Brainpolice : Slavery, Universality

What Is Democracy? Part One: Democracy Is Slavery

Brainpolice — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 05:57:00 GMT

This is part one in a three part series: democracy is slavery, democracy is impossible and democracy is liberty.

Democracy Is Slavery

By the phrase "democracy is slavery", I refer to the tyranny that inevitably arises from the principles of majoritarianism and communalism. One standard definition of democracy is rule by the majority. Rule by the majority is fundamentally in opposition to the liberty of the minority, and the individual is of course the greatest minority of them all. The logical implication of the principle of majoritarianism, viewed as an ethic, is that superiority in numbers justifies decision-making over others. The group with the largest amount of people in it may control and subjugate all other groups, all other individuals not within it. To use a common phrase that accurately describes majoritarian democracy, it reduces to "might makes right". Majoritarian democracy creates a master-slave relationship in which the masters outnumber the slaves. The range necessary for a group to become a majoritarian ruling class could be anywhere between 51% and 99% of a given population.

Numerical majoritarianism, a subcategory or altered version of majoritarian democracy, is somewhat different in that no true majority is actually required. One does not have to exceed 50% in numerical superiority in order to rule over others. The numerical majority could theoretically be constituted by anywhere between 1% and 49% of a given population. In practise, it actually reduces to a minority ruling over a majority in terms of the overall population of those involved. Numerical majoritarianism creates a master-slave relationship in which the slaves outnumber the masters. The more groups that are involved, the smaller the numerical majorities may potentially get, and conversely the larger the dominated or subjected group may potentially get. Most examples of democracy in action are cases of numerical majoritarianism, although democracies could be said to vary between exercises of both pure and numerical majoritarianism interchangably depending in the particular situation in question.

Democracy is slavery because the minority, most importantly the individual, is forced into an association with and subjected to the decision-making power of the majority that they did not explicitly consent to. I define slavery quite simply as involuntary servitude and forced association, a state of affairs in which one or more individuals imposes decision-making from above upon one or more individuals against their explicit consent. Under democracy, whatever positive obligations that the majority wishes to impose on the minority must be lived up to regaurdless of the consent of the minority. The majority exercises decision-making power over social and economic life of others. Certainly a man is no less a slave if they have a multitude of masters rather then one master. While in monarchy the individual has one ruler or is the subject of a tiny familial or noble aristocracy, in democracy the individual has more of a plurality of rulers. The majority exercises shared or quotal rulership over the subjected individual. Democracy increases the amount of rulers. It could conversely be said that it reduces the amount of subjects as compared to monarchy, but this does not solve anything and the subjects are only reduced by the creation of more rulers.

It is important for one to realize that, as a principle seeking to justify authority and decision-making, majoritarian democracy, wether it be constituted by true majorities or numerical ones, is blind or neutral to the logical or ethical nature of the preferences of the majority in question. It justifies whatever decision is made by the majority, regaurdless of wether or not is right or wrong based on any independant ethical criterion and regaurdless of wether or not it makes any sense at all. In an exercise of majoritarian democracy, anything from murder to theft to rape to kidnapping could theoretically be given sanction, so long as the group approving of or engaging in such actions constitutes a majority. To reduce majoritarianism to the absurd, using the principle of majoritarianism on a small scale, if there are two men and a woman and the men want to have sexual intercourse with the woman and she does not, the two men are allegedly justified in raping her. Or, to use a large-scale example of the absurdities resulting from the principle, 51% of a population may allegedly legitimately murder the other 49%.

Majoritarian democracy fails the criterion of universality in ethics because the respective majorities and minorities are not held to the same basic standard of ethics. It functions as a defacto justification for the majority or group being able to get away with doing that which the individual or minority may not do. In short, the majority is exempted from being subject to the same ethical criterion and responsibility as everyone else. This is logically inconsistant if ethical principles and rights are supposed to apply to all individual human beings, if the individual is our standard of sovereignty. Using the law of universality as our criterion, even if it is one individual against everyone else in the world, it still is not just for even everyone else in the world to enslave, plunder or murder the individual. "The community", "the majority", and the deceptive phrases such as "the will of the people" and "the public good" cannot legitimately be invoked to justify tyranny. These terms function as obfuscations and illegitimate apologetics for the subjugation of people.

Utilitarianism could be seen as being linked to democracy in terms of the old and common maxim "the greatest good for the greatest number". Using this as a criteria for ethics could be used to justify majoritarianism because the precise definition of the term "good" is left up in the air so that whatever the majority happens to consider to be "good" is sanctioned. Afterall, the majority is "the greatest number". The majority may certainly benefit and gain utility, wether it be in a purely psychological and emotional sense or in terms of material and physical well-being, prosperity and survival. But the criterion for justifying it is arbitrary and inconsistant, especially when terms such as "happiness" are employed. The means toward obtaining the utility are not taken into proper consideration. The end of utility or happiness for the majority is used to justify the means. What is not addressed is that there is a burden of proof on the majority to justify their means. The burden of proof always lies with those who assert authority, and a mere numbers game does not constitute a sufficient justification for authority. If explicit consent is used as a criterion for the burden of proof, then democracy and utilitarianism cannot ethically legitimize anything at all. It functions as little more then majoritarian hedonism. In the absence of explicit consent, democracy as a general principle is nothing but an arbitrary apologetic for slavery.

