Beyond Democracy, Or, Why Shooting The CEOs of Venal Healthcare Corporations Won’t Solve The Healthcare Hell Problem, #2.

(Marcetic, 2024)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. The Core Argument for Dignitarian Anarchism

3. Anti-Oppression, Quasi-Federalism, and How to Construct “The World As It Could Be Made.”

4. Post-Democratic Social Dynamics: DDAO, Concordar, and Carnival

5. Healthcare Hell and Universal Free Healthcare

6. Conclusion

The essay that follows will be published in three installments; this, the second installment, contains sections 3 and 4.

But you can also download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of the essay, including the REFERENCES, by scrolling down to the bottom of this post and clicking on the Download tab.

3. Anti-Oppression, Quasi-Federalism, and How to Construct “The World As It Could Be Made.”

In part 2 of his little-known book, Proposed Roads to Freedom (Russell, 1918), Bertrand Russell discusses many concrete social and political issues, and proposes a number of concrete solutions, in line with his favored doctrine, “Guild Socialism,” which is a federalist development of Kropotkin-style social anarchism. And in the last chapter, “The World As It Could Be Made,” he quite lyrically describes a normative vision of a categorically politically better world: as it were, John Lennon’s “Imagine” for 1918. In fact, it turns out that Lennon’s political views were actually strongly influenced by Russell’s views, via Paul McCartney (Michaels, 2008).

One thing that’s very striking about Russell’s arguments is his consistent avoidance of a priori reasoning, abstraction, and even minimal formalization. It is as if, in this book, he found great intellectual relief from the relentless abstractions and formal-logical reasoning patterns of Principles of Mathematics (1903), Principia Mathematica (1910), Problems of Philosophy (1912), the aborted Theory of Knowledge project (1913), Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), and even An Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1918), written in Brixton Prison, about which he later wrote in his Autobiography:

I found prison in many ways quite agreeable. I had no engagements, no difficult decisions to make, no fear of callers, no interruptions to my work. I read enormously; I wrote a book, “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy”… and began the work for “Analysis of Mind.” (Russell, 1967-1969/1975: p. 256)

As a consequence, however, Russell’s political solutions in Proposed Roads to Freedom are too concrete–too much embedded in a certain historical-social context: Europe and England, circa 1918, at the end of The Great War. This fact makes Russell’s excellent ideas less directly applicable to the USA and the rest of the world, circa 2024, not to mention the future world, than they should be.

But here I can help Russell out with some procedural principles of Kantian ethical anarchism, as follows.

First, by an institutional structure, I mean

an ordered set of moral principles shared in common by a group of people, with a collective aim, guiding their mutual interactions.

Or, in other words, an institutional structure is a social network of moral principles designed to further some collective aim.

Second, by oppression, I mean the following:

A person or a group of people are oppressed if and only if their actual condition falls below what would be minimally sufficient to meet the moral demands of respect for their human dignity.

Third, by oppression with respect to X, I mean the following:

A person or group of people are oppressed with respect to X if and only if their actual condition falls below what would be minimally sufficient to meet the moral demands of respect for their human dignity with respect to X.

So, for example, young black men in the USA in 2024 have been oppressed with respect to treatment by the police: in the USA in 2024, the police have been and are treating young black men violently in ways that fall substantially below what would be minimally sufficient to meet the moral demands for respect for their human dignity with respect to police treatment.

Fourth, Federalism says:

States should introduce a series of mediating institutional structures between government and the individual, each of which and all of which have specifically ethical aims and rational justifications.

Fifth, Quasi-Federalism says:

Humankind should introduce a series of mediating institutional structures between government and the individual, each of which and all of which have specifically dignitarian anarchist aims and rational justifications.

Sixth, Quasi-Federalism operates according to a recursive[i] procedural principle that I call the principle of Devolutionary and Dynamic Anti-Oppression, aka DDAO:

Suppose that a State or Statelike institutional structure SS exists. Then SS should be replaced by a series of new institutional structures, each one of which simultaneously represents a definite step in the direction of the devolutionary deconstruction of SS and also a definite step in the direction of the dynamic construction of a non-oppressive condition, in a post-State world, for all the people affected by SS.

