Uncontrollable Passion

Loren Lomasky from the May 2000 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

It follows that strong democracy gives short shrift to liberty. Barber is fully aware of this opposition and, following an ancient if not honorable philosophical practice, attempts to define it away. In A Passion for Democracy, he approvingly cites Rousseau's dictum that "the instant a people allows itself to be represented it loses its freedom" and expands on it with the announcement that "women and men who are not directly responsible through common deliberation, common decision, and common action for the policies that determine their common lives are not really free at all--however much they enjoy rights of privacy, property, and individuality." So, like Rousseau, Barber will force them to be free.

It is easily understandable why someone would value freedom in the ordinary sense of being let alone to pursue the ends and activities she prizes, but it is not clear what reason there is to care about the so-called freedom that emerges from Barber's definitional alchemy. Barber should not be surprised if people who assign higher priority to private activities decline the invitation to be conscripted into liberation.

Barber's understanding of rights is no less revisionary than his take on freedom. How can someone who isn't free be characterized coherently as enjoying rights of privacy, property, and individuality? Privacy rights incorporate, among other things, a freedom to determine who will have access to intimate aspects of one's life; property rights entail the freedom to appropriate and trade things; and whatever individuality may be, it surely includes a liberty within broad boundaries to steer one's own course rather than have it prescribed by others--including those others who happen to hold prestigious professorships at elite universities.

This confusion may not disturb Barber much, though, because rights are of derivative importance in his system. Rather than serving to constrain the scope of majoritarian decision making so as to preclude tyranny and usurpation, rights in his telling are whatever the people in their democratic assemblies determine they shall be. Strong democracy, then, is not only direct but also omnipotent. It countenances no checks set by original and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That is why the evocations of Jefferson in these pages, although reverential and oft-repeated, ring hollow.

Barber's populism lacks a core. He exalts The People in the abstract but exhibits smug disdain for real men and women. Because they don't possess what he will deign to recognize as freedom, their choices and preferred modes of life are inauthentic and thus do not merit respect. His 1995 book Jihad vs. McWorld is largely given over to excoriations of McDonald's, not because that corporation fails to meet the demands of consumers in America and throughout the world but precisely because it does. (Barber there lets us know that his own tastes run to the superior ambience of out-of-the-way bistros.) He is similarly dismissive of the "free" market --scare quotes come with the territory--in ideas and entertainments because its favored commodities are homogenized and declassé.

As proof that nominal freedom of entry and consumer sovereignty are illusory, Barber offers this observation: "I have a home page on the net just like Bill Gates and the Disney Corporation....But does anyone really believe that the common capacity to produce a home page is the same thing as the common power to affect the world?" This is perhaps the most revealing depiction of strong democracy offered in these books: It is a social order in which Benjamin Barber is among the prime movers and shakers of the world!

I don't mean to suggest that Barber is dissembling when he declares a passion for democracy. Just the reverse: He is passionate to a fault. Love is elevated and ennobling but, as we all know, it can be blind. In the throes of passion one is inclined to see the beloved object as one wishes it to be, not as it really is. Love frequently is possessive, demanding reciprocation and exclusivity. When spurned it lashes out vindictively. Benjamin Barber courts an electorate that persistently rejects his embrace and instead obdurately holds onto its own affections. It thereby shows itself unworthy to be the object of devotion of so ardent a lover. But rather than acquiesce in rejection and give up the chase, the swain will turn the tables, transform the drab voter-consumer into beauteous citizen, and once and for all win her favors--if not through seduction then by rape.

These two volumes are a disparate pair. Once one gets past the rabble-rousing, the essays in A Passion for Democracy offer nuggets of keen historical insight and every so often connect with a sharp dart to the complacent regions of liberal capitalism. A Place for Us, on the other hand, is the sort of potboiler someone plumping to be invited back to the Clinton White House might produce. It is grumpy about the economy, grumpy about the dominant culture, and grumpy most of all about politics. But it cheers up long enough to offer a bushel of nostrums for each.

These newest add-ons to the strong democracy contraption weren't very sturdy when they were contrived, and the passage of time renders them increasingly embarrassing. For example, in a prediction that ranks with the one that declared the Titanic to be unsinkable, Barber informs the reader that the American economy has entered a state of permanent stagnation and vanishing employment. Bad news? No, actually it's good news, because it neatly solves the problem of ordinary citizens' finding time for endless political convocations. The other rooms of this "place for us" display similar fitness for habitation.

Particulars aside, the real service these books provide is to display under a bright light what the scientific study of politics leaves obscure: not only how democracy can serve as a tool for supplying various goods and services but also how it can engage the passions. Benjamin Barber's commitment to strong democracy is reminiscent of other enthusiasms for other political ideals that have roiled the past century. Like them, it mixes expressed devotion to the people with unbounded zeal to mold them, shape them, and enlist them in the service of designs that are not their own. Ultimately, the most valuable lesson we take from these pages is that a passion for democracy is not necessarily either innocent or safe for those in its line of fire.