Liberal Anti-Democracy, Chapter 2: The Plutocratic Origins of Representative Government

Posted By Kenneth Vinther On In North American New Right | Comments Disabled

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Part 2 of 9 (Chapter 1 here [2])

In all countries the rights of the majority take care of themselves, but it is only in countries like England, enjoying constitutional liberty, and safe from the tyranny of a single despot, or of an unbridled democracy, that the rights of minorities are regarded. — Sir John A. MacDonald

The great ability of those who are in control in the modern world lies in making the people believe that they are governing themselves; and the people are the more inclined to believe this, as they are flattered by it. — René Guénon

The people of England regards itself as free, but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)

From the cradle to the grave, we are fed this vision of democracy that consists largely of propagandistic images, slogans, and selective historical scenes that create a certain image in the public consciousness.

The political scientist Christopher Achen calls this image the “folk theory of electoral democracy.” Alternatively, Jan Komárek calls it our “democratic imaginary.”

This “democratic imaginary” is the idea that our system of government was introduced to represent the people. If it is failing to do so today, this is only because the democratic process has been hijacked and subverted by shadowy special interest groups, diverting our democratic institutions from their popular mandate, which is to enact and fulfill the will of the people.

This is a cultural myth that reaches back into the rhetoric of seventeenth-century English radical movements which proclaimed that the government “has been laid in the Consent of the People.” It reaches into the American Declaration of Independence — that “[g]overnments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed” – and in the preamble of the Constitution, that “[w]e the People . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution.” This is all government propaganda from past centuries that has since assumed mythic proportions. The idea of a “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is what informs the image that most today entertain in their minds about our system of government.

This is a monumental misconception that causes people to completely misunderstand how our system of government was designed and how it works. It is also causing the opponents of liberalism to grant this system the pretense of “democracy,” and miss out on the most powerful critique that can be made against this liberal system of government.

At the end of the twentieth century, approximately half of all countries on Earth were liberal democracies, where citizens elect representatives to govern on their behalf through a supreme legislative body. Contrary to popular belief, this system of representative government has nothing at all to do with democracy. It does not find its inspiration in democratic precedent, such as the democratic constitution of ancient Athens. It instead traces to the British and American traditions of representative government and to the liberal constitutional theory of Enlightenment-era political theorists such as John Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founding Fathers. At its heart, this tradition of liberal constitutionalism defines a legal and political system oriented not towards popular rule, but rather towards the protection of individual rights. For the framers of our modern constitutional governments, representative government was not meant to actualize mass political participation, but to limit the threat that the state and mass political movements posed to an individualistic, rights-based legal order.

“From the beginning,” writes Philip B. Kurland, “the language of America has been the language of rights.” Prior to the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence found inspiration in the traditions of English common law and its mythic origins in the Magna Carta. Grounded upon “the natural, inherent, divinely hereditary and indefeasible rights” of the “natural [sic] born subject of England,” the traditions of liberal constitutionalism sought to protect and secure “those rights which God and the laws have given equally and independently to all.” In the words of the liberal constitutional theorist John Locke, “the end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.” And for the doctrinaire founders of our liberal frame of government, the foremost of these rights was the right of property.

The American Founding Fathers and the liberal European aristocrats who designed our constitutional system of government firmly believed, in the words of James Madison, that “[g]overnment is instituted to protect [private] property.” John Adams professed that “[p]roperty is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty”; in The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton clarified that “the first object of government” is the “[t]he protection” of “[t]he diversity in the faculties of men . . . [and] the rights of property.” The purpose of the Revolution was foremost to provide security “to liberty and to property.” In the early drafting of the Declaration of Independence, the phrase “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” instead featured a phrase lifted almost verbatim from the English philosopher John Locke: “to life, liberty, and property.”