According to DDAO, in a normative sense, each new institutional structure simultaneously represents a definite “left to right” decrease in Statist coercion and also a definite “right to left” increase in individual and collective non-oppression. So each new structure is dual and enantiomorphic (i.e., mirror-reflected) in a categorically normative sense. More generally, we should always be looking to design and create new institutional structures that have this normatively dual, enantiomorphic character, i.e., they satisfy DDAO.

Here’s a brief example of how DDAO can be applied.

For each armed police force in the USA, we create a new devolutionary/dynamic Police Force Regime 1 in which no police officers normally carry guns or ever use other violent solutions to policing problems (left to right devolution of the State) and all police officers normally engage in community policing and consistently practice non-violent solutions to policing problems, although they still carry nightsticks and have some training in the martial arts (right to left construction of a non-oppressive condition for young black men, and others, in a post-State world). Then, as soon as it can be implemented, for each armed police force in the USA, starting with Police Force Regime 1, we create should be a new devolutionary/dynamic Police Force Regime 2 in which no police officers normally carry nightsticks or ever use other violent solutions to policing problems (left to right devolution of the State) and all police officers normally engage in community policing and consistently practice non-violent solutions to policing problems, although they still have some training in the martial arts (right to left construction of a non-oppressive condition for young black men, and others, in a post-State world). And so-on, until Police Regime N is reached, in which police treatment of young black men in the USA fully meets or exceeds the minimal demands of respect for their human dignity, in a post-State world (see also Vitale, 2017).

Here are two crucial further points about real-world applications of DDAO.

First, in applying DDAO, we are always drawing directly on fully embedded social know-how about the actual operations of the relevant institutional structures,[ii] and thereby also always using phenomenologically self-evident moral intuition to guide us in knowing how each new institutional structure simultaneously represents a definite decrease in Statist coercion and also a definite increase in individual and collective non-oppression.

Second, obviously, no change in institutional structures occurs independently of simultaneous changes in other institutional structures, since there are multiple dependency relations not only within institutional structures but also between and among institutional structures. So, for example, in the police oppression example, obviously, in order to make each recursive change in the institutional structures constituting police forces, we would also simultaneously have to make corresponding, relevant changes in other social-institutional structures, for example, in the local government administration regimes that control police forces.

4. Post-Democratic Social Dynamics: DDAO, Concordar, and Carnival

In section 3, I defined “institutions” in terms of shared ordered sets of ethical principles and collective aims. Now by a “collective aim” I mean an essentially embodied, action-oriented, desire-based emotive shared set of basic ideals and values (Hanna and Maiese, 2009: ch. 5), or what the Brazilians call concordar: a shared heart. It is also what Samuel Alexander calls “sociality” and what Jan Slaby calls “relational affect” (see Alexander, 1920: vol. 2, pp. 31-37; and Slaby, 2016).The basic idea is that once we realize that from the standpoint of the philosophy of mind, emotions are neither merely “in the head” nor inherently passive, but on the contrary are essentially embodied, first-person experiences of desiderative caring, directly expressed as dispositions to move one’s body in various ways, then we can also clearly see that all emotions are immediately manifest in the world and fully shareable with others.

Concordar is vividly obvious in the deeply important yet still everyday human phenomena of sexuality and love, religious rituals, revivalist meetings, team sports, rock music concerts, and all kinds of dancing, for example, hip-hop dancing. In all of these group activities, concordar exists not only among and between active participants or performers, but also among and between audiences or viewers, and also among and between active participants or performers and audiences or viewers. These phenomena clearly show that concordar can be the source of tremendous personal and social liberation, intense bodily and spiritual enjoyment, and morally authentic happiness—as well, of course, as considerable amounts of shallow or morally trivial happiness, “just having fun.” Concordar is equally vividly obvious, however, in the bonding rituals of business corporations, cults, and terrorist oganizations, in angry political demonstrations and protests, in jingoistic political spectacles, in military rituals and spectacles, in mob hysteria, and in mob violence. The latter phenomena all clearly show that concordar can also be the source of tremendous psychological and social oppression, and evil.

What I want to concentrate on is concordar with respect to the Highest Good, aka “the sole and complete good,” in the dignitarian sense. As I show in Kant, Agnosticism, and Anarchism, this is essentially bound up with radically agnostic religious experience (Hanna, 2018: part 1). The dual conception of social dynamics according to DDOA and concordar enables us to contrast dignitarian anarchism sharply with democracy in general and with liberal democracy in particular, especially including neoliberal democracy.

