Some say the natural state of humanity – that is, what would arise if we swept away all convention tomorrow – is a form of Utopian democracy, or an accidental anarcho-syndicalism. No-one has yet produced the daguerrotype of this primeval Arcadia, nor accounted for the universal experience of untamed man - “voracious and sanguinary”, as Kirk put it. But let us say, regardless of that, that we desire something like modern democracy, but more equal, more fair. Construct it on what model you want, Parliamentary or Swiss or Federal – in all cases, an even cursory consideration should tell us that we cannot accomplish this via revolution, via a sweeping away of conventions. In fact, any hope of an equitable society rests precisely upon convention, of long civic training, of the restraint of our own appetites.
The popular revolution does indeed return us to the state of primeval humanity, insomuch as it returns us to reliance upon strongmen. There must be one to first wave the flag at Lemarque's funeral, or rouse the mutineers on the Potemkin. The National Convention needs Robespierre for a President, and the Party needs Stalin for its General Secretary. High ideals descend to the imprisonment and murder of the Dauphin. These popular revolutions, of course, need not be strictly “left-wing”; Jacobo Arbenz and Salvador Allende were overthrown, at the instruction of imperial masters, but nonetheless by broadly popular militarism. Nor need they even be politically violent, if the revolution be not total, or directly against the constitution of the land. Thatcherism had a truly Jacobin ardour, supported at 4 consecutive elections by the body of the people.
Democracy, then, is not a primal quality, but a civilised one. It requires long training. Nor is democracy so simple – even in the dreams of Rousseau – as the blunt mass vote. That is ochlocracy, mob rule, not democracy, the rule of the people. We may observe with irony the terrified response to the vote by the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, or the election of Donald Trump, that the educated despisers of convention have exhibited. They seem now to understand the branch they are sitting upon has been cut off, but know not by whom, even as they wave the saw around in emphasis.
What training does democracy require? Well, let us first consider the training any human being must have to live alongside others, from birth to adulthood: the ability to share, to give way to the needs of others, to respect that which is others' (“no snatching!”), the ability to restrain one's own appetites. How is it, if the body politic is ideally consisted of such civilised people, do we not expect the body politic itself to be the same? We are social creatures, not beings of pure mind; the bulk of our species, ourselves included, are irrational the bulk of the time, relying upon training and instinct to carry us through. The adult who has not received the training we mention is impossible to live alongside. They spoil what they touch, they damage even those they love. It is the same with an untrained social body. Of course the baser appetites are provided for in such a case; of course minorities (be they darlings of the left or of the right) are oppressed by the untrammelled course of larger groups.
Yet, factionally, full of cant, insincerely, we demand rights for ourselves, for our favoured groups, and claim that the opposition is trampling upon human decency or natural rights or democracy or whatever phrase we choose to warp and abuse today. Of course, we only want the appetites of our faction to be satisfied; when we talk of “rights”, we really mean the civic possessions we desire power over. We in fact have reverted to the politics of strength, even as we plead that we are the true defenders of democracy.
Democracy means the opposite of all this. By trusting more and more citizens with a direct share in how we are governed (a lack of suffrage never meant there was no share at all), we impose greater duties and responsibilities upon more and more citizens. Extending the suffrage did not mean making more people more “free”; it meant giving more people the terrible responsibility of wielding the headman's axe. When you cannot vote, you may reasonably expect those with power to exercise noblesse oblige, and legislate to protect you; children can expect that of their parents. But when you can vote, the weight of the decisions made by any government you support rests square upon your shoulders. You are not in a position to see democracy as a way to extend your privileges. You are now amongst those who must restrain their own desires in the interest of the protection of the property and liberties of others.
This confounds the rapacious capitalist and the revolutionary Marxist both. Neither enclosure nor the Unlawful Oaths Act nor enforced nationalization nor enforced union dues show restraint, respect for the property of others, nor care for their liberties. Every measure taken to achieve the – perhaps good, perhaps admirable – aims of the revolution perverts the accomplishment. Thatcher wanted a property-owning democracy, an admirably Burkean aim; to accomplish it, she undertook a quite unBurkean policy, which caused massive, unforecasted, unsustainable changes to both local communities and to the nature of the property market. She achieved not a property-owning democracy, but the creation of a wealthy rentier class and the further social collapse of communities already affected by the mass privatization (and destruction) of industry. Mrs Thatcher saw, with an honest eye, the problems facing her nation; and in revolutionary fervour set to with a sledgehammer. No wonder the walls have been undermined since.
