Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Chesterton on Democracy

The democracy has a right to answer questions, but it has no right to ask them. It is still the political aristocracy that asks the questions. And we shall not be unreasonably cynical if we suppose that the political aristocracy will always be rather careful what questions it asks...the powerful class will choose two courses of action, both of them safe for itself, and then give the democracy the gratification of taking one course of the other. GKC, Daily News, July 16, 1910
Some would say this was largely true in America as well, and still true today. Nor should we assume that Trump is a great exception to this, though that is what his supporters hoped for. As a real-estate developer, he is also from one of the American aristocracies. We should be glad that we have multiple aristocracies instead of just one, I suppose.

Chesterton believed that both socialism and capitalism degraded the people and made them servile. He believed in the good of private property, and that it should be widely distributed. The endgame of the industrial revolution and the socialist revolution, he thought, was wealth for the few and slavery for the rest. If we had him here, wouldn't we say that it hadn't worked out that way? We have a free market heavily laced with socialism, and its failures may well be the "crony" part of crony capitalism, the corruption and abuse. Yet through it all, wouldn't we say that even the poor live in great prosperity compared to what he knew in 1910, and the middle classes do own property?  None goes hungry, all are clothed and sheltered, all have education and some legal protection. In some cases these items are of lesser quality, and the poor cannot be certain that next week will not upend what little they have - yet they do have, and we do go on.  Nor does the great mass of men appear to be degraded, compared to what we know rural survival was like in the decades before and even after he wrote this. What, Gilbert, is degraded about us?  If you would insult us, at least tell us what it is we are doing wrong.

I don't know what GKC would answer.  Whether he would brush away our claim of education by declaring that much of it is of poor quality, or admire that we have indeed done a good thing I can't guess. Whether he would think our prosperity a welcome example of the poor being fed and clothed or an incitement to greed and indulgence is beyond my knowledge as well.

Yet I do think he would point to our church attendance and the breakup of our families as serious losses. I think also that he would deplore thinking of ourselves as a society instead of a nation. Societies have unclear boundaries, people move in and out, and the obligations we have to each other are somewhat temporary and imposed from above. Nations have boundaries, and members, and the obligations we have are more intuitive than catalogued.


Texan99 said...

I'm starting to think that nearly any social or political system results in slavery for the masses because most people resent the burden of freedom in their own lives and the inconvenience of freedom in the lives of others. Nearly any system would work if people genuinely respected each other's autonomy while caring for their needs--which is why a nurturing and successful family doesn't have to trouble itself about these matters, but a larger group of strangers does.

A hard question continues to be, which systems do a better job of minimizing these unavoidable catastrophes? Which have more built-in checks and balances for the tendency of many people to coast on the efforts of others, either by exploiting their pity, or by using force to impose their will? Socialism is worse about encouraging people to coast and leech if that's their bent. Capitalism is worse about cavalierly ignoring the needs of people with little to offer others; any generosity must be truly natural and spontaneous. Fascism is worse about simply handing over all the good stuff to the most unscrupulous guy with the best weapons and the least concern for his neighbors.

james said...

When I had looked at the lights of Broadway by night, I made to my American friends an innocent remark that seemed for some reason to amuse them. I had looked, not without joy, at that long kaleidoscope of coloured lights arranged in large letters and sprawling trade-marks, advertising everything, from pork to pianos, through the agency of the two most vivid and most mystical of the gifts of God; colour and fire.

I said to them, in my simplicity, 'What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any one who was lucky enough to be unable to read.'

james said...

This appears a little farther on...

But I found something like my real innocent abroad, my real peasant among the sky-signs, in another part of the same establishment. He was a much leaner man, equally dark, with a hook nose, hungry face, and fierce black moustaches. He also was a waiter, and was in the costume of a waiter, which is a smarter edition of the costume of a lecturer. As he was serving me with clam chowder or some such thing, I fell into speech with him and he told me he was a Bulgar. I said something like, 'I'm afraid I don't know as much as I ought to about Bulgaria. I suppose most of your people are agricultural, aren't they?' He did not stir an inch from his regular attitude, but he slightly lowered his low voice and said, 'Yes. From the earth we come and to the earth we return; when people get away from that they are lost.'

To hear such a thing said by the waiter was alone an epoch in the life of an unfortunate writer of fantastic novels. To see him clear away the clam chowder like an automaton, and bring me more iced water like an automaton or like nothing on earth except an American waiter (for piling up ice is the cold passion of their lives), and all this after having uttered something so dark and deep, so starkly incongruous and so startlingly true, was an indescribable thing, but very like the picture of the peasant admiring Broadway. So he passed, with his artificial clothes and manners, lit up with all the ghastly artificial light of the hotel, and all the ghastly artificial life of the city; and his heart was like his own remote and rocky valley, where those unchanging words were carved as on a rock.