The idea that one has a right to participate in and have decision-making power over other people's private relationships against their explicit consent is fundamentally contradictary to the concept of individual sovereignty and free association. A sovereign individual is one who is free from the imposition of 3rd parties of people, including majorities. Noone else has an abstract entitlement to decision-making over the individual and the private relationships that they enter into. Only the individual has legitimate authority in decision-making over their own person. The only alternative to individual sovereignty or self-ownership, as Murray Rothbard once pointed out, is either for another individual to exercise decision-making over their person, which would create a master-slave relationship in which one person rules over another, or for the collective or everyone to exercise quotal ownership or decision-making over eachother's person, which would create an absurd scenario in which everyone attempts to own a quotal share of everyone else. Since this is practically impossible to realistically enforce, the communalist alternative, in practise, reduces to the first alternative of individual rulership, only in the name of the community or collective. Democracy is somewhere in between the two extremes of individual rulership and the mutual and universal slavery of everyone to eachother. Democracy is as close to the communalist ideal that a society can get, reducing to some combination of pure and numerical majoritarianism in which there is a mixed and somewhat dynamic network of master-slave relationships.

Positive "Rights"

Brainpolice — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:33:00 GMT

The idea of positive rights is that people have a "right" to be given particular benefits, material resources or services by others. They represent claims of a right to recieve positive benefits from other people, in the abscence of any actual "debt" incurred. They require people to take certain actions with regaurd to eachother. The contemporary notion of a right to healthcare, a right to education and a right to income equality are common manifestations of this.

It is empirically impossible to consistantly apply or enforce positive rights to all people. Imagine that every single person has a positive obligation to provide food, clothing, income security, healthcare, and education for eachother. Not only does the scarcity of resources make this hopelessly utopian, but it is simply physically impossible for each person to exercise their quotal share of control over everyone else. There is no realistic way for everyone to keep continual tabs on eachother as to ensure that they fulfill their alleged positive obligations to serve eachother. Therefore, the attempt to enforce positive rights will always in practise impose a burden on one group to the benefit of another. Positive rights cannot realistically be applied equally. Of course, wether they are attempted to be enforced or not, there will always be some degree of inequality in terms of the material resources people possess, and hence people's alleged positive rights will always be quantatively imbalanced. Any attempt to set it up so that everyone has an absolutely equal quantity, as well as quality, of goods and services will be in vein.

More importantly, however, is that claims of positive rights inherently must violate what is known as "negative rights", which are real rights. Positive rights require that people be forced to sacrifice in order to serve eachother. In short, all claims of positive rights bestow a positive obligation onto everyone to perform particular actions on the behalf of others. This is essentially altruism or forced egalitarianism. Negative rights, in contrast, bestow an obligation for people to abstain from infringing on the free actions of others. They do not require anyone to take any particular action. Instead, they are based on people abstaining from infringing on the free action of others. Negative rights is to be understood as freedom from the violence or coercion of other people. A negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another human being, or group of people, such as a state, in the form of violence or coercion. Therefore, positive rights violate negative rights in that they infringe on the liberty of others to not be forced to give to, serve or associate with other people. For example, in forcing someone to give money to someone else, their right to be free from coercion is being trampled upon, for they are being forced to take a particular action to benefit someone else against their will.

If someone has a right of self-ownership, then noone else can legitimately claim control over their bodies. Self-ownership implies that they are free to act without others initiating force or threatening to do so against their person. The alternative to self-ownership is some kind of slavery, even if it's a partial kind of slavery in question. The consistant application of positive rights would imply that everyone is eachother's slave. But as we have previously touched on, it is impossible to consistantly apply it. Therefore, in practise, one individual or group is enslaved to another under a regime of positive rights. If someone has a right to that property by which they voluntarily aquired, then noone else can legitimately claim that property against their will. Property rights implies that they are free to control that which they have justly aquired without others initiating force or threatening to do so against their property or to claim control over it against their will. The alternative to property rights is some kind of theft or coercive usory. The consistant application of positive rights would imply that everyone has a right to steal from eachother. But since it is impossible consistantly apply positive rights, in practise, one individual or group is plundered to the benefit of another.

As has been pointed out by professor Walter Block, the utopianism of positive rights can further be demonstrated by making another distinction between positive and negative rights. Negative rights violations require a human agent. Positive rights violations don't. Suppose that a natural disaster occurs, such as a bad tusnami or hurricane in central asia. Could it be legitimately argued that any negative rights violations occured? Most certainly not - no individual used any aggression or compulsion against eachother. But if one takes positive rights seriously, one could concievably argue that the people's positive rights were violated - afterall, they had no food, adequate clothing, shelter, healthcare or education! This, of course, is not to say that it would not be wise to provide such victims with food and shelter, but the idea of positive rights would lead us to claim that each and every victim of the disaster has an abstract "right" to have others provide certain services, in this case clothing and shelter, even against their will.

A mighty strange doctrine this notion of positive rights is. Someone can be charged with violating someone else's rights when they have not done anything to that person at all, and may have never even met the person in their life. A positive rights violation merely requires that someone abstain from fulfilling some expected positive obligation, even if they are completely unaware of such an excepted obligation. In other words, you are charged with a rights violation for the "crime" of taking no action at all or simply not knowing someone else! But people who are separated by oceans and large land masses must therefore be considered guilty in the extreme according to this view, for they mostly don't really interact with eachother at all. In either case, exploring the notion of positive rights empirically clearly leads us into an endless series of absurdities. More importantly, however, in terms of ethics the concept of positive rights is indistinguishable from a concept of mutual theft and slavery.