Are Freedom and Autonomy Enough?

Inching forward through the March/April 2009 edition of Foreign Affairs, I read through the article "How Development Leads to Democracy," by Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel.

The summary of the article reads, "Democratic institutions cannot be set up easily, anywhere, at any time; they are likely to emerge only when certain social and cultural conditions exist. But economic development and modernization push those conditions in the right direction by creating a self-reinforcing process that brings mass participation to politics and thus makes democracy increasingly likely."

The authors are professors of political science. Inglehart is at the University of Michigan, and Welzel is at Jacobs University Bremen, in Germany.

First off, let me say it is refreshing to read POLITICAL SCIENCE professors talking about political paradigms as leavens for various kinds of democracy.

The article opens by talking about the ways in which democracy has grown and shrunk over the last thirty years. Democracy in Bangladesh, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Russia, has retreated.

Bush attempted to create two new democracies in the Islamic world: one in Afghanistan, and one in Iraq.

The basics of democracy are that there is a solid middle-class which is used to thinking for itself. That's the foundation of Democracy. That was the situation for our founding fathers. It was the situation, they argue, even in East Germany, just before the wall came down. There was a large middle class of well-educated people.

In Iraq, this did not exist.

In Afghanistan, this did not exist.

It does not exist in Zimbabwe.

It does exist in South Korea, and in Japan, in Poland, and in Estonia. Such countries, they believe, will therefore make it out of the autocratic and into the ranks of the democracies.

This is good for several reasons: democracies rarely attack one another. They are self-sustaining, and enjoy a high level of cohesion, which means that they are not as likely to be festering with crime, which they are then likely to export. (The article does not discuss Mexico, or say whether it's a basket case or not.)

The article in fact is vague about religious convictions underlying prosperity. Are the gangs in Mexico composed of traditional Catholics, as the Italian Mafia was apparently composed of traditional Catholics?

One can understand that East Germany easily made the transition since it is largely a Lutheran area (the protests against Honekker began in Bach's church in Leipzig, and radiated out).

David Landes, in his book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, argues that a Protestant background is likely to lead to wealth as well as literacy (the two seem to go hand in hand). He argues that countries that are able to build good clocks, will also build strong inventions in a variety of sectors, and he uses the clock as a kind of bellweather of the cultural health of a country. Countries without good clockmakers are hopeless.

Inglehart and Welzel offer different criteria.

"The desire for freedom and autonomy are universal aspirations," (43), they write.

How true is this of traditional African societies, or of people living under the Islamic system, or of the citizens of North Korea?

Once there is economic development, democratization will follow, the authors assert. But why didn't that happen in Saudi Arabia, or in Kuwait?

Why is it that Burma, once the richest country in Southeastern Asia, fell down the rabbit hole into the wonderland of Myanmar, reinventing itself as the poorest nation in Southeastern Asia?

David Landes argues that Protestant values underwrite economic expansion, as Protestantism leads to individual inquiry, which in turn leads to enterprise and a sense that each person must find their own career path, and do God's will. Something similar seems to be true among those of the Jewish faith, whose success closely parallels that of Protestants.

But Marxists want government to do everything for them, and Islam wants God to do everything for them. And there are still enormous numbers of Marxists and a growing number of Islamic proponents.

The authors assert, "Today, virtually nobody expects a revolution of the proletariat that will abolish private property, ushering in a new era free from exploitation and conflict" (36).

Have either of these authors visited with Humanities professors at their respective institutions? They would find a lot of nobodies, if they bothered to do so. Unlike Marxists, these authors believe in an actual transfer of power from the elites to the people.

"One can establish electoral democracy almost anywhere, but it will probably not last long if it does not transfer power from the elites to the people" (44).

Marxism of course offers to do this, but it doesn't. Power is retained by the party, which they slyly suggest will slowly wither away. Instead, in every Marxist country, power consolidates into the hands of the party, all other parties are outlawed, and even within the party, there are purges, in which the top-dogs slit the throats of all rival claimants within the party.

