The United States prides itself on its democratic heritage. We believe in educating our children, and our neighbors, in the virtues of democratic citizenship. Or we say we do. But what does an education like that really mean?
In Book 3 of the Politics, Aristotle writes:
But [besides rule … over persons in a servile position] there is also rule of the sort which is exercised over persons who are similar in birth to the ruler, and are similarly free. Rule of this sort is what we call political rule; and this is the sort of rule which the ruler must begin to learn by being ruled and by obeying—just as one learns to be a commander of cavalry by serving under another commander, or to be a general of infantry by serving under another general and by acting first as colonel and, even before that, as captain. This is why it is a good saying that 'you cannot be a ruler unless you have first been ruled.' Ruler and ruled have indeed different excellences; but the fact remains that the good citizen must possess the knowledge and the capacity requisite for ruling as well as for being ruled, and the excellence of a citizen may be defined as consisting in 'a knowledge of rule over free men from both points of view.'
How do we get that practice? Once upon a time, there were a number of ways.
- If you go far enough back in time, most Americans lived on farms. Of course you might have been a hired hand on such a farm, or a cousin visiting for the long term; but if you owned the farm then you were responsible for it. The farm functioned like a small community. Whoever owned it (typically a Mother and Father) allocated chores among the people who lived there (themselves, and also the children and hired help, if any) and made decisions about how to use whatever was produced (what to consume, what to sell, what to buy with the proceeds). At the same time, a farm was likely not completely self-sufficient; so the owners of the farm were also members of a larger civil and political society, including church, schools, and towns of some kind, all governed by laws. While they ruled at home, in these other domains they were ruled by others.
- Then there were townsfolk. These might be merchants or doctors, blacksmiths or lawyers, barbers or barkeeps, preachers or teachers. But again, if you go far enough back in time most of them were sole proprietors, or close enough. A successful merchant might hire a couple of men to handle his warehouse; a successful lawyer might take on a likely lad as a clerk. But in time the clerk could learn the law and might start his own practice; a man who started by heaving and stocking dry goods in a warehouse might go into business on his own moving and hauling. So the distance between the working man and the customer was small; and in this sense, many townsfolk were masters of their own affairs. At the same time, naturally, they were ruled in various ways by city, county, and state governments.
- It's also true that somebody had to hold these government positions, and frequently they were not full-time jobs.* So a prosperous farmer or a successful townsman, someone who could afford time away from work, might well run for office for a term or two and then go back to private life. Again, we see the alternation of ruling and being ruled.
- And of course there were service clubs, fraternal organizations, and other kinds of voluntary groups. Most of them involved some level of governance, however minimal; most of those chose their officers according to some kind of vote for some kind of period, after which the office would expire and be conferred on someone else. Someone who didn't have time to run for City Council might be elected to head his local Rotary Club, or volunteer for a leadership position in 4-H, or Scouting.**
One way or another, then, it was not unusual for adult Americans to have some experience of leadership or responsibility over some group of other people, however small or temporary. And our idea was that this experience made us all better citizens. By diffusing the experience of command throughout the society, we thought we were making it less likely that we would later accept servitude or despotism. If we were used to standing up straight, we would find it harder to bow.
Sounds great. How's that working out for you?
These days? Not so well.
The problem is that none of these avenues towards responsibility and the experience of temporary rulership has the same meaning it once did.
These days, fewer than 2% of Americans live on farms; so while the farm household might still function as a small-scale political community, it is not available as a learning environment for the overwhelming majority.
In fact, never mind farms: even the ownership of real property—land—doesn't mean what it once did. At the time of the American founding, voting rights depended (among other things) on owning property, because property meant independence. The fear was that a man without property would vote however his employer told him to vote. But back when I owned a house, it didn't make me independent. All it meant was that I had a mortgage to pay every month, so I had a strong incentive to keep my job. If there had ever been a measure on the ballot which hurt my employer, I would have voted against it blindly, without a second thought—so I could keep paying my mortgage. So much for independence.
Government jobs are full-time and professional now. (For the implications of this shift, see this wonderful essay by Charlie Stross.) Even towns and cities are mostly large enough that you are unlikely to be ruled by your neighbors anyway. I don't know many cities that still hold Town Meetings.
