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Radical Democracy

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Lummis, who has taught in Japan for years, has unfortunately not been much heard from in the U.S. and the West generally until the publication of Radical Democracy. I'm no fan of political science normally - too often the author has a theory to push or a political stance to defend at some cost, usually including common sense -- but I re-read Lummis's book at least once a year to unstuff my head of Newspeak and doubletalk and cynicism. He cuts through sloppy and wishful thinking with clear and approachable prose, and I'm grateful to be able to recommend this book to anyone who values honest thinking about what power in the hands of the people means and has meant historically. Lummis does not trot out new solutions for real problems so much as return us to the roots - hence his title. "How to democratize any particular antidemocratic organization - a kingdom in south Asia, a communist country in eastern Europe, a banana plantation in the Third World, a multinational corporation in a capitalist country-is a question that be answered in concrete form only through the process of democratic struggle with each such organization. In this sense, radical democracy is different from utopianism. It does not seek to impose a preconceived model; such impositions always turn out to be antidemocratic, however `democratic' the model itself may be. It means a struggle carried out on democratic principles, a process from which new forms of organization emerge. Such a struggle can be begun in any organization, at any economic or technological level."

Lummis's critique of economic development as a process often carried on in highly undemocratic and ultimately destructive ways is perhaps the heart of his book. Yet he is no reactionary or Luddite. "How and when a people prospers depends on what they hope, and prosperity becomes a strictly economic term only when we abandon all hopes but the economic one." Too many polities get driven by economies, rather than by people and their actual needs, as opposed to their manufactured ones. His discussion of power in the hands of the peoples is international in scope, and American in its immediacy to current problems, crossing ideological lines. No doubt he can see democracy all the better for living and working in a foreign country, where one's most basic assumptions get challenged as a matter of course.

I teach in a high school, and this is one of the few books I wish I could get all my students - and colleagues - to read. As Lummis says near his conclusion, "Democracy is essential politics: the art of the possible."

First things first, Lummis is not going to offer any prescriptions or solutions, and he is using "radical" meaning "straight from the source." Thus, "Radical democracy, taken in this sense...[is] the vital source of energy at the center of all living politics." He spends the first 30 pages discussing this word "radical" and what it does and doesn't mean, and how many concepts and institutions commonly regarded as "democratic," really aren't. The next 30 pages are spent on "antidemocractic development," a powerful chapter exposing the power-skewing effects inherent in development economics. Next is 30 pages on "antidemocratic machines," which seeks to explain how technology has ordered human work in ways that are inherently undemocratic. Then follows 30 less invigorating pages in which Lummis examines what he calls "democracy's flawed tradition," namely Athens in the Age of Pericles, and the Roman Republic. The aim of this chapter is to explore the West's two main exemplars of democracy and reconsider them in light of radical democracy. Basically, all of this is aimed at dispelling contemporary complacent notions (myths) about what democracy really is. Lummis is vehement in telling the reader that democracy is not the presence of this procedure, or that institutions, or any combination thereof, "Democracy is essential politics, the art of the possible." It ebbs and flows, but it cannot be contained and sustained, it must be constantly struggled for. This is a powerful notion, one that clearly is at odds with mainstream political philosophy, but one that deserves careful consideration.

Lummis' 'Radical Democracy' is one of these rare books where you can feel during the read that your perception of the world changes. Things which you thought about before, but couldn't quite figure out, suddenly appear in beautiful clarity. The book is written in beautiful, clear, easy-to-understand prose and the author is very apt at translating concepts he is trying to explain into telling examples. But more than these formal things counts what Lummis has to say: he does away with all those ideological myths with which we have surrounded the concept of democracy so that it does fit our inherently, structurally undemocratic world system. Lummis takes the concept back to what it really means: power to the people. This is the highest possible form a society can take, it is self-determination of people over their own lives. Lummis then shows how little our current world has to do with this concept, determined as it is by an economic system (capitalism) which is structurally, inherently and necessarily antidemocratic. The best part of the book is when Lummis takes apart, bit by bit, the ideology of (economic) development. This book, in short, is an absolute must for every body remotely concerned about human freedom, self-determination, justice and sustainable society.

In Western culture's long conversations concerning who should hold power in society and why, C. Douglas Lummis's Radical Democracy is a recent and righteous voice. Lummis's account is grounded in historical events in which he played a direct role (Berkeley Free Speech Movement in the 1960's) or which he surveyed soon afterwards (the democratic overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines in the 1980's). Furthermore, since Lummis has spent most of his professional life as an expatriate in the Philippines or as a faculty member at Tsuda College, Tokyo, his perspective is informed by the concerns of the so-called Third World. Democracy and "development" are thesis and antithesis in this work, which Lummis describes as the "search for a radical political perspective that does not depend on Marxism."

