There are several works in which excellent and detailed accounts of the history of Athenian democracy are given. See Danielle Allen's "Political Philosophy: The Origins," in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy, ed. George Klosko (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 75-95. See also Robin Osborne's Athens and Athenian Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). See also John Thorley's Athenian Democracy (New York: Routledge, 1996).
Shaun Bowler, Todd Donavan, and Jeffrey Karp have written an interesting article covering this subject entitled "Popular Attitudes Towards Direct Democracy," which was prepared for the American Political Science Association Meeting in 2003.
James Madison, "Federalist #10," in the Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: New American Library, 1961), 81.
Alexander Hamilton, "Speech in the New York Ratifying Convention on Representation," in Alexander Hamilton: Writings, ed. Joanne Freeman (New York: Library of America, 2001), 489.
John Witherspoon, Lectures in Moral Philosophy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1912), 93.
For a general overview of Joseph Schumpeter's elitist theory of democracy see his work Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1942; 1976); particularly chaps. 20-22.
See Anthony Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper, 1957); see also Robert Dahl's A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
In principle, deliberative democratic theorists reject that notion that politics ought to be based on competition, but rather, on public reason. See Iris Young's Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); see also Jurgen Habermas' "Popular Sovereignty as Procedure" in James Bohman and William Rehg's Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997); see also
A concise article that explores in detail issues related to preference transformation is Claudia Landwehr's "Rational Choice, Deliberative Democracy, and Preference Transformation," Studies in Social and Political Thought, 11: 40-68.
This, I hope, is self explanatory.
John Elster, "The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory," in James Bohman and William Rehg's Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 10.
Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996).
Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (New York, NY. : Oxford University Press, 2000).
John Dryzek, Democracy in Capitalist Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
James Bohman, Public Deliberation (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996), p. 16.
James Bohman, Public Deliberation, p. 17.
James Bohman, Public Deliberation, p. 198
James Bohman, Public Deliberation, p. 199-200.
James Bohman, Public Deliberation, p. 201.
James Bohman, Public Deliberation, p. 201.
James Bohman, Public Deliberation, p. 201.
James Bohman, Public Deliberation, Italics mine. p. 202.
James Bohman, Public Deliberation, p. 203
Leamon L. Bazil
4143 W. Kossuth
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[email protected]
African American Studies
Black Radical Democracy
In this paper I will demonstrate how to best conceptualize democracy and explain how black social critics can utilize it as a practical guide for emancipative action. In the first section, I briefly illustrate how democracy is typically construed by the average American, and, ipso facto, by the average African-American: as an aggregative voting procedure that tabulates the fixed interests of private persons. My aim here will be to point out that although the voting process is an important mode of self-governance, it does not reflect the essence of democracy. African American politicians and pundits are right in condemning efforts to block the black vote and in advocating fairness in electoral politics, but as history shows, they have a much more substantive record of democratic achievement from which to draw inspiration. African-Americans should be channeling the political energy of their prior democratic successes and reshaping it so as to manage contemporary black problems.
In the second section I spend a considerable amount of time fleshing out the nuances of a theoretical model of democracy which is typically offered as an alternative to the aggregative or market based kind: deliberative democracy. Deliberative democratic theory has evolved over the past few decades. It has moved from a classical model that emphasized adherence to regulative principles and to the achievement of unitary consensus towards revised models that loosen restrictions on procedural rules and which allow for pluralistic conceptions of the common good. The most distinguishing feature, though, of deliberative democratic theories is that they highlight the positive features of public reason for decision making. In the final section I argue that although the ideal of deliberative democracy is promising, it is still wanting. To the extent it neglects the normative elements of agonistic politics, the deliberative model doesn't paint an accurate portrait of democracy either.
