Disemancipation

 “Democracy or Bonapartism? - Two Centuries of War on Democracy” by Dominico Losurdo, 1993-2024

 Italian Gramscian Doiminco Losurdo does a deep dive into the question of democracy, a value that has always been part of a real socialist, communist and Left program.  In the process he eviscerates many doyens of classical liberalism – de Tocqueville, J.S. Mill, John Locke, Walter Bagehot, Edmund Burke, Ben Constant, Max Weber, EJ Sieyés and Karl Popper among them.  They were liberal only in respect to property and the maintenance of classes.  He also takes apart the myth that democracy is the gradual trend of liberalism.  Losurdo bases his analysis on quotes and the political / historical development of democratic ideas and movements in Europe – principally France, England and Italy; and in the U.S.  He notes 3 dates as key in the development of actual democracy:  the 1792 French Revolution; the 1848 European-wide revolutions, especially in France; and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Oddly he does not list the 1871 Commune. None of these were carried out by liberals, and certainly not conservatives.  Libertarians like Hayek and de Mises later joined in the classical liberal endorsement of surreptitious rule by a minority disguised as democracy. 

The contradiction between economic equality and political equality demands that capital nullify, minimize or reverse universal suffrage and proportional representation, hence its slant towards the erasure of democracy. If the majority actually held political power they could make inroads into property.  Losurdo calls this process ‘disemancipation’ – a regular feature of bourgeois states leading to forms of ‘democratic Caesarism.” For instance Ludendorff identified democracy as voting for a leader (führer), after which the electorate should shut up.    

This book covers 200 years and answers the question of how we understand the authoritarian version of 'democracy' proliferating in so many countries.  A controlled democracy hemmed in by censorship, voting barriers, legal anachronisms, captive courts, candidate controls and ultimately police or military action; i.e. coups.  This is nothing new under bourgeois-led capitalism as Losurdo shows us.  He tracks the role of property requirements, elitist democratic bodies, indirect 2-stage voting, single member districts, first past the poll victories, poll and education tests, plural voting, residency requirements gerrymandering, gender, ethnicity, immigration and class as barriers to actual democracy. List voting versus ‘single member districts’ also play a role. Oddly he never mentions money. The U.S. was one of the latest to actually get nominal universal suffrage, which even now is marred by the Electoral College, the Senate, the Supreme Court, gerrymandering, a supine press, advertising, the 'two-party system, corporate money and voter restrictions. The U.S. ranks 29th in world democracy standings in 2023 and is titled a 'flawed democracy.'

Classical liberals called their own working classes animals, instruments, hands, work machines, foreigners and later children who needed guidance. This all mitigated the role of the proletariat and peasantry in politics and democracy, as they were treated as inferiors. Local workers got fuller suffrage as colonial enterprises grew in order to gain the adherence of the local working classes to colonial conquest and war. From local workers being racialized (Irish, blacks, Chinese coolies, etc.) as inferior, this was transferred to the colonies, including internal 'colonies.' Later controlled voting in an 'orderly democracy' was considered stabilizing internally, especially when dominated by a singular personality.  Leadership went from heredity, blood, religion and title in Europe to great men, to charismatic leaders and to 'statesmen,' to Bonapartes and crypto-Caesars rising above the classes; and now to a whole system mirroring and configured to the wishes of that great state leader, who seems to never relinquish power.  This is the context of present authoritarian 'Bonapartist' governments masquerading behind a vote which exist on a sliding scale across the world.  Military dictatorships, theocracies, kingdoms, war-lord-ism and failed states, all which make no pretense to democracy, fall even below these regimes.

Shay's Rebellion - 1786-1787

Some Enlightening Details

Both the French and U.S. revolutions ended with what Lusordo calls a kind of coup d'etat by the upper classes against the democratic excesses of the revolutions.  One led by Napoleon the First, the second by Washington and Hamilton. The latter were fearful of Shay's Rebellion, which impressed upon them the need for a Constitution and President that would prevent 'mob rule.'  The Federalist Papers claimed landlords, merchants, factory owners and the professional strata were the best decision makers for the working classes.  Hamilton, the arch reactionary, leaned towards creating a life-long, hereditary version of the House of Lords.  The Federalist noted the usefulness at times of a dictatorial Roman Caesar.  But after the Revolution, few would buy those ideas.  They settled on increased presidential power as the 'dam' against the proletarian and farmer masses. (Lusordo goes into great detail on developments in the U.S.)