Fraternal organizations appear to be in decline. I can't speak for volunteer organizations of other sorts; but when my kids were in Scouts and Little League (and I was serving in the PTA), it seemed like I kept meeting the same small group of parents volunteering in one venue after another. (And of course they kept meeting me.)
But in some ways the biggest change—as monumental in its effects as the disappearance of our farm population—is the change in the nature of work. In most places, in most professions, sole proprietorship has disappeared. The polite question, when you meet someone new, is no longer "What do you do?" but "Who do you work for?" Economically speaking, Americans—rich and poor alike—are mostly employees. And American workplaces are not designed to be democratic institutions! Swedish managers may have to discuss a new initiative with their employees to get buy-in before implementing them. German managers have to get permission from the Betriebsrat before instituting major changes. American managers are free to call out, "Hey everyone! Gather 'round and listen up. Effective immediately …!" Don't like it? No hard feelings. You can always quit. It's a free country, after all.
"It's a free country," but in our daily working lives, as employees, our experience is of obedience to authority. This is true at the operational, or ground-floor level; but it's often true to some considerable extent in management as well. I worked once at a company where one of our Directors confided quietly to me that he was feeling really bad about his job because the VP that he worked for was regularly overruling all his decisions. This is the kind of management that Scott Adams lampoons so famously in The Pointy-Haired Boss, and Adams couldn't have made such a profitable career of his cartoons were it not that so many people recognized the scenarios on a visceral level.
Of course, workplaces differ, and I don't mean to sound bitter. On the whole my own experience with workplaces has been very pleasant. And in some workplaces, a measure of distributed responsibility is still possible. I have sometimes speculated that the closest I've ever come to the Aristotelean ideal of "ruling and being ruled" was when I managed a small department for a struggling technology start-up. My department had a critical (but very narrow) role in the operations, loosely characterized by everyone else as "the stuff that Hosea's group takes care of"; I was consulted on all major decisions that affected our work; then once a decision was finally made I saluted and went to implement it (even if I had argued the other way). Ruling and being ruled. And while I had no legal responsibility for the company (and no financial stake besides my salary and a few stock options), I was able to base my contributions on the company's overall needs and goals (as I understood them). This is what political engagement ought to look like, and what strikes me most is that it almost never does.
Certainly my engagement with the political entities where I live has never looked like this. Those organizations—city, county, state, and federal republic—ask me to cast a ballot every two years, and I do it because it is the right thing to do. But I can't believe it matters. My vote for Senator or President must surely disappear in the collective pool of votes as less than a rounding error. My vote for Mayor probably makes a little difference, because I don't live in a big city. Even so, I don't have any sense that the city is some kind of collective enterprise which needs my input. Voting is just a ritual, so I do it for the same reasons I celebrate holidays.
I seem to have wandered some distance from my original topic, but the basic point remains. If a Man From Mars studied the way that most Americans live their lives on a daily basis, he would never call us a democracy. He would point out that as children we go to schools where we have to do what we are told; then as adults we go to jobs where we have to do what we are told. Outside of work, well, there are doctors and insurance companies and agencies and bureaus of one kind and another. The Man From Mars would tell us that our whole experience, most of the time for most of us, is that of obedience to authority. In practical terms, our lives are one long education for servitude.
This essay is not a call for revolution. It is not an incitement to any kind of change. These conditions have grown up for reasons, which means that trying to make a sudden, abrupt, arbitrary change will be no help at all. But it is helpful to understand where we really are, especially when that point differs so far from the story we tell ourselves.
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* As late as the 1980's, when Howard Dean was elected to the Vermont House of Representatives and then later to the Vermont lieutenant-governorship, all of those roles were part-time positions and he maintained a private medical practice alongside to pay the bills. (Reference.)
** And yes, I am conflating different decades here. Rotary and 4-H and Scouting were all founded in the first years of the 20th century, as the period of family farms and small towns of sole proprietors was beginning to recede into the past. But the point is that even as some opportunities for "ruling and being ruled" faded away, others came forward.
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