Contemplating Democracy and Capitalism

The other day, my wife mentioned the term ‘Checks and Balance’ forming the foundation of a healthy democracy. We concluded that the absence a free forum to express diverse individual opinions and absence of freedom to choose one’s personal stance about the present state of things would result in a monoculture, and a stale status quo.

America in spite of the criticisms at least provides a free forum for an individual’s expression. A country which boasts of a block-buster documentary film, the core theme of which is to show the president of the that country as a clown truly upholds the ideals of free opinion. The more interesting testimony that democracy truly works in America is that the country re-elected this clown for another term in spite of the film.
This would mostly be the case when moderates and not radicals or extremists decide. If unlimited ruling power is in the hands of limited number of people, for unlimited amount of time, you always run the risk of monoculture and suppression of free opinion. Of course when moderates are ruling, progress is slow, reforms take a long time to get implemented, change is limited. So aren’t we in the same rut of stale status quo.
But then here we are assuming that there are two equally vociferous and powerful radicals at both end of the spectrum. This normally might not be the case. For the Right Wing Radicals power takes the form of Money or the “Vengeful Majority”. For the Left Wing Radicals power takes the form of ‘Anger of impoverished Majority’ or Alienated Minority. In this power struggle at various points of history at various places, the Left or the Right has won. The Bolshevik and French Revolution were major victories of the Left. But the present economic revolution of the developed and developing nations is a thumping victory for the right. At present the world is tilted in the favor of the Right.

Initially we had the Monarchy, before the democracy or representation as a paradigm of governance spread by Locke, who reinstated Pericles (431 BC) vision:

“Our constitution is named democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes and our public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement… on grounds of excellence alone…”

John Locke’s cardinal concepts of democracy where “equality, individual freedom, government based upon consent of the governed, and limitations upon the state”

Economic Liberalism or Capitalism was also gaining currency, with pioneers like Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mills. Their concept was in alignment with democracy, but instead of power, they were bothered about property and distribution of the same based on grounds of excellence.
Democracy and Capitalism combined, wanted to distribute property and power, which was held only by aristocracy to all citizens without any discrimination. This opened the “Game of Attaining Individual Prosperity” to all. Everything was even and fair. Though initially voting rights were limited, but then as time passed, universal suffrage became inevitable.

This was a good move. This followed a more rational approach for division of property and power (On Grounds of Excellence), than the approach followed in the days of Monarchy (On Grounds of Inheritance). This was also true in the matters of ‘Truth’ during the renaissance period where the Monopoly of ‘Truth’ held by the church was being broken. Rational science based on rigid principles, proof and scientific method replaced the clergy. So Truth, Power and Property were liberated from the clutches of few and were given to the masses.

All was well and good. Capitalism combined with Democracy reigned as the ideal solution for world problems and equitable sharing of wealth and property. Scientific method was touted as the proper approach for understanding and explanation of the hidden truth. The great game of capitalism started with much fanfare and hope. Everybody participated with the aim of winning. As every game, this game also had winners and losers. This game had a unique problem, that the winners had more probability of winning than the losers. So as the game was played for more than a century, they found that there were miserable losers and super winners. As with all games, in this game too, the winners were less and losers were more. Gradually the status of affairs seemed like old times for the losers. Now the Monarchy was replaced by the Winners of the capitalist game. Inheritance, like in monarchy remained and so the offsprings of winners without any talent on their part already enjoyed a distinct advantage (e.g. George Bush, Rajiv Gandhi , Birlas and Tatas). Pericles classic notion of democracy based on only ‘Grounds of Excellence’ was being falsified.

Some might say that let us do away with the inheritance of property and make it truly a game based on human capacity and not family’s capacity. May be. But then there is another kind of inheritance, which you would never be able to do away with. The inheritance of genes, qualities. Assuming the genes which are passed on, provides the offspring the similar advantage (like the inheritance of wealth) in winning the capitalist game, how can we do away with that?. What about the surroundings where the child is reared? Doesn’t that give the child an advantage?

So that puts us to the most elementary question.
A question for Pericles: What is this “grounds of excellence”? How do we measure it without bias or partiality?
But the I believe in any game, which has a set of rules for winning, there will be people who are intrinsically better positioned to win the game than others. This intrinsic quality, can be attributed to genes, inherited wealth, surroundings and the most dreaded ‘Even Luck’. So however we try to manipulate the game to attain equality (say reservation system for minorities, domestic protection and subsidies), we are bound to fail. In the new game, only the victors will change, there will always be losers.

So how do we handle this problem? Remove the game?

Beware! This was not what Marx, Lenin or Mao did. They just played a different game, more or less like Monarchy, may be worse than democracy. Stalin was in the league of Hitler and his game was worse than Monarchy itself. In fact all these communists fooled the people with their unjustified rhetoric (read ‘Communist Manifesto’) and unscientific analysis (read ‘Capital’ by Marx) and showcased an appealing ideology without any concern to implementation details. They were in a hurry to change the world like George Bush, without any clear-cut agenda of how to go about it. This mentality of these intellectuals (Marx and Engels) resulted in the most buggy implementation of a not a bad design (but definitely not perfect). World was offered Stalin. Obviously after a lot of patches and service packs, the software crashed.
Some would say Total Free Market is the only solution. Even that is a game and as with every game will have winners and losers and inequality.

So what the hell is the answer? I have witnessed a lot of arguments, read some theories and heard a lot of rhetoric with utmost conviction advocating this and that. There have been great philosophers and great scholars, who have devoted their entire life, to understand this problem and have accepted that they have failed to come up with a convincing solution or have come up with a less convincing solution. There are also half-baked self-proclaimed gurus (including me) with some limited knowledge which they would have gained reading some few books on philosophy and ideology who aver with true unshakeable faith “ This is the way”.
Till now I haven’t truly heard one convincing solution to the world problems, more specifically this survival game problem where every one is a winner or every one is happy (or at least 80% of them are happy).
The closest has been Budha’s Sutra or The Gita, where they both ask of us, humans to quit the game or at least not play the game in the way it is played now. That is asking for too much from us, “Who doesn’t want to win when other are”?

But all set and done, before we find the right way we need check and balances, so we need a Healthy Right and a Healthy Left and a healthy clash of ideas and a healthy argument. So in these times of the winning Right, I tend to support the underdog “The Left” so that we keep it balanced.