Liberalism emerged as an aristocratic revolt against the state, against the arbitrary exercise of political power, against the ties and obligations of feudalism, and against the expropriation of privately-owned resources for public purposes. It marked a profound break with traditional European political philosophy and inaugurated a revolution of cataclysmic proportions in the way that men viewed society and social relations. Medieval political philosophy regarded society as a holistic organism composed of its constituent parts: a body politic, or corpus mysticum et politicum. The advent of liberalism, in the words of Marx, “tor[e] asunder the[se] motley feudal ties,” and inaugurated a radically different vision for organizing society that found its articulation in the atomistic cosmology of the early-modern philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

Proceeding from the state of nature analogy, liberal philosophy envisions man not as an interconnected link in a great chain of being, nor even as an inherently social being, but rather as a rational, calculating, self-interested, and radically individualistic economic creature that desires radical independence above all else. It envisions human life as naturally “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” and characterized by an endless struggle between individuals over scarce resources to satisfy their lusts and appetites, “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.” And it is only because “the enjoyment of the property [that] he has in this state is very unsafe, very unsecure,” writes John Locke, that humans break from their naturally independent and self-interested nature and compact together into political society “for the mutual Preservation of their Lives, liberties and Estates, which I call by the general Name, Property.” Setting forth the primary thesis of liberal constitutional theory in 1689, Locke submitted that the state’s ultimate purpose is the maintenance and protection of private property. “The Supream Power cannot take from any Man any part of his Property without his own consent,” wrote John Locke, because

the preservation of Property being the end of Government, and that for which Men enter into Society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the People should have Property, without which they must be suppos’d to lose that by entring into Society, which was the end for which they entered into it, too gross an absurdity for any Man to own . . . Hence it is a mistake to think, that the Supream or Legislative Power of any Commonwealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the Estates of the Subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.

For liberal constitutional theorists, whosoever “invades the Fundamental Law of Property . . . subverts the end of Government.” Eighteenth-century aristocrats wished to have all the privileges of private property without any of the obligations or responsibilities that feudalism had once demanded in exchange. In their revolt against the feudal state throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these theorists set out to contrive a different model of government that would be fundamentally organized towards the protection of individual rights and private property. The modern constitutional state reflects this motivation, outlining a series of strictly-defined rules and institutional procedures designed to minimize violations of individual liberties, restrain arbitrary political power, and secure civil society against political interference by promoting the “rule of law.” At the heart of this constitutional formula is the doctrine of the separation of powers and parliamentary sovereignty.

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The principle of the separation of powers and parliamentary sovereignty emerged throughout the seventeenth century in England. It represented an exceptional, radical, and peculiar contribution of English jurisprudence that contrasted sharply with other developments elsewhere throughout the European continent. In early-modern Europe, monarchist absolutism was ascendant, and the powers of the state — including the executive, judicial, and legislative powers — were tending to be concentrated in the monarch.

However, it was unique in England that, over the course of various struggles between monarchs, the nobility, and other wealthy elites represented in Parliament, that Parliament emerged ascendant and succeeded in sharply curtailing the monarchy’s powers. England was also unique in the international system in that, unlike any other country, England’s legislative power — rather than the executive power — was sovereign. As Locke declared, “all other Powers in any Members or parts of the Society [are] derived from and subordinate to it [i.e., the legislature].” This unique arrangement of parliamentary sovereignty produced a series of unique characteristics which rapidly distinguished England from any other European state. The foremost of these characteristics is the separation of powers, which is designed to foster what liberal theorists refer to as the “rule of law.”

As the famous English constitutional historian A. V. Dicey stated, unlike an absolutist monarchy — where supreme powers are concentrated in the person of the monarch — the decrees of parliament “always take the shape of formal and deliberate legislation.” Legislation begins when a private member sponsors and introduces a bill to Parliament, after which the bill is introduced to Parliament for its first and second readings, before it is reviewed by a series of committees which may or may not introduce a series of amendments, after which the bill is then returned to Parliament for its third reading and consideration. As a divided and pluralistic committee of hundreds of disparate individuals with competing interests and loyalties, the bill is debated and voted on, and — if it passes Parliament — then proceeds to be reviewed through a similar process in the Senate as well. The edicts of {arliament must be delivered through a highly cumbersome and proceduralist formula, making Parliament an inherently limited body that cannot enforce and administer its own laws. It must therefore delegate the enforcement of its laws to the executive branch and to the courts. A profoundly inefficient political institution, “‘tis necessary there should be a Power always in being, which should see to the Execution of the laws that are made, and remain in force,” recognized Locke. “And thus the Legislative and Executive [and Judicial] Power come often to be separated.”

