A New Insurgency: The Port Huron Statement and Its Times

The Participatory Democracy

In this Society, man is seen as both creator and creature; that is, while in a sense, her personality is no more than the buffeted consequence of all the social, physical, and historical forces which have shaped him, he is also an individual with felt identity, a sense of purpose, and independence. “Human nature” is not an evil or corrosive substance to be feared or contained; rather, it represents a potential for material and spiritual development which, no matter how lengthily or rapidly unfolded, can never be dissipated. The liberation of this individual potential is the just end of society; the directing of the same potential, through voluntary participation, to the benefit of society, is the just end of the individual. For a participatory democracy, freedom is present since man needs the opportunity to become. But freedom is more than the absence of arbitrary restrictions on personal development. For the democratic man, freedom must be a condition of the inner self as well, achieved by reflection confronting dogma, and humility overcoming pride. “Participation” means both personal initiative—that men feel obliged to help resolve social problems—and social opportunity—that society feel obliged to maximize the possibility for personal initiative to find creative outlets.

In the democracy of participation, government and politics are not negative phenomena isolated from the highest experiences of life, nor are they mere tools with which man prevents himself from destroying his fellows, nor are they monstrosities that inexorably come to dominate and subvert the individual capacity for initiative. On the contrary, government and politics represent a desirable, necessary (though not sufficient) part of the experience through which man discovers and develops himself; they are among the instruments by which man becomes the measure and maker of all things. The institutional form of this process involves the organizing of representative political parties or other associations to advance or change public policies, to link the individual to the state decisions-making structure, to channel private problems to public issue and make public issues relevant to private problems, to guarantee peaceful transitions, and to clarify at all times the meaning of the issues.

Like the political experience, the economic one is of decisive and positive character for the individual. It is a means by which man comes to understand his capacities, unleash his creative potential in a useful manner, and gain influence over the direction of his life. Therefore the individual should not be isolated from the control and ownership of his work, and the society should not be divided into economic groups who own and are owned, or who manage and are managed. The individual should have responsibility for his own occupational development, and the society should be organized in a way that allows the greatest opportunity for the exercise of this responsibility.

Participation is especially needed in a large, fragmented society, since it can integrate the many sentiments and roles of the individual into the function of “citizenship,” whereby identity is found in relation to the general society, not to a limited, isolated or fragmented part. Participation in the full life of society is the process by which man comes to a consciousness of his dignity and a respect for the same fundamental quality in his striving fellows. Participation animates the abstract ideas of freedom and responsibility, and ensures that morality has meaning in the practical life of men.

 
Accept, if you can, the above as an adequate etching of the ideal that democrats seek to realize in society. If it is inadequate as ideal, then continue to etch until contours become acceptable. This done, I think our task is to examine, or better, find a way to examine in some detail the real meaning of these seductive moral statements: what values remain implicit and unexplored, what parts of the ideal are less clear than others, what values should be exported from or imported into the structure, etc. etc. As this examination proceeds, we will naturally be drawn into empirical findings in political behavior, in comparative political and cultural systems, and so on.

Some of the quite relevant problems, presumably, are the following (these obviously do not exhaust the list):

1) Some arguments against democracy rest on a view of “human nature” that precludes participation of the kind suggested. One such view holds that democracy depends on the “rationality” of man: his ability to comprehend his true self-interest, and devise methods of obtaining that interest. However, man is seen as decidedly not rational: he is a package of confusion, irrationality and anxiety not competent to consistently, if at all, judge the “best course.” From this judgment usually follows a statement of the need for a rational elite that will look on the inferior majority with compassion, and necessarily an elite which submits itself to examination via checks-and-balances, rigorous constitutionalism and periodic elections.

It is usually added as a reinforcing point that man by nature is selfish, or aggressive, or power-lusting, or cursed by original sin, or combinations of these. Or it is insisted that all men really do not desire freedom (Mencken: “The average man does not want to be free; he wants to be safe”).[1] Again, the next step is the construction of an elite principle of some kind.

In all of this it is clear that the aim of political organization, as Sheldon Wolin wrote of the early American political theorists, is “not to educate men, but to deploy them; not to alter their moral character, but to arrange institutions in such a manner that human drives would cancel each other or, without conscious intent, be deflected toward the common good.”[2] A similar distrust of men leads writers to concur with Andrew Scott, author of a contemporary political theory anthology, in this curious form of hopefulness: “The existence of a dark side of man’s nature does not vitiate a belief in democracy. If man is irrational, he has been that way a long time; yet democratic regimes have persisted through it all. Man is not always rational, but he is sufficiently so for democratic government to work passably well.”[3]

In this view, it seems, the idea of a fully participatory democracy is not only impossible to achieve, but misguided—since it is based on a false estimate of man’s “nature.”

2) Other thinkers have remained agnostic toward the issue of “human nature” and, instead, claimed that the problem of popular democracy derives from a mistaken idea of human “capacity” or “ability” for public participation—in other words, all metaphysical questions about “nature” aside, the facts of history demonstrate conclusively that people never have—and therefore can’t—govern themselves. People, it is insisted, are never “informed” enough to permit their full participation in the major events of history. Not only are they mal-informed, they are apathetic as well. Furthermore, they have not the proper training to inherit central positions in real government. The traditional glorification of the “sovereign public” is nonsense propounded by utopian liberals, or worse, it is myth-making by the manipulative men of power.

