by Stephen C. Preston
(originally published in the Stony Brook Press, 11/25/99)
If religion is the opium of the masses, is democracy their heroin?
The missionaries who once traveled the world in great numbers to bring Christianity to the heathens were generally doing it altruistically, and with the best of intentions. However, they often inadvertently abetted the Empires of the day in their subjugation of colonized peoples. Because of this, missionaries who meant no harm have been remembered scornfully, and blamed as agents of imperialism.
Today, "Christianizing the heathens" is no longer fashionable. Greater tolerance for religious diversity around the world has reduced the numbers of missionaries, and forced those remaining missionaries to rely on private charity alone. Nonetheless, the needs of empire remain.
So the Christianizing mission has, in part, been replaced by the democratizing mission. Third World countries now see people sent from the wealthier countries to ensure "free and fair" elections and construct institutions with a "rule of law," with the purpose of building more or less democratic political systems, on the Western model. But the democratizers, with the best of intentions, have at times served the purposes of economic imperialism, in much the same way the Christian missionaries once did.
Before continuing, it's necessary to emphasize one thing. I do not wish to contribute to the literature which claims certain groups are "not ready for democracy," and which thereby justifies authoritarian governments around the world. It is my intention to critique the particular system of representative democracy, not to criticize the general notion of democracy as opposed to authoritarianism. Similarly, my criticisms of missionaries are criticisms of the particular church institutions, and should not be interpreted as criticisms of religious belief generally.
This article will compare two systems of economic imperialism: the 19th century empires, dominated by Britain militarily, and by the "Christian civilizing mission" ideologically; and the modern informal empires, dominated by America militarily, and by the "capitalist democracy" model ideologically. The first is fairly well-understood, and can thus help us better analyze the second. It's ironically far easier to understand what happened a century ago than what is happening now.
The Missionary's Position in the British Empire
There were a variety of motives which drove people from Britain and other Western countries to travel the world and spread the Christian gospel. Johannes Van Den Berg has suggested (quoted in Max Warren, The Missionary Movement from Britain in Modern History) that among the motives were the utilitarian (to explicitly aid the Empire) and the humanitarian (to give aid to the poor in Jesus' name).
So for example, among utilitarian arguments, Claudius Buchanan advocated in 1812 inculcating the Christian religion, since "it attaches the governed to their governors." In 1817, John Williams expressed a similar sentiment: "Everyone, who is concerned to promote the commercial welfare of his country, is bound to exert himself on behalf of the Missionary Society." These arguments were not intended to persuade the missionaries to go – they were motivated more by the humanitarian impulse – but rather to persuade the government to support the missionaries.
Such were the missionaries' benefactors at home. The missionaries, though often more enlightened than domestic politicians, still brought such attitudes to the colonies. Implicit in any missionary's mind – and though this is clear to us, it never occurred to most of them – was the principle that the native religion, and by extension most native customs, were inferior and needed to be unlearned. This was obviously traumatic for most of the colonial peoples, and contributed to some subsequent rebellions against the missions, including particularly the Boxer rebellion in China. But more importantly, it helped to create an impression still prevalent in many Third World countries: that the Westerners were superior to the old primitive ways, and therefore that colonialism (in some form) was justified and rational.
There was a more subtle effect of Christian conversion in the colonies. And this is a general feature of Christianity and of many other popular religions: the emphasis on sacrifice in life for a greater reward after death. Those of the colonial population who argued for nationalism and independence sometimes found it hard to persuade the converted, who were not concerned about improving their situations in the material world, instead looking primarily to the spiritual.
But this was not the fault of the missionaries; rather it is implicit in most popular religions. The missionaries sometimes were more directly responsible for complacency among the suffering populace. They were the representatives of the church in the colonies, and therefore the representatives of God to the believers. As such, their endorsement of the puppet rulers that Britain was fond of installing in the colonies — the British eventually realized that the people are less likely to complain if they are nominally ruled by "one of their own" — was obviously irresponsible and perhaps even immoral. This is a problem caused by any church which officially endorses or is endorsed by a government.
