and a Response
Dahl, Robert A.
I appreciate the opportunity to clarify some of the questions raised by my article and Philip Green's comments. 1 . I am not surprised that Professor Green has misunderstood my description...
...As Rousseau also understood, associations are a natural part of human existence and would be inevitable in a democratic polity larger than a very small city-state, perhaps no bigger than a village...
...In effect, Professor Green tells us that justice does not require equality or equal bargaining power among individual human beings but among collectivities...
...Since my account of the democratic process did not speak to the question of associations, it is to that extent incomplete, and what is more, defective...
...This view may not be too different from Professor Green's...
...In its philosophical origins, democratic theory tended to be strongly monistic: there were individuals and the state but (other than the family) not associations...
...In fact, it is hard to see how the process could ever stabilize or where it would end...
...If the democratic process were our sole standard (which I doubt), we could judge a process or regime as better or worse to the extent that it satisfied, or failed to satisfy, the criteria...
...It is therefore only by abolishing] the social class known as `owners of the means of production" [that we have] any hope of achieving roughly equal bargaining and exchange among such communities...
...This is not to say, certainly, that all solutions to the problems of pluralism are equally good or bad...
...And as a democrat he will have to confront the problems that are bound to exist in any system of democratic pluralism...
...For its time, a form of agrarian capitalism based on rather widespread ownership of farms was relatively favorable to democracy in the United States, as it was also in a few other countries such as Norway...
...Though he may not altogether appreciate my saying so, he will discover that at heart he is really a pluralist...
...Such relevant experience as is now available confirms my forecast...
...They all fall far short of the criteria for a democratic process...
...Suppose we were to define that relation of equality without specifying the units: the units might be individuals or they might be collectivities...
...In considering alternative economic systems, one needs to give high priority to two central questions about control over the economy: Who should control decisions about inputs, outputs, prices, allocations, investment, locations, and so on...
...Now it is a common error of socialists to think that a socially owned and controlled economy would, somehow, miraculously solve such problems...
...and there is the problem I had in mind: these inequalities in turn will produce morally unacceptable inequalities among individuals...
...Meanwhile, let me state unambiguously that I do indeed believe that individual equality in voting is a necessary condition for democracy...
...Communities of choice [he writes], rather than idealized but actually powerless individuals, are the only possible building blocks of genuine political equality...
...We have not yet learned theoretically, or in practice, how to deal with the presence of associations, that is, with pluralism...
...If Community A consists of 100 citizens and Community B of 1,000...
...There is a view on the left, represented most clearly by orthodox Leninism, that the political institutions of polyarchies—"bourgeois democracies"—are a contemptible sham, in practice no different in nature or value from openly authoritarian regimes...
...One may, of course, simply stipulate that what one means by such an order is that these problems no longer exist, or that "socialist consciousness" would have eliminated them...
...and if their equality in voting and bargaining produces something like equality in exchange or allocations, then at the individual level each citizen in A counts for much more than each citizen in B, and presumably gains more from their transactions...
...At this late stage in the 20th, there is too much concrete experience available to allow ourselves the vague generalities that once might have been acceptable...
...But if autonomous associations and organizations are permitted to exist, then social ownership will not rescue a democratic socialist order from the problems of pluralism...
...One necessarily excludes the other...
...To begin with, the fundamental conception of justice that it violates is more than simply liberal...
...Polyarchies are more democratic than authoritarian regimes, and to that extent they are better...
...If I understand his argument rightly, Professor Green's communities are intended to reflect this assumption...
...Unless one is quite clear about questions of control—how decisions are to be made that govern particular enterprises and the larger coordinating functions of the economy—the consequences are likely to be disastrous, not only theoretically but, what is more important, in practice...
...Let me now try to erase the last shadow of ambiguity...
...In my view this has been a tragic misconception...
...As it stands his principle seems to be simply arbitrary...
...iv) FINAL CONTROL of the agenda by the citizens: the citizens ought to have the exclusive opportunity to decide what matters are to be, or are not to be, decided by means of the democratic process...
...In one crucial detail, it is potentially misleading...
