Noam Chomsky - Madison vs. Aristotle

Madison pointed out that the British system would have problems if they transferred it over here and that is because the United States they did want to make it he did he and other the other founding fathers as they're called did want to make it a more participatory and democratic society but he said a Democratic Society has a serious flaw the flaw is that a Democratic Society the people can participate and he said suppose what would suppose I suppose this would take place in England I suppose for example in England that they were really allowed people to vote which they didn't he said well the first thing people would do would be to a call for what we nowadays call agrarian reform that is they would call for changes in the land laws which would grant more people access to the highly privatized and centralized land system and that land was a crucial part of the economy then and he says well we obviously can't accept that you know we don't want to have any system that will allow people to participate and infringe on the rights of private property and well so therefore we have to be careful not to allow a democratic system in which things really function democratically we have to make design a system in which power is in the hands of the wealth of the nation quoting the more capable set of men those who are sympathetic with the rights of property ok they must have the power and the rest must be dispersed and factionalized in such a way that they don't really interfere with the rights of power actually in Madison who is no fool recognized that this problem was going to become greater as time went on as he put it if I couldn't read my own notes he said there's going to be an increase in the proportion of the population that Labor's under all the hardships of life and secretly sighs for a more equal distribution of its blessings ok this an increase in that and if those people really have an ability to participate they're going to do things which will infringe on the right of private power and and private property on the wealthy and therefore we have to design the system so that doesn't happen and indeed the system was designed so that that wouldn't happen that's the role of the Senate was to represent the wealth of the nation and the role of the separation of powers and so on and so forth how will it function you can argue it's an interesting question but it's worth noticing that this idea about the nature of democracy has a long list this problem in the nature of democracy you know that namely if people can vote they're going to vote in their own interests and infringe on the rights of private power and wealth that goes that insight goes way back goes back to the origins of political theory so you read the first major book on political theory and something like our sense Aristotle's politics that's a core question of Aristotle's politics Aristotle distinguishes tyranny oligarchy and democracy and as a long elaborate discussion of each and favours democracy it was perfect but he favored democracy is the best system for him a democracy meant was very straightforward it meant the community of equals or to be precise free men who are equals and that phrase free men is rather crucial but put that aside for a moment a community of free men who are equal and participatory and if unless it's equal and they can't be seriously participatory he noticed the same problem that Madison did exactly the same problem he said suppose that you did have a democracy where everyone participated but he had radical inequality so concentration of wealth he said well then the poorer part of the population which is the majority will use their voting power to for their own interests to advance their own interests instead of the common good of all okay and the goal of the democracy for Aristotle was to advance the common good of all but if you had inequality radical inequality well yeah the majority of the population would vote for their own interests which would not be the common good of all so therefore you had to do something about that same problem that the Madison faced you know exactly the same problem but they reached opposite conclusions Madison's conclusion was that we should reduce democracy so that you don't get the threat from the population Aristotle's was the opposite you should reduce inequality so therefore the problem won't arise and it will be ahead you could have a real participatory democratic system so Aristotle called for what we today would call a welfare state he said that a democracy must be based on use of public revenues to ensure lasting prosperity for everyone welfare state in other words and then he describes in some detail how you could proceed to do that in Athens do it differently here but the same kinds of questions and then if everyone had moderate but sufficient income you wouldn't have this problem that both he and Madison faced but notice that their choices were radically different one choice was to aim for equality and participation and democracy the other the one on which our country was founded was to reduce the threat of democracy maintain the inequality and ensure that power remains in the Senate you know the capable class of men the wealthy part of the you know the wealthy part of the society that's now internationalized so this huge financial capital is flowing around the world is sometimes called by international economists a virtual Senate meaning it has the power to ensure if you really liberalize capital to ensure that no country will be able to undertake social policies that strike at the interest of the wealthy because if any country moves in that direction the capital quickly flows out of it their country goes down to two so it's a virtual Senate you know kind of generalization of Madison's Senate and the opposite of the Aristotelian conception of democracy is necessarily based on a welfare state and equality to go back to that word freemen a democracy for Aristotle meant men not women and free not slaves you know our alien so it's a sub part of the population but it's a little hard to dump on Aristotle for that since given that those questions weren't even addressed and badly addressed until this century you know and still are far from address but that's a significant qualification but the principles are there and they come right up to the present it's also been understood and it by now it's and this this battle sort of struggle up and back between the two conceptions of democracy is a large part of modern history major theme of modern history runs right through the nineteenth century it's hard to remember now but in the nineteenth century which was a rather anarchic period in the United States it was quite generally assumed that you not only had to have an equal and participatory society but you couldn't but that even wage labor was an intolerable infringement on human rights that wasn't a radical position that was the slogan of the Republican Party for example you can read it in the New York Times editorials in nineteen eighteen seventy it was they slogan under which many northern workers fought the civil war it was Abraham Lincoln's you know position wage labor is not very different from chattel slavery because it's a it's a fundamental infringement on rights it was the major theme of the working class press which was quite lively around this area run buddy you know women from the farms partisans and so on their position was look if you have a democracy the people who work in the mills have to own and you have to move towards real participation and direct control and so on and that remain major themes of perfectly mainstream us thinking right up until the corporatization of America that hundred years ago when corporations developed collectivist legal institutions as they were called which got enormous rights you know the rights of persons but in fact well beyond persons because they're immortal and the huge comparison with persons that was sharply attacked by conservatives a breed that doesn't exist anymore but it exists the century ago people who really believed in classical liberal doctrines they recognized that corporations with themselves a major attack on markets and that also an attack on the natural rights doctrines on which you know conceptions of human rights and Liberty were developed that was a big change and it's again not graven and stone these were decision

Channel: Chomsky's Philosophy

Views: 257,229

Keywords: Philosophy (Field Of Study), Noam Chomsky (Author), Aristotle (Author), James Madison (US President), Political Philosophy (Field Of Study), Economy (Field Of Study), Politics (TV Genre), Democracy (Quotation Subject)

Id: gGfFXc0TwhU

Length: 9min 31sec (571 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 29 2015