So let us say we have agreed to preserve democracy, or perhaps more honestly to restore it. If you are not of that view, honestly say so; call for Madame Guillotine's invention to return, and honestly proclaim that your private judgement on the wholesale reconstruction of nations is trustworthy, though you and I are incapable of recalibrating a grandfather clock. But if you consider our late experiment in democracy, with only a few hundred years in the testing, to be worth preservation, then certain common principles must be agreed upon, regardless of our particular faction.
The concept of promise-keeping and of self-restraint must be widely disseminated and enforced. A country based upon contract as we are – with a democracy based upon common assent and mutual trust – cannot have laws which loosely dispense with the necessities of oath-keeping, as we do in arenas ranging from public debt to the marital bed. If our children are taught to sate their appetites – social, career, sexual – at every stage, if our teenagers are encouraged to resent every prior generation (the generations who built them, by graft and bequest, the very schools and universities which disavow them) – if our adults are encouraged by both Thatcherism and Marxism to see themselves as simply the sum of their labours – then we cannot hope to live in any form of common compact. If there is no reason not to elbow one's neighbours except fear of brute strength – the opposite of even-handed justice, and an enemy of shared goals – then only demagoguery or autocracy can hope to achieve assent.
A realization of a living connection to both the past and the future is necessary also. This is not to skate over the sins of our forebears, nor yet to idly believe in the perfection of our descendants; this is neither nostalgia nor the Whig view of history. It is, instead, in one sense the simple recognition our grandfathers and our grandchildren are much the same sort of people as we – two legs, two arms, capable of that greatest love which lays down its life, capable of art and architecture to lift the soul, capable also of rape and Auschwitz and Jim Crow. It is also a recognition of a unity between us and them, represented in the nation we inherit and the nation we pass on. It means giving thanks for the trees planted in our parks by men and women otherwise quite morally indifferent; it means shepherding our urban landscapes, often beautiful, often built with blood money (yes, perhaps that church was built by a wicked industrialist – but its flying buttresses cause the soul to soar alongside, and thousands of decent folk have had their wounds treated in the pews). It means not tearing down every institution and convention before even assaying the replacement, all because of our own sense of historical isolation – we uniquely are able to assess good and evil, beauty and horror, cries the revolutionary, whether in social mores or in architecture. We owe an undespoiled landscape to our children; we do not owe them wasteful exploitation of resources, nor a litany of exterminated species. Similarly, we owe them not just fine physical buildings, but fine social institutions, too – ones improved by accretion and prudential rebuilding.
We must also replace common resentment with mutual respect, though God alone knows how. No common project of building can be accomplished by those who hate one another. Even Satan knows this – a house divided cannot stand. Now, if you desire stumbling, humbling democracy over Robespierrean purity, then you must assent to this. If that is the case, you must desire the rule of law, where law – even where imperfect, not ideal – is reckoned out equally to all. As Orwell put it, the hanging judge may be dreadful and archaic, but he is never – can never be – unjust or corrupt. The law must only make simple, clear requirements, and cannot have vague clauses requiring judicial interpretation, naturally favouring some over others. This is true whether it relates to the suspension of habeas corpus we currently have in our terror legislation, or the obscene power of corporations in international arbitration, or the stranger and more malign niches of equality legislation. So – in a healthy democracy – the richer partner cannot resent the poor man's requests, nor the poorer partner the rich man's wealth. Man and woman must live not in the midst of a revolutionary reordering, but as partners – flawed, sinning against each other – in a common endeavour to pass on a worthwhile inheritance to our children. The aged cannot resent the young for their desire, nor the young hate the old for their inherited fences and habits. Essentially, we must learn not to get our own way, and still live with the winner afterward; and, sometimes, not often, get our way and be a magnanimous, co-operative victor.
Now, if we had any sense, we would say things are too far gone. The slate will be washed clean with blood, and some slow process will, after much chaos, rebuild some new constitution. But happy features of the mindset required for the project above include mulish stubbornness, an intuitive love for what is well-worn and battle-tested, a sober acceptance of our nature, and a cheerful confidence in the value of planting the seed of a tree one will never see. On that basis, let us begin.