A. Market Democracy
Democracy is routinely construed as a form of government in which persons rule themselves through voting mechanisms, either directly or by proxy. When a society's institutions are arranged in such a way that its citizens primarily vote directly, it is said to be a direct democracy. When a society is arranged such that its citizens govern themselves indirectly it is said to be a representative democracy. Because this definition/construal of democracy is theoretical it can be used as a means by which to identify and categorize both preexisting and standing democracies, which are either more or less direct or more or less representative. It can be argued, for instance, that Athenian democracy under the leadership of Pericles was far more direct in kind than that under the leadership of Solon. Although Solon's reforms are known to have paved the way for Athenian democracy, they don't quite measure up to populist polices later instituted by Pericles. At the other end of the temporal spectrum, it can be argued that Norway's democracy is more representative than that of the United States', for there are far more viable and functioning political parties in the Norwegian system than there are in the United States, indicating that a far more diverse cross section of interests is actually being absorbed and represented there.
It is interesting to note that most ordinary persons who are accustomed to living in western democratic societies, particularly the United States, tend to think that having more democracy is favorable to having less. For this reason many Americans assume that direct democracy is better than representative democracy and several studies suggest that this attitude may be linked to citizens overall distrust of elected officials and representative institutions. But many well-noted political theorists and statesmen have argued against this disposition. In fact, several of the framers of the United States constitution and signatories of the Declaration of Independence have warned against the dangers associated with direct democracy, or as it is often construed, populism. In Federalist Paper No. 10, James Madison vehemently argued against direct democracy on the grounds that "such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." Alexander Hamilton complained, during a speech urging the ratification of the United States constitution, "the ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity." John Witherspoon, a signatory of the Declaration of independence, is reputed to have said, "Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage."
Joseph Schumpeter, the famous Austrian American economist, expressed a more recent warning against direct democracy and populism in the middle of 20th century. Using empirical data developed in political sociology, Schumpeter suggested that ordinary citizens in modern democracies are too guileless to be charged with the responsibility of making complex political decisions. Furthermore, he argued that the average citizen is uninterested in political life to begin with, and when he is not, he is prone to exploitation and manipulation. In the best-case scenario, ordinary citizens hand over the reins of government to an elite group of statesmen, limiting the scope of citizens' political involvement to electoral politics.
Social choice theorists, such as Robert Dahl and Anthony Downs, whom model the political process after an idealized conception of the economic process, have issued a more recent repudiation of direct democracy or populism. Under their schema, the ideal political process is a competitive process in which individual citizens each seek to maximize their own utility and actualize their interests through the logic of strategic decision. Generally then, such theorists reject populism, especially as it pretends to be directed towards securing the common or public good. Furthermore, they contend that active citizenship has no intrinsic value, and typically tend to characterize citizens as consumer-like voters rather than as actively engaged citizens.
Before outlining any shortcomings associated with the above mentioned anti-populist viewpoints, I would like to take some time to draw attention to the fact that, ironically, today's black politicians and social critics, even those who were participants in the civil rights movement, tend to characterize democracy as social choice theorists do: as consumer-like voting. Blacks have become so preoccupied with voting and with electoral politics that they have neglected to take stock of their current political reality. Certainly, voter ID laws, voter protection proposals, the shortening of early voting periods, unfair redistricting, and ominous billboards that intimidate black voters with jail time are all unjust forms of voter suppression and should be condemned. But, voting has not, nor will it ever, stop the growth of the prison industrial complex. The same applies the problem of black hyper-ghettoization and the consistent disrespect that stems from racism. Overall, what I am asserting is that punching a hole in a ballot box or electing earnest and competent black politicians will not solve most of the problems currently facing the African-American community, at least not alone: white supremacy, black unemployment and underemployment, failing schools, black nihilism, etc.
The crucial downside, I think, of this unreflective acceptance of the economic characterization of democracy for African Americans is that it prevents black leaders ordinary and black citizens from recognizing that the extra-constitutional measures and insurrectionist actions of the participants of the civil rights movement and abolitionist movement, was, in fact, democracy. Instead of encouraging an emerging black public to act democratically in order to improve its condition, black politicians and social critics have fooled themselves and members of the black community into thinking that voting is democracy and that voting is the principle means by which to practice self-governance. This is unfortunate. The result is that no more action and no more insurgency is expected or required from the members of the black community, because the members of the civil rights movement are perceived as having done all of the important work for us. Those men, and those women, and those children sacrificed and faced hostile sanctions, so that we don't have to. By imagining voting to be the principal means by which to practice self-rule, the black public has lost the fervor-the very soul-of the political. For a lack of better terms, we have adopted, literally, a Post -Soul politics, a politics with no soul at all.
