The Well-Trained Dog
As an epilogue, it would pay dividend to reflect for a moment on the words of a recently deceased scholar and lieutenant to a popular American president. I speak here of Jeane Kirkpatrick. She observed: "Although most governments in the world are, as they always have been, autocracies of one kind or another, no idea holds greater sway in the mind of educated Americans than the belief that it is possible to democratize governments, anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances. This notion is belied by an enormous body of evidence based on the experience of dozens of countries which have attempted with more or less (usually less) success to move from autocratic to democratic government. Many of the wisest political scientists of this and previous centuries agree that democratic institutions are especially difficult to establish and maintain-because they make heavy demands on all portions of a population and because they depend on complex social, cultural, and economic conditions." Again: "Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road from the Magna Carta to the Act of Settlement, to the great Reform Bills of 1832, 1867, and 1885, took seven centuries to traverse. American history gives no better grounds for believing that democracy comes easily, quickly, or for the asking. A war of independence, an unsuccessful constitution, a civil war, a long process of gradual enfranchisement marked our progress toward constitutional democratic government. The French path was still more difficult."
However, she betrays her ethnocentrism in mentioning the lack of discipline of non-democratic people: the ancient Egyptians were not only disciplined; they were perhaps a mite over-disciplined, as was surely their Mesopotamian siblings. Who would say today that the Chinese lack discipline?
One is reminded of passages from the early book on anthropology "Sex and Society" by William I. Thomas. He was at pains to refute the prevalent view that the 'savage' lacked self-discipline. His counterargument is interesting: 'A native of Queensland will put his mark on an unripe zamia fruit, and may be sure that it will be untouched and that when it is ripe he has only to go and get it. The Eskimos, though starving, will not molest the sacred seal basking before their huts. Similarly in social intercourse the inhibitions are numerous. To some of his sisters, blood and tribal, the Australian may not speak at all; to others only at certain distances, according to the degree of kinship. The west African fetish acts as a police, and property protected by it is safer than under civilized laws. Food and palm wine are placed beside the path with a piece of fetish suspended near by, and no one will touch them without leaving the proper payment. The garden of a native may be a mile from the house, unfenced, and sometimes unvisited for weeks by the owner; but it is immune from depredations if protected by fetish. Our proverb says, "A hungry belly has no ears," and it must be admitted that the inhibition of food impulses implies no small power of restraint.' Indeed.
The generosity of Bertrand Russell for the poor savage finds expression in this line: "There are many nations which lack the self-restraint and political experience that are required for the success of parliamentary institutions, where the democrat, while he would wish them to acquire the necessary political education, will recognize that it is useless to thrust upon them prematurely a system which is almost certain to break down." It is small wonder that the eastern intellectual cringes with self-contempt when he reads this sort of verbal tat.
In Bangladesh, the army, egged on by western donors, had to intervene just before a murderous election: proof positive that the Bangladeshis lack self-restraint? Never mind that they are disciplined farmers, never mind that they are disciplined workers, never mind that they are disciplined students. Only when it comes to democracy, all discipline and restraint go by the board. Why? Because democracy is an idea we devalue: we don't think it worthy of respect, as a field, or a machine, or a book is worthy of respect.
And what is to count as self-restraint? In western capitalism, one is not required to show self-restraint in the pursuit of material goods: it would be the beginning of the end of the system. Saving was, until recently, considered a vice. Yet Asians are notorious for their thrift. Again, William Thomas puts it well: "The truth is that the restraints exercised in a group depend largely on the traditions, views, and teachings of the group, and, if we have this in mind, the savage cannot be called deficient on the side of inhibition."
Thus we have Amartya Sen, the Indian neocon's, breathless insight: 'Throughout the nineteenth century, theorists of democracy found it quite natural to discuss whether one country or another was "fit for democracy." This thinking changed only in the twentieth century, with the recognition that the question itself was wrong: A country does not have to be deemed fit for democracy; rather, it has to become fit through democracy. This is indeed a momentous change, extending the potential reach of democracy to cover billions of people, with their varying histories and cultures and disparate levels of affluence.' One can append any preposition one likes after the word 'fit' for, through, between, behind, across from, near, next to, under, above"but the fact remains that one group of people will never behave like another group. Their circumstances are entirely different. All humans are capable of self-restraint and are fir for this or that: the object of their restraint and the goal of their fitness must vary according to their experience. Bombing Iraq to bring democracy to a savage people was, no doubt, according to Amartya Sen, a noble thing to do: they could only be made fit 'through' democracy and in every direction around or above it except towards it. (Notice that Sen offers no empirical proof for his doctrine of 'fit-through-democracy': he means merely that after the cold war, the west has imposed democracy on their clients, whatever the consequences, such as over a million deaths in Iraq.)
Behind Sen's lines we hear the old nineteenth century complaints of Herbert Spencer et al that some of us lacked 'restraint'. To quote Thomas again: "Sir John Lubbock pointed out long ago that the savage is hedged about by conventions so minute and so mandatory that he is actually the least free person in the world. But, in spite of this, Spencer and others have insisted that he is incapable of self-restraint, is carried away like a child by the impulse of the moment, and is incapable of rejecting an immediate gratification for a greater future one." Samuel Huntington, however, was prescient about the Iraq tragedy. "He also came as close as anybody to predicting America's agonies in Iraq by pointing out that democracy is the product of very specific cultural processes (The Economist, January 3rd 2009, p 29)." And if democracy means becoming anything like the United States of America or the United Kingdom, it is a fate well avoided by a people.
And why make such a fuss about self-restraint, anyway? Why does the question of 'fit for' and 'fit through' (what I call the 'fifor-fithrough' question) arise at all? We'll let William Thomas have the Parthian shot.
"Altogether too much has been made of inhibition, anyway, as a sign of mentality, for it is not even characteristic of the human species. The well-trained dog inhibits in the presence of the most enticing stimulations of the kitchen."
Greek Gift
"To lose one civilization may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
Here we may regard Oscar to be referring to the Greek and Roman civilizations: we have seen how the latter was lost for a thousand years; now we turn to see how the former was mislaid. For we have been able to account for the rise of parliament, but we haven't yet accounted for the rise of democracy itself in Hellas.
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