Anarchism and Democratic Principles of Majority Rule and Minority Rights

[LeoCasey at aol.com]

The issue here is not simply one of differences in anarchist and socialist 
conceptions of politics, but of core questions in democratic thought and 
practice. Important currents in democratic theory have recognized the 
possibility of a 'tyranny of the majority,' in which the majority decides to 
deny the rights of a minority; in opposition to such notions, more 
progressive currents of democratic theory insist upon defining a democratic 
polity in terms of the combination of majority rule and minority rights. That 
is why the classic notion of civil disobedience under a democratic government 
asserts both the right to disobey laws which one believes violates 
fundamental human rights and the responsibility to accept whatever penalties 
may come from the judicial system as a result of breaking the law. The 
challenge is then not the authority of the majority to rule, per se, but to 
the enactment of specific laws which violate minority rights. This was the 
philosophy behind the use of mass, non-violent civil disobedience during the 
civil rights and anti-war movements.

It seems to me that, as a body of political philosophy, anarchism does not 
recognize the democratic principle that the majority has a right to govern. 
It accepts liberal principles of individual rights, and thus, minority 
rights, but not the right of the majority to make laws. Anarchism is 
liberalism taken to the extremis, denying democratic principles in a way that 
points out how liberal democracy embodies a tension between liberalism's 
focus on individual rights and democracy's focuses on equality.

<< In reality most anarchists are not against majority votes, we are against 
the idea that in all circumstances the minority are required to obey the 
majority.  This might sound controversal but on issues like racism and 
abortion rights many on the left would agree with this.  My own introduction 
to activism was partly through defying the strongly anti-abortion majority of 
the Irish population and supplying 'abortion information' to Irish women. [A 
relevant example because it involved disobeying the majority not merely 
arguing for it to be changed).  And
in the next months I'm part of a group bringing a ship here that will be 
equipped to carry out abortions.  See 
http://struggle.ws/ws/2001/64/abortion.html >>

Leo Casey
United Federation of Teachers
260 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)

Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never has, and it never will.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who 
want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and 
lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
-- Frederick Douglass --

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