It is clear that the new black social critic is confronted with a significant problem. How can he convince a diverse horde of black persons that their conception of democracy is significantly flawed? How can he convey to the black public that the civil rights movement, if it is perceived chiefly as struggle for suffrage and desegregation, was an exercise in futility? The new black social critic can begin to manage this crisis in three stages. First, as I have already suggested, he must disclose the shortcomings of a market-based theory of democracy. Second, he must offer up an alternative. I suggest that the new black social critic explain how a deliberative or participative model of democracy is a viable alternative to the market model. Third, he must warn the black public that it should not rest comfortably with the promotion of communicative rationality, as deliberation is but a phase or mode of democracy. If we use history as a guide, we will find that in most instances insurgent acts, which are aesthetic and expressive in nature, are the catalysts, no less than public reasons, for the creation of new meanings and are what gets deliberation going again when people refuse to listen.
Goal One: The Shortcomings of an Economic Theory of Democracy
So far we have taken a brief look at the historical origins of the market-based theory of democracy. This approach to democracy, I have suggested, can be linked to an anti-populist sentiment that is grounded upon certain perceived dangers associated with direct democracy: tyranny, manipulation, and capriciousness. For this reason several of America's founding fathers were leery of direct democracy and populism, as are several social realists and social choice theorists, but for slightly different reasons. Social realists like Schumpeter reject direct democracy on the grounds of citizen incompetence, and advocate for the establishment of a political elite. Social choice theorists, instead of rejecting the competence of citizens, reject the idea of active political participation directed towards the public or common good. They conceptualize the ideal citizen as a consumer, a semi-active political person who votes according to the logic of strategic decision, which creates political efficiency and expediency.
There are, however, several shortcomings related to this economic characterization of democracy. The list provided bellow is neither lengthy nor exhaustive, but is merely representative of a larger and more comprehensive list of significant deficiencies with the market model of democracy. First, the economic characterization of democracy assumes that individual citizens and groups have conflicting interests and that they are in competition with one another over public goods and services, but politics need not be characterized as or modeled after a competitive process; second, the economic characterization of democracy assumes that individual citizen's preferences and interests are given and fixed, but all persons views are subject to change or review over the course of time; third, the economic characterization of democracy assumes that uncoordinated private choices lead to outcomes that are favorable to coordinated outcomes, however, as the prisoner dilemma illustrates, this is not always the case. Finally, the most compelling case for rejecting the economic model of democracy comes from a quote provided by John Elster in an article entitled "The Market and the Forum," where he states:
We can now state the objection to the political view underlying social choice theory. It is, basically, that it embodies a confusion between the kind of behavior that is appropriate in the marketplace and that which is appropriate in the forum. The notion of consumer sovereignty is acceptable because, and to the extent that, the consumer chooses between courses of action that differ only in the way that they affect him. In political choice situations, however, the citizen is asked to express his preference over states that also differ in the way in which they affect other people.
Essentially, the ability to differentiate between public and private matters ought to lead to a distinction of the kinds of behavioral norms that are most appropriate to private economic and to political life. If you decide to buy a Spice Girls over an Oscar Peterson compact disc, it is an insignificant matter. As a subject of taste, I would consider it an error. Buy what you wish. But if you prefer driving drunk to driving sober, it is matter of public and not merely private concern. That is to say, when the things that you do affect or have the potential to affect others, the interest is public.