Democrats and American Neo-Colonialism
Representative democracy, especially as practiced in the "Western democracies," involved a periodic choice of a set of dictators (called "representatives") who decide policy and create laws among themselves. Even before we get into the problems resulting in the implementation of democracy, we find problems with the concept even abstractly.
The main problem is that by delegating the responsibility for major decisions to representatives, the people have forfeited any direct control over government. The representatives are not compelled to act in the interests of their constituents once they are elected, except through the implicit and often illusory threat of being voted out. Thus they are led to vote in their own personal interests, and corruption is absolutely inevitable.
The most profound instance of this, which now occurs on a regular basis, is the declaration of war. Immanuel Kant once explained that if given a choice, people would rarely choose to fight a war; but in a dictatorship, the dictator loses nothing from declaring war. Kant was right here; but the problem is that no modern democracy actually asks the people for their consent in going to war. In fact, the Ludlow Amendment of the 1930s, which proposed to hold referenda on the question of declaring non-defensive war, was ridiculed by many of the liberals at the time. In representative government, the representatives do not sacrifice anything by declaring war, and so they readily go to war. America itself has been at war many times this century, demonstrating the fallacy of the "peaceful democracy."
So representative democracy is inherently inferior, in this aspect, to more direct forms of democracy, including referenda. But even supposing representative democracy was the only practical form of democracy and thus the ideal, its implementation in non-Western countries has often been flawed. A good implementation of representative democracy requires "free and fair" elections and a genuine choice of candidates. Implementations supported by the United States, however, have sometimes deliberately fallen short of these conditions.
The phrase "free and fair" implies a choice that is made free of coercion. Our government, however, often explicitly tries to coerce people in other countries to vote the way it wants. Most notoriously, the US, after having imposed a blockade and economic sanctions on Nicaragua for 12 years, declared that sanctions would be lifted only if the Nicaraguans voted for the American-endorsed candidate. The US is now using the same tactic in Serbia, to coerce Serbs into opposing Milosevic in the next elections by starving them with sanctions.
The issue of a genuine choice between candidates is a problem not only in the fledgling democracies, but here as well: the official candidates all agree on most issues. In South Korea's recent election, for example, the IMF demanded that all Presidential candidates support IMF proposals; this was a serious restriction, since most of the population did not.So when election observers and international advocates of democracy declare that leaders chosen in these ways are "democratic," they are doing as great a disservice to the people as the missionaries who endorsed the puppet colonial governments. It is now as hard to question the legitimacy of a ruler whose rule is supposedly based on the "will of the people" as it once was to question a ruler whose rule was based on "divine right."
In fact, representative democracy can have the effect of destroying the political consciousness of the people in a country. For example, when the serious demands of people, for economic independence or social welfare, get diverted into demands for democracy, the actual will of the people can be subverted. By relegating all politics to a single cold day every four or six years, the people are prevented from influencing political decisions: "You've chosen your leaders, now sit back and do what they say."
To make this argument more concrete, note that the same thing happens, for example, on University committees. Students complain about some policy, and nearly unanimously agree on the problems. The Administration appoints several people from the student government to a committee (which will often either ignore the students or co-opt them), and the student body then has no recourse to dispute the committee. And the same problems remain.
The socialist's argument against mere "political democracy" was always that it was virtually meaningless without social democracy and especially economic democracy. An elevation of the process of political democracy, to the exclusion of economic democracy or even economic freedom, is effectively support of neocolonial policies. If the people have a choice between two candidates, both of whom will give away the country's resources and labor to the United States cheaply, what have they gained?
Ultimately, people who advocate representative democracy and work to implement it must be aware that simply holding an election does not necessarily improve the situation of the people. Many humanitarian groups have gotten diverted from providing real aid to simply providing for elections. When the elections themselves are corrupted by outside powers, such promotion of democracy can actually do more harm than good. And thus, the practitioners of democracy may end up, like the missionaries a century ago, as well-intentioned travelers on the road to imperialism.