Very confusingly for most people, especially including political scientists, who can’t even come to an agreement on the definition of “democracy” (Cummings, 2017), there are at least three substantively different concepts of democracy at play in contemporary politics, not only in the USA but also worldwide: (i) democracy as the rule of the majority of all the people qualified to vote, who then hand over the control of coercive power to an elected or appointed minority, aka majoritarian-representative democracy, (ii) democracy as the open process of critical discussion and critical examination of opinions and social institutions, and, simultaneously, the unfettered expression of different opinions and lifestyles, aka libertarian democracy, and (iii) democracy as the unwavering commitments to universal respect for human dignity and autonomy, and universal resistance to human oppression, aka ethical-emancipatory democracy (Hanna, 2024c). Notoriously, however, the three concepts of democracy are mutually logically independent, in that they do not necessarily lead to or follow from one another.

First, it is really possible that what is decreed by the majority of all the people qualified to vote is in fact morally evil and wrong, aka the problem of the tyranny of the majority—and that is exactly what happened when the Nazis were elected by a majority of German voters in 1932–1933 (Wikipedia, 2024a).

Second, it is also really possible that what is decreed by the majority of the people qualified to vote is a system in which an elected or appointed powerful minority of those people can actually override the majority, aka the problem of the tyranny of the minority—and that is exactly what happens whenever the US Electoral College votes to elect someone, like Trump in 2016, who did not actually win the popular vote, and also whenever the Supreme Court votes either to sustain or strike down laws in decisions that don’t reflect what the majority of Americans actually believe or want.

Third and finally, it is also really possible that there could be an open process of critical discussion and critical examination of opinions and social institutions, and simultaneously the unfettered expression of different lifestyles and opinions, which nevertheless leads to a situation in which universal respect for human dignity and autonomy, and universal resistance against human oppression, are in fact undermined and weakened, aka the problem of an unconstrained, value-neutral process—and that is exactly what happened in the case of Trump’s election in 2016, via the multiple-Party system, the Primaries, and psychologically-manipulative uses of social media and the internet (see, e.g., Schreckinger, 2016; Benkler et al., 2017).

In my opinion, the only independently morally and politically acceptable concept of democracy is the third concept, ethical-emancipatory democracy: democracy as the unwavering commitments to universal respect for human dignity and autonomy, and universal resistance to human oppression. Nevertheless, if we conjoined the second and third concepts, i.e., an open process of critical discussion and critical examination of opinions and social institutions, and the unfettered expression of different opinions and lifestyles, all guided by and for the sake of the unwavering commitments to universal respect for human dignity and autonomy, and universal resistance to human oppression, then we could also derive a compound morally and politically acceptable concept of democracy that is driven by the demands of the third concept.

Now,the USA claims that it’s an ethical-emancipatory democracy. Nevertheless, the existence and Constitutional entrenchment of the social institutions of the Electoral College and the Supreme Court entail that it actually isn’t. Or, more to the point, majoritarian-representational democracy and libertarian democracy, as actually practiced in the USA, are rationally unjustified and immoral.

On the contrary, therefore, politics is all about respect for human dignity, ending/reducing human oppression, mutual aid/kindness, and radical enlightenment, universally and worldwide. So coercive power vested in the people is no better than any other kind of Statist coercive power. Moreover, and more specifically, liberal democracy essentially requires conformity, consensus, and, short of the ideal of total consensus (sometimes called “direct democracy”), majority rule and voting. In direct democracy, the minority can determine the governmental control of coercive power. But the tyranny of the minority is no better than the tyranny of the majority: both are tyranny, hence both are rationally unjustified and immoral. So any anarchism that is based on direct democracy is merely another form of Statism.

In dignitarian anarchism, however, based as it is on DDAO and concordar, we share collective basic ideals and values, and yet we also fully allow for a multiplicity of human differences in bodily coloration, configuration, and natural operation, language, and ethnicity, and for a multiplicity of spontaneous variations of opinion and lifestyle under those basic ideals and values, that I call creative self-expression. Hence dignitarian anarchism is directly opposed to the conformity, consensus, majority rule, and voting that are essentially characteristic of liberal democracy. All these treat people like mere factory products or machines; by means of these, they rule and apply coercive power by treating people as sheer aggregates of human bodies more or less accidentally collected inside bordered sub-regions of the Earth—where the borders are sometimes also walls with barbed wire on top, and passage across which is highly restricted, and enforced by well-armed, trigger-happy guards—and by monitoring and surveillance systems based on the omnipresence of CCTVs and sheer numbering (e.g., social security numbers in the USA, or CPF numbers and Federal Police identity cards in Brazil), alone; and they suppress or even kill creative self-expression.