In this formulation is included a statement about the growing complexity of modern society: complexity of information, of administration in the large and organized society, of the more general trends expressed in science, industrialization, geographic and demographic change and interconnected institutions of the other fields of knowledge.

In this confused situation, modern man is in need of leadership—an elite, preferably, of experts equipped with the training, knowledge and maturity to make proper decisions about public matters. Special guidance becomes increasingly required as the functions of life undergo division and subdivision. Man is “incapable” in the sense that he is without the time, the breadth of understanding, the preparation, and the interest to undertake the direction of society. Democracy is now conceived not as the free participation of people in their common affairs but as the free competition of elites for the periodic consent of electors (whose business is finished after voting). The criterion is not: Does the individual have the opportunity to develop his consciousness and potential? but rather: Is there a way to guarantee equality of opportunity for anyone who wants to seek political office? The realization of the second statement is not seen as conditional on acceptance of the first; that is, there can be a free competition and circulation of elites without participation by the mass of men.

The needs for technical expertise and specialized skill are usually seen in conjunction with such social phenomena as apathy, reliance on habit, enforced remoteness of the individual from the centers of power, the psychological urge for authority, and so on; the final vision is for permanent although perhaps beneficent, oligarchy or oligarchies. When Robert Michels said sadly that socialists might win, but socialism never, he was predicting the impossibility of dismantling the structure of oligarchy and the tendencies that sustain it.[4] Once an incoming leadership stabilizes itself, no matter how revolutionary its goals when it sought power, it creates new interests in conflict with those of the movement it originally represented. A “tragicomic” process is set off, in which “the masses are content to devote all their energies to effecting a change of masters.” Social change is simply a progression of elites, each promising to its followers a dream that is tarnished by the first brush with power. True or false?

3) How much democracy does an organized, rational bureaucratic society need? Curiously, as Wolin points out, it seems “that there still exists in the West an impressive capacity for political participation and interest which is not, however, being diverted towards the traditional forms of political life.”[5] This kind of “participation,” he indicates, is diverted towards institutions commonly thought “private” at one time: chief among these is the large corporation, which is probably the most important institution in contemporary society. The goal of the corporation, or any similarly imposing institution, is not simply profit or other forms of aggrandizement. The goals now prominently include providing a sense of personal warmth and fraternity for the worker. In the language of A. A. Berle, the corporation is “the collective soul” and “conscience carrier” of modern life.[6] What does all this mean for a theory which gives the decisive place in public decision-making to government and the political, but not such to economic institutions? Is there a way to understand the corporation as a “public” institution subject to the control of the political representatives of the people? And is organizational “togetherness” the perversion or perfection of “participation”?

4) The idea (or ideas) of “mass society” is obviously related to the problem of participatory democracy.

“When the normal inhibitions enforced by tradition and social structure are loosened . . . the undifferentiated mass emerges,” writes Philip Selznick.[7] While men are forced into greater and more complicated interdependence, they also are estranged from each other radically, in the absence of unifying values. Their tastes are shaped by institutions geared to the lowest common human denominator. Their activity is divided into a number of roles, often without coherent or even anticipated pattern. Herbert Blumer analogizes mass society to the audience at a movie theatre, each person “separate, detached, and anonymous,” with “no social organization, no organized group of sentiments, no structure of status roles and no established leadership.”[8] Liberals and conservatives alike seem uneasy, and often terrified, of the “mass”—it invokes images of anarchy, the mob, violence, corruption. This apparent consensus among writers of different political affiliations is a happening worth consideration, since traditionally the “left” has hallowed the masses (the popular will, the proletariat, the brotherhood of man, etc.) while the “right” has reviled them as the most dangerous of threats to civilization. Today the conservative has not changed his mind about the mass, but the liberal has done so more and more—is this a sign of disenchantment among men whose expectations were never realized? Should younger radicals heed it?

From the generally accepted notion of the mass, participatory democracy is criticized thoroughly. It opens the possibility for mass-man to dominate society, bringing about the feared “sovereignty of the unqualified.”[9] If the masses imprint their concerns everywhere in society, then incompetence permeates the decisive institutions, and the potential of great men is constrained for the benefit of the sluggish progress of lesser men. Perhaps even revolution will result, since the masses are susceptible to charisma, new symbols, and sudden outlets. The democrats, it is claimed, don’t recognize the importance of a creative elitist minority which nurtures and preserves the essence of culture, the values of civilization, the stability of traditional institutions. As Selznick outlines the aristocratic view, the democrat wants “a leveling process in education, literature, and politics (which) substitutes the standardless appetites of the mass market for the canons of refinement and social restraint.”[10] The democrat advocates implicitly the breakup of standards and moral direction for society since his form of democracy: 1) expands the number of elite groups so greatly that none can decisively influence the whole society, 2) ends the insulation of elites from the mundane burdens of life, thus making it more difficult for them to pursue their role of renewing and preserving culture.

