Even
in its highest, most sophisticated expression, liberalism points to its own
dissolution. It was Benjamin Constant who best summarized the historical
process whereby the State had been transformed from Antiquity to Modernity. To
be sure, Constant fails to identify the specific role of the social production
of wealth – from slave labour to serfdom (feudalism) through to wage labour
(capitalism). Nonetheless, he catches admirably the key “political” difference
between the ancient polity and the modern nation-state. The reason that he
fails to identify the crucial difference between the capitalist mode of
production and that of Antiquity is, of course, that from within his liberalist theoretical perspective, the economy is
scientifically separate from the Political – and therefore the Political transformation
of the State can be traced independently
of the process of production.
Yet
there is one aspect of economic activity – that of “commerce” – that Constant
isolates as the crucial catalyst in this transformation. According to him, what
has made possible the transfer of political power from the associated citizen
to the liberal State is the rise of commercial activity whereby individual citizens have been induced to
focus on their own private gain rather than on the standing of their nation against
other nations and on the daily conduct of public administration.
Because
commerce has made possible the overcoming of war over scarce resources through
the exchange of goods, individuals within
nations have preferred to pursue commercial activities rather than support
their nation-states in wars aimed at wresting control over wealth from other
nations by military means. Because of this, all individuals within
nation-states have an interest in preserving social and international peace and
indeed they have as great an interest in ensuring that their nation-state does
not interfere with their private property as they have in ensuring that other
nation-states do not confront their own State. Thus, commerce works in two ways
– internationally, by ensuring that
commerce replaces war as a means of obtaining and maximizing individual wealth,
and nationally by limiting the power
and function of the State to preserving private property. It turns out
therefore that it is the market economy that ensures both the national
liberties of individual citizens and international peace.
But
commerce also has one essential function: by turning the energies of individual
citizens inward toward the maximization of their personal wealth, commerce also
favours the transfer of the exercise of political freedom from the direct
involvement of individual citizens to “elected representatives” who are
entrusted with running the machinery of State and, in turn, appropriate the
political power and energy of citizens in exchange for the granting of maximum
“liberties” to each citizen.
Thus,
first of all, commerce replaces exchange with war, both nationally between
individuals, and internationally between nation-states. Second, because of its
emphasis on exchange and wealth maximization, commerce involves “calculation”
and therefore it encourages citizens to require a rational State and also to
delegate their freedom to the State through representatives because commerce
and its calculation require much more complex social relations and services
that individual citizens cannot oversee directly – hence the need for
“bureaucracy” (cf. Weber’s cognate theory of the State as the product of
capitalist Kalkulation and Rationalisierung in Parlament und Regierung).
Two
developments, then, have conspired to remove democratic control by citizens
over the State since Antiquity: the first is the rise of commerce which has
reduced the power of nation-states in military conflict whilst at the same time
it has turned citizens “inward” toward protecting their individual “private
property” and to entrust the “elected representatives” and the State
bureaucracy with the power to administer society and protect their “rights”. The
second is the sheer size of nation-states which, unlike the ancient republics
from Athens to Rome to Geneva, no longer lend themselves to individual citizen
involvement in day-to-day politics.
Thus,
from “active freedom” in the sense of participatory democracy, modern-day
citizens have moved to minimizing their engagement in Politics but at the same
time maximizing their “passive liberties” that the State is called to guarantee.
But
what happens if the State fails to maintain such guarantees over the liberties
of individual citizens? Two problems immediately arise in Constant’s theory of
the liberal State. And these are problems that show conclusively why liberalism
and democracy, far from being synonyms or even cognate terms, are in fact
contradictory concepts, and why therefore “liberal democracy” is an oxymoron.
The first problem that the liberal State, far from being neutral, is in fact
bound to act to protect the private property of individuals – and therefore its
social role is functional to the protection of the “rights” of wealthy
citizens. As George Orwell might have put it, all citizens are equal under the
law; but some are “more equal” than others – depending on their property
holdings.
The
second and related problem is that, depending on the “type” of property held by
individual citizens, some citizens might find it easier to escape the control
of the State – or, obversely, they may have more control over the State –
simply by virtue of the fact that these citizens may hold the State to ransom
as against other States! This danger is particularly acute and virulent in
capitalist societies because the widespread existence of money and markets
makes wealth particularly “liquid” and “mobile”. Here is Constant acknowledging
in his own ideological liberalist terms the tremendous importance of this
point!
Le commerce rend l'action de l'arbitraire sur notre
existence plus vexatoire qu'autrefois, parce que nos spéculations étant plus
variées, l'arbitraire doit se multiplier pour les atteindre; mais le commerce
rend aussi l'action de l'arbitraire plus facile a éluder, parce qu'il change la
nature de la propriété, qui devient par ce changement presque insaisissable. Le
commerce donne à la propriété une qualité nouvelle, la circulation: sans
circulation, la propriété n'est qu'un usufruit; l'autorité peut toujours
influer sur l'usufruit, car elle peut enlever la jouissance; mais la
circulation met un obstacle invisible et invincible à cette action du pouvoir
social. Les effets du commerce s'étendent encore plus loin: non seulement il
affranchit les individus, mais, en créant le crédit, il rend l'autorité
dépendante.
