Modern-day discussions about liberty rarely conclude without associating it with democracy, nor do discussions about democracy conclude without associating it with liberty. With this textbook example of concept-creep, liberals should take care not to lose sight of our goal: the expansion of freedom, not the endless extension of the democratic principle.
Democracy, from the Greek dēmos (“the people”) and kratia (“power” or “rule”), etymologically means “rule by the people.” The contemporary and perhaps even ancient understanding of what this refers to is that the people rule collectively: they rule themselves collectively, they rule each other collectively, and they rule their government collectively.
This notion, in the abstract, is anathema to the notion of individual liberty, not because liberalism opposes collectivism per se, but because liberalism opposes collectivism in the utilisation of lawful coercion (“rule”).
Democracy is only one part, among many others, of the liberal approach to constitutional government. More importantly, democracy is not the foundation of this approach. Instead, the liberty of the individual is. Those who agree must therefore ensure their support for democracy is not unmoored, but focused on its uses for liberal purposes.
Liberalism is not democratic
Arguably the greatest liberal thinker of the twentieth century, FA von Hayek, wrote in 1966 that, “Liberalism and democracy, although compatible, are not the same.”
Fareed Zakaria also explains that “constitutional liberalism” – a “bundle of freedoms” including free expression, freedom of assembly, free exercise of religion, and property rights – is “theoretically different and constitutionally distinct from democracy.”
Zakaria quotes Philippe Schmitter who points out that while liberal social and economic policies might have “coincided with the rise of democracy,” they have “never been immutably or unambiguously linked to its practice.”
Hayek adds that the so-called “liberalism” that blindly defers to the will of the majority is rather “democratism,” and is quite anti-liberal in practice.
To Hayek, liberal order has only sustainably been produced in those jurisdictions where justice is regarded as something to be discovered (the common law method) by “judges or scholars.” Illiberal order, on the other hand, has been produced where justice is the ostensible result of “the arbitrary will of [an] authority […] in countries in which law was conceived primarily as the product of deliberate legislation.”
Liberty declines “under the joint influence of legal positivism and of democratic doctrine, both of which know no other criterion of justice than the will of the legislator.”
This is a controversial thing for a liberal to claim, but like Hayek, liberals should stand by it today. This is no less important in leftist-dominated South Africa than it is in the West, with the rise of an authoritarian, populist right.
Where liberty and democracy diverge
Liberalism, above all, prizes the liberty of individuals to self-determine their own affairs – which extends to their property – without uninvitedly interfering in this same self-determination by other individuals.
This allows individuals to cooperate, live harmoniously in communities, and be as conservative or cosmopolitan as they wish. Liberalism is not the opposite of conservatism, but the opposite of authoritarianism.
It is immediately clear where the tension with democracy lies. If the individual’s liberty is the organising principle of the liberal political programme, what happens when, say, a political party that has been democratically elected adopts a law that disallows the recreational use of marijuana, or disallows the use of a minority language in schooling?
A democrat with liberal inclinations would disagree with this law, but would defend its legitimacy on the basis that the individuals who live in this country participated freely, voluntarily, and equally in the political process, and most individuals opted for the political party that said it would outlaw marijuana or minority language education. Provided this law is not obviously unconstitutional, the democrat respects the outcome.
A liberal, however, immediately recognises this as a deprivation of the individual’s liberty, and hence outside of the legitimate authority of political institutions. Government may only impose restrictions on society that are directly and strictly necessary for the protection of liberty and property.
No individuals have a right to rule their fellows coercively, whether alone or in cooperation with “a majority” of other individuals in their country. This is intuitive, and a core liberal insight.
But once this is accepted, the mythological prestige of democracy must necessarily fall away. Everywhere where democracy reigns supreme today – even where it is limited by constitutional constraints – people are ruling coercively over their fellows when they cast a vote.
The modern welfare state – a direct result of democracy – was rightly identified by constitutional scholar Sir Kenneth Wheare as one of the primary reasons for the expansion of state power. Ostensible liberals, from the beginning of the twentieth century, were instrumental in the establishment of the welfare state. They replaced liberty with democracy as the political end-goal, rather than simply part of the road to freedom.
This is why liberals continuously – especially nowadays – have to be reminded that we are liberals, not democrats. At various points in history, those who bear the latter descriptor have helped expand the power and scope of the state into individual and communal domains. To be compatible with liberal order, democracy must operate within the fixed parameters of the legitimate authority of government rather than seek to expand that authority.
Liberals are therefore not (necessarily) democratic and often have to be (necessarily) anti-democratic.
Careful of the company we keep
Having said that, there is a brand of anti-democratic rhetoric that liberals must also resist and oppose.
This brand is one where the anti-democrat (nowadays usually a populist, ironically) supposes that there is a specific class of people out there – of which this anti-democrat is always a member – who is somehow endowed with the right to govern. These anti-democrats are rightly accused of arrogance, for they suppose that they, coincidentally, find themselves in this class and “know better” than the democratic majority, whatever that happens to be.
I do not encourage that brand of anti-democracy.
Liberals do not believe they “know better” than majorities. In fact, it is precisely in our recognition of our own – and that of every other individual’s – ignorance about the best interests of our fellows, that liberals are sceptical of democracy.
