Since at least the 1960s the American political establishment has wholly accepted as it's operating system the "elitist theory democracy". Consequences include a woefully disconnected pundit class, shrugging acceptance of stolen elections and voter suppression campaigns, demoralized voters, unchallenged corporate political power, and dread of the rising netroots and the return of popular democracy.
"Elitist democracy" enables a frighteningly myopic and selfish insider class of journalists, consultants and other courtiers. The elite attend the same cocktail parties and self-congratulating media orgies like the Sunday talk shows. They thrill at their commitment to public service while maintaining an economic and political Berlin Wall between themselves and The People, the people who are supposed to be in charge in classical, popular democracy.
The netroots and renewed emphasis on popular democracy represent a serious challenge to this worldview that has dominated political life for 40 or 50 years. The anger and vindictiveness of the ruling elite toward the netroots (and the netroots' sense of outrage, revolutionary calling and urgency) is evidence that we are engaged in a conflict of deep belief, more like an era of religious Reformation than political reform. We shouldn't underestimate the source of the ruling elite's anger. We're heretical. We're telling them their forms of worship are wrong, that their god no longer exists.
The elitist theory of democracy was so-named by Seymour Martin Lipset in 1962. It had already been championed by conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1940s. A thumbnail history of the theory goes like this.
Social and political "scientists" were struggling to justify the use of the word "science" in their academic fields. They developed the "theory of the rational actor." As rational actors, we the people could be counted on to base our political decisions upon what we rationally believed to be in our individual self-interest. Research could quantify and predict this behavior.
The problem with the rational actor model? It failed to predict outcomes in real world elections. Always. One hundred percent of the time. This was quite alarming to the academics who yearned for the status of the scientist. So, social "scientists" held fast to their rational actor model and wrote that, oh my god, the public is irrational. The problem wasn't their science, it was the people's irrational acts. So irrational, in fact, that it justified rule by a privileged elite of political entrepreneurs and professionals. The people were simply incapable of self-rule.
Of course, what was taken as irrational was nothing more than unpredictability. A complex array of emotions, cares, concerns, habits, dreams and accidental circumstances play important roles in our decision-making. In a sense, the failure of the rational actor model was confirmation of the possibility of human freedom. But it was instead interpreted as irrationalism.
The new elitist approach awarded itself the "realist" moniker. And it dovetailed beautifully with the rise of the far Right's superstructure of think tanks and noisemaking machines, which exploited the theory for their own political ends. But the theory wasn't relegated to Right Wing enclaves. Public opininon pollsters and other political practitioners, in political science programs throughout academia, were all indoctrinated with the theory of elitist democracy. The 1960s seemed to prove how irrational the people are.
The rise of media politics was the perfect top-down weapon in the elite's separation from the people. Corporate America loved it, because political professionals of all stripes became apologists for the status quo and defenders of corporate rule.
The elitist theory was helpful in the rise of celebrity culture and obsession. In a sense, elite political practice was beautifully merged with a bread-and-circuses hyper-market of distraction that was self-reinforcing all the way up, and all the way down.
As late as 2003 federal appeals court judge and prolific conservative writer Richard Posner could argue without shame that political participation by the people would distract them from their most important duty -- economic consumption.
The behaviorist yearning for human predictability was and is deeply imbedded in American culture. Humanist science fiction author Isaac Asimov, for instance, based his "Empire" series (1951, '52, '53) on hero Hari Seldon's mathematized "psychohistory" that allowed science to predict the future based on analysis of large-scale, collective human action. Foreseeing the collapse of civilization, Seldon builds a secret refuge where elites can preserve its fruits. (I've always thought Seldon an anti-hero; Asimov set out to destroy the pretensions of social science.)
Above all, it is very important to understand that the legitimation of elite rule is modeled throughout popular culture, from the worship of entertainment figures and sports heroes to political personality cults. Also, long before the elitist theory was legitimized, freethinkers and dissenters, from Emerson, Thoreau and Margaret Fuller, to William James, John Dewey, W.E.B. Dubois, and Jane Adams, recognized the nation's dominant, anti-democratic cultural habits.
Hari Seldon's elite refuge could have been imagined by Schumpeter or Leo Strauss. Ultimately, faith in and nurturing of the elite class are the justifications for tax cuts for the rich, suppressed wages, racial profiling, imprisonment as weapon of mass disenfranchisement, exportation of jobs, environmental apathy, and disinterest in open and fair elections.
Even contemporary progressive author Morris Berman who mourns "the twilight of American culture", recommends a modern version of the elite, "monastic option," modelled after the 5th Century monks who withdrew to refuge from the collapse of the Roman Empire to preserve the great works of civilization.
Recent dust-ups -- attacks on Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, the New Republic's (and many other elitist outlets) ongoing belligerence toward bloggers -- as well as more profound and dangerous developments like Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, are all consequences of the deeply held faith in elitist democracy.
Criticism of the rigged procedures of elite democracy are ridiculed as conspiracy theories. It's irresponsible, somehow, to argue that anything that subverts voter preference is undemocratic. But this can only be argued by elitists who think popular elections are little more than annoying obstacles to correct, rational, elite rule. Hence, the mad rush to end the counting of votes in Florida in 2000 and declare Bush winner. Elite democracy, not democracy, absolutely depended upon it.
The alternative, classical or popular democracy, had long been held as problematic, especially by elites. Didn't the founders choose representative democracy over direct democracy? Well, yes, but there is no contradiction between representative democracy in which an informed public regularly delegates and re-delegates decision-making, and pure popular or classical democracy. In both, the participation of an informed, even nurtured public is critical.
We will know that the return to popular democracy is at hand when one political party or another takes up the cause of Voting Rights. Democrats have been shy about that because they lost the South to racism following the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And because they, too, depend upon corporate dollars. And because the Democratic elite like what they've got. And because elite democracy is their religion. Republicans' contempt for voters is well documented, from the countless voter suppression and intimidation campaigns, felons lists, uncountable black box voting machines, mid-decade redistricting, etc.
All of these things, though, are overlooked or accepted by a current political elite who don't really value voting at all. The theory of elitist democracy expressly holds that 1) the public must be told that voting matters at the same time they are continually distracted and reminded that their individual vote really won't make much difference; 2) the actual outcome can be "ethically" manipulated so that elite decision-making is never challenged. Posner writes that if an election is so close it is hard to determine who won, then it doesn't matter who wins.
In countless ways young people, minorities, the poor and other disenfranchised are reminded that their opinions don't matter, that they are ill-informed, that their bosses know what's best. That is the cruelest suppression technique of them all.
I'll continue in a Part II with an analysis of attitudes toward voting, and a more express call for a revolution in Voting Rights, for the adopting of the right to vote as a core value of the progressive revolution.
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