On Democracy
by Derick Varn

Sitting at a desk, staring at a blank computer screen, as another lame duck President of the United States of America sits in his office, has not restored my faith in democracy. Not that the United States is a democracy: “It” is a Federalist Republic. Whatever it means, I don’t have a hell of a lot of faith in that either. The U.S. system is based on the consensus. Yet candidates are chosen by the party and not the people. This came to a natural blooming when two bloodless candidates ran for office and the public could only muster a luke-warm response when the Electoral College voted for Bush while the public narrowly squeaked support of Gore. Party politics have become general politics. That is the plight of our “fair democracy.”

I have never come to terms with economics or politics on a party platform. I am not a Republican, a Democrat, a Communist, a Libertarian, a Socialist, a New Capitalist, or a Green. One of the things that has isolated me from the artistic community is my lack of a affiliation with any political group. I am a poet, concerned with morals and politics, yet I lack a creed? Not entirely, but I do lack anything to be considered concretely liberal or conservative.

Artists, being Eurocentric, are traditionally leftist or socialist. Europe is rooted in the tradition that the state should support the people. Higher taxes and larger welfare programs grow like mad throughout the continent. This mindset has produced everything from the libertine Amsterdam to Nazi Berlin. It seems supportive to artists and to the “common people.” No?

I don’t think so. In fact, most social experiments discourage the growth (and maybe even the strife) necessary for inspiration. It is only after the horrors of strife, and the growth that goes along with it, that we are most creative. Hints the artistic productivity of the modern period. In any case, social experiments tend to fail when they are applied on a large scale.

Let me combine economic theory with the second law of thermodynamics to make my point: the goal of every benevolent social system is to maximize every individual's “utility” or “general happiness.” Economics, through use of mathematics, shows us that the more people you have in any given social system, the harder it is for the system to supply the necessary “utility” to each individual because the highest possible utility for each person, if one is fair, is the lowest common denominator. So for anyone to have anything of value in a large system, one cannot be fair in splitting up the “utility” of each person. Now, when combined with thermodynamic’s entropy theory, we see something horrifying. Things begin to stagnate, because the inequity involved in the social situation discourages innovation and increases social unrest. The stagnation begins to make the open social system into a closed social system because there is no change. In a large closed system, the entropy theory dictates that decay begins to set in. As W. B. Yeats said, “the center cannot hold.” It makes a violent mixture.

Does that mean I am a die-hard capitalist? Hell no. Socialism would be ideal if the lowest common denominator aspect of it did not encourage the people in power to cheat. However, in a capitalist system, selfishness encourages social welfare as long as everyone involved plays by the rules. These rules are property laws, without property laws capitalism is not possible. The catch is when the businesses start to cheat the laws on which capitalism is founded. Since businesses have the money while Capitalism provides the general selfishness, it is easy for a business to buy its way out of the rules. This makes “true” capitalism impossible and makes the existing capitalism immoral and degrading.

You may ask: “What does this have to do with myself or democracy?” I say “everything.” Admittedly, my analysis of both communism and capitalism is theoretical and simplistic; however, we see the two poles that make up the base arguments of the two party system –“right”economic policy (capitalism) and “left” economic (socialism)– as being devoid of any real possibility. Both the Republicans and the Democrats know that, which is why they distract the voters by bombarding them with moral issues: abortion, capital punishment, and reform in our public schools.

The trick here is to realize those issues are ultimately untouchable as long as we remain in a democratic system. There is no consensus on how the public feels on these issues and which statistics (which are never good things to judge the “truth” on) show as constantly alternately, thus no one in a Republican system will change dramatically.

I think what we are seeing is very simple: a democratic republic turning in stagnant oligarchy. Stagnation leads only to decay.

Democracy is set up, in part, to encourage an open system of social government. Yet, we see that both extremes of its economic principles are impossible to maintain and its general tactics of distraction enable those who would abuse it to turn into a closed system. Examples are bountiful, just watch C-SPAN.

My challenge is to push us to find new ways to open up the system. By this we should encourage tensions between the ends of the “modern” economic spectrum. Capitalism and Socialism may indeed be good bedfellows. We should bush up the party system, by lobbying to open up the primary laws outside of the two-party system. As artists, we should encourage strange philosophies and continue to push the envelope both morally, politically, and artistically. However, we should avoid simply ideologies in our work and encourage those who are opposed to us to produce could work as well. As long as there is tension, the old and the new swirl, keeping the waters fresh. It does not require faith, it requires subtle action.

Derick Varn is a poet and longstanding contributor to Unlikely Stories. Check out his literary works at this site.