Unlike an absolutist monarchy, a state that both creates and enforces its own laws, Parliament – as a divided and proceduralist legislative institution — can only speak through general and proscriptive legislative enactments. Parliamentary sovereignty therefore “has tended as naturally to protect the independence of the judges” and promote a highly legalistic system of government, because it must continually operate “under the supervision . . . of the Courts.” Dicey continues:

Powers, however extraordinary, which are conferred or sanctioned by statute, are never really unlimited, for they are confined by the words of the Act itself, and, what is more, by the interpretation put upon the statute by the judges. Parliament is supreme legislator, but from the moment Parliament has uttered its will as lawgiver, that will becomes subject to the interpretation put upon it by the judges of the land . . .

Parliamentary sovereignty has been fatal to the growth of “administrative law” and highly conducive instead to the development of the highly legalistic English and American traditions of the common law. Operating under the principle of stare decisis — to stand by things decided — the independent judiciary under the common law is a tremendously powerful institution, overseeing the activities of the state and actively contributing to the fabric of the law in a semi-legislative manner through the courts’ interpretations of statute, which then becoming binding legal precedent. In the words of the Supreme Court of the United States, “[a]lthough the Legislature may of course speak to the subject, in the common law system the primary instruments of [legal] evolution are the courts, adjudicating on a regular basis the rich variety of individual cases brought before them.” As the famous English historian Christopher Hill remarked, in England “the law itself was sovereign; and the judges alone understood its mysteries.”

Even though Parliament is “sovereign,” the sovereign legislature therefore implies the delegation and separation of powers into an executive and judicial branch. The principle of parliamentary sovereignty consequently becomes the bedrock of the separation of powers and the constitutional checks and balances which Enlightenment thinkers such as “the celebrated Montesquieu” recognized in the eighteenth-century English parliamentary state as the fundamental mechanism of “political liberty.” “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person,” argued Montesquieu, “there can be no liberty.” However, when the lawmaking and law-enforcing branches of the state are separated according to their various functions, “le pouvoir arrête le pouvoir” — power checks power — “so that power may not be abused.” Montesquieu’s observations and insights regarding the separation of powers later became a tremendous influence on the American Constitution and American Founding Fathers, who reaffirmed the principle of the separation of powers in the Federalist 51: “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

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The modern liberal constitutional state, in the words of Montesquieu, represents a “way in which things are arranged” such that that government is divided against itself in a manner that regulates and circumscribes the exercise of governmental power. The independence of the various branches produces a system of internal checks and balances that interfere with the arbitrary exercise of power by any given branch, outside of the prescriptions of the law. For this reason, Montesquieu praised parliamentary government as “moderate government.” However, others have gone so far as to describe it as “the politics of institutionalized acrimony” for the purposes of “prevent[ing] tyranny” and “enhance[ing] the liberty of the citizen.” “The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 1787,” clarified Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1926, “not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power.”

Liberal constitutional government and its system of separation of powers effectively amounts to a “deliberately inefficient” and weak system of government, constituted such that the executive cannot effectively interfere with the judiciary or the neutral administration of the private rights of citizens through the court system. As Dicey famously wrote in 1902,

Parliament, though sovereign, unlike a sovereign monarch who is not only a legislator but a ruler, that is, head of the executive government, has never hitherto been able to use the powers of the government as a means of interfering with the regular course of law.

“The rule of law or the predominance of the legal spirit,” writes A. V. Dicey, “may be described as [the] special attribute of English institutions.” The liberal constitutional state represents the liberal faith and belief in the rights of the individual, representing a highly procedural and legalistic system of government designed to maximize the private sphere and secure the liberty of private persons and market actors by restraining the state. A naturally limited state that delegates enormous power to a robust and independent judicial system, parliamentary government essentially represents the subordination of the state and of political power to liberal principles, legal procedures, and private common law. It relegates the state to the role of a referee that arbitrates disputes between private actors within the context of the largely apolitical and private market sphere. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, the liberal constitutional state is superior because it is a “government . . . which governs least . . . [or] which governs not at all.” It also goes without saying that this legalistic system of government tends to promote liberalism, as the court system is oriented largely around adjudicating disputes between private individuals. An individual rights-based institution, the judges in Commonwealth countries regularly cite English liberal philosophers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill in their judgements.