B. Deliberative Democracy
Goal Two: An Alternative to the Economic Theory of Democracy
The fact that private behavioral norms and concerns are not appropriate in the context of public matters raises the question: what kinds of norms are appropriate in the forum, in contradistinction to those appropriate in the marketplace? We can begin to explore some substantial answers to this question by examining deliberative democratic theory. Although the main feature of deliberative democracy is the exploration of how deliberation enhances public reason and contributes to legitimate law making, different deliberative democratic theorists differ in the way that they perceive problems unique to deliberation and how to manage them. Some deliberative democratic theorists, such Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, think that moral disagreement among actors in democratic processes threaten the integrity of the outcome of those processes, hence they think that regulative principles should guide deliberation in the presence of moral disagreement. For Iris Young, the exclusion of marginalized and oppressed groups is the crisis confronting the integrity of the democratic process; hence inclusion is offered as the paramount regulatory ideal. According to John Dryzek, the pervasiveness of instrumental rationality is what constricts the ebb and flow of the democratic process, thus the search for promising pockets or areas where discursive rationality can supplant instrumental rationality is the goal. Of course numerous other deliberative democratic theorists offer varying conceptions of deliberative democratic principles and problems that they intend to rectify with those conceptions, but for the sake of brevity I will focus only on one that develops a robust notion of social criticism, which ought to be of considerable concern for African Americans.
IV: Disclosure and Its Relevance to Black Social Criticism
In his work, Public Deliberation, James Bohman gives an account of social criticism that is intricately connected to his theory of deliberative democracy. The result is that he characterizes social criticism mostly as a component of deliberation or as an element of the dialogical exchange of reasons. My response is that although social criticism can be construed as an extension of communicative rationality, it is far more than that, social criticism is multifaceted action aimed against ineffective or undesirable social policy or unjust and unfair power relations and structures. Dialogue is an important phase in social criticism, but as history shows, talk alone has rarely been a major catalyst for social change or the most effective means of breaking up social injustice. In what follows I hope to show that heroic insurgency, no less than dialogue, is often a vital and constitutive element of social criticism.
A. The Problem
At the outset Bohman makes it clear that his theory of deliberative democracy is different from most others. He purposefully develops a notion of dialogue aimed at sidestepping the inadequacies of what is considered to be the cornerstone of classical deliberative democratic theory: the ideal deliberative procedure. Philosophers offer up various accounts of the ideal deliberative procedure, but in general the norms and standards it promotes can be listed as follows: a). the requirement that all those affected by a decision be included in the decision making process; b). fundamental political equality such that all citizens have the ability to participate in the deliberative process; c). a free and open exchange of ideas and information, and d); fairness in being able to set the agenda of deliberation. When decisions are made in light of the norms enumerated by the ideal deliberative procedure, they tend to be legitimate. At least that is how the argument goes among those who defend and promote it.
Bohman, however, points out that although the ideal deliberative procedure is "useful for the purpose of critically evaluating some deliberative processes and outcomes, such an approach is inherently counterfactual and theoretically inadequate, especially with regard to the descriptive task of showing how deliberation is possible and the practical task of showing when it is successful." So, rather than developing an account of democracy that makes use of the ideal deliberative procedure, Bohman develops a fine-grained account of deliberation, in which speakers are actually answerable and accountable to one another in their exchange of public reasons. The accountability and answerability inherent in speakers' give and take of public reasons is what grounds democratic legitimacy, as all the speakers involved in sincere dialogue of this sort can be confident that they have had the potential to affect the outcome of the deliberative process.
There are several advantages to Bohman's dialogical approach to public deliberation. On one hand, it encourages us to think of conditions required for deliberative democracy that cannot be guaranteed by institutional rules or procedures. For example, it deals squarely with factual constraints on deliberation such as differences in social circumstances and differences in basic public skills and abilities. On the other hand, and most importantly for the current discussion, Bohman's dialogical account of public deliberation enables us to see how democratic citizens must be able to reform or renew outdated institutions when they fail to produce agreements. Bohman presents this most pressing and important requirement for deliberative democracy in the following way.
Deliberative democracy needs not only to be stable but also to provide periodic renewal of its institutions when public reason begins to fail to produce agreements… deliberative democracies need to find ways to promote the emergence and formation of new publics, which in turn may change existing institutions and their rules or even produce new ones. Some of these publics may become deliberative majorities. This potential for innovation is necessarily decentralized and set in motion by the problems and needs of citizens in their everyday lives.
