On display in
Canberra's Parliament House is a 13th century copy of a famous agreement. In
1215, King John acceded to the demands of his rebellious barons and signed the
'Articles' at Runnymede, near Windsor. This year marks the 800th anniversary of
that event and there are celebrations and exhibitions around the world. In
English history, the "Magna Carta" formalised the proposition
that a monarch's rule was not absolute; but needed the assent of his subjects:
propertied barons. The treaty is usually cited as the precursor of the English
Parliament, and indeed of modern democracy itself. Yet Magna Carta had little
to do with demokratia as it was originally conceived.
The barons' feudal land tenure
became the defining qualification for parliamentary membership. As late as the
US Declaration of Independence, in 1776, most voters were still vassals of the
local grandees as they could be bought for money and/or concessions. No voter
had an unfettered say, as the secret ballot (first introduced in Australia in
1856) was only adopted in the US and Britain much later. Thomas Jefferson
described the first US Congress as a "natural aristocracy", since it
was, as with the British House of Commons, constituted by wealthy, white
males. The American founding fathers eschewed the very word
"democracy", as that word conjured up the original Greek model.
Thus modern democracy was born of
privilege and nurtured through class conflict. Conceived in partisan contest,
initially as kings and barons, then as landed gentry in elections, the
disenfranchised became chartists, then socialists, and the
ultra-disenfranchised became communists. Even though the claims of the working
class and the suffragettes have largely been resolved, the saga continues in a
fossilised relic of divisiveness. Modern democracy rejected the Athenian ideal
of equality, wherein the poor, as much as the rich, were automatically accorded
a place in government.
In this 800th anniversary year,
Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a resolution to start a reading list, and
recommended as his first book Moises Naim's The End of Power. Naim's
proposition is that, with the advent of the internet and better education,
knowledge and power are so diffuse that the notion of unassailable authority is
a thing of the past. In the era of "here comes everybody" we
feel empowered to live a more self-directed life, and we expect to do so with
cheaper and smarter tools. Our social and political networks have exploded into
myriad tribes. Yet, still, our greater desire is for collaboration.
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An "existential
crisis" is how the Economist magazine describes the current
state of democracy in Britain. I think that descriptor can be extended to most
nation states. As the tribal drums beat on the heart of the public realm, the
only paradigm is one of campaigning candidates, and of government and
opposition. In this cacophony of rhythms, there is a desperate competition for
relevance, peppered with rhetoric and hyperbole. Our politicians, wizened
representatives forged in electoral bear pits, entreat us to believe that there
can be no more deserving. Raised on a bloody battlefield, modern democracy
knows nothing but a brutish struggle for power, and no other means by which to
achieve equality and dignity.
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published
his Leviathan, with its striking frontispiece: a king with sword in one
hand and church staff in the other, and a body constituted of people, with
their backs to us and their gaze towards the giant. The image sought to
describe 'the social contract' whereby power, both material and spiritual, can
only be exercised by assent of the people. Seemingly just and fair, this
metaphor persists today, but the premise is that of acceding to a supreme
authority – more imposed than implied. Let us for a moment imagine a Parliament
– or at least a House of Review - constituted of people selected by lot, like a
jury. You might say: it may well be representative, but it can't possibly be
competent!
We've lost sight of the true
genius of democracy, of trusted public decision-making, wherein power and
competency reside, from the outset, in everyday people, unnamed and
unadvertised.
Luca Belgiorno-Nettis is founder of the new
Democracy Foundation
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