a fun little morsel.
 

- Hobbes, Leviathan

I concur. This is exactly what survivalists are preparing for. :(

Hobbes had a comma addiction. My friend was a philosophy minor and mentioned this. I happened to look at Leviathan on Friday night and opened it to a few random pages. Commas are everywhere!

but surely a democratic system itself is an ongoing war, a battle of ideologies, no?

Yes. But look at the origination of such ideologies. Surely the vast majority are only the result of a taught thema (or schema). This can only have resulted from direct or learnt experience of other societies - religions, paradigms, ideologies. If democracy naturally occured, i.e. if it was humanity's default social structure, there may well be no conflict. Hegemony may exist without control.

I think the point is that you can't actually have a democracy without some form of conflict. It doesn't have to be armed, violent struggle, or people martyring themselves; but a society in which people are free to voice their opinions and seek the enfranchisement of their choice of rules and regulations is, by definition, one in which some people will be disappointed, some of the time.

And if some people want something, and some people don't, that's a conflict.

You can't have a democracy in which everyone gets to do what they want, and even the most harmonious society must contain some element of conflict however genteel.

Kev

Yes, but from a wider philosophical perspective - taking democracy as a stand-alone entity - I am saying that devoid of opinion, there needn't be conflict. The 'opinion' with which to conflict must come from somewhere - comparison, relativity. If only democracy existed, there would be nothing to compare it to. Therefore democracy - hypothetically - could exist without conflict. In its current form, it does not.

Not really, if I want firewood and you want apples, a conflict is naturally occuring. Then it becomes a matter of possession/ownership of the apple tree. :)

I see where you're going, but I'm not convinced.

Democracy implies plural, in my mind. That is, more than one person. The will of the people, plural. Unless all those people agree on all points, your argument doesn't hold water - and if they do agree on all points, I'd argue that that's not in fact a democracy at all. In fact, it's pretty much a totalitarian ideal; the autocratic existence of a society with no dissenting bodies.

I think a democracy can only exist where there's some form of conflict; it is by its very nature a means of compromise, rather than an entity which may independently exist.

However... I'd also contend that an actual democracy is impossible. In the UK, we have an oligarchy elected by the people. In the US, they don't even have that - they've got an elected body which then elects an oligarchy. A system where a body of people is elected by the populace and is then free to do whatever it likes for 4 years is not, to my mind, a government of the people. And, for the record, I think the 2nd Amendment had its metaphoric teeth removed about the time the US Government formed an set of armed forces large enough to overthrow the majority of the rest of the world, let alone "a well regulated militia" swaggering around with shotguns and bibles :)

Kev

Democracy by it's very nature is conflict.

Evan, you might not be a large fan of representative democracy but that it is, calling it an oligarchy is an insult to all the good oligarchies in the world, like the US government ;) Hell with a bit of luck the lib dems will condemn the tories to the garbage bin of history come next year, one can only hope(and vote).

There are other options, how well they scale and what they requirements they have is another question. Switzerland is small but we have a referendum on every major bill - as close as you can get to participatory democracy and some would say as close as you can get to athenian democracy as you can get in the modern world.

I understand your point, but that is a survival (evolutionary) issue, not an ideological one.

I understand your point. Practiceable democracy (demos being Greek for people) requires people for its very existence, and therefore cannot stand alone. But the philosophy of democracy is nevertheless not inextricable from conflict. The foundation of Hobbes' argument is that man is perpetually at war - that conflicting ideologies exist whatever form the government (or governance) takes. With no structure there is fighting, therefore it is necessary for a 'common power' to keep them pacified. Marx only built on this by noting who had that power. A state of hegemony which is not enforced, at least for the purpose of this argument, is possible. Unlikely maybe, but certainly possible. If that is the case, democracy is not rooted in conflict, but agreement. Two very different things.

but are they not sides of the same coin?

I'd rather see the Lib Dems condemn Labour to the bin... but it's unlikely to happen. At least the Tories have the decency to run under their own banner, unlike Labour who've decided to be the Tories (only worse) and run under the banner of Labour.

A tory/lib dem parliament would suit me just fine - right-of-centre capitalism tories, tempered by the socially responsible Lib Dems. I'm damned if I can think of a single thing I like about Labour...

But alas, I'm just one man and have just one vote, and that's not a lot compared to the staunch Labour voter who just won't accept that Neil Kinnock isn't pulling the strings of the party anymore.

Ah well.

At least a lib dem opposition would force the government to do something, innovative policies in opposition might force them to take a position more advanced than 'well we don't suck as much as the tories, even if we do lie and deepthroat bush'.

Not when we're talking about roots. To be rooted in conflict is to agree on a perpetual state of war. To originate from consensus is to assume all conflict can be and will be resolved - a true democracy.

evan where in england are you from? I agree that Labor-y has lost its way but anythings got to be better than the tories. A PR government would address all these concerns.