Democracy, the most celebrated religion of both the Left and Right, has spread like wildfire. Zimbabwe has recently fallen for more democracy. Social movements in the Middle East — with the most recent one known as the Arab Spring — are inching the area toward more democracy. Even in reclusive Saudi Arabia democracy is slowly gaining an upper hand. Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Nepal are solidifying their democracies; their military or traditional-religious heads have found it increasingly difficult to assert their will. Many political leaders in Africa now vacate their seats in response to the verdict of their citizens.
Democracy is winning. It is a religion, a faith, which is seen as an objective, universal truth, a truth that cannot be challenged. It is the solution to all ills. It is perfect and cannot be damaged by evidence. When a society does well, the true believers attribute this to an improvement in democracy. When a democratic system does not work — as it doesn’t in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia — the blame must go elsewhere. The true believers always ask for more democracy.
South Africa has continued to become more democratic, with its institutions increasingly reflecting the wishes and the culture of the masses. The political leadership is now openly in support of expropriating farms from the minorities. The masses, quite fallaciously, believe that such acts will improve their lot.
The true believers always ask for more democracy.
In 1994, before the advent of democracy, South Africa had a first-world infrastructure. Today, there are random electrical outages, water supply is in deep crisis, roads are bad, and crime is off the charts. Hate-crime against the minorities, including vicious torture and sadistic rape, is on the rise. For more than two decades the canniest people of South Africa have been emigrating to Canada, Australia, or the US.
The end of apartheid — in 1994 — did not have to begin the rule of the masses, but it did. Democracy has slowly changed the nation’s institutions, adjusting them to the mass’s demands and whims. The minority are whites, so the media and the intellectuals pay little heed to their rights. According to the media’s definition of “racist,” only whites can be that way.
Was South African apartheid a bad policy? Is the Indian caste system regressive? It is easy to say “yes” — and move on. But all changes in social and political systems have their collateral damages. A culture of individualism, decentralization, and the rule of law emerged in Europe to reduce collateral damage. From this point of view, supremacist democracy has been a disastrous regression.
The end of apartheid did not have to begin the rule of the masses, but it did.
South Africa now has apartheid against the whites, one consequence of which has been the destruction of the lives of blacks as well. The white minority — even today — is the intellectual and business spine of South Africa. As the minority loses its grip or emigrates, South Africa is imploding. Can the masses, peasants, and politicians not see what is coming? Apparently they cannot — which is the reason why democracy puts a society in a vicious cycle. Not just South Africa but the emerging democracies of Egypt, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and Nepal have been on assured paths to disaster.
Instead of thinking through why democracy might be the reason for the failure of societies, Western intellectuals blame a made-up recession in the number of democracies. When things go wrong, they credit the situation to a lack of democracy, even if democracy has been in ascendancy. If their rationalizations are no longer tenable, through circular reasoning they define and redefine “democracy” to ensure that it stays on the pedestal.
Over the long haul, Turkey and Malaysia have been among the best examples of progress in the third world. Not only have they become increasingly democratic but their GDPs per capita have grown relentlessly, making them middle-class societies. Both also have Muslim majorities; there is likely no other country in which increasing democracy in a Muslim majority society coincided with rapidly rising GDP per capita and maintenance of stability.
Can the masses, peasants, and politicians not see what is coming? Apparently they cannot.
It was not too far in the past that Turkey was under strict secular control by the army. Then, in 1997, the military asked the then Prime Minister, Necmettin Erbakan, to resign. His fault was that he had mixed religion with politics. Pressure from the US and international organizations meant that Turkey had to become more democratic and distance itself from the rule of the military.
It might be claimed that Turkey improved economically and socially because of this strengthening of its democracy. But Turkey was merely one beneficiary of a general trend of economic growth affecting the third world. The economies of Turkey, Malaysia, Latin America, South Asia, Africa, in fact, every country and particularly non-democratic China grew rapidly during the past two decades. None of them grew because of democracy. They grew because of the electronic revolution. Ironically, the growth of non-democratic China changed the economic structure of the world and made it possible for the third world to benefit, as the crumbs fall into its lap. Because it suited their purpose, ideologues credited this all to “democracy.”
But now, as democracy has grown, politics in Turkey and Malaysia increasingly reflect the will of the masses. Masses in the West might care more about hedonism, but it is religion, magical thinking, and the afterlife that occupy the minds of the masses in the third world. Fanaticism — hence totalitarianism and diminishment of the individual — has been growing rapidly in Turkey and Malaysia.
Most people in top positions in the media, the IMF, the World Bank, etc., maintain the usual, regurgitated, and extremely favorable view of democracy and multiculturalism. This has to be the case, for they cannot say (and eventually even think) anything that might be (mis)interpreted as racist, or they will be thrown out of their jobs. The result is that political correctness has absolute control over the institutions of the West.
Fanaticism — hence totalitarianism and diminishment of the individual — has been growing rapidly in Turkey and Malaysia.
Of course, it requires little reflection to notice that democracy isn’t the panacea it is made out to be. Quite to the contrary, it has been an unmitigated disaster for the third world. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia had massive public support when they took power. During their rule, the guards at the concentration camps soon became the inmates, while the earlier inmates were sent to the killing fields after grotesque torture and dismemberment. Even the topmost “leaders” got caught up in this cycle of brutality. In a period of just over three years, they managed to kill as much as 25% of the population.
What they did in Cambodia is something no sane person, using the lenses of Western culture and political correctness, can understand. But perhaps that is exactly what needs to be understood to see the underpinning problems of democracy. One must understand the psyche of the masses and the peasants.