This liberal constitutional formula provides the basis for so-called democratic systems of government today. However, contrary to popular belief, while the practice of electing members to a sovereign legislative body has given rise to the legal fiction of popular sovereignty, liberal constitutional government has virtually nothing whatsoever to do with “the rule of the people” at all.

Parliament — a committee composed of some several hundred elected members of parliament — does not substantially represent or serve as a more accurate reflection of the people any better than the singular person of theKking. In each case, the people are being represented by what amounts to a miniscule fraction of the population. The purpose “of the House of Commons lies not in its being the representative of the people, for this holds as well for King, Lords, Commons, and judges,” explained the British constitutional theorist Edmund Burke. “They all are trustees for the people.” Rather, as Burke explains, the merit of Parliament is not that it is the representative of the people, but that “it was designed as a control for the people.” By this, Burke is explaining that Parliament is expressly purposed to serve as an immediate check, limitation, and procedural restraint on the power of the executive, and thereby protect the rights of private individuals against arbitrary state action by promoting the “rule of law.”

For liberal constitutional theorists, the purpose of Parliament is to protect private citizens against political interference by standing as a barrier between the executive and civil society. The purpose of parliamentary government and the separation of powers is to obstruct the executive. Parliamentary government’s “checks and balances” are designed to produce a deliberately inefficient and divided state that is too dysfunctional to effectively interfere with civil society. It is designed to make the state weak and foster in its place a highly robust and active judicial system, that will be guaranteed to safeguard the private property rights of landowners and creditors. If the state tries to act, it must go through Parliament and the Senate, which — elected by private economic interests — implies including civil society and lawyers in public policy negotiations. Any state policy that makes it through this process can then be challenged in the courts, meaning that it will be forced to take into consideration the private rights of litigants when attempting to perform public acts or implement public policy. The purpose of this highly litigious organization of society is to produce a depoliticized private sphere in which private individuals are protected from political interference, to foster political stability and legal certainty for firms, and to protect the private property of private market actors from expropriation by the state for public purposes. The liberal constitutional state is therefore effectively subordinated to the interests of civil society’s private entities that are economically powerful enough to influence the legislature and the judiciary by privately funding elections, mobilizing lobbyists, and engaging in litigation.

All modern “democracies” are descended from this eighteenth-century English liberal state, as it emerged from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the ascendance of the Dutch Prince William of Orange to the throne of England. By affirming the principle of parliamentary sovereignty with the Bill of Rights of 1689, England officially became a “liberal protodemocracy . . . with a constitutionally constrained executive, an independent parliament with substantial influence over domestic and foreign policy, a mostly free press, and a relatively open economy.” This British constitutional state eventually “expanded in the international system in a ‘family tree’ pattern,” writes the political scientist Kevin Narizny, as this “founding state ‘reproduced’ by transferring its political, economic, and social institutions to its colonies, conquests, and clients.”

Sir John Seeley famously remarked that the British Empire was accumulated in a “fit of absent mindedness.” Before many territories were integrated under the dominion of the British Empire, great swathes of territory were first colonized by British joint-stock companies such as the British East India Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company. When these British joint-stock companies conquered a territory, they established parliamentary government in their newfound colonies “to create an environment in which British firms would have the same institutional protections that they had at home, including the rule of law, an independent judiciary, an incorruptible civil service, and stable political rights.”

Before the twentieth and twenty-first century efforts of the American State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the Soros Open Society Foundations to “spread democracy” and incorporate various countries into the liberal international order, the British Empire spread its proto liberal-democratic institutions “to open [foreign] markets to trade and . . . investment.” Modern so-called liberal “democracies” evolved as a constitutional form that was uniquely attuned to protecting the rights of private individuals, for creating and administering markets, and for subordinating the state to the interests of private property owners and investors. A century later, Alexander Hamilton would define the United States of America, with its own Constitution modelled closely after the British Constitution, as a “Commercial Republic.”

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