...Sooner or later we shall have to reach "communities" of one person...
...Politics, and Society, Fifth Series (1979...
...The meaning is clear enough: a process ought not to be called democratic unless the vote of each citizen is counted as equal with that of any other citizen...
...The universe of important values does not consist only of the values of the democratic process...
...Where I may differ from Professor Green is in thinking that the relation between democracy and the socioeconomic order, far from being as clear as orthodox socialists and antisocialists seem to believe, is highly problematical...
...Political equality is surely one, and I should have foreseen that the term would produce misunderstanding...
...If we try to apply his solution within a community, then it looks to be selfcontradictory or vacuous...
...If I understand Professor Green rightly, he does not believe that individual equality in voting is a necessary condition for democracy—or for "political equality" in the broader sense...
...There would be very strong incentives for larger communities to split endlesaly into smaller communities...
...Moreover, we can conceive of very much better processes, institutions, and regimes that may be within our capacities to attain...
...Certain changes in structures and in civic consciousness that democratic socialism might help to bring about could also make the problems of pluralism less virulent and intractable...
...111) ENLIGHTENED UNDERSTANDING: in order to express one's preferences accurately, each citizen ought to have adequate and equal opportunities for discovering and validating, in the time permitted by the need for a decision, what one's preferences are on the matter to be decided...
...Would he insist that within each political community the "only possible building blocks of political equality" are still smaller communities...
...Procedural Democracy," in James Fishkin and Peter Laslett, eds., Philosophy...
...For one thing, I believe it has been simplistic and unproductive for advocates of capitalism and socialism to focus so much attention on ownership rather than on control...
...In such a society people would take it for granted that economic activity was a matter not of private concern and private control but of public concern and public control...
...I can't say whether Professor Green believes this to be true, though he sometimes sounds as if he did...
...1 . I am not surprised that Professor Green has misunderstood my description of the democratic process, for the account given in the article is highly condensed and incomplete...
...The system of corporate capitalism that replaced it is much less favorable to the democratic process, not least because it generates greater inequalities in political resources...
...But that kind of agrarian capitalism was uncommon...
...Enterprises would be understood to be social, not private...
...Again, Professor Green's voluntary communities evidently could vary indefinitely in size...
...I do not see how anything less could be judged fully democratic, and I do not see how any process could be more democratic...
...Even so, a word or two may help to clarify the main points of agreement and disagreement between Professor Green and myself...
...If the size of a community were not fixed, then the unhappy consequence I just mentioned would tend to produce another...
...In more than one place, Professor Green rejects the value of political equality among individuals, which he seems to regard as a lamentable legacy of obsolete liberal ideas...
...if the two communitites are to be politically equal...
...It is possible that Professor Green believes that the unseen hand of competition among communities would somehow yield a rational and desirable outcome...
...Whenever an attempt is made to institute democratic process on a scale larger than, say, a village, then a variety of associations will exist, each partly autonomous in relation to the others and to the state...
...If resources are bargained over, and communities are roughly equal in their bargaining and exchange, as he says, then individuals in the smaller communities would, as we have seen, acquire more resources than individuals in the larger—concretely, I suppose, more per capita for education, medical care, housing, and so on...
...To put the problem in classical terms, how are the particularistic ends sought by the associations and their members to be reconciled with the good of others and, finally, the good of all...
...V) INCLUSIVENESS: the citizen body (the demos) ought to include all adults subject to the laws, except transients...
...I do not believe that democracy requires capitalism, and never have...
...Unless it should happen that the collectivities are all equal in the number of persons they contain, the following is obviously true: it is impossible that political equality exists simultaneously among individuals and among communities (or other collectivities...
...3 . Among the many conditions necessary to the democratic process it is obvious that the socioeconomic order must be of crucial importance...
...Yet I do not believe that all regimes are equally undemocratic, nor, I imagine, does Professor Green...
...I wish him luck...
...Here I think Professor Green misunderstands the argument of the article, as I think he misunderstands what I have written elsewhere...
...If a reader as deeply informed on these matters as Professor Green has misunderstood my argument, others may also...
