Posted on 01/29/2003 11:05:35 PM PST by Askel5
Unconditional Surrender to the Volonté GénéraleTage LindbomThe Myth of Democracy | 1991 (from parts XI and XII)
…. But does not modern man have a great compensation in citizenship? Is not citizenship the great human assumption of responsibility and social morality?
Actually, the father of universal citizenship, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, has abolished the foundations of this citizenship because he proclaims the unidimensionality of popular sovereignty. For Rousseau, the highest norm is not law; the highest norm is the will of man, above which nothing can be admitted. But genuine citizenship is realized only on condition that man accepts an order of virtue that is superior to him, which is expressed as a manifestation of heavenly norms and of heavenly power over him. Unidimensionality annihilates the possibility of virtue.
The concept of citizenship, in aristocratic times, was a fascinating ideal and goal. Today, when men live as if in a hall of mirrors and in subjectivist seduction, they behave as de Tocqueville observed during his American tour:
Nowhere is man so insignificant as in a democracy.
Democratic man flatters himself, but he cannot shut out an awareness of his real situation. He has placed himself squarely within the process of secularization, and must recognize that now he is nothing more than the sum of psycho-physical functions in the universal existential flux, in effect nothing more than a welter of chaotic and fleeting sensory impressions.
Democratic man cannot escape the experience of powerlessness.
It is a curious fact that nothing makes democratic man so confused, even irritated, as calling his attention to the enormous power that he is said to possess. He does not deny the principle of popular sovereignty, but it lurks in the shadows as a kind of half-conscious power held in reserve, one that we are supposed to bring out into the light and defend when authoritarian dangers threaten. On such occasions, one observes a state of excitement, of collective narcissism. But this reaction must be seen as a means of self-assurance and not at all as an expression of a consciousness of dignity and power.
Concealing, veiling, or maneuvering around the sense of powerlessness is commonly accomplished through escapism, and the avenues of escape are basically two. Sancho Panza is the classical literary figure illustrating one of these. His master, Don Quixote, has promised the little squire that he will be made governor of an island, but if he should find the power and responsibility too onerous, he can always find an exit: He can lease it out. And Cervantes lets the reader know that when Sancho Panza finally finds that his governorship is in fact too heavy for him, he is overtaken by real fear; and with deep gratitude he returns to reality and to his simple role as servant.
Sancho Panza returns to private life; countless are the multitudes of men who go the same way Private life is found to be the great territory for escape, where man can rest and be delivered from the yoke of almighty democracy The modern social state helps, offering excellent possibilities and all of the needed guarantees of welfare and security, that umbrella under which private man can live. Even Marxist-Leninist systems led to the paradoxical situation of the great mass of inhabitants, "Soviet man," striving more and more for purely private interests under a growing, flourishing power of peoples' commissars.
The retreat into private life is one of the main avenues of escapism; it is the passive expression of the experience of powerlessness. But another way of escapism expresses a more active and compensatory attitude: this is when people experience great democratic leadership, the charismatic aspect of the democratic myth.
Powerlessness is never better concealed than when people place themselves in the shadow of a great leader, those momentous personas with whom the people can identify.
There are almost no limits to the generosity and the hopes but also to the deceptions – that the democratic masses invest in their leaders, their father figures. The self-esteem of the masses is here raised to sublime heights. If the possibilities of identification between the leaders and their followers are sufficiently strong, then every feeling of powerlessness is obliterated.
Moreover, the notion of popular sovereignty is never undermined for these adorers, even when confronted with confessions of deception and failure from the master himself Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in a frank declaration about the Social Contract, wrote that a real democracy has never existed and will never exist, because such a state of affairs is against the order of nature. The great mass of men can never bear the governing power. Il n'a jamais existé de véritable démocratie, et il n'en existera jamais.... Il est contra l'ordre naturel que la grande nombre gouverne. In this fit of candor, Rousseau was in full accord with the Scholastic adage that nihil agit in seipsum, nothing acts upon itself.
In democratic leadership we see manipulation and the psychological phenomenon of projection at the highest level. The leader will be the incarnation of the volonté générale, the bearer and executor of what is said to be the people's inner "will."
These strong and charismatic leading figures are the magnified images of what the masses want to be themselves. The leader is the "mirror" delivering man from perceptions of his own powerlessness and insignificance; he is the father figure, giving to his adherents what they believe is the real Popular Will.
The outcome of the Second World War is not only a military victory in the conventional sense; it is also a victory in an inner sense. Mankind is confronted with good and bad; with a choice between Fascism, which is bad, and the order proclaimed by the victors, which is, by definition, good. This proclamation itself has a more interior meaning: the denial in principle and the annihilation of the traditional order. It means the denial of more than a thousand years of energy directed toward moral and spiritual ends, the inner content of the traditional. Ideologically expressed, it means the annihilation of conservatism. The dispositions that found expression in the proclamation of victory in 1945 can also be expressed in "trinitarian" terms: the City of Man, modernism, democracy.
The City of Man affirms the omnipotence that free and equal man, in his endless one-dimensionality, has granted to himself - to deny or to doubt, which is blasphemy. No longer can any higher power set limits to human omnipotence; no responsibility need be vindicated for transgressing any borders; for, mirabile dictu, there are no longer any borders. The City of Man is total godlessness; it is the pseudo-metaphysical dimension of this trinity.