We see here that Bohman recognizes that democratic institutions can come to be arranged in such a way that they become rigid and ineffective, necessitating their renewal. Such renewal is to be achieved by citizens, but how? More precisely, what methods are justifiably available to citizens such that they can bring about the required changes? The answer Bohman gives is that citizens bring about democratic renewal by modifying the current framework in which deliberation takes place. "When deliberation fails, citizens may need to change their public reasons; but they also may need to change the situation itself, the framework in which they deliberate." This statement, though, is a bit opaque and needs elucidation. How do citizens change the situation itself? What exactly is it that they can do to most effectively change the framework in which deliberation takes place? Before attempting to answer these questions I would like to briefly define what a public is. After, doing so it should become easier to see what Bohman has in mind when he says that citizens must alter the framework of deliberation itself.
Traditionally a public is perceived as a physical forum in which private citizens can meet together and talk frankly and freely. In 18th century Europe these forums were salons and coffee houses, places where bourgeois intellectuals could communicate thoughts and ideas in earnest with members of the aristocracy. In 19th century America such fora were conventions organized by trade unions such as the America Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Such conventions were set up by trade unions for the purpose of countermanding the deleterious effects of concentrated capital. In the 20th century such spaces were churches and mosques where Negro leaders would meet to formulate plans to negate the damaging effects of Jim Crow and segregation. It is clear that the aforementioned examples characterize the public as a set of concrete locations with face-to-face deliberators, but a public can be regarded as much more than this.
Conceptually, the public can be thought of as an indefinite audience to which political speech is aimed. As Bohman argues, "The public sphere is not merely a collection of spaces or forums… but also a set of self-understandings by which a group of persons [come to] see themselves." In this sense the public is more than a geographical location or space where deliberation takes place; it is a theoretical abstraction-an unlimited body of self-referential and self-reflective citizens ready to discuss a variety of issues ranging from art, politics, and, to no strange surprise, its own self. The public defines itself and its interests, not solely in terms of private or individual self-interests, but also in terms of "common" and "general" interests. A public assesses and evaluates itself through open and critical dialogue, in order to measure its own character and virtue. According to Bohman, it is this self-referential and self-reflective quality of the public that makes it unique and enables it to be a fountainhead for democratic renewal.
One crucial aspect of the public is its essential amorphousness. The public, if it is working well, is not a static or monolithic body, but a decentralized, dynamic, and open-ended self-referential process by which public opinions and beliefs can constantly be scrutinized and tested; accepted or rejected. Deliberative democracies that are working well have citizens that embrace this critical and self-referential quality of public discourse and dialogue. However, in certain instances, democracies can become affected by community wide biases and prejudices, which restrict and limit critical self-reference and serious self-reflection. In such instances public communication becomes stale and breaks down, rendering public institutions impotent in terms of their problem solving capacity. When this happens, "a new public must emerge to create new institutions and new opportunities for deliberation."
It should come as no surprise that deliberation in familiar settings produces familiar outcomes. As Bohman puts it, "Deliberation within institutions usually rearranges, rather than changes, the set of feasible and available alternatives." The production of novel public reasons is not impossible within extant deliberative institutions, but is highly unlikely. So ultimately, when democratic renewal takes place, it is usually initiated outside of standard political institutions and processes. Newly formed publics come along and initiate institutional regeneration by indirectly influencing extant institutions. These new publics renew institutions in a number of important respects: a.) in their concerns, b.) in their ongoing interpretation of rules and procedures, and c.) in their methods of problem solving. It is in this way that new publics change the context and framework of deliberation itself.
