If you can’t beat ‘em, should you join ‘em?

Just to recap on the previous post, I think that there is an important distinction to make here, for the sake of clarity.

There is an important difference between democracy and politics.

Democracy is a system of government (I prefer ‘governance’) of the people, by the people and for the people. It is one in which the people get the kind of governance that we want, usually with the heavy-lifting done under the direction of folks that we have appointed to do it. We have to appoint people sometimes if we can’t find a fair or efficient way of doing it ourselves, and this is generally the case.

A democracy always creates a system of governance so that everybody knows what is going on, and so that it can actually realise it’s ideal of being a better form of governance than its rivals (autocracy, theocracy, technocracy, kleptocracy, etc).

All democracies are far from perfect in achieving this. Some more than others. Some are so bad at it that their claim to be a democracy is a fraudulent one.

Are you with me so far? OK. Now, how is this different from politics?

Politics is something that has probably always existed in all societies, including non-democracies. In a democracy, politics is the art of taking the system of governance and gaming it to give a sub-group of the population a governance that advances and protects their interests more effectively — often (usually?) at the expense of everyone else.

Because a system of governance applies to everyone, this means that politics is all about imposing a machine that, in some way, coerces everyone else. Obviously, governments coerce people, but in a very good democracy, this coercion would be fair.

However well-meaning we are in doing it, Politics is about promoting an unfair form of coercion.

When we get involved in politics, we aim to make government take more heed of our interests, opinions and beliefs, and we use our political skills and political advantages to create political power.

Often, the best way to exercise this political power is to make sure that people who are similar to us are the ones who get to manage the system of governance.

I would be very surprised if any of this tells any reader anything that they haven’t instinctively understood for a long time, yet sometimes, I think we need to restate the obvious.

Politics could be fair — and an asset to democracy — if no-one enjoyed any natural advantages in it. Some political positions (socialism being the obvious one) may claim that their raison d’être is to correct the anti-democratic politicking of people who unfairly wield political power.

To illustrate what I mean, an idealised justice system is something that we all seem to understand. It applies laws once they have been made. It gives no-one any advantages because of their wealth or their connections.

We now look with contempt on ideas like trial by combat, or using duels to settle a dispute, yet we are happy for democracy to be directed by political power.

The idea that we should make laws to something approaching the standard of justice that use to apply them would probably be treated as an example of hopeless idealism.

I think that it would be useful if, for a while, we stopped being so dismissive of this possibility. Perhaps we can spend some time looking at every issue from the highly principled position of asking what it is that the public want? We could be asking how we would find most democratic answer to every question.

It may be a more honourable thing to do than to get involved in an ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ exercise of political gamesmanship?

More on this later.