Democritus or democracy?

[imomus]

The Guardian today has an interesting breakdown of the kinds of people voting Yes and No in Sunday's Euro-constitution referendum:

"Only majorities of professionals, graduates and pensioners voted for the constitution," says the paper. "More than 80% of blue collar workers voted against. Haves and have-nots were divided by worries about unemployment, currently at a five-year high of 10.2% - and the biggest single reason for a no vote - and globalisation. Geographically, the trend was clear: Paris, with its large number of "bobos" (bourgeois bohemians) and high-profile socialist mayor, voted massively in favour. Lyon, Strasbourg and Bordeaux were in the yes camp. But Marseille, Nice and Lille said no."

(Fear Eats The Soul, Guardian leader, Tuesday May 31st)

It seems to me that a very similar thing has happened to Europe that has happened in the US: the people voting Yes to the EU constitution have the same educated, urban profile as the people voting Democrat in the last US election. And in both cases they've been defeated and outnumbered by less tolerant, less affluent and educated, more anxious, irrational and xenophobic people from smaller towns and country areas. People who feel like outsiders to the political process are now, with splendid passive aggression, exacting their revenge by dealing it blows. In many cases these people are also outsiders to the process of wealth creation: strip away the blue coasts and the big cities and America loses the economic powerhouses which make it the world's predominant power. It's the same in Europe: the people now determining the shape of the continent are the insecure poor, unwilling to share their meagre income with Polish plumbers and Turkish bakers, but also unwilling to admit their economic dependence on the dynamic city folk and political elites they've just dealt a slap in the face.



Jean de La Fontaine would probably have been a Yes voter. France's greatest writer of fables describes how the townspeople of Abdera summoned the great doctor Hippocrates to treat the philosopher Democritus, believing him to be mad. Hippocrates arrived and conversed with Democritus. They turned out to be kindred spirits; it was the townspeople who were mad. But what do you do when the majority are mad or abnormal? In a relativist conception of the universe, is it even possible to call a majority "abnormal"? In a democracy, can a majority be "wrong"? Surely we have to oppose to La Fontaine's fable the famous Brecht poem which advises the East German government, when it tells the people they have to redouble their efforts to regain the government's confidence in them, to "dissolve the people and elect a new one"?

Everyone who's ever believed profoundly in either a principle or a project, only to see a majority of the people spurn or destroy it, has to question, from time to time, the very idea of democracy: the idea that the majority of the people knows best what's good for the world. We all know that big majorities of the people would, given referenda on the death penalty, war, abortion, immigration and other issues, often choose the most barbaric and atavistic options. There are all sorts of sensible measures you can propose to improve the situation: give the people better access to information, improve education, make the political elites more responsive, make them explain their visions better. But although the editorials won't say it, I will: majorities of the people, at any given time and in any given place, are likely to be mad, bad and wrong.

I mean, someone in my position more or less has to believe that. For twenty years I've been making records. They've been available in shops and played on the radio, but the people have almost completely spurned them. If the people are always right, it would seem an unavoidable conclusion that my records are just a million times worse than Kelly Clarkson's. So give me the choice between Democritus and democracy and, well, you can see how passive aggression might just make me vote for the "mad" philosopher.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Not really, it's predictable that the bulk of the far-right are going to vote against anything international, but that's always been true - it doesn't explain why this referendum was different.

As for the Guardian, that sorry article by Kettle claiming that the key problem is that in the modern world we can't afford a welfare state, and that no really means yes, but yeah, if in doubt or stuck for an argument then calling your opponents racists usually works.

The three key reasons for voting no were firstly unemployment, secondly
general disillusionment with the French and European political elite, and
thirdly rejection of the neo-liberal bias in the Constitution - no other
reason was cited by more than 25% of No voters.

[rwillmsen.livejournal.com]

This makes sense to me. I think that people in Europe are absolutely sick of being told that they will have to sacrifice their jobs, their welfare states and their pensions in order to compete with China, India and anywhere else where wages are low and working and social conditions are abysmal. They appear to have taken this opportunity to make a stand against the way the whole world is going. Blairite journalists writing for the Guardian won't like it, but I think they'll have to start thinking a bit more critically about the way the world is going and how people feel about it, instead of just being lazy and blaming French workers of kneejerk racism and conservatism.

The answer to the problems Europe faces - primarily an aging population - is not cutting back on pensions and working conditions. If we continue on that road we will before too long all be working for Chinese-level wages. The answer is immigration. We need a grassroots political movement that recognises that fact and challenges the consensus on globalisation.

[rwillmsen.livejournal.com]

ps. You need to think of the distinction between Socialists and socialists in France. Mitterand was a Socialist, but he certainly was no socialist. Ditto Tony Blair. I think that actual left-wingers voted on the whole against the constitution, although of course it's hard to verify.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Oh I know - I spent a lot of time in France during those years. My view is that Miterrand was elected in 81 as a socialist Socialist, with four Communist ministers in the Mauroy government, abolished the death penalty, brought in wealth taxes, nationalised the banks, panicked the markets, gave in to pressure (a lot of it from Germany) and moved to the centre in about 83-4, or whenever Mauroy was sacked.

Do you think that's fair?

[rwillmsen.livejournal.com]

You probably know more about it than I do, my understanding is that he was elected on a huge left-wing vote and rapidly proved to be a huge disappoinment. Plus he was an extremely dodgy individual with all sorts of extreme right-ring associations, n'est pas?

http://www.reseauvoltaire.net/imprimer12751.html

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Well, my view is very much that he was a 'proper' socialist for a couple of years, but flunked it when he had to choose between europeanism and socialism. As to the rest, a lot of strange things happened during the war - my grandfather had friends in the resistance who were shot for being collaborators because their cover had been so good they couldn't prove anything.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Immigration will be useful in the medium-term to smooth the curve, but it isn't a long-term solution to people living longer. All the suggested answers to that problem are tinkering. The only long-term answer to that is either to raise the amount of wealth we each generate over our total lifetimes, or reduce the annual amount of wealth we each consume.

[joentdothat.livejournal.com]

I'd really like to see what Nick has to say about this. I am not an EU citizen, and honestly both sides of the arguments have elements that appeal to me (I am not certain how I would have voted) - I don't think you've addressed these points, though, Nick. I would like to see whether you have any reaction towards them.