Tzvetan Todorov.
The Inner Enemies of Democracy. Polity: 2014. Todorov, Honorary Director of Research at
Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique,
The National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, examines
here the history of the twentieth century in search of democracy’s
enemies, and finds, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and world
communism, that democracy’s enemies lie not without, but within.
He includes here not just a rise in populism but of
mass media and sound bite-driven demagoguery, which he defines as
“identifying the concerns of the majority and proposing to relieve them
by resorting to solutions that are easy to understand but impossible to
apply.” This will sound instantly familiar to those who have listened to teabagger “solutions” since 2008.
While he is not the first to make this observation
that the enemies of democracy lie within, it is nevertheless important
to note his dismissal of the oft-cited threat of terrorism, noting that
“islamic terrorism (or jihadism) is not a credible candidate for the
role of enemy that was formerly held by Moscow.”
Todorov instead argues that “a certain use of freedom can be a danger to democracy”:
Democracy secretes
within itself the very forces that threaten it, and the novelty of our
time is that these forces are superior to those attacking it from
outside.
Worse, he says,
Combating and
neutralizing them is all the more difficult because they claim to be
imbued with the democratic spirit, and thus have every appearance of
legitimacy.
He is not, as you might think, talking about the religio-wingnuts or the Koch brothers, about either theocracy or
corporatocracy, though he admits the threats he is discussing “are not
the only internal threats to democracy.” Readers looking for elucidation
of those threats will have to look elsewhere.
Here, Todorov is not interested in a comprehensive
list of threats, but only, he says, those threats with which he has
familiarity. Despite having spent the first third of his life in a
totalitarian state, he is focused on the threat posed by an
overabundance of liberty:
The people, freedom and
progress are constituent elements of democracy, but if one of them
breaks free from its relationship with others, thus escaping any attempt
to limit it and erecting itself into a single principle, they become
distinct dangers: populism, ultraliberalism, and messianism. Those inner
enemies of democracy.
Todorov warns of political messianism, “messianism
without a messiah” – a secular form of the end justifies the means
thinking – which has not heaven in mind, but “establishing the
equivalent of heaven on earth,” or “temporal salvation.”
Todorov’s point is clear: ideological crusaders are
as dangerous as religious crusaders, and he offers us three examples of
political messianism:
- The French Revolution;
- Marxism/Communism;
- Imposing Democracy by bombs.
Among the latter attempts to “bring the good” he
includes Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003) and most recently, our
intervention in Libya (2011), where, he notes, the security of the
United States was not at stake, and which, uniquely of the three, had UN
authorization. This sort of “justice,” as he points out (in company
with many others), is highly selective.
Even Obama’s foreign policy, he says, depends
ultimately on an expression of American responsibility born of America’s
unparalleled strength, neither “divine” nor “by consensus” but our
status as “the world’s most powerful nation.” This, he says, “is how
might is enabled to pass itself off as right!”
Todorov cites French philosopher and political scientist Nicolas de Condorcet, who put is thusly:
“The moment has come for a new crusade, and it has a far nobler, and holier object. It is a crusade for universal liberty.”
If that sounds familiar, it should. This is a refrain repeated by our own neo-wingnuts.
Todorov points out that, “None of these supporters
of freedom for all wondered whether deciding the future for other
peoples in this way might not violate the principle of universal
equality which they defended elsewhere.”
Leading revolutionary activist Condorcet may have
found more holiness than he hoped for, as he died from an excess of
universal freedom after being arrested by revolutionary authorities in
1794.
In all three cases we see what Todorov calls
“spirited activism,” the idea expressed, to paraphrase revolutionary
leader Saint-Just during the French Revolution, that “Once the good has
been attained, it will of course need to be ‘perpetuated.'”
The good in a democratic society? Why, equality and
freedom in the name of democracy of course. Unfortunately for
Saint-Just, too much of this “good” perpetuated him right to the
guillotine.
There is some satisfying irony in Condorcet and
Saint-Just being victims of what they said needed to be perpetuated, but
the irony is less amusing if we see that our democracy can – and has –
become a victim of our own zeal for democracy.
Communism was the next phase of political
messianism, relates Todorov, and communism fully embraced the ideal of
might is right, which was unfortunate for those who stood against it
because, as Lenin put it, “Marxism is all-powerful because it is true.”
This capital-T-type truth – and anything that stands
in its way must be swept aside – was no more open to debate in
communist circles than it is among our own Religious Right, and it is
unfortunate that Todorov does not follow this very inviting avenue of
thought.
Todorov turns instead to neoliberalism, which he
refers to as “a new phase in the evolution of liberalism” in opposition
to totalitarianism. Ayn Rand (who, like Todorov, grew up in a communist
country) he labels a “neoliberal propagandist.”
He argues that neoliberals “distance themselves from
the laissez-faire of classical liberalism and advocate a form of state
intervention that can speed up history, namely the systematic
elimination of any barrier to competition.”
Ultraliberalism is, he argues, yet another phase in this progression. Ultraliberal ideology opposes any intervention or controls by the state.
This sounds like Ayn Rand. It does not sound like
liberalism, which, after all, came up with the United States
Constitution, establishing an entirely unique system of government on
the earth, full of controls via an intricate system of checks and
balances.
As we can readily see, and know from experience,
ultraliberalism is not liberalism at all. In fact, as Todorov points
out, ultraliberalism in its devotion to unbridled economic forces,
“violates the basic principle of liberal thought, which is the
limitation of one power by another.”
Nor, he warns, are ultraliberalism and
totalitarianism “as radically opposed” as their adherents claim.
Ultraliberalism, says Todorov pointedly, is not only totalitarianism’s
enemy, but its brother.
A rather chilling thought, but one we are seeing proved before our very eyes in the early years of the twenty-first century.
The Inner Enemies of Democracy is a very readable book, and a very important one.
