Democracy and the individual - the unconscious association?

It is perhaps fitting in the current climate of financial collapse and recession to utilise the ideas of John Ralston Saul (see The doubter’s companion - a dictionary of aggressive commonsense, Penguin Canada: 1994, p.95) to examine individual citizenship within Australian democracy. This article does not suggest that membership of a political party is necessarily bad. But we must remember that it is the party, or group, that serves the interests of the individual and not the other way around.

We are bombarded daily with concepts that diminish our personal individualism. For instance, in the form of nationalism, politics and economics Australians can be neatly reduced into subgroups or subcategories for mass media consumption and political analysis. If one doubts this you need look no further than Australian political media and election coverage. What exactly do I mean?

Modern Australian society is analysed from an understanding that Australian society is made up of various groups and special interests. Therefore, to truly understand Australia is to understand subgroups and special interests. These special interests and groups can be both formal and informal subcategories, but individualism remains irrelevant to the ultimate outcome. According to Saul (in The unconscious civilisation, Penguin Australia: 1997, p.91):

Citizens, who rise, citizens who win responsibility, who succeed, enter into these units. What about the distinction between public and private? [While] government services are slipping into private hands. [and] adopting private industry standards and methods.

An excellent example of this transition from individual to being a member of a subgroup can be seen in the political career of Peter Garrett, Minister for the Environment. More than two decades of individualistic political activism, largely based on his acceptance of common principles of ethics and morality (both humanist and religious), were an ideal foundation for a career as an independent Senator or MP. Yet he believed that only membership of one of Australia's major political parties would allow him the potential to achieve more. Having joined a major political group (the ALP), he has succeeded in becoming Minister for the Environment, but he has also had to publicly conform to views that stand in contrast to his individualistic past.

Malcolm Turnbull, the multimillionaire lawyer and merchant banker from North Sydney, has long understood the benefits of sub-group membership and special interests. However, with his enormous wealth and intelligence, Turnbull could have contributed as an individual in any number of ways to Australia's social and political life. Yet he has conformed to membership of another major Australian political group (the Liberal Party), because he believes that it is through this organisation that he might one day become the Prime Minister of Australia.

In the political and private capitalist spheres great efforts are made to understand the collective attitudes of various “sub-groups” and “special interests” in order to predict political and economic outcomes. This is ultimately done, not really to help certain subgroups (although they will benefit in the short term perhaps at the expense of other competing groups), but for the long-term benefit of a government, political party or large business enterprise.

The greatest danger of this situation is that individuals begin to define themselves as only members, or followers, without the benefit (or even a desire) to engage in any strong individualistic reflection. These are the sorts of conversations that cause eyes to roll and mouths to yawn, but these concepts are especially important when we consider the constrained nature of corporate Australia (ibid):

As for the individual, but one third to one half of the population who are part of the managerial elite [and the beaucracy] are indeed castrated citizens because their professions, their employment contracts and the general atmosphere of corporate loyalty make it impossible for them to participate in the public space.

To understand the fetish-like hold that subgroups and special interests hold for modern Australian government, Australian media and Australian finance we should examine the concept of corporatism. Australia has fast become a corporate society defined by the decisions that emerge from various negotiations between sub-groups, special interests and government (John Ralston Saul, The doubter’s companion - a dictionary of aggressive commonsense, Op. Cit., p.74):

Corporatism is a persistent rival school of representative government. In place of the Democratic idea of individual citizens who vote, confer legitimacy and participate to the best of their ability, individuals in the corporate state are reduced to the role of secondary participants. They belong to their professional or expert groups - their corporations - and the state is run by ongoing negotiations between those various interests this is the natural way of organising things in a civilisation based on expertise and devoted to the exercise of power through bureaucratic structures.

This is precisely the situation that engenders individual voter apathy, cynicism and general disinterest in politics and the Parliamentary processes. These processes are after all, foregone conclusions that are decided well ahead of time and indeed even punish individuals from the inner sanctum who dissent i.e. crossing the floor of Parliament.

For example, the Parliamentary Education Office (PEO) at Australian Parliament House in Canberra, repeatedly tell visiting schoolchildren that those elected to Parliament are indeed “individuals” who are elected to represent the views of their electorates and States to the best of their abilities and conscience. Yet in their technically laughable 45-minute role plays, the PEO imprint on their young visitors that:

• a benign Parliament makes laws seemingly for the noble benefit of all the citizens; the government “always wins” in the House of Representatives;
• the government party is nearly always forced to compromise with the opposition, minor parties and independents in the Senate; and
• MPs and Senators vote on party lines and will be punished if they cross the floor.

Indeed the scripted PEO role-plays can be completely destroyed should the children demonstrate any desire not to conform like sheep into their assigned roles.

Any philosophical questions about Australian politics, the definition of democracy, basic political theory and why individualism is squashed by Parliament are avoided by the PEO. Why?

They are mere bureaucrats and their conditions of employment prohibit them from engaging in any individualistic intellectual pursuits, lest they be punished by the code of conduct for Senate staff. Indeed, a lack of ability to engage in any of these questions is a distinct advantage to those who manage this office.

The desire to force conformity on hundreds of thousands of visiting Australian schoolchildren should not be surprising. In nearly every aspect, most Australians willingly conform and align themselves to the collective interests of a group, while other Australians are only too happy to exploit this conformity (see John Ralston Saul, The unconscious civilisation, Op.Cit., p.90):

Remember: the origin of corporatism in the second half of the 19th century lay into things - the rejection of citizen-based democracy and a desire to react in a stable way to the Industrial Revolution. These original motives would involve into the desire to a stable managerial, hierarchical society.

One of the great advantages that corporatism was thought to provide in the 1920s was to “dissect the democratic citizenry into discrete functional groupings which are no longer capable of joint political action [enabling corporatism to] achieve is rightful standing as the creator of collective reality” (see Timothy Kaufman-Osborne, Emile Dirkheim and the science of corporatism, political theory, Volume 14, number four, November 1986, pp. 640 & 653). This was the economic and social framework for the rapid rise of fascism in the 1930s which eagerly incorporated corporatism at its core. The aims of the corporatist movement during the 1920s were to:

1. shift power directly to economic and social interest groups;
2. push entrepreneurial initiative in areas normally reserved for public bodies; and
3. obliterate the boundaries between public and private interest.

All three of these aims have a decidedly relevant place in modern Australian society, in fact, we have seen since the 1980s a general acceptance of these concepts from various Australian governments. This process was accelerated by the radical attitudes of the conservative Howard government.

If we are to reclaim our rights as individual citizens we must be prepared to engage our so called political and economic masters, not from the position of inferiority or cynicism, but as equals. Not only must we debate, engage and criticise, we as individuals can also point out the benefits of reflective individuality over sheepish group conformity. The great hope is that barriers that have been falsely created between the citizenry can finally be dismantled.