gracchusdixit

Virtually everyone is familiar with this famous quip by Winston Churchill:

No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.  Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Most of us focus on the final phrase, which praises democracy, and pay scant attention to the more critical assessment that precedes it.  In reality, both parts of Churchill’s aperçu are correct.  Democracy may be superior to other forms of government, but it is neither perfect nor all-wise.  On the contrary, it is particularly clumsy and cumbersome.  

Routinely riven by differing opinions and interests, hobbled by the tedious process of political accommodation and compromise, democratic governments are seldom able to address the most fundamental problems or effect systemic social and economic changes, even when majorities of their populations support such changes.  Nevertheless, powerful elites throughout history—monarchs and aristocrats, intellectuals and plutocrats, even our own “founding fathers”—have been fearful of the supposedly “radical” tendencies of democracy, failing to realize that democratic governments are in reality inherently conservative.  I don’t mean “conservative” in the ideological sense but, rather, in the practical sense.  However radical democratic rhetoric may sometimes be—”man the barricades,” “off with their heads,” “power to the people,” and the rest—democratic governments in practice are slow to move, loath to take risks, and reluctant to tinker with long-standing customs and habits.

Until there is a crisis.

When an unexpected crisis arises—be it a war, an economic collapse, a plague, or a natural calamity—democracies can suddenly turn on a dime, leaving both their advocates and critics equally breathless.   Obstacles that once seemed insuperable are swept away.  Tasks that once seemed impossible are tackled in a minute.  Social and economic goals that once seemed forever out of reach are quickly embraced and enacted.  When otherwise cumbersome democracies eventually stir themselves, they can move with all the force and speed of stampeding cattle.  

The direction this stampede takes, however, is not preordained, and it can just as easily lead to a productive or destructive destination.  The course any particular democracy follows in responding to a crisis depends upon the strength of its institutions, the caliber of its leaders, and—above all else—the moral character of its citizens.  These are lofty standards, and history is rife with examples of democracies that have failed to reach them.

More than 2,000 years ago, the democracy of ancient Athens was ravaged by a devastating plague in the midst of a long and debilitating war with its arch-foe, Sparta.  The citizens of democratic Athens allowed themselves to be cajoled by a charismatic demagogue named Alcibiades and to embark upon a risky military expedition against the fabulously rich Sicilian city of Syracuse.  The result was a bloody debacle.  Athens lost the war, its empire went up in smoke, and Athenian democracy—the first in the world—never recovered.

After a hopeful and enlightened beginning, another democratic government, put in place by the French Revolution, found itself assailed on all sides by the forces of reaction.  Its response to that crisis was the infamous “Reign of Terror,” in which Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette, several thousand “aristos,” and many more conservative members of the peasantry and petit-bourgeoisie were summarily executed.  In the chaos that ensued, Napoleon Bonaparte seized control, abandoned and betrayed the first republic in French history, and declared himself emperor—all to popular, “democratic” acclaim.  We all know how that turned out.

Benito Mussolini came to power “democratically” in the wake of Italy’s humiliating defeat in the First World War, only to discard democracy and install himself as the dictator of a fascist state.  We will never know how many Italians actually embraced fascism or merely made their peace, as Italians have done for centuries, with what they deemed to be the prevailing political wind.   What we do know is that Italian democracy was, for a time at least, seduced by its own Alcibiades.

The same can be said, with consequences far more grave, of Hitler’s Germany.  It was not only military defeat in 1918 but the economic collapse of 1929 that enabled Hitler to come to power, a crisis in which the Deutschmark became worthless, personal savings were wiped out, and the economy of Germany descended into chaos.  Although Hitler’s ascent was not itself democratically achieved, there is little doubt that the vast majority of the German people enthusiastically supported the murderous regime he imposed upon the country to solve its economic and political woes.  In that sense at least, Hitler was a truly “democratic” figure.

These are chilling examples of democracies spurred by crises to act in terrible and destructive ways.  But such reactions are not inevitable.   Sometimes, an existential political, economic, or natural crisis is the only force sufficiently powerful to move a democracy forward.

That was certainly the case in 1932, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in a landslide of historic proportions, and Americans finally decided that they had had enough of the false promises and empty bromides of  Herbert Hoover and the Republican Party.  All the while millions were losing their jobs and any ability to sustain themselves or their families, Hoover had condemned government action as a “dole” that would weaken the country by undermining “the work ethic,” as if there were any work to be had.   The only advice his sinfully rich Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, was prepared to offer a desperate nation was:  “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.  Purge the rottenness out of the system.”

In the face of such amoral nonsense and confronting the crisis of the Great Depression, American democracy changed course swiftly and dramatically.  The frothy exuberance of the “Roaring Twenties” gave way to the “New Deal,” which in turn gave the nation the Social Security system, federal deposit insurance, the electrification of large, previously ignored swaths of the country, price stability for American farmers in place of a feast-or-famine economic regime, unprecedented investments in public infrastructure, and a thousand other innovations and advancements that we now take for granted.

The crisis we now confront is no less dire than the crisis that began in 1929.  It might even turn out to be worse, because it threatens, not only our economic survival, but our very lives.  The days ahead are going to be long and dark.  None of us knows—I certainly don’t—when or how all this will end.  

I do know, however, that we have fundamental choices to make and the opportunity to make choices that we never before thought possible.  As each day goes by, this crisis is tearing the scabs off the unhealed wounds of our society:  our pitifully inadequate health care system, the pitiless sink-or-swim ethic of our economic system, the grotesque inequalities that allow the rich, the socially privileged, and the politically powerful to further empower themselves at the expense of everyone else.  

This crisis gives us a chance, perhaps a last chance, to change all that.  We can choose well or badly.  That is now entirely up to us.