of democratic movements in authoritarian countries. But freedom to speak and organize, coupled with an unequal distribution of resources, means that those who control the means of production will also control the state and use it to their advantage.

Private concentrations of wealth, however, are not the only obstacle to democracy. A party-state monopoly on resources, even if used wisely to promote human development and civilizational progress, can make authentic democratic participation impossible. If every popular organization is simply an instrument of the party-state, or if popular organizations are juridically autonomous but lack an independent resource base, there will be no real room for public deliberation. Historic socialism, in this sense, has been no kinder to democracy than capitalism. The old Rousseauean ideal of a mass of free individuals democratically controlling the state, directly or through a revolutionary party, and through it the resources of society, which was adopted by most continental socialists, is as much an illusion as the idea that “the people” can rule when they enter an open democratic arena with a tiny fraction of the resources enjoyed by those with great concentrations of wealth.

But democracy is not just a matter of access to resources. The people must actually be capable of deliberation. This, in turn, requires a certain intellectual, moral, and spiritual formation. The people must be able to make and evaluate arguments regarding fundamental questions of meaning, value, and public policy. And they must be able to do so with the aim of serving the Common Good, and not just their own immediate, individual interests (though making sure those interests, especially when they bear on the ability to contribute to and participate in the human civilizational project, are taken into account, is no sin). There are, broadly speaking, two ways in which these capacities are acquired. The first is through a liberal education. The second is through participation through the institutions of civil society: trade unions, community organizations, political parties, fraternal orders, local congregations, etc., which order people to the serve of higher ends and ultimately to the Common Good as they understand it. Both processes are carried further through participation in organizations which join active service to the common good, whether through charity or civic engagement, with a program of intellectual, moral, and spiritual formation. But is important that these organizations be clear about their mission: to cultivate capacities and lead deliberation, not to establish a political or cultural monopoly for themselves.

Modernity, in both its humanistic and positivistic forms, has not been kind to liberal education. As higher education has expanded, as the democratizing impulse of humanistic modernism has rightly demanded, its liberal education mission has been progressively diluted, even for the elites, an issue we have discussed at length elsewhere. The positivistic modern ideal of transcending finitude by means of scientific and technological progress, has, furthermore, put a premium on the generation of surplus, making it more and more difficult for the organizations of civil society to engage people in action on behalf of the Common Good. They just don’t have time.

What does this say about the way in which we should respond to the democratic uprisings in the Arab world? First, each uprising must be analyzed separately, in the distinct economic, political, and cultural context of the countries in which it is unfolding. Second, we must fully support the aspiration of people to participate in deliberation regarding fundamental questions of meaning, value, and public policy. Concretely, however, we must be clear that under current conditions the most that an uprising can be expected to yield is a liberal state which respects freedom of expression and organization. This end is well served by the Obama government’s policy of encouraging orderly, gradual transitions. This, in turn, creates the context for the creation of a vibrant civil society in the context of which the capacity for such deliberation can be cultivated. Creation of a liberal state must be followed by support for liberal education and the creation of a vibrant, autonomous civil society. This, in turn, means ensuring that the institutions of civil society have a substantial resource base, at least comparable to that of the state and private enterprises.

This may all sound a bit cautious at a moment which, to those on the street --and those who would like to be— seems so pregnant with a more hopeful future. But Durkheimian intensity must yield ultimately to de Tocquevillian depth. Democracy is not just about demonstrations and insurrections; it is about capacity building and institution building. It is not just for those moments of transcendental crisis when we are lifted above ourselves; it is for ordinary time. And so, as we share the joy of democracy (re)discovered, let us set about the hard work of promoting liberal education, and an active, vibrant civil society, the institutions of which are economically autonomous, free from both market and state. Only under such conditions can democracy really flourish.