The world, dominated by man, everlasting in time and endless in space, is an existential flux without origin and without goal. For man nothing else is left but to be identical - with himself.
Willy-nilly whether he intends it or not, he is enclosing himself within an autism of his own making. He can no longer surpass himself, no longer pass out of the prison of his ego. His own prisoner, he finds compensation in the narcissistic reflected images of himself and of his idols. In a subjectivism that is without horizons and timeless, he can no longer give an objective answer to his own questions.
If he asks questions, he is only throwing himself into his own arms, as the existentialist theologian Bultmann said. In this state, when the historical also loses its meaning, we encounter the existential dimension of this unholy "trinity": modernism.
How is omnipotent man using his power in his City?
In this existential flux, there are no stable points, no supports; the absolute is replaced by the relative, the qualitative is replaced by the quantitative. In the art of governing, man has a new means of administration: statistics; and a means of power: voting. The world is placed, willy-nilly, under a principle of power.
More implacable than God's will under a millennial creed is the present domination of the majority over the minority. For God's will was always linked with caritas, with forgiveness, grace, and compassion. The will of the majority, on the contrary, is unconditional; it requires unconditional surrender.
To the pseudo-metaphysical dimension of this "trinity," the City of Man, and to its existential dimension, modernism, we must now add a third: naked political and physical power – democracy. For in this modernistic, democratic City of Man, we must vote on everything, even on virtue [4] and righteousness.
And what then of the righteous minorities?
4 In the fatness of these pursy times, virtue itself of vice must pardon beg (Hamlet III.iv.153). |
This is just another one of those "I can't imagine how it can be anything but thus, therefore it must be thus" line of arguments. But it is not a proof of impossibility, it is merely evidence of this particular man's limit of imagination/knowledge.
It seems to be a common fallacy engaged in by philosophers, and religious philosophers are no exception.
.... another way of escapism expresses a more active and compensatory attitude: this is when people experience great democratic leadership, the charismatic aspect of the democratic myth.
Powerlessness is never better concealed than when people place themselves in the shadow of a great leader, those momentous personas with whom the people can identify.
There are almost no limits to the generosity and the hopes but also to the deceptions – that the democratic masses invest in their leaders, their father figures. The self-esteem of the masses is here raised to sublime heights. If the possibilities of identification between the leaders and their followers are sufficiently strong, then every feeling of powerlessness is obliterated.
In democratic leadership we see manipulation and the psychological phenomenon of projection at the highest level. The leader will be the incarnation of the volonté générale, the bearer and executor of what is said to be the people's inner "will."
These strong and charismatic leading figures are the magnified images of what the masses want to be themselves. The leader is the "mirror" delivering man from perceptions of his own powerlessness and insignificance; he is the father figure, giving to his adherents what they believe is the real Popular Will.
p.s. Have you any idea where I would go for more information on this company? Just a curiosity. Seems so odd -- don't it though -- that a Russian would incorporate under "Volonté Générale".
All genuine philosophers believe in God. Philosophy is a love of truth, after all.
The rest are just masturbatory sophists enamoured of their own Systems and hypotheses.
In any case, his conclusion re: unidimensionality is true. I can pull a dozen threads from latests posts to illustrate, if you like.
Naturally, I knew I'd enjoy it when I heard the magic words Erik von Keunnelt-Leddhin and Thomas Molnar as well.
I'll flag you to the excerpt I'd been meaning to post on liberty ... one of the three foundations -- along with equality and power -- on which the Myth of Democracy is based.
I agree with Molnar that Lindbom does an excellent job of concisely covering the same lines of thought folks like Keunnelt-Leddhin will take entire books to elucidate.
(Though who minds reading every word and footnote of KD? ... his "Liberty and Equality" is outstanding. I wish I could post the whole book.)
Will you be posting the answer to that question?
Much of his explanation of human motivation is identical to Nietzsche's Will to Power. Nietzsche said that a civilization's teleological function is to produce (only a few) great men. I'm interested to see if Lindbom agrees. Every popular attempt at societal analysis/futurism concentrates on "megatrends". Small is beautiful.
I've heard of Lindhom (only because of the Swedish connection) and never read him. You probably know he was a social democrat for many years before he started writing. It's impressive to even find these types, and generous to post them. Thank you.
(Library-full-of-books)
This is not at all what I'd intended on posting first ... consider it my response to the SOTU.
In addition to the "Myth of Democracy" piece, he's also got a section on Socialism (you're right about his background) and a stand-alone chapter entitled "Lucifer".
I started with Lucifer and worked my way backwards through the introduction by Claes Ryn (also excellent in many respects). My head was on fire by the time I got home.
I'm off on another hunt entirely but using the book to hold my favorite pen so I can savor him a while. I'll flag you to any future excerpts.
I guess we have to let them hang ... like he did (and they do, more often than not).
That's the end of the piece, anyway.
I like reading books from my grandfather's eclectic contemporaneous collection of intelligent but not heavy books. It gives a feel for how thought evolved that can't be found by only reading the major or latest works.
Here's one on my desk - Adventure's of the Mind from The Saturday Evening Post(1960), Intro by M. Van Doren, articles by Paul Tillich, Aaron Copland, Hans Selye, A. Huxley, W. Gropius, Clement Greenberg and others.
Lindbom is just the sort of book my grandfather would have picked up.
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