...Democratic socialists are inclined to deny that this would be socialism...
...To be sure, within the limits of his comments it would be unfair to expect that Professor Green would describe his solution in much detail...
...His own solution, if I grasp it correctly, is to provide equality not among individual persons but among communities...
...ii) EFFECTIVE PARTICIPATION: throughout the process of making binding decisions, each citizen should have an adequate opportunity, and an equal opportunity, to express his or her preferences as to the final outcome, including an opportunity to place questions on the agenda...
...Though I defined it in the same way, instead of "equality in voting" I called it "political equality...
...Regimes with certain institutional guarantees that provide considerable freedom of expression, fair and frequent elections, a plurality of political parties, toleration of organized oppositions, and so on, seem to me more democratic according to the criteria than regimes that lack these institutional guarantees...
...Regimes in various countries that we tend to call democratic are, by these criteria, really not very democratic...
...2 Unfortunately I continued it in the later article, where, however, the fuller account may help to prevent misreading its meaning...
...And must these criteria not include, among other things, equality in voting...
...Professor Green and I would agree, I think, that solutions requiring the suppression of all autonomous associations are very bad indeed...
...Even in this more complete account, however, I excluded several crucial problems that I hope to deal with in the larger work of which it is only a part...
...2 However, the essential point is not the label, after all, but the meaning it is given...
...To that extent his criticism is misconceived...
...Of course, we live in a world of unsatisfactory processes, institutions, and regimes...
...Is this not a strange principle of distributive justice...
...if their equality includes something like equal power in voting and bargaining...
...The criteria I offered may be thought of as ideal standards against which to evaluate the performance of an existing process, institution, or regime, and possible alternatives to them...
...But it ought to be perfectly obvious that it cannot be a sufficient condition...
...But to solve problems by stipulation is not to solve them at all...
...One problem in discussing political ideas, and certainly in any discussion of democracy, is that a very large number of key terms are jampacked with meanings, ambiguities, and emotions...
...2. The misleading detail in the account given in Dissent' has to do with the label I attached to criterion (i...
...Although so far as I am aware no country exists that combines a socially owned economy with a democratic polity, the experiences in East European countries where liberalization and decentralization have gone furthest show pretty decisively that the problems of pluralism transcend economic orders...
...I am not sure how much of Professor Green's criticism arises from his supposing that I meant to define equality in voting as not merely necessary but sufficient for democracy For those who might be interested, a fuller version has since become available...
...In any case, it is a dangerous illusion...
...Nonetheless, we may judge processes and regimes as relatively more democratic, or less, 363 according to these criteria...
...In any case, it was historically ephemeral...
...It is not unfair, however, to suggest that he should have openly confronted a difficulty with his solution that many readers will find profoundly troublesome and some may regard as lethal to his proposal...
...To complete the account in a satisfactory way is a task far beyond the limits of an article, and far more complex than may be commonly supposed—as I am only too painfully aware, since it is a task in which I am engaged...
...However, in my article my intentions were limited to the narrower problem: if Americans were to take the values of the democratic process seriously, what obstacles would we need to remove and what alternative arrangements would be better...
...I shall come back to his own solution later...
...The reason is self-evident...
...In addition, there is the problem exhibited every day in pluralist orders...
...and clearly it would not be democratic...
...For many additional conditions are required, including, I believe, the other four criteria for the democratic process...
...For one thing, it provides no solution to the problem of the relations that ought to prevail within each of his communities...
...but if so he ought to explain how this would come about...
...Yet I think the problems will still be serious enough, for they are bound to arise in any attempt to apply democracy on a large scale and, therefore, to allow a variety of autonomous associations and organizations to exist...
...However, to say that the economy ought to be viewed as public, not private, is not a solution...
...The requirement is hardly original with me...
...I want therefore to add a few words that may help to clarify my account...
...They ought to be democratized further...
...As a general principle this is open to so many objections and difficulties that it finally verges on absurdity...
...To put it in another way, equality among collectivities is given priority over equality among individual persons...