L'argent, dit un auteur français, est l'arme la plus
dangereuse du despotisme, mais il est en même temps son frein le plus puissant;
le crédit est soumis à l'opinion; la force est inutile; l'argent se cache ou
s'enfuit; toutes les opérations de l'État sont suspendues. Le crédit n'avait
pas la même influence chez les anciens; leurs gouvernements étaient plus forts
que les particuliers; les particuliers sont plus forts que les pouvoirs
politiques de nos jours; la richesse est une puissance plus disponible dans
tous les instants, plus applicable a tous les intérêts, et par conséquent bien
plus réelle et mieux obéie; le pouvoir
15
menace, la richesse récompense: on échappe au pouvoir
en le trompant; pour obtenir les faveurs de la richesse, il faut la servir:
celle-ci doit l'emporter.
Par une suite des mêmes causes, l'existence
individuelle est moins englobée dans l'existence politique. Les individus
transplantent au loin leurs trésors; ils portent avec eux toutes les
jouissances de la vie privée; le commerce a rapproché les nations, et leur a
donné des moeurs et des habitudes à peu près pareilles: les chefs peuvent être
ennemis; les peuples sont compatriotes.
In
other words, as Constant’s wily analysis makes plain, it is the very spread of
capitalist industry and therefore also of finance – it is the “world market” of
capitalism that allows capitalists to play off, to establish a competitive tension, between different
nation-states for investments so as to subtract themselves from any sort of
“political” control, regardless of
whether this control is democratic or not!
So
in his own words, Constant is saying that the capitalist world market allows
capitalists to elude the checks and balances that nation-states can impose on
them by establishing a coalition of capitalist interests that run counter to
the interests of the individual nation-states!
[L]e commerce a rapproché les nations, et leur a donné
des moeurs et des habitudes à peu près pareilles: les chefs peuvent être ennemis; les peuples sont compatriotes.
The
utterly and devastatingly anti-democratic
bearing of Constant’s liberalist position could not be any more frightfully
evident! The kind of “freedom” or “liberties” that Constant champions are to be
subjected not to the “neutral” political control of the nation-state but rather
to the control of capitalists by means of the nation-state! It is not the
democratic nation-state that controls private property; instead, it is private
property that controls the nation-state in accordance with “liberal”
principles: liberalism and democracy could not be more starkly opposed! This is
the true and devastatingly terrifying implications of Constant’s liberalism,
and therefore the theoretical endpoint of all liberalist political theory. Here
is Constant again:
Que le pouvoir s'y résigne donc; il nous faut de la
liberté, et nous l'aurons; mais comme la liberté qu'il nous faut est différente
de celle des anciens, il faut à cette liberté une autre organisation que celle
qui pourrait convenir a la liberté antique; dans celle-ci, plus l'homme
consacrait de temps et de force a l'exercice de ses droits politiques, plus il
se croyait libre; dans l'espèce de liberté dont nous sommes susceptibles, plus
l'exercice de nos droits politiques nous laissera de temps pour nos intérêts
privés, plus la liberté nous sera précieuse.
De la vient, Messieurs, la nécessité du système
représentatif. Le système représentatif n'est autre chose qu'une organisation à
l'aide de laquelle une nation se décharge sur quelques individus de ce qu'elle
ne peut ou ne veut pas faire elle-même. Les individus pauvres font euxmêmes
leurs affaires: les hommes riches prennent des intendants. C'est l'histoire des
nations anciennes et des nations modernes. Le système représentatif est une
procuration donnée à un certain nombre d'hommes par la masse du peuple, qui
veut que ses intérêts soient défendus, et qui néanmoins n'a pas le temps de les
défendre toujours lui-même. Mais a moins d'être insensés, les hommes riches qui
ont des intendants examinent avec attention et sévérité si ces intendants font
leur devoir, s'ils ne sont ni négligents ni corruptibles, ni incapables; et
pour juger de la gestion de ces mandataires, les commettants qui ont de la
prudence se mettent bien au fait des affaires dont ils leur confient
l'administration. De même, les peuples qui, dans le but de jouir de la liberté
qui leur convient, recourent au système représentatif, doivent exercer une
surveillance active et constante sur leur représentants, et se réserver, à des
époques qui ne soient pas séparées par de trop longs intervalles, le droit de
les écarter s'ils ont trompé leurs voeux, et de révoquer les pouvoirs dont ils
auraient abusé.
Notice
how in the quotation above, Constant constantly
and surreptitiously shifts from “les
hommes riches” to “les masses” and
“les peuples” as if these entities
were one and the same thing! In reality, of course, the interests of the
wealthy (capitalists in a capitalist economy) and those of “the masses” (mainly
wage labourers in capitalism) hardly ever coincide – and certainly they cannot
coincide where the democratic operation of Constant’s “representative
government” is concerned: because such a government will obviously represent
the interests of “les hommes riches” (capitalists)
well before it protects those of “les
masses”! And the interests of capitalists and workers cannot coincide for
the very reason that Constant himself reveals – that “les individus pauvres” (workers) are too busy “working” for a
living to be able to oversee and monitor the work of their “representatives”!
As we have argued again and again here, the essence of capitalism is the
violent enforcement of the wage relation whereby capitalists force workers to
give up their political freedom as living
labour “in exchange for” the product
of their living labour – what we call “dead
labour” or “wages” which are the monetary equivalent of dead labour.
(Wages cannot stand immediately for products – that would
amount to barter and would nullify
the essential role of money in capitalism, that is, to separate workers from the product of living labour so that they
do not have any say into how their living labour is applied – what is produced, how and when – except, of
course, as “consumers” who “choose” products imposed on them by the owners of
the means of production – capitalists – at a “price” that perpetuates their
subordination to capital.)