The spectacle of politics; its not the same thing as ‘democracy’

Janan Ganesh writes here (FT — £) on the politics of Corbynmania.

Reading it, it occurs to me that the ‘Politics’ that we have always known, is a functional thing that is used to ‘game’ the process of making laws, and (sometimes) the way they are applied.

In our liberal democracies, with our ‘electoral cycles’, the rights to hold a strong influence in those games has been shared out among a small-ish group of people we have elected, usually on a licence that lasts for about five years.

Before that, it was done by people who weren’t elected. The cycles were more arbitrary and the processes were a lot less complicated and consensual, but apart from that, the idea was basically the same.

Today, politics seems to be seen as a spectacle that everyone who selects themselves into it can watch themselves playing a part.

They can watch themselves doing it virtually but not actually. Obviously, they can’t really play a part as big decisions are made by big forces. Those boundaries are set by things that are much bigger than any of us and they’re very hard to control. Doing this job really involves winning elections (easy-ish), acheiving real democratic power (a lot harder) and being engaged in a sustained and detailed way.

But as long as people are decrying things online, sharing petitions through social media channels, (signing a fraction of the petitions that they ‘share’), then the illusion holds.

This huge division of expectations — that of politics and virtual politics — needs to be dealt with, because in virtual politics, we are hurtling towards the kind of direct democracy in which philosophers will be forced to drink hemlock at the whim of the masses. In this world, to argue for anything else is elitist.

I’m not sure anyone has grasped just how much democracy needs to change in order to stop the emergence of a dystopia in which everyone is engaged in a sort of Truman Show of virtual democracy while the real decisions are made elsewhere.

We are seeing a huge demand for a more participatory democracy that isn’t intermediated by politicians. It’s possible to build this, but it would involve a vast change to the way society is organised.

In the meantime, these demands will be patronised and sidestepped, and one day, even the people who think virtual politics is worthwhile will realise that they’ve been hoodwinked.

It will either result in a devastating democratic uprising, or it will happen too late (for democracy).

My money is on the latter scenario. Pessimistic, I know, but…