shuggy's blog
A Protestant outfit, such as the Kirk, has at least two substantial advantages over the Roman Catholics (and, perhaps, the C of E). First, I have never read, or met, any Presbyterian who made the patronising distinction between the religion that's suited to the clever and educated, and the one for the dim and ignorant. You probably know the line - the simple people like relics, saints, and so on - so comforting, these little white lies, don'tcha know? Whereas we sophisticates.... ah, we know better. Golly, but I find that attitude offensive. Secondly, the proposition that elders - i.e. everyman - can have power in a church, that the politics of the church is not modelled on the gangsterism of Late Antiquity, with its all-pervasive client-Bigman relationship, I find appealing. My family background contains Protestants, Papists and Atheists and family experience with the RC church is much the worse. Our ex-Protestants are typically not bitter; they've simply lost faith. Our ex-Papists, though, have usually also been repelled by their Church's behaviour, sometimes by reflecting on it long after the event. I think it's fair to say that our experience is consistent with my suspicion that the development of liberalism and democracy was dependent on Protestants of different sorts having to learn to rub along together. Thank goodness that I was never exposed directly to the Roman Catholicism of the Irish slum that one of my grandfathers grew up in. Still, as one of my kin once put it "You have to remember that on the Continent there are intelligent and educated people who are Catholic."
OK. I own up. I didn't write that post very well. Multiple retractions and corrections can be found here.
Hmmm - I see you've got another one up. I appreciate you weren't writing a post about church history but I'm still not following your use of 'puritanism' as a sociological type. Surely it has to have some connection with the historical reality - otherwise why use it?
is that puritanism - in all of it's forms - is always likely to be a thorn in the side of a functioning democracy
Puritanism, whatever else it might be or has been, has a strong egalitarian streak, which has obvious implications for democracy. It's no accident that while the Church of Scotland elects its ministers, the PM is still appointing bishops. When you're using religious concepts as sociological types, I feel your argument would be more balanced if you acknowledged this historical connection of protestantism to democracy.
P.S.
I would suggest (as an extension of the previous posts) that the simplistic and disastrous attitudes to internal democracy within the Unionist parties can be explained by the dominance that evangelical protestantism has over Unionism
But this wouldn't explain the other example you used - i.e. the Labour Party in the 80s. Neither does it explain the equally disasterous attitude to internal democracy routinely found in far left groupsicles of varous kinds. I think you'll struggle to show that this has much to do with 'evangelical protestanism'.
P.S.S. I feel you would have been on surer ground if you'd pointed out that puritans tend to be egalitarian but not liberal and connected your views about the tension between liberty and equality to these. Part of the problem is that you've used concepts not for precision's sake but as repositories for things you find desirable and undesirable. It works something like this for you...
'Puritans' = 'liberals', by which you mean 'radical liberals' or 'libertarians' = bad for 'really existing' liberty (very Burkean)
'High church' = 'democrats' = social democrats who are also liberal but not in an unrealistic 'libertarian' kind of way = good.
No?
I may well have misunderstood you but I think your use of the terms 'democrat' and 'liberal' is particularly confusing.
From the perspective of the British Isles it may well look as if the Catholics have always been on the right side against the Protestant establishment but if you look a little wider I think it very easy to find examples of the Catholic Church being equally anti-democratic. The religious wars throughout Europe don't show either side as being particularly virtuous but I would suggest that the concept of individual liberty (real and tangible) was present always on the protestant side. Is it an accident that democracy grew first in the Anglosphere?
If we need to pick specific examples look at the Catholic support of Franco in the Spanish civil war. Or the traditional Catholic support for dodgy South American regimes (at least prior to Liberation theology).
I’m still regretting having written that first post, and the second one is still improvable. When you’re in a hole, it probably makes sense to stop digging. But, apologies aside, I’m actually trying to make a much *much* narrower point that the ones that you are holding me to.
Firstly – to repeat – I’m not defending Catholicism (present or historical) in any way. I’m using aspects of Catholicism and a sub-set of Protestantism to illustrate an argument.
Of course the ‘aristocratic’ nature of Catholicism is indefensible, and I’m not really going to bother totting up the points to find out whether it has more barrels of blood on its hands than other faiths have. I’d acknowledge that there were plenty of low-church strands that were fairly egalitarian. Quakers are the obvious example here. Many of the British left’s antecedents were low-church of one form or another.
But I’m using it to illustrate a point about temporal government. While unelected aristocracy – either Popish or otherwise – is obviously likely to lead to oligiarchy, plutocracy and generally poor government, an ELECTED aristocracy leads – I would argue – to the highest form of governance that is currently available to us.
