David Hume was fascinated by ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few’. He found it surprising because ‘force is always on the side of the governed’ and concluded that government is founded on control of opinion, a principle that ‘extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular’.41 The claim that force is always on the side of the governed is questionable – certainly in our own time, given the amount of coercive power wielded by modern states – but Hume had a point. The control of public opinion is central to the exercise of power. Preserving domestic inequalities has always required a range of non-violent strategies. From the Pharaohs of Egypt to the Industrial Revolution, writes economist Yanis Varoufakis:
[T]he rulers’ command over the surplus and its uses was based on a combination of their capacity to make compliance seem individually inescapable (indeed, attractive), ingenious divide-and-rule tactics, moral enthusiasm for the maintenance of the status quo (especially among the underprivileged) and the promise of a pre-eminent role in some afterlife. Only very infrequently was it based on brute force.42
Where unrestrained force can be used, it lessens the need to control people’s beliefs and desires – if you can put a gun to someone’s head, it matters less what’s going on inside it. It is precisely in societies that combine great disparities of wealth with formal freedom that we should expect to find the most sophisticated forms of control.
As we will see, the threat faced by elites at the start of the twentieth century spawned a subversive solution, one that sought to reinterpret the very meaning of democracy. Modern democracies are founded on the idea that government is legitimised by a mandate – the consent of the governed – but from this principle emerge two conceptions of democracy, for there are two ways to gain the public’s consent: one is to modify the government; the other is to modify the public.
The power to choose
The creativity of our species has harnessed more forms of energy, in more complex ways, than any other creatures on the planet. From the domestication of animals and the advent of agriculture to the invention of the steam engine and the nuclear reactor, we have devised ingenious methods for harnessing the power of nature. Technology expanded the power of our species, but it has been techniques of social control that have determined how that power is used. Since the dawn of civilisation, through the shaping of identities and context, extremely skewed distributions of burdens and benefits have been perpetuated. Systems of rule have changed, methods of production have evolved, but coercive hierarchies and deep inequalities have persisted.
Centralised control has always been contested. Until recently, most rulers lacked the means to exert tight control across the vast territories they claimed to govern. Coercive power was dispersed among competing elites, and isolated communities enjoyed considerable political autonomy. There are many cases of communities escaping the reach of centralised power and experimenting with novel forms of self-government. Some were ultimately crushed by force in a relatively short amount of time, but others have survived for thousands of years. The active creation of spaces free from the constraints of centralised power continues today, from the Zapatistas in Mexico and tribes in isolated regions to urban occupations of public and private spaces and virtual communities online.
The many achievements of democratic experiments around the world demonstrate that coercive control is not the only way to coordinate action on a large scale. Mutually beneficial cooperation is the alternative – working together for a common end, one that benefits all those involved in its creation, in which unity of purpose is preserved by common interest, decisions are reached by dialogue rather than by manipulation or intimidation, and social cohesion is achieved not through carrot-and-stick incentives but by cultivating social values, including a respect for reason, evidence, fairness, equality and democracy. This is an ideal but it has practical value. Ideals orient us. They enable us to evaluate the ongoing experiment that is human society: an experiment in sharing this planet with each other, as families, communities and nations.
In every generation, it is incumbent on those who value freedom to identify its limits and – given our opportunities and talents – work to overcome them. Crucial to being effective in this struggle is an understanding of where power lies. This requires that we look beyond rhetoric and ideology, beyond words laid down in constitutions and legislation, and beyond myths of the market and formal political procedures. It requires that we peel away propaganda, peer behind rituals and lay bare the mechanisms of control that constrain us. It is through understanding control that we understand freedom.
Market democracies are founded on the so-called ‘freedom to choose’: between competing political parties, products, employers and news sources. But without a careful look at the nature of the choices we face and the way we arrive at our decisions, the experience of making choices can create the illusion that we possess more freedom than we really do. Focusing on the apparent options available to people in the voting booth and the market, while glossing over the way in which people’s options and identities are manufactured, conceals the profound imbalances of power at the heart of the system. It conceals entire professions, billions of dollars and increasingly complex technologies dedicated to predicting, understanding and controlling behaviour. It conceals the fact that most of the planet’s wealth remains in the hands of a tiny segment of humanity. It conceals a bitter struggle between two competing principles of power: ‘one dollar one vote’ versus ‘one person one vote’ – a struggle that continues to shape our world.
The following three chapters examine this wider context. They explore how our political and economic freedoms have been hollowed out while preserving the shell that is the ‘freedom to choose’. As we will see, the democratic revolution is far from over. Much of the freedom attributed to the institutional pillars of modern democracies – free elections, free markets and free media – is illusory, compatible as it is with extensive mechanisms of control.
5
Elections
Every few years, millions of people enter small booths set up in local buildings – perhaps a school or town hall. They close the curtain behind them, reach for a pencil and, within the confines of a printed square, mark a cross. The paper is folded and pushed through a narrow slot in a box. Four to five years later they get to repeat the process.
It is primarily the marking of a ballot during the holding of free elections that separates modern democracies from other political systems. Once inside that booth, voters can place their crosses beside any party they choose. It is an act widely hailed as the source of our most cherished political freedoms. And yet, when we place this choice in a larger context, important questions arise: how were the options on the ballot determined? How was the identity – the opinions, loyalties and beliefs – of each voter formed? And, if this liberty is so meaningful, why has voter turnout in most modern democracies been steadily declining?
Manufacturing consent
Democratic reform was not welcomed by the aristocracies and empires of old. The desire of those with power to advance their own interests did not die out as democracies were born. Initially, elites fought the expansion of voting rights, but the growing movement for democratic reform forced a different strategy. As concessions were made, novel methods of control were developed to meet the emerging threat that democracy posed to traditional power structures. These were methods of manipulation rather than coercion.
Technologies of mass communication enable millions of people to be reached with the stroke of a pen or a single broadcast. ‘With the emergence of the mass media as a connective tissue of modern life,’ observes American historian Stuart Ewen, technology was ‘changing the ways that people saw, experienced, and understood the material world and their place within it’.1 It heralded a revolution in communication and creativity, with huge potential to liberate and educate. But these advances also opened up the possibility of increasing control over the ideas, opinions and values encountered by the public.
Replacing Gustave Le Bon’s irrational crowd was, as Gabriel Tarde, a leading social scientist and close friend of Le Bon, put it, the