5) What is involved in an ideal “totalitarian” form of participation? How is it different from “democratic participation”? Surely there is considerable evidence that dictatorships exist not only through total control of the means of violence or through the enforcement of whatever conditions make rebellion impossible, but also often through sincerely expressed popular support. People in such a society can be mobilized by a sense of mission, an identity with some transcendent cause that appears to be attainable. For this goal they will sacrifice their freedom willingly, and continue to make the sacrifice so long as their movement seems to be progressing. Such people might find genuine pleasure in their work, be it on a collective farm or in a factory, in a bureaucratic political post or in a university professorship. They sense a solidarity with their fellows. They are swept up not only in a vision of their goal but also usually in a reinforcing image of their enemies. They are happy, integrated into a group, purposeful, dedicated, sacrificing. Yet they truly are separated from the means of decision-making. They are manipulated from “above” by an open, controlling elite. They have only tangential influence over the tactics and direction of their group and their society. They are not “free” in any liberal or democratic sense.

Numerous questions immediately come to mind. What are the moral issues involved in claiming that an exuberant, creative man is not living “the good life”? Is there anything innate in man that yearns for attachment to a consuming cause or a transcendent form of being? If so, how does the non-totalitarian society deal with that human yearning? Can a non-totalitarian society generate the same élan, mission, purposefulness? If totalitarianism involves an attack on privacy, what place do we give to privacy in our participatory society? And if privacy really has no place, if the really democratic political order is universal, how is it different from totalitarianism?

6) How are we to apply the idea of participation to a country engaged in the colonial revolution? Where industrialization is just beginning, where educated and competent leadership is scarce and poverty, illiteracy and disease are prevalent? Where tribal patterns are as important as Cold War politicking? Where counter-revolution and complete anarchy are twin menaces? Are our democratic notions applicable only to the industrialized nations? If not, by what values do we judge the development of these new nations?

In evaluating a form of development, is centralized economic planning our primary concern, or the establishment of democratic institutions, or the existence of political parties or the form of national government, or cold war policies? These questions indicate the real inadequacy of our ideal theory and demand that we develop at least two instruments: 1) a theory of social change, 2) a scale of greater and lesser values. The former will allow us to grasp what is absolutely necessary for a country’s development, what is peripheral, what is flexible and what is not: the prerequisites of evaluation, in other words. The latter will give us a formula for judging the quality of various institutions or nations. For example, Erich Fromm in May Man Prevail? seems to argue that non-corrupt government, economic planning, individual hope, technical skill and capital are needed before democracy can exist. And explicitly, he asks that we “look at the problem of democracy in several dimensions,” then lists the four “most important” qualities of democracy as: 1) Political democracy in the Western sense: a multiparty system and free elections (provided they are real, and not a sham); 2) “An atmosphere of personal freedom” in which the individual can “feel free to voice any opinion (including one critical of the government), without fear of any reprisals”; 3) “If one wants to judge the role of the individual in any given country, one cannot do so without examining for whose benefit the economic system works. If a system works mainly for the benefit of a small upper class, what is the use of free elections for the majority? Or rather, how can there be any authentically free election in a country which has such an economic system? Democracy is only possible in an economic system that works for the vast majority of the population”; 4) “. . . there is a social criterion of democracy, namely the role of the individual in his work situation, and in the concrete decisions of his daily life. Does a system tend to turn people into conforming automatons, or does it tend to increase their individual activity and responsibility”?[11] Fromm’s criteria are perhaps inadequate, but his style of evaluating democracies is perhaps the kind that must be developed in relation especially to underdeveloped nations.

A special consideration for SDS, of course, is that of importing democratic ideas into the university experience. Briefly, it might be said that our primary interest must be: what are the decisive elements in the structure and activity of the university, and who regulates them? These surely include: content of curriculum; academic requirements, opportunity for free inquiry, non-academic living and working conditions. Generally these decisions are governed undemocratically: by authoritarian fiat of administration, and occasionally with faculty participation. The various rationalizations for this procedure are similar to the attitude toward democracy already mentioned: “Students are not capable of exercising rights responsibly,” “the university is too delicate an enterprise to risk student influence,” “even if students were capable, they are apathetic,” “if you give rights away indiscriminately, you are inviting license, perhaps of a catastrophic kind,” “why not hire trained specialists to do the complicated work of governing?” Supplementing these are several new themes: “Educational institutions are like business establishments, not societies,” “Parents expect us to keep a fatherly eye on their kids, especially those who are away from home the first time,” “students are transient, the administration staff is permanent,” etc.

How are we to respond to these theses? Presumably the answer itself might carry the thinker into the more general problems of the democratic social structure and pattern of life.

 
(It would be desirable to continue, or to return to earlier sections in need of elaboration, but these notes already grow too long, and I hope they establish some basis for thought and correspondence about the meaning of “Students for a Democratic Society.” Short notes or longer treatises can be stenciled and periodically sent out so that discussion goes on among all SDS associates.)