So I’m saying that I prefer the sort of government that tells its electorate that it doesn’t have to sweat the details and to leave the detail of policymaking to the government. This is not even an argument against open government or a highly participative / deliberative democracy by the way. Nor can it be necessarily characterized as a form of government that will always result in the permanent government of a class-based ‘political caste’ (any socialist should surely have the working-class autodidact as the perfect ‘aristocrat’ in a representative government). But it does argue that – at the point of decision – the elective aristocracy (and this is VERY Burkean) should have the final say.
I’m also saying that it is not surprising that a political grouping that has largely arisen from the dominant Protestantism of Ulster – one where the gospels are left to the interpretation of the individual – would be less disposed to high standards of representative democracy than other social groups. They may (and in Northern Ireland, they clearly do) want to recall representatives more often to ensure that they are sticking to the line that a wider group want them held to. I’ll leave aside the fact that that wider group also have a religious (anti-Catholic) agenda because it muddies the argument further.
It may be that even a convert from low Protestantism to Aetheism would be less positively disposed to a more representative form of government. You could perhaps draw the conclusion that my own Catholic upbringing is to blame for my strong preference for representative democracy as opposed to direct democracy.
Broadening this out into the more general term ‘puritan’ – it’s one that is used beyond the confines of religion. In left-wing politics, there are p
Balls - interupted in mid-flow:
Continuing:
Broadening this out into the more general term ‘puritan’ – it’s one that is used beyond the confines of religion. In left-wing politics, there are puritans. People who will not compromise with the electorate. I’d use the word ‘idealist’ but if I do, Will Rubbish will pull me up for it. But I still hold that a Puritanism that insists upon a prescription as opposed to a solution that is chosen by the prerogative of those we elect to decide on our behalf – that Puritanism will nearly always have a less democratic outcome.
I suppose that where I am saying something unusual, it is my contention that representative v direct democracy is a much bigger issue than anyone else thinks it is, and I’m prepared to make fairly tortuous points to tease out the issues in this argument.
On my blog, I’ve spent ages trying to build the case that representative democracy has a number of significant rivals.
Listing them:
1. Bureaucrats are a rival to democratic governance of all forms, so they will attempt to diminish the power of politicians
2. Pressure groups are rivals to elected representatives. They would generally prefer direct democracy as the general public are more bendable
3. A more direct democracy is in the interest of media owners – and consequentially successful journalists. The status of journalism would increase in a less representative democracy
… and so on.
My argument is that left-wing democrats should be primarily focused upon defending representatives from their rivals. It’s my (apparently unique) take on Kautskyite social democracy.
And at the moment, I’m rather clumsily trying to add generic ‘puritans’ to that list of adversaries.
I’m also (even less confidently) suggesting that there is some kind of historical lineage here – low church >>> whig >>> 19th century liberal >>> modern economic liberal. But I’m already knee deep in a mire of generalisation now, so I’m not going to take it much further.
Sorry - qualifications and clarifications to the above:
Minor point: I'd acknowldege Weber's point that bureaucracies grow hand-in-hand with democracy. The rivalry is on a day-to-day level. Micro rather than macro.
Bigger point: I think my key argument (I'm only now discovering it) is this line:
"...it is not surprising that a political grouping that has largely arisen from the dominant Protestantism of Ulster – one where the gospels are left to the interpretation of the individual – would be less disposed to high standards of representative democracy than other social groups."
There's a parallel between not trusting priests and not trusting MPs. Not that you should trust a priest, I might add....
"From the perspective of the British Isles it may well look as if the Catholics have always been on the right side against the Protestant establishment": are you mad?
You could perhaps draw the conclusion that my own Catholic upbringing is to blame for my strong preference for representative democracy as opposed to direct democracy.
I might were it not for the fact that this protestant agnostic also prefers representative democracy. I agree with the following, for example:
So I’m saying that I prefer the sort of government that tells its electorate that it doesn’t have to sweat the details and to leave the detail of policymaking to the government.
It may well be because I am indeed a protestant agnostic that I've been taking you too literally but I still think 'aristocratic' is a wholly inappropriate word to describe this arrangement because of what the word connotes. Better to frame some kind of Rawlsian justification? Democracy is justified in terms of equality - but representative democracy isn't equal and some 'extreme liberals' go no further and advocate direct democracy in the way you suggest. But if we take Rawls' argument that inequalities are justified if everyone benefits, this can be applied to our form of government. I think we'd agree about this: most people have neither the time nor the inclination to enage themselves with the business of policy-making in the way advocates of DD would like. Representative democracy is justified on these ground - specialisation, rather than any notion of aristocracy?
I was also wondering if you'd agree: democratic participation has to be limited if our liberal habits are to survive? This would be automatically dismissed as 'elitist', of course - but I think it's true and I think further that it's an important function of representative democracy to do this.
I’m also (even less confidently) suggesting that there is some kind of historical lineage here – low church >>> whig >>> 19th century liberal >>> modern economic liberal. But I’m already knee deep in a mire of generalisation now, so I’m not going to take it much further.