In post-democratic Kantian dignitarian anarchist social dynamics, the (neo)liberal democratic mechanisms of conformity, consensus, majority rule, and voting will all be gradually devolved out of existence and simultaneously dynamically replaced by an indefinitely large number of partially overlapping, shared human sentimental journeys, that is, by an indefinitely large number of partially overlapping, shared human non-oppressive, freely-chosen, yet collective DDAO-guided processes of forming and acting on the basis of concordar. So, given DDAO and concordar, since we share collective basic ideals and values in our collective creation of a better world, and since we yet also fully allow for a multiplicity of human differences in bodily coloration, configuration, and natural operation, language, and ethnicity, as well as a multiplicity of spontaneous variations of opinion and life style under those aims, creative self-expression, then this sentimenal journey will be like free-style collective dancing combined with wholehearted respect for all humanity: that is, it will be like Brazilian carnival at its very best.

By sharp contrast, as a direct consequence of the (neo)liberal democratic obsession with conformity, consensus, majority rule, and voting, the multiplicity of natural human differences in bodily coloration, configuration, and natural operation, language, and ethnicity, are feared and hated (racial, linguistic, ethnic, and sexual discrimination); and spontaneous variations of opinion and lifestyle are taken to be offensive and legally punished (intolerance). In (neo)liberal democracies everywhere, but paradigmatically in the USA, people fear and hate the racial, linguistic, ethnic, and sexual Other; they do not tolerate the multiplicity of creative self-expression; they do not have concordar; and they do not freestyle dance together in the Kantian ethical anarchist sense. More generally, they oppress people in the name of (neo)liberal democracy: they demand consensus and conformity while paying sanctimonious lip-service to the First Amendment; they march up and down to the jingoistic, martial, patriotic music of John Philip Sousa; they wave flags; they put their right hands over the mechanical blood-pumps where their hearts should be; they take offense at anything they cannot turn into a mirror image of themselves; and they summarily publicly shame or otherwise punish anyone who dances to the beat of a different drummer, who breaks rank, or who steps out of line. But taking offense is at best morally trivial, and if it is substituted for moral principles grounded on respect for universal human dignity, then it is positively evil, dignity-undermining, and oppressive. Offense-based/comfort-level-based so-called “morality” is nothing but coercive moralism that is either the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of the minority, and both are equally tyranny. What matters above all, morally and politically, is ending/reducing oppression, not guaranteeing that either the majority or the minority obsessively impose their personal comfort-levels on others, coercively backed up by The Law of the Land.

So, sharply contrary to (neo)liberal democracy, according to dignitarian anarchism, tolerance is fully allowing for the multiplicity of spontaneous variations of creative self-expression under DDAO and concordar; and above all, it is never confusing what is merely offensive, or comfort-level-disrupting, with oppression. Hence (neo)liberal democratic so-called “anti-discrimination” and “tolerance,” under the aura-surrounded, taboo-protected labels of equality and diversity, are nothing but inauthentic, phony, or bullshit so-called “anti-discrimination” and so-called “tolerance,” both of them rationally unjustified and immoral. And this isprecisely because in the paradigmatically (neo)liberal-democratic USA, “equality” and “diversity” actually function as weapons for oppressing people—for example, people living in grinding poverty and without adequate healthcare (see section 5 below)—and for violating the dignity of anyone who has a bodily coloration, configuration, or natural operation, language, ethnicity, opinion, or lifestyle that fails to conform to the rule of law imposed by the tyranny of the majority or the tyranny of the minority.

NOTES

[i] A recursive principle is a principle that, starting with a “ground level” or “zero” case as input, is successively applied to the result of each prior application until a certain desired output is constructed. So, e.g., the arithmetic principle that determines counting to ten in the natural number series is a recursive principle.

[ii] This is also what James C. Scott, borrowing the Greek term for Odysseus’s non-discursive social and political insight in the Odyssey and the Iliad, calls “metis” in Seeing Like a State (Scott, 1998).

Download