Although today in the West we take democratic government for granted, and as the natural way for humanity to organise itself politically, actual history indicates that this belief is an illusion.
In realty, prior to the evolution of the political philosophy of Classical Liberalism in 18th century Europe and the United States, which incorporated democracy, every single preceding form of Western governance had, in fact, been rule by an authoritarian minority.
Meaning, that the majority of the population was subject to the psychological domination, political control, and economic exploitation by the aristocratic or religious minority that normally controlled and organised the society.
The ruling minority was authoritarian inasmuch as it demanded complete conformity by the majority to its belief system which morally justified the authority that it was claiming over the majority.
The ruling minority in each Western society was presumably led by the more capable, driven, intelligent, imaginative, and power-hungry individuals from all levels of society, together with the co-opted intelligentsia.
Authoritarianism has historically been the natural political form that human socio/political organisation has hitherto taken. Even in classical Athens, the putative birthplace of democracy, only property-owning male citizens possessed political power.
Liberal democracy was specifically designed by the highly educated individuals from several nations who created it specifically to break the political and psychological hold that the ruling minority in each society enjoyed over the majority.
Prevent authoritarianism
This was achieved by introducing political principles specifically designed to prevent authoritarianism. These protected the rights of the individual against the claims of any other individual, or group of individuals, who asserted their moral right to rule society.
Morally based political and religious ideologies were consistently used to justify aristocratic and theocratic minority rule in the past, and political ideologies are still used today to justify the authoritarian ideologies of fascism, socialism, and communism. As we shall see, there is very good reason why all ideologies are morally-based.
There are numerous indications that currently liberal democracy is widely losing favour throughout the West, despite the enormous benefits that it has brought humanity. Its fundamental political principles are being increasingly violated or ignored, both by governments and the very electorates that it had empowered.
Should liberal democracy and its principles no longer be observed, the question arises as to exactly what form of government will replace it, or is already in the process of replacing it.
In approximately 1550, a Frenchman, Etienne de la Boetie, published a book which has survived the centuries, titled ‘Discourse of Voluntary Servitude’. In it he asserted that the social authority possessed by the French aristocracy (and all authoritarian governments by implication) was voluntarily ceded to it by the people as a whole, and not forced on them.
Force of millions
This had to be so, he argued, as it was clearly impossible for a single individual, or even the entire aristocracy, to resist the overwhelming physical force of millions of people if they were seriously unwilling to concede their subservience to a tiny minority.
Whether de la Boetie was right that the majority voluntarily accepts its domination by the minority, we cannot say with absolute certainty. However, an understanding of the psychological method historically used by Western minorities to control the majority without the use of force, suggests that he was right.
The historical evidence indicates that the majority does voluntarily accept domination by the minority – provided only that it is given a convincing morally- based reason to do so. And it does not seem to matter how absurd and fantastical the reason is, as long as the majority believes that the moral authority of the minority providing the reason is authentic and significantly greater than its own.
Humans are born as self-interested individuals, programmed to pursue their own selfish interests. Yet at the same time their biology requires them to live as socially collective animals. This biological contradiction requires resolution.
This is achieved practically through the agency of morality, the system by which humans decide which actions are right and which are wrong, and accordingly by which they govern their behaviour relative to one another. Morality guides us in reconciling our self-interest with our collective responsibility.
Moral judgements
Moral authority, such as that possessed by Nelson Mandela, expresses the degree to which someone is commonly perceived as being qualified to make moral judgements.
While serving its function of governing human behaviour, morality also, however, permits any dominant individual, or group of individuals, to gain control over the beliefs, and so behaviour, of others in the community for their own benefit, without having to use force.
This is done, firstly, by them successfully establishing a general communal belief in their moral superiority, and then employing this to create a self-serving ideology. In other words, morality is also the agency by which the minority is able to establish its authority over the majority and have them voluntarily accept the minority’s dominance.
Historically, this method of achieving relatively peaceful social control has been principally exploited in the ideological fields of politics and religion. This is because each of these areas of activity is morally based, and so of fundamental importance to the majority.
Both forms of ideology generally seek initially to attract public attention by claiming to have identified a major evil in society, together with the cause of it. In respect of political ideologies, this consists of a warning that society is in a corrupt state and in urgent need of radical reform.
In respect of religions, it is that humanity is sinful and in need of spiritual guidance and redemption. When successful, this in turn permits both ideologies to manipulate the local moral code by declaring what activity is, and what is not, morally virtuous, so giving them control over aspects of the behaviour of that society.
Dominant social minority
Each ideology, political or religious, is based upon this psychologically manipulative procedure. And this self-same method of moral manipulation is what facilitates the voluntary acquiescence of the majority to a psychologically dominant social minority.
In return for the majority’s acquiescence, and the benefits that this brings the individualistic minority, they provide the majority with a belief system and a proposed course of action that renders its collective existence meaningful.
Classic Liberalism established the basic political principles which have to be observed in order to keep the majority largely free from its historical subservience to a dominant minority. These democratic principles are increasingly and deliberately being violated by the current dominant minority, and remain largely unknown to the majority.
The likely consequence of this is a return to some form of authoritarianism, driven both by the present minority’s inherent need to control society and the majority’s ongoing need to believe that their lives have some meaning.
[Image: Siena Nisavic on Unsplash]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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