Lusordo points out that voting for officers extended into the new French National Guard for a time until it was put under control of the national political leader, as was done in the U.S.  The Left press which promoted the French Revolution was later hobbled by security deposits and hostile middle-class juries. Now in the internet age, Left sites are drowned in a sea of invisibility, nonsense and yelling voices.  The bourgeois press dominates television, as 6 corporations still control most media.  Lusordo sees the trade union and Party presses were at one time equals to ruling class forces like the Church, just as proletarian violence could match the rulers' minions for a time.  Now the monopoly of 'mental production' is clearly held by the capitalist class, while the monopoly of political violence is also theirs. Anti-democratic laws, propaganda and 'the leader' mitigate against a party of the proletariat and popular classes, which is the genius of U.S. politics.  Ideology is verboten. The 'two-party' system, based on different wings of the capitalist class, leaves out the actual working class's independent role.  This was always the plan.  Elections devolve into personalities with political programs that share support for neo-liberalism and capital while differing on tactics, sometimes significantly. Marx said you could get to vote for your favorite ruling-class figure every 4 years. These differences mirror strategic and tactical differences among the oligarchs and corporations.  

U.S. Suffragettes in mid 1910s

Lusordo sees Bonapartism not just in Napoleon I and Louis-Napoleon III, but also in Bismarck and Gladstone; in George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt; in Clemenceau and Lloyd George; in Mussolini and Hitler; in Wilson and FDR, in De Gaulle and Yeltsin. This seems to casts a wide net to the rule of individual politicians over the state.  He explains this by calling it the triumphal development of 'soft Bonapartism' in the 20th Century – perhaps what hippies used to call 'soft fascism.'  Lusordo details the unlimited power these leaders had during wars. He even introduces the concept of ‘planetary Bonapartism’ for imperialism.  He’s making Bonapartism a universal for capitalist state leaders, for all times.

Notably the Bolshevik Revolution spurred the recognition of the right of women to vote across most of the 'West,' as anything other than the claim of a universal franchise was no longer tenable.  Some MAGA Republicans have actually called for women to lose the vote, while Hayek praised Switzerland for not allowing women to vote into the 1960s. J.D. Vance has suggested giving parents more votes for every child they have.

Lusordo has trouble identifying Stalin as a true Bonapartist, as Stalin's cult of personality, one-man rule and bloody ruthlessness also made reference to the Party, Marxism and class struggle.  But that might be symptomatic of Bonapartism in a workers' state, just as bourgeois Bonapartists still praise 'volk' democracy, their Party and their nation. He thinks that perhaps Mao during the Cultural Revolution approached 'Bonapartism.'  At any rate, Lusordo sees Bonapartism at various levels in almost every bourgeois state leader, which dilutes the concept.  He identifies fascism as 'Bonapartism unleashed' or ‘war Bonapartism.’  The insight is that the state leader in an ostensible democracy – or at least once elected - can easily become a dictator given the right conditions like war, civil or labor strife or any 'emergency' - and later on a daily basis.  They can be ‘elected dictators.’ This is not news, as expanding Presidential / Premier power and a ‘unitary executive’ has been a given for years all over the world.  Losurdo’s concept suffers by over-extension, especially when you have to add ‘soft’ to it.  It is the normal working of the capitalist state.

Losurdo takes aim at Mises, Hayek, Friedman and Schumpter for opposing wider democracy, as they thought the ‘market’ was the real democratic institution where consumers vote with their money.  Mises maintained that only 2 parties should exist, and neither can represent a certain class.  The U.S. has endorsed this, as capitalist domination is hidden under rhetoric around the nation and unity from both parties.  However each Party is not identical, as simple-minded folk would have it.  The Republicans are closer to classical Liberalism, which Losurdo shows infused the origins of fascism until fascism dispensed with any democratic norms.   Hayek contended universal suffrage was not a ‘natural right,’ instead claiming it was ‘a dictatorship of the workers’ and ‘totalitarian democracy.’  By the way classical liberalism is not what is called ‘liberalism’ now.  We're at neo-Liberalism now for most Democrats at least.

Lusordo never discusses state 'democracies' in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, India and elsewhere. He doesn't discuss China, Cuba, Vietnam or North Korea. He ignorers forms of proletarian democracy – councils, assemblies, Soviets, communes.  These are all forms of more direct democracy far superior to the parliamentary or Congressional kind, based on workplaces and geography. In a way it is the socialist version of what the capitalists promoted against feudalism.  This is an odd omission for a book about democracy by a Marxist. He mostly posits universal suffrage and proportional representation. But hey… a dense, deeply historical tract, this book will fascinate those interested in the origins and variations of democratic processes in Europe and the U.S. 

Prior blog reviews on this subject, us blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “Democracy Incorporated” (Wolin); “Has Representative Democracy Failed?” “Is the U.S. an Actual Democracy Even By Its Own Standards?” “The Only Political Question That Matters?” “Beyond Liberal Egalitarianism,” “Political Beliefs of Americans,” “Death of the Liberal Class” (Hedges); “A Confederacy of Dunces?” “Democracy in Chains,” “The Nordic Theory of Everything.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / July 26, 2024