But democratic renewal is not always a smooth and easy process. Extant institutions, which are representative of the needs and demands of an older public, can block the input of emerging publics, which aim to alter their structure. Certainly, extant institutions must be somewhat conservative and steadfast in their organizational structure so as to maintain stability and integrity, but when they are too intransigent and fail to change along with the changing needs of large numbers of the citizenry, they become obsolete and illegitimate. According to Bohman, what is necessary then is the discovery of
[A] process by which democratic institutions can remain flexible and open to change, short of constant revolutionary activity. This interchange between new publics and stable institutions takes two main forms: the speech of social critics in the public sphere and the emergence of social movements.
At this point we are now in a position to answer the question posed at the beginning of this section: What exactly is it that citizens can do to most effectively change the framework in which deliberation takes place? The simple answer is that when deliberation in normal channels dries up, social critics and social movements must emerge and "disclose new social worlds and new forms of interaction. Innovation begins when a public forms around such critical discourse and successfully frames public debate in such a way that it may reshape democratic institutions." In other words, emerging publics reshape outmoded institutions from the outside by successfully framing issues in new and relevant ways. Through a disclosive dialogical process, new publics change such institutions concerns, procedural interpretations, and methods of problem solving. Ultimately, I argue that Bohman's position is only partially correct, because where Bohman thinks that the social critic restores social reflexivity I want to suggest that he (or she) actually forces it.
B. The General Role of the Social Critic: Restoring or Generating Reflexivity?
Generally speaking, social critics are like everyone else in the public sphere, they grapple with issues relevant in their day and they seek to influence public opinion. But they are different than most citizens in their goals. The ideal social critic seeks to influence public opinion, not for the sake of advancing his own private interests, unless those interests are generalizable, but for the sake of securing and promoting human emancipation and the public good. Negatively, the social critic highlights sources of unfreedom by utilizing an interdisciplinary approach that explains their social, cultural, and psychological dimensions and sources. Here the model of the critic combines philosophy and social science in order to sniff out the causes of human subjugation.
On the positive side, the social critic increases freedom through normative and practical prescription. He utilizes ethical, political, and philosophical norms in order to promote ideals that undergird democratic theory and practice. In the context of our current conversation, though, when deliberative communication runs dry or when there is deep democratic disagreement, exemplary social critics are called upon to open up substantive dialogue, to develop new meanings and understandings, to mobilize new social movements, and to change outdated or unjust institutions and social practices. The goals of the social critic in such situations are uncontroversial and well defined. I argue, however, that the best means by which to accomplish these goals are not so clear-cut and are not so well defined.
1. Restoring Reflexivity?
Goal Three: Illustrating Why Agonism Matters
According to Bohman, the social critic can best achieve the aforementioned results "through speech, by persuading and convincing others." Under his model, the social critic is encouraged to utilize dialogue and to use critical reason in order to bring about a renewed sense of public self-reflection and transformation. He must demonstrate to biased groups that their current reasons are not really reflective of public reasons. If this does not work, he can initiate meta-communication to disclose or uncover their biases. Last but not least, if this does not result in the desired effect, he is permitted to use rhetoric as a means to jar the public back into a state of self-reflection.
It is clear, then, that under Bohman's model of democratic renewal the most important feature of social criticism is dialogue, for under it the social critic is encouraged to utilize jarring and agonistic acts of speech as a means for restoring the essentially self-reflective and self-referential character of public reasoning. Bohman identifies this feature of his theory as a strong point and as a reason for it justification, but I think that this feature is his theory's Achilles heel, for there are several presuppositions that must ring true if this model of social criticism is to carry any significant weight or can be utilized as a practical model for bringing about societal renewal, especially for dominated and oppressed groups. First, he must show that the public sphere is essentially self-reflective and truth oriented. Second, he must illustrate that community wide biases can be neutralized through dialogue and reflection. Third, he must demonstrate that the success of social movements can historically be attributed to dialogue and reason giving. If any of these presuppositions about the public cannot be found to ring true, then Bohman's theory of democratic renewal and social criticism begins to lose traction and becomes less desirable as a means by which to procure human emancipation and freedom. What follows, then, is a brief explanation of each presupposition and a description of why each one is erroneous. Afterwards, I argue that if Bohman's' theory of communicative social criticism is to be salvaged; it must be conceptualized as an important explanatory and justificatory phase of heroic insurrection, not the centerpiece of social criticism itself. Thus there is no reason to omit anything from the theory, but to merely add critical action into the mix.