...To be sure, as we all know an authoritarian regime could 367 provide for "social" ownership and control of the economy, and deny autonomy to associations and organizations of all kinds, including economic enterprises, political parties, and local governments...
...We are unlikely to discover satisfactory answers in the ideologies of the 19th century...
...Whether any large group of persons could govern themselves by a process that was fully democratic seems to me rather doubtful...
...In clarifying his account of a society that is both socialist and democratic, as I hope he does, Professor Green is going to have to come to grips with these problems...
...My purpose was to provide a description of the democratic process at the limit of possibility...
...Let me simply use the term associations as a label for these smaller groups within the larger polity— communities, collectivities, subsystems, organizations...
...Yet polyarchies are not sufficiently democratic...
...It is a serious defect of democratic ideas that from the Greeks to Rousseau, for the most part they did not allow sufficiently for the presence of associations within the state...
...Evidently that confusion is the source of a good deal of his concern...
...I think that virtually all important views about justice have held that the good of each human being ought to be considered of equal value, and no human being ought to be considered as intrinsically more valuable than another...
...Now there happens to be a fundamental dilemma of political life of which Professor Green does not warn us...
...364 and for political equality in the broad sense...
...The economic "surplus" above survival needs that is available for increased consumption, investment, public goods, and savings would be viewed as a social product jointly created by a multiplicity of social factors—not merely entrepreneurial or managerial inputs or, for that matter, only labor inputs...
...But if the size of the community were arbitrary, would this not make 366 allocations and distributions arbitrary also...
...The trouble is that any polity containing a number of somewhat autonomous associations is prone to certain problems...
...I prefer to call regimes of this kind polyarchies...
...From certain assumptions not set out there, I derived five criteria that a democratic process ought to satisfy: (i) EQUALITY in voting: the rule for determining outcomes at the decisive stage should take into account, and take equally into account, the expressed preferences—the vote—of each citizen...
...365 4. Let me now turn to that problem, and to a point on which we flatly disagree...
...Once one concludes that democracy must allow for associations, then formidable questions arise, as Rousseau clearly understood in his attack on associations...
...Moreover, the question of the best socioeconomic order lays a claim on our concerns to some extent independent of the question of the democratic process...
...But aside from this philosophical problem, his principle encounters a host of practical difficulties...
...In my view, in a modern economic order that would be more congenial to democracy the economy would have to be seen as essentially public or social, not private...
...How they can be democratized further is a problem to which both Professor Green and I seek solutions...
...In my view, some are considerably worse than others...
...it is only a beginning...
...There is the problem that Professor Green has in mind: inequalities may—probably will—develop among the associations...
...Let me mention one more defect...
...And how can this control actually be exercised...
...I imagine that he would recoil from the reductio ad absurdum of his argument...
...Where Professor Green and I disagree, I expect, is regarding the nature of a desirable solution...
...5. Although he is in my view quite wrong in proposing that as a general principle political equality among communities ought to override political equality among individuals, he is quite right in saying that democratic ideas and practices are bound to be unsatisfactory unless they provide for communities—to which I would add other kinds of groups and associations as well...
...Hidden in this conception of collective rather than of individual equality is a curious, rather corporatist notion of justice...
...Nevertheless, it appears that Professor Green considered the label rather than the definition, and understood me to mean that equality in the voting is the whole substance of "political equality" in the much broader (and more ambiguous) sense...
...they are, to that extent, better...
...Without being precise about the exact nature of the relation, we can all readily agree that political equality must be a relation of equality among units of some kind...
...The matter seems clear enough to me, but if Professor Green was misled then no doubt other readers were also...
...Surely, a process for making binding decisions within one of his communities, if it were to be democratic, would have to satisfy my criteria, not his...
...If Professor Green proposes to replace the good of individual human beings in moral reasoning with the good of collectivities, I hope he is prepared to take on quite explicitly the task of showing us why we should accept his principle of justice and reject that of almost all moral reasoning...
...A process satisfying these five criteria would be, in my view, fully democratic...
...The size of a community would be quite arbitrary...
Vol. 26 • July 1979 • No. 3