I shouldn't have given the impression that I entirely disagree with you because I don't. It still is an over-generalisation though. The thing is, when the forces of religion are secualrised, they feed into a number of different political currrents. There's no doubt that protestantism has an individualist streak that Catholicism doesn't and this sort of inner-worldly asceticism does indeed feed into the sturdy individualism of economic liberalism. But there is also, as you point out, this tradition that is found in social democracy. Labour being more Methodist than Marxist and all that...
I was kidding about my catholic influences. Even though I've got lots of lefty distain for religion, most of my personal experiences growing up as a catholic were OK. We weren't very doctrinaire in our house - it was an Irish expat cultural thing some the time.
Do you not think that Unionists have the attitudes to internal party
democracy as a result of their low church backgrounds? I must admit, my recollection of reading around this (Steve Bruce - not the football manager - wrote a few v.good books about Unionism) dimly points to this conclusion.
On my annoying use of the word 'Aristocratic', I should have clarified this more. I'm now fairly sure it was Bernard Crick who wrote about this distinction. He used the term to illustrate the compromise that has repeatedly been made whenever democracy emerges historically. That Aristotle solved the problems of direct democracy by arguing for an elective aristocracy. And Burke largely did this as well, I think? I see why it's annoying, but it made me think when I read it, so I've continued using it.
"I was also wondering if you'd agree: democratic participation has to be limited if our liberal habits are to survive? This would be automatically dismissed as 'elitist', of course - but I think it's true and I think further that it's an important function of representative democracy to do this."
Good question. My original clumsy post had stuff in it about capital punishment / longer prison sentances etc. I think that you can appeal to the humanity in the way that you can't with the unmediated crowds - who are more prey to demagogues.
That's why I try and frame representatives as a power-bloc that have rivals. OK - it's elitist to limit participation. But whatever we do, we will limit participation. If representatives are weakened then participation will be bottlenecked much more by the political centre, bureaucrats, pressure groups, newspaper proprietors and demagogic journalists.
So repreresntative democracy is the least worst way of limiting participation.
I've argued that it is possible to have a form of representative democracy in which participation is encouraged and welcomed (within reason).
Apologies for sending you off to read a previous long post of mine, but I'm going to do it anyway: Here
http://nevertrustahippy.blogspot...cracy-
more.html
Do you not think that Unionists have the attitudes to internal party
democracy as a result of their low church backgrounds?
They may well do - I don't know enough about them to say although it's maybe more simply a small party thing where divisions rise up over doctrinal differences? Fairly typical of protestant schismatics, I'd agree.
Re: “Where the liberals demand constitutional defences for the rights of individuals and smaller prerogative powers for elected representatives, the consequences will always be the same. More lasting privilege. Poorer quality-standards of public policy. Less tolerance. Think of longer prison sentences, more executions, less redistributive taxes and a high burden of proof required to justify taxation, more vetoes, social censoriousness, more entrenched hereditary property rights and tougher immigration policies."
This is largely nonsense.
Tougher immigration policies? Immigration is not a particular problem to ‘liberals’, or those with Individualist, or libertarian leanings.
Excessive immigration is much more a problem of a welfare state - and the need to curb it is also directly symptomatic of a welfare state.
Property rights. Adding in the 'hereditary' is misleading. Property rights are property rights. They are not specifically related to inheritance, though they must include it as it relates to property.
Social censoriousness? Again this is not something specifically, or even often associated with ‘liberal’ ideas. Liberal thinking normally goes in the direction of ‘live and let live’, providing there is not too much harm in doing so.
Social censoriousness is more often found in more Authoritarian groups and societies, as a means to coerce uniformity, or compliance with a religion, or system.
More lasting privilege? Again, surely actually anti privilege for just some, but pro rights for all.
Demanding the same rights for all, protected under law, even against an overweaning, or authoritarian state.
This is often not convenient for those in power, especially if they want to be ‘practical’ and cut corners by riding rough shod over the citizens rights.
What about ‘elected representatives’. Elected by whom exactly? Very seldom by the majority and even if someone you, as an individual, did vote for gets in you can be fairly sure they will not represent your stance across a range of topics, assuming you can actually believe the expedient promises they make in order to persuade you to vote for them. That is why they do need to be contained by the law.
Sorry Phil - only just seen this.
I fail to see why 'hereditary' is a red herring here? I instered the word in the sentance very deliberately.
I'm not saying that doctrinal liberals always argue for tough immigration policies, regressive property rights, censoriousness, etc. But that's what you get. You get pedantic and well-resourced pressure groups defending the interests of their members, while less organised or poorly resourced demographics get ignored.
Where lawyers can routinely over-ride elected representatives, it always results in a promotion of the interests of the most privileged members of society - and a pulling up of ladders behind those who succeed. Look at Switzerland or the US for examples.
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