A vast majority of even the world’s enlightened society is made up of people who have no interest in public policy. While in the West, this is often reflected in an expectation of free-stuff and resulting social welfare programs, the counterpart in the third world is usually tribal and superstitious. In the West, the desires of the masses result in a politics of redistribution and envy, a win-lose paradigm that, like a termite from within, slowly destroys the morals and the institutions of society. In poor countries, these desires result in a politics that is increasingly sociopathic and tyrannical, a lose-lose paradigm.
To see the underpinning problems of democracy, one must understand the psyche of the masses and the peasants.
I travel around the world to understand what is happening, without the lenses of political correctness distorting my understanding. One soundbite that I often hear from economic analysts is that if a country wants to keep growing it has to allow entrepreneurialism to take hold, reduce regulations and the size of the state, and do what is right. If that is the way the world worked, in this modern age of technology there would have been no reason for vast areas of the world to suffer from abject poverty. These economists are either politically correct (or else they would be thrown out of their jobs), living in gated communities (real or virtual), or simply naive. In any case, they are paid well to stay ignorant about the problems that democracy is afflicting on the third world, and increasingly in the first world.
Why can the masses not see the problems they are creating for themselves by voting to destroy their wealth-generating class, the backbone of their society? Why do they not see that they are creating tyranny for themselves by imposing through their vote fanaticism in their institutions, a contest in which there is no winner? Why cannot the wisdom of the crowds — democracy — provide improvement in governance? Why don’t their collective votes align their economic structures for growth?
For the third world, tribalism and magical thinking are the mental and cultural operating system. While they claim to seek peace and economic growth, there is a list of numerous other dominant considerations — superstitions, religious dogma, the afterlife, pride in the tribe, which makes the individual impotent, the everpresent fear of Satan, family entanglements, envy, ego, and a conspicuous lack of understanding of the concept of causality. Even if they are keen on economic growth, their irrationality assures that they do more of what created their poverty, in a vain attempt to remove their poverty.
Economists are paid well to stay ignorant about the problems that democracy is afflicting on the third world, and increasingly in the first world.
The situation gets rapidly worse as you go down the class hierarchies of these societies and arrive at the people who mathematically are the major voting bloc. The peasants are traditionally tribal, superstitious, and envious. In a democracy, the bottom 51% of a society decides the nature of its institutions. Institutions take a long time to change, but eventually the psychology of the masses, their irrationalities, and their tribalism permeates it.
Many people worry ad nauseam that the USA supports the totalitarian regime in Saudi Arabia. But people from that area know that were Saudi Arabia to become democratic, it would become much more fanatical. While isolated locals might ask for more liberties, and their voice be exaggerated by the Western press, making Saudi government look like the one remaining province of tyranny, the masses insist on an increase in totalitarianism. While a few isolated women might burn their hijabs, the majority of women insist on them.
And what about other countries?
Quite in contrast to video images of recent protests, and the Western narrative of Iranians asking for liberties, 83% of Iranians favor the use of sharia law. It is a no-brainer that more democracy isn’t going to change Iran in the way romantics in the West think it will.
A rule of, by, and for the peasantry is the maturing of democracy, and it never ends well for anyone, including the peasants.
Syria is nothing but an advanced stage of the Arab Spring, of the movement for democracy. So, mutatis mutandis, is Venezuela, where the culture of the masses and peasants has seeped into the government. With each gyration of democracy, Pakistan has become an increasingly Islamic state, where a word against the holy book results in a death penalty. India, the world’s biggest democracy, is rapidly taking the same course, as its deep-rooted superstitions, tribalism, and magical thinking continue to permeate its institutions.
We must again ask whether any democratic change would increase the rule of law and the culture of individualism — or whether it would be detrimental to both.
A rule of, by, and for the peasantry is the maturing of democracy, and it never ends well for anyone, including the peasants. The peasant revolutions of Mao’s China, Stalin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the innumerable civil wars of sub-Saharan Africa have virtually no competitors in causing misery and destruction. Peasants, except in New Age literature, have high time preference; they lack education, critical thinking, and rationality; and they are unskilled in planning. They focus at best on the immediate accumulation of resources. Allowed to feel victimized, allowed to pass responsibility onto others for their predicament, they happily do so.
But haven’t the elite, the intellectuals, the businessmen, the entrenched classes, the feudal lords not been exploitative?
In Brazil, India, and Venezuela the middle class is extremely corrupt. In the caste system of India, the lower caste does not even exist as human being in the minds of the upper caste. The elites are the exploiting class. But when the peasants get into power, there are no limits left for corruption and exploitation. They enable lose-lose tyranny and brutality — pure, unadulterated savagery.
All power structures are exploitative. The question is which one does the most for society.
The state is a totalitarian instrument. Apartheid was the same. The caste system is the same. Among all these systems, the rule of peasants — democracy — is the worst. Their inability to think of the future and understand public policy means that once in control, they rapidly destroy the institutions, enter a phase of hedonism, go into conflicts over resources, or simply destroy the country’s capital, eventually trending society toward Malthusian equilibrium. One has to spend time in backward societies to see how, as if by magic, the masses instinctively destroy any advantages they get from technology and economic growth.
Capital, civilization, and prosperity do not occur in nature. Increasing capital and even maintaining it is the job of the elite — not of masses or peasants. All power structures are exploitative. The question is which one does the most for society and what steps to take to move society toward more liberty. Democracy isn’t that next step forward.