How do you transfer power from the elites to the people if your basic paradigm is either Marxist or Islamic? In Marxist countries the party controls all power in perpetuity, and the party in turn has a hierarchy ending in a number one who controls (effectively) everything. In Islamic societies the religious authorities have perhaps an even more powerful headlock on power. No one else is permitted to speak. No other religions are permitted to exist. Apostacy is the crime with which those who attempt to change religious faiths within Islam are charged. The penalty in many cases is death. This is true even in Afghanistan.

"Accordingly, it [Democracy] is closely linked to the degree to which a given public emphasizes self-expression values" (44-45).

Protestantism emphasizes an individual's clear link to God, without passing Go, and without having to be mediated by a priest, a Mary, or the party. Each individual is free to think for themselves, using Luther as the ultimate standard: "Here I stand, I can do no other."

These authors assert that religion is inevitably a backwards trend, one that grants too much authority to those in power. But Protestantism is precisely the opposite of this. It empowers each individual to speak directly to God, and with God, and to be a witness for what they think and feel. These authors actually cite Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant as the twin underpinnings for their thinking, without seemingly realizing that both of them were Protestant Christians (46).

Self-expression is not necessarily a good in and of itself. Think of Britney Spears, or Paris Hilton, or the decadent authors of France such as Jean Lorrain. If the self is corrupt, that which is expressed will be corrupt. There has to be a basic set of guidelines, which Protestantism seems to offer. Moreover, there must be a valid sense of the laws (in Protestantism, they stem from the Ten Commandments). Otherwise, people are expressing themselves in ways that lead to divorce, sexual diseases, lack of respect for one another, harming the innocent, and so on.

I find the theory that is espoused here to be half-right and cockeyed: autonomy and self-expression are necessary but not sufficient. Total autonomy can lead to a Sadean sensibility, and a feeling of being cut off from the community. Someone like Ted Kazinsky could be said to be expressing himself, and to have had autonomy. The results were far from laudatory.

Total self-expression can lead to bizarre forms of decadence, and a lack of respect for others: leading to self-absorption, and a lack of respect for law. The self is not necessarily something to which one should turn for guidance, as it's likely to yield only violent selfishness.

The authors do nod in this direction, when they write, "...a society's heritage... whether shaped by Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Confucianism, or communism -- leave a lasting imprint on its worldview" (38). While they recognize that these heritages are remarkably "resilient" they do not opt for one heritage over another (as David Landes so clearly does, and which is why his theory is better than that of Inglehart and Welzel).

Our authors don't want to deal with comparative consequences, especially if it might mean that Protestantism comes out ahead.

They perform a sleight of hand on p. 39, where they look at all religions across the board and argue that a strong emphasis on religion within a society is linked to a poorer society, and imply that it is better for a society to be atheistic. This is sloppy casuistry, because they do not control for different kinds of religion. Islam, animism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Protestantism (there are about 1200 denominations of Protestantism in the US alone) and other religious faiths, are not all equal. Certainly some of them would top atheism, in the long run, in economic development, as well as providing a background for Democracy, while others would fall far short. By lumping them all together, our mischievous authors manage to cast a dark aspersion on all religious faith.

Meanwhile, the atheism which they indirectly espouse can lead to selfishness in every arena of life.

These authors posit that "individual freedom and self-expression," (40) are goals that should be set above all others as the necessary and sufficient conditions for Democracy to occur and that a "tolerant outlook" will therefore be derived where those two factors are most in play.

This is almost certainly incorrect. Where there is total toleration, there is also a revival of Marxism, and other totalitarian ideas (the great ouburst of freedom in the sixties led to selfishness and to the me-generation of the 80s, and also to a revival on the one side of Marxism, and to the other side of bizarre cults, of which the Manson family was the forerunner, and Jonestown and other cults of suicidal depravity were other premonitory instances.

Individual expression and autonomy are necessary but not sufficient. Freedom and autonomy may be universal aspirations, but equally true is that almost everyone wants a set of higher values, a religious faith, a program that unites all. Being atomized into a self-expressing and autonomous individual like Britney Spears, is not enough to make for an adequate society.

I grade this essay, after grade inflation, with a C+.