Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!pyramid!octopus!avsd!govett
From: govett@avsd.UUCP (David Govett)
Newsgroups: sci.misc
Subject: Re: Democratic evisceration
Message-ID: <60@avsd.UUCP>
Date: 29 Mar 88 16:16:25 GMT
References: <1125@deepthot.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Ampex Advanced Technology Division, Redwood City, CA
Lines: 65

> 
> The following is a direct quotation from `Democratic Theory'
> (essay: Problems of a Non-Market p55) by C.B. MacPherson.
> Oxford University Press 1973 (reprint 1984)
> 
> "Men's very contentiousness might be attributed to intellectual error
>  or to scarcity: both condition were assumed to be removable. That men 
>  if freed from scarcity and from intellectual error (i.e. the ideologies
>  inhereted from ages of scarcity) would live together harmoniously
>  enough, that their remaining contention would be only creative tension,
>  cannot be proved or disproved except by trial. But such a proposition
>  is basic to any demand for or justification of a democratic society.
>  The case for democratic GOVERNMENT (`one man, one vote') can indeed
>  be made sufficiently on the opposite assumption: in a thoroughly
>  contentious society everyone needs the vote as a protection. But the
>  case for a democratic SOCIETY fails without the assumption of potential
>  harmony. For what would be the use of trying to provide that everyone
>  should be able to make the most of himself, which is the idea of a
>  democratic society, if that were bound to lead to more destructive
>  contention?"
> 
> "It must therefore be a postulate of any fully democratic theory that 
>  the rights or freedoms men need in order to be fully human are not
>  mutually destructive. To put this another way: it must be asserted
>  that the rights of any man which are morally justifiable on any
>  egalitarian principle are only those which allow all others to have 
>  equal effective rights; and that THOSE ARE ENOUGH to allow any man to
>  be fully human...To translate this from terms of right into terms of
>  power: the power which a democratic theory requires to be maximized is 
>  the ability of each to use and develop those of his capacities the
>  use and development of which does not prevent others using and developing
>  theirs. His HUMAN capacities are taken to be only those; and those -
>  the non-destructive ones - are taken to be enough to enable him to be
>  fully human."
> 
> Am I jumping to conclusions here or does this imply that it is an
> unqualified democratic principle that aggression is to be exterpated
> at all costs; to strip men of their CAPABILITY for aggression, their
> exercise of any vestigial aggression. And hence, ANY display thereof
> is to be treated with contempt and relegated to the domain of
> immaturity and inhumanity.
> 
> If so, then what if aggression is an inherent human motivator which
> energizes man's boldness, inquisitiveness, steadfastness, etc.; does
> this not imply the inevitable road to self-contempt, self-loathing,
> and self-destruction?
> 
> Also, how can one be a creator without destroying? (Politically, and
> socially, NOT theistically).
> 
> 					Raymond J. Tigg

Beware of intellectuals who, from their ivory towers,
would remake society.  What to them is a theoretical exercise
(or a thesis) usually translates into megadeaths when implemented
(e.g., Marx).  

Democracy does not presuppose utopian harmony.  Look at Japanese society
if you want to see the result of hyperharmony.  The result: the
individual is subordinate to the organization.  Look at an anthill
if you want to see the ultimate harmony.  The best Homo sapiens can
hope for is an uneasy equilibrium between centrifugal and centripetal
social forces.  

Man cannot survive without the motor of aggression,
for life is (still) a Darwinian struggle.