As I slowly make my way through A People's History of the United States, the book keeps intoning an idea that, frankly, annoys the heck out of me. The idea this this: (democratic) election siphons revolutionary energy away from the oppressed people into the system.
Well, let's look at things the other way around. No government stands without at least some tolerance of its people. To give credo to the social contract idea, at some level, the population must consent that the current regime is acceptable. Generally, "acceptable" is a balance between oppression by the current regime and the blood and resources spilled for a new regime. When a significant enough faction of the population consider their government to be unacceptable, they can and do revolt to establish a new government.
Such is the democratic basis of undemocratic regimes. The people vote by their blood, with roughly 2 choices: to revolt or to endure.
Democratic government gives a new choice. A discontent people (which is to say, all people) have a new channel of expressing their discontentment: through actual voting. Well, generally speaking, a requirement for "democracy" is also freedom of speech, assembly, and of the press. So, a democratic regime allows multiple forms of opinion expression. In fact, with enough determination, a population can, and did, change its population quite dramatically over time without much blood shed.
Remember this: no regimes go away peacefully. At least, none that I know of, including Meiji Revolution. Each regime starts with a reign of terror (against old regime) and ends with a reign of terror (against the upcoming one). Some regimes (French First Republic, says) actually include periods explicitly named "Reign of Terror." Thus, a regime may kill off some of its oppressed citizens (intentionally or through negligence), those are pocket change compared to the mass killing that surely accompanies any change.
More disturbingly, revolutions don't necessarily result in improvement. In fact, most of them merely replace one group of rulers with another, or in fact degrade the status quo. With the risk of overly relying on French Revolution, let's consider its outcome. The revolution started against taxation and tyranny. It resulted in, gasp, an empire! And I am not sure if the First Republic was that good either: half of it is called "Reign of Terror." Numerous revolutions end this way. Think about Egypt during Arab Spring: its Twitter and Facebook wielding population ousted a dictator, then proceeded to elect Muslim Brotherhood, an alleged terrorist organization. Or think about assassination of Caesar (just to be clear, that assassination is merely a coup, which is much less bloody than a full-blown revolution).
Lastly, even if a revolution succeeds, its result have severe upper limits. More sadly, those limits are probably quite close to those of the old regime. Let's take French Fifth Republic (France is a fascinating historic case). For all intends and purposes, it is the ideal revolutionary: not that much blood, and the government was formed relatively quickly. And yet, when you think about it, France still experiences poverty, joblessness, and so on. After all, when you think about it, the regime may change, but most other things remain the same. If the country consists mostly of desert, it still can't feed itself after a revolutionary. If the people have been evading taxes, they probably would continue to evade taxes after a revolution. The government, after all, is not God. It can only rearrange, not make miracles.
Thus, the whole point of democracy is to avoid bloody revolutions. Democracy ideally fosters peaceful communication and problem solving so that the people don't need to vote with their blood.
To complain that democracy siphons revolutionary fervor is like to complain that wolves are cruel to deer. Sorry, dear, but that's the whole point. Revolutionary fervor probably drags millions to the graves with an uncertain future. Can a 50% chance of a hopefully better government be worth the blood and suffering of a revolutionary? Obviously, I am very generous here. History suggests that the chance is probably much lower. Can 10% chance of a slightly better government justify such sacrifice?
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