Radical democracy, in Lummis's view, is radical because 1) it is practiced nowhere in the world today and therefore is "subversive in every system and in every country"; 2) it is preferable to all other forms of political culture if public freedom is desirable. The book is not a theory of democracy, nor is it a policy text. It is a sermon preached to believers to inspire them to act righteously and avoid the paths of perdition. It exhorts the reader to have faith in a political promised land, yet in keeping with the metaphor of "grace" as coming serendipitously and unbidden, the book offers no formulation of how this best of all possible political worlds is to come into existence except by fortuitous accident.

Can a society prepare for grace? According to Lummis's political theology, it is the practice of democratic virtues - trust, faith in real persons, public hope,
public happiness, and last but not least "a great collective effort"- which both prepare the way for, and instantiate the kind of rule that radical democracy is, the kind of rule where people rule themselves.

And furthermore, as in any system of faith-based thought, democratic theology must posit a set of "Thou Shalt Nots":

1) Thou shalt not turn over your power to someone else in exchange for promises.
2) Thou shalt not confuse real democracy with economic development, the free market, democratic centralism, the U.S. constitutional system, allowing people to have their say, vicarious power or political safety.
3) Thou shalt not organize work based solely on maximum efficiency and profit.
4) Thou shalt not worship the false god "development".
5) Thou shalt not think that all can be rich.
6) Thou shalt not allow thy needs to be manipulated.
7) Thou shalt hold no empire over others.
8) Thou shalt not oppress others with underpaid and stultifying work.
9) Thou shalt not mistake democratic institutions for real democracy.
10) Thou shalt not organize thy families, clubs, businesses, corporations, counties, states or nations except through the disposition of radical democracy.

As with any good sermon, Radical Democracy contains two dozen or so homilies. These eloquent statements of the main themes of the book, none more than three paragraphs long, are easily excerpted. I reckon they would make nice posters. I like them so much that I shall quote most of the last one I found, entitled "Persephone's return":

Spring is a wonder and a miracle every time it comes; the wonder of it
is not compromised by the fact that summer and fall and winter will come
again. What we mostly have in the "actually occurring representative democracies" is winter, with a lot of elaborate equipment designed to
help us to survive it: "democratic institutions." We are right to cherish these institutions; flawed as they are, we should never allow ourselves to be forced to face winter without them (my argument for a recognition of political cycles should not be taken as meaning that we must accept cycles of democracy and dictatorship). But we must not start thinking of the cave, which we originally entered to get out of the wind, as if it were the whole world, or confuse the stove with the sun. This is the error we fall into when we define democracy as identical to the institutions of the "actually existing democracies." And this error is surely one of the reasons that, even in this age when virtually everybody claims to be a democrat, democracy itself has still no more than a fugitive existence. If eternal democracy is too much to ask, fugitive democracy is too little. Demeter forced the King of the Underworld to return her daughter for nine months out of the twelve. That's not a bad bargain, and maybe we can do as well. It would be something to hope for.

My favorite section of the book was an act of historical legerdemain by which the civic and military phases of the ancient Roman empire appear like specters in the modern European nation-state. Among the rabbits Lummis pulls from this metaphorical hat is the following: "The two tracks of company employment - white collar and blue collar - correspond to the ancient class division in the military, maintained to this day, between officers (patricians) and enlisted soldiers (plebeians)." Why not extend the allegory? The non-voting, disgusted, disenfranchised are the political peasants, hoping to hold onto their vegetable patches like Hobbits in the Shire, free from the ugliness of political concerns. And then there are the Barbarians, who exist in perfect isomorphism with, well, the Barbarians. The ones who ENJOY conquest and oppression, who REVEL in rape and pillage and war. Certainly not for them any fine democratic egalitarianism.

An edifying discourse should staunch the hemorrhaging of virtue. It should fairly convince us to pursue lives more trustworthy and just, for the world is conspicuously lacking in these virtues. Can so fragile a process as radical democracy carry the weight of unprecedented suffering? Can the butterfly truly forecast the hurricane? For the allure of radical democracy to be more than a nostalgic cry, the many must seize from the few the processes of power and rule. People must rule themselves. But how?

This stands out as one of the best short, positive critique of democracy I've ever read. It helped me understand the difference between true democracy and the democratic institutions that sometimes act to preserve it. The author's conclusion at the end is very compelling and has helped me think differently about what I can do to realize democracy in my world beyond casting a vote. Like the author, I too live in Japan, and I've seen firsthand how a society can have all the trappings of what we think of as democracy, such as free speech and free elections, and yet fail to truly realize the essence of "people power". Perhaps I can rise above my cynicism and have faith that people can be free.