First, Bohman's theory of social criticism presupposes that the public is essentially self-reflective, truth oriented, and fundamentally abhors self-deception and bias. In my view, the above may be ideals to which the public must strive, but it is far from clear that this is how the public normally behaves and operates. It can be argued that normally the public is splintered into interest groups, each possessing their own private interest in attaining, preserving, and/or deflecting power. The problem here is that Bohman, along with many other deliberative democratic theorists, takes the ideal of a public and characterizes it as a normal state of affairs; in so doing he brackets insurrectionist action and civil disobedience out of the critical and democratic mix.
Under Bohman's dialogical scheme, social critics and emerging publics are required to kill a proverbial Goliath without a slingshot; they are required to walk into a political battle without sword or buckler. The ideal of a self-referential and self-reflexive public is just that, an ideal. It is an attractive ideal, but it is not a political reality, so it should not be characterized as a normal state toward which the social critic is urging a prompt and pleasant return. Instead of returning the public to a self-reflective state, the critic, ex ante, is often the catalyst or generator of reflection. Without him there is no authentic reflection. Thinking, being, and doing tend to become canalized without the emergence of the radically nettlesome and irritating behavior and reasoning offered by social critics.
Another presupposition is that interpretive assumptions and community wide biases can be neutralized through dialogue and reflection. However, a case can be made that community wide biases and interpretive assumptions are often made worse by dialogue and reflection, especially incomplete dialogue and reflection. Furthermore, which I will explain in greater detail later, it can be argued that biases are themselves a species of habits, which can only be altered by a subsequent alteration of objective conditions and social circumstances.
Lastly, another assumption is that the success of social movements can be primarily attributed to the effective use of dialogue and reason giving. But this is only half of the truth. Most successful social movements were centered on speech and action, but mostly on action. The unions of the labor movement used strikes and the destruction of property as a means to get blocked communication going again. Members of the gay and lesbian movement brought about social transformation through the act of coming out of the closet and by being themselves exuberantly when others said that they were aberrations. The civil rights movement relied upon rhetoric, but would never have brought about a change in unjust social practices without civil disobedience. In the examples above, it appears that action was fundamental component of social criticism giving rise to reflective communication, the understanding of new meaning, and subsequent institutional change.
2. Generating Reflexivity?
I am not so sure that Bohman's account of social criticism is the most accurate way to characterize the social critic's plight or to describe the real world problems that many disenfranchised groups face. Bohman restricts the social critics function to revealing disclosure through speech acts. But it would be better to assert that it is the critic's function to communicate meaning and to be disclosive in a variety of different ways, not the least of which is through radical democratic action. In the previous section I have attempted to show that Bohman's theory of social criticism is hamstrung by the ideal of communicative rationality and its emphasis on dialogue. Under such a model, the recalcitrance of power is not given much emphasis, making polite and reasoned reform, not paradigmatic or radical political change the paramount aim.
What I mean to articulate here is that rather than view the critic as someone who is primarily interested in breaking up hegemonic power through insurgency and insurrection, Bohman perceives him as someone who is concerned primarily with uncovering and eliminating undesired bias through communicative disclosure. That is, for Bohman democratic renewal rests upon critical and disclosive speech acts, which he assumes any number of ordinary citizens can perform. To some extent I agree, but again, I would like to add insurrectionist action into the critical mix. I argue that democratic renewal is not simply grounded upon ordinary communicative acts of disclosure; but in fact, as history illustrates, it is often a herculean undertaking, requiring ordinary persons to become heroic or soulful (full of radical political spirit). In many cases democratic renewal requires the members of social movements and social critics to perform risky and dangerous actions, leaving them open to both formal and extra-constitutional sanctions. Such action tends to generate rather than restore reflexivity because it is an aesthetic and expressive response to political power and not merely communicative biases.
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