Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 B.C. to A.D. 1993.

DEMOCRACY

The Unfinished Journey: 508 B.C. to A.D. 1993

Edited by John Dunn 

Oxford University Press, $25,290 pp.

Liberal democracy has won the cold war, and John Dunn and his colleagues have taken the occasion to write a collection of essays accounting for democracy's unlikely yet undeniable success. Unarguably a timely work, Democracy benefits from the advantage of being a collaborative volume in which each author brings an impressive expertise to his or her historical purview.

For well-conceived panoramics there is Charles S. Maier's essay on democracy since the French Revolution and Neil Harding's trenchant indictment of Marxist-Leninism; in Biancamana Fontana's treatment of the French Revolution we may have among the first fair and balanced accounts of that ambiguous and disputed event; while shorter versions of earlier and monumental books by Quentin Skinner and Gordon S. Wood appear on the Italian city republics and the American Revolution respectively. Democracy will serve admirably as a departure for anyone wishing to learn more of these eruptions of popular rule throughout history.

Yet, the collection also suffers from that usual disadvantage of multiple authorship: because each essayist is immersed in his or her topic, the book lacks an overall focus. Notably absent is any sustained attempt to define those essential aspects of democracy outside the particular historical moments that each chapter undertakes, to measure temporal vagaries against a higher standard, even to assume a critical stance on democracy itself. While the neglect of democratic theory is not surprising, its source is less the varying political viewpoints of the authors--although certainly contributory--than the underlying assumptions of their common vocation as historians. Among adherents of this school there is an admitted reluctance to draw any broader lessons from historical knowledge, and this is tantamount to an admission that historical contingencies, not human nature, are largely responsible for political outcomes.

The only oven, if apologetic, engagement of the fundamental excellences and inadequacies of democracy occurs in Susan Mendus's chapter on feminism. The reigning question for Mendus is, what is it about democracy that precludes female participation? Is it simply that democracy has had its prejudices too, and can be fixed with relative ease by adding women (or blacks or the poor) to the mixture? Or are there fundamental flaws in the very concept of modern equality? Does modern democracy assume a corporeal equality that cannot exist? Paradoxically, a wholly procedural equality that neglects natural inequalities-such as our "equal" fight to family leave that almost invariably disrupts only women's career paths--may result in an exacerbation of those existing inequalities. One recalls Anatole France's quip that in Paris all are equally forbidden to sleep under bridges, although this seems somehow to apply disproportionately to those without roofs.

Mendus's recapitulation of feminist theory's difficulties with liberal democracy is adequate, at times subtle, but like many feminists Mendus is ultimately too narrowly concerned with the postmodern paradoxes of equality to concern herself explicitly with justice. Yet justice may demand that we measure human shortfalls occurring from accidents of fortune and nurture against an older standard of civic and even natural equality, one that goes beyond purely procedural means.

Mendus looks in this direction by proposing that "difference" be added to our current understanding of equality, suggesting a scenario in which natural (as in gender and race) and cultural distinctions would be received within the polity. Yet Mendus, like many "multiculturalists," too easily embraces any difference regardless of its possible antagonism to democracy itself. Her solution to procedural equality remains, at base, procedural: rather than assuming abstract equal rights at birth, she would substitute an equality of differences. But democracy cannot afford to be indiscriminate about its tolerance of difference. As we are now witnessing throughout the world, many groups base their "identity" in direct antagonism to democratic ideals of speech and persuasion, instead opting for the bullhorn and the gun. Justice demands that we be attentive to the contents of those claims for equality, and not merely respect any claim in itself.

Mendus's inattention to principles of justice underlying democracy is not unexpected given the inaugural treatment of these themes in Cynthia Farrar's essay on Greek democracy. In an original, engaging, but misleading analysis of ancient thought, one replete with modern liberal assumptions, what most disturbs Farrar is the uncomfortable blending of the public and private in the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. In short, they demand too much unity between the individual and the polity, integrating excellent democratic practice with private virtue. To be preferred are the Sophists, who in Protagoras's phrase consider "man the measure of all things," thereby according all citizens a theoretically equal capacity of participation in the political order, regardless of whether virtue or viciousness constitutes that measure.

Plato and Aristotle, alternatively, make the divine the measure of all things, thus setting a standard to which all people, despite varying and sometimes radically limited opportunities, are nevertheless held to equal account. The political sphere points beyond itself, at its best enabling citizens to approximate those perfect standards even as it inevitably falls short. Neglecting, even repudiating such standards, all that remain are secular measures.

Indeed, Quentin Skinner in his essay embraces Machiavelli's call, contra ancient and Christian philosophy, that the objects of democratic republics be civic glory and liberty. Yet Machiavelli is ultimately not as sanguine about the mutual coexistence of these goals as Skinner would have us believe. Always with Machiavelli one must consider means and ends, and he is quite revealing in this instance. "It is easy," he writes in the Discourses, "to understand how an affection for living a free way of life springs up in peoples; for one sees by experience that cities have never increased either in power or in wealth unless they have been established in liberty." Skinner cites this passage as though the goals are entirely compatible, yet Machiavelli explicitly makes liberty a means to achieving power and wealth, not an end in itself. As modern regimes demonstrate at every turn, wealth eventually challenges a citizenry's most evident form of freedom, shared speech and action in political life. If we forgo participation in communities in favor of exercising our liberty to pursue wealth and power, will our freedoms last? This logic ultimately condemns democracy to ruin: without the constant interplay of citizens in public spaces that maintains the uneasy coexistence of liberty and equality, we lose the element that makes democracy more than a name or a system. In neglecting to consider this self-corrosive aspect of modern democracy, Democracy does not fully succeed in living up to its name.