[Peace-discuss] Who opposes the war? (democracy)

[Morton K. Brussel]

I would argue that democracy--empowering the effective will of the  
majority of the people--may be a necessary, but is not a sufficient  
condition for a truly just and humane society. You can change the  
definition [as given in, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary]  
if you like to include egalitarian economic and social aspects if you  
like, but then you will often be misunderstood. And by the way, I can  
easily conceive of famines happening in a democracy, even if it  
usually occurs in our world as you say.

Mort


On Jan 29, 2006, at 12:21 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

> On Fri, 27 Jan 2006 Morton K. Brussel <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
>  wrote--
>
>> Thanks Carl for your reflection of my whimsical question.
>>
>> I would only comment that left-right political determinations
>> might include, in addition to degrees of authoritarianism and
>> democracy, something about economic and social rights, such
>> as the right to have lodging, food, health care, decent
>> living conditions, education, culture….  Democracy in its
>> political sense does not necessarily include these aspects of
>> human life and welfare...
>
>
> I'd say that the answer to this point it found in Nobel
> laureate Amartya Sen's work on famines: he contends that no
> functioning democracy has ever suffered a famine.  Famine
> occurs, he argues, not from a lack of food, but from
> inequalities built into mechanisms for distributing food.
> Taking democracy seriously (the far Left position) means that
> not only the polity but also the economy should be under
> democratic control (a minimal definition of socialism) .
>
> "Democracy in  a political sense" is a truncated democracy,
> not worthy of the the name.  Such limited democracy is taken
> as a standard form, in part because that's what the US
> constitution provided.  Madison make it clear in his notes on
> the convention that the great fear was that a truly democratic
> government would quickly move on to  distribute wealth more
> equally (he was probably right) and that had to be prevented.
>
> Madison was not in favor of a democracy for America, saying
> that "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and
> contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal
> security, or the rights of property." Madison wanted a system
> of checks and balances built into the Constitution so as to
> prevent the majority of the citizenry from "discovering their
> own strength" and from acting "in union with each other" --
> precisely because he wanted to protect the property of wealthy
> Americans from governmental action fueled by the desires of
> the majority of poorer Americans: "Landholders ought to have a
> share in the government, to support these invaluable
> interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to
> be so constituted as to *protect the minority of the opulent
> against the majority*."
>
> It was to guard the "the minority of the opulent against the
> majority" that the limitations on democracy were built into
> the constitution (and reinforced by devices like "judicial
> review" -- the ability of the Supreme Court to declare an act
> of Congress unconstitutional -- which of course is not in the
> constitution.) True democracy would necessarily include rights
> to lodging, food, health care, education, culture...
>
> Regards, CGE