Just as I do not know better than others what is best for them, others do not know better than I do what is best for me.
Healthy scepticism of democracy must come from humility, not arrogance, in recognition of the fact that democracy, contemporarily, has itself arrogantly attempted to answer questions it has no business answering.
Hayek highlights the importance of humility:
“To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.”
He continues:
“The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”
Modern democracy throws this humility to the wind.
Want free, quality healthcare? Vote for the sponsors of the National Health Insurance (NHI). Want a farm? Vote for the sponsors of expropriation without compensation. Want to work less? Vote for the advocates of a four-hour workday.
All of these “votes” replace the specialised knowledge of others with the rent-seeking preferences of the haughty.
We simply do not know what is best for our fellows. To vote as if we do, setting aside their ability to self-determine entirely, is (coercive) arrogance of the highest order.
To top it off, democracy lends a veneer of respectability to such deprivations of liberty that liberals find difficult to argue against. Whereas a crude, egotistical dictator, or an insular authoritarian minority are easy targets to accuse of base tyranny and oppression, when it is “the People” who ostensibly place their seal of approval on a tyrannical government initiative, things get trickier.
A real liberty-respecting democracy?
Can democracy, however, conceivably operate within liberal parameters?
I would say it can. Democracy has significant pragmatic benefits, even to liberal order.
There is no “liberal way” to decide which specific persons must comprise the government. A liberal autocrat, a liberal monarch, a liberal president, and a liberal AI supercomputer are all equally legitimate expressions of liberal governance.
It does not matter how the institution of government is selected, only that its authority is severely limited and that it remains within the small legitimate scope of government business.
As there is no distinct liberal way to choose between these various ways of selecting who governs, throwing it open to a vote is perhaps the most uncontentious option that tends to avoid bloodshed.
One of the main benefits of frequent elections is that no government is guaranteed power. It can be removed and replaced. The longer the period between elections, however, the more a government is able to institutionalise itself.
We see this in South Africa today, where three decades of ANC rule have allowed it to entrench comrades and cadres in key positions that make it difficult for any successor administrations to implement their agendas.
Democracy also tends to mean civilian (ordinary people) governance, rather than rule by the more coercively-minded military or another closed caste. It helps ensure that experts, officials, and decision-makers account for their conduct to a representative body, allowing individuals and communities to understand what government is doing and why.
And there is also a measure of decentralisation (a key liberal imperative) inherent in letting a large group of people with widely divergent interests make collective decisions. Single dictators can more easily impose their preferences on their subjects, but this at least becomes less intense with a group of 50 million voters (whose rent-seeking preferences are nonetheless measured in the aggregate in democracy).
But this is not all that democracy has become. What I have described is democracy as a limitation on the power of government, rather than democracy in actual practice.
In fact, it must be liberals’ objective to return democratic voting to this role. Democracy being employed to rob people of their freedoms and their property – in particular their income, to fund more and more social services and entitlements – is anathema to liberalism. It must be rejected with the contempt that it deserves.
The NHI is today one of the clearest manifestations of democratic excess in South Africa.
Universal healthcare appears on the face of it to be entirely beneficial and entirely benign.
But, as the NHI is conceived, it necessarily involves greater government spending that in turn necessarily involves depriving the already overburdened taxpayers of more of their income. Not only that, but it would also involve depriving individuals of the liberty to choose the entirety of their healthcare package. And it does this – perversely – in the name of giving effect to the “right” to have access to healthcare!
So when liberals say “power to the people,” what they (should) mean is that the people – individuals, communities, etc. – must have (do have!) the maximum authority to govern themselves. And by “themselves,” liberals, who place a massive premium on consent, are referring only to those who agree to be so governed. A political community cannot be said to govern “itself” when it is disallowing individuals in its midst to opt-out. This is why liberals prize private property rights: the boundaries of our property demarcate very clearly where our authority to govern “ourselves” begins and ends.
A liberal interpretation of democracy – not to be confused with the contemporary understanding of liberal democracy – of “rule by the people,” then, would be that the people rule themselves individually and that they do not rule each other. “Rule by the people” means “the people” as individuals are entitled to self-governance, not governance inter se (by one another).
This liberal notion of democracy is anti-hegemonic and pro-liberty.
It still leaves some room for “collective rule,” particularly as it comes to oversight of government. Here, it makes practical and principled sense for the people, together, to appoint representatives or agents to ensure government does not stray from its legitimate path.
Doing away with democracy?
As a liberal and a constitutionalist, I am no democrat – nor should any other liberal be. While there are elements of democracy that are useful to liberty, their appeal to us should be nothing more than utilitarian and pragmatic, not principled.
Does this mean we should work towards jettisoning democracy? Certainly not.
Democracy, however, must be properly conceived; not as the dish we are about to eat, but the spice that is applied to the dish with circumspection to enrich its taste. The meal is liberty, and the spice of democracy has the potential to overwhelm and ruin it, necessitating a cautious application.
Democracy can form a useful part of a constitutional package dedicated to the maximisation of individual liberty and the limitation of state authority. But it must play a far lesser role than it is currently playing both in the constitutions of the world and in the imaginations of those engaged in political discourse.
[Photo: Wikimedia Commons]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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