Democracy Matters

by Cornel West

  The age of Europe—begun in 1492 with the European discovery of the Americas and the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims from Spain—ended in 1945 with the Nazi effort to annihilate all Jews and with the American empire at the center of the world-historical stage. With the advent of the guns of August in 1914, sounding the opening shots of World War I, race and empire were the invisible perimeters of American democracy—hardly seen by most whites yet harshly lived by most peoples of color. The war not only shattered European myths of progress and illusions of security, but also disclosed the brutal realities and bestial desires of imperial Europe. As major European empires collapsed—such as the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Czarist Russian empires—seismic shifts took place across the globe. The British empire, first shaken by the South Afrikaner anti-imperialist victory at the turn of the century and hobbled by World War I, pulled back financially and militarily in Latin America and Asia. The French, Dutch, and Belgian empires adjusted accordingly. And the humiliated German empire turned inward for later dreams of world domination under the imperial xenophobe Hitler. American imperial banks and corporations quickly filled in for British ones as the world braced for round two in imperial Europe’s thirty-year war. As the British pound faltered and the gold standard collapsed, worldwide depression set in.

  The aspirations for social and economic advancement among the poor and nonwhite peoples of America were dealt a devastating blow with the onset of the Great Depression. If the business of America is business, as President Calvin Coolidge said, then the America of dreams was no more. In the language of the greatest American play, The Iceman Cometh, written in 1939 by the greatest American playwright, the disillusioned democrat Eugene O’Neill, America was a barren landscape of pipe dreams—a landscape littered with the debris of hubris, greed, and bigotry. O’Neill saw no way out—even Socratic questioning and prophetic witness were hopeless. Some looked to the new Soviet empire for inspiration, but its brief alliance with Hitler and Stalinist atrocities dampened their hopes. Needless to say, imperial Europe entered a long, deep tunnel with only the courageous sheer will of imperial Winston Churchill standing between Nazi domination and any democratic possibility in Europe. Fascism—especially the vicious democratic despotism of Hitler (elected by the German people)—cast its ugly shadows over much of imperial Europe, including his fascist allies in Italy (Mussolini) and Spain (Franco). With aggressive militaristic autocrats in Japan seizing Asian lands and with all of Africa under European empires (including the Italian fascists’ subjugation of Ethiopia for a short time), only the American and Soviet empires seemed capable of combating the Nazi conquest of the world. And that is precisely what the historical alliance of the American and Soviet empires did together—they defeated the fascist forces on the globe at a cost of fifty million dead, including six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps along with Gypsies, Communists, gays, and lesbians. The indescribable courage of the U.S. Jim Crow armed forces (365,000 dead) and the incredible gallantry of the Soviet army (twenty million Russian dead) gave the world another chance for democracy matters.

  A small former British outpost had become the greatest imperial power in the world—with only a devastated Soviet empire as competition. Yet race still haunted the American empire, which was especially ironic given its heroic victory over a racist German regime in Europe. With the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to symbolize the defeat of imperial Japanese aims of domination, imperial America was the last behemoth standing after the nihilistic frenzy of a world drunk with power and greed subsided.

  Yet, as is often the case in our sad human comedy, the peace did not last long, and in the cold war between the American and Soviet empires that immediately heated up in Turkey, Greece, Germany, and Korea, the major ideological weapon the Soviet empire could use against the democratic claims of the American empire was its racist treatment of black Americans and the refusal of the United States to support freedom movements in colonized Africa, Asia, and poverty-ridden Latin America. Then, as now, race and empire loomed large in America’s credibility in arguing about democracy matters on the global stage. No one in his right mind could deny the vicious forms of repression and regimentation in the Soviet empire—as well as Mao’s China—yet innocence and denial of race and empire in America vastly weakened a case that could have been stronger if candor had prevailed.

  Just as World War II lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression, the cold war created a military-industrial complex in the United States that produced a vast concentration of military might—unprecedented in human history. Such might tends to intoxicate most, if not all, high-level public officials. To have such power at one’s command is itself nearly inhumane, and to remain anchored in one’s integrity and humility is nearly impossible. We should not be surprised when we get beneath the empty clichés and routine shibboleths so often uttered by American officials to discover that the obsession with power and might is so prevalent. Only the accountability of an informed citizenry and the intractability of a just rule of law can thwart the nihilism of imperial elites—here or anywhere else.

  This difficult lesson of the strength of the forces of nihilism within our democracy was taught most graphically by the black freedom movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. He understood it would take tremendous Socratic questioning, prophetic witness, and tragicomic hope to break the back of American apartheid. Yet he also realized it would take even more vision and courage to dismantle the imperial dimensions of the American democratic experiment and to provide genuine equality of opportunity to all. When he said that bombs dropped on Vietnam also landed in American ghettos—and in white Appalachia, on yellow street corners, in red lands, brown barrios, or black hoods—he was highlighting the close link between empire, class, and race; between imperial wars, wealth inequality, and racist practices. He died because his vision and courage were simply too much for the nihilists to stand—especially the FBI. His life—the intersection of love and democracy—constituted the most powerful threat to the mendacity and hypocrisy of the nihilists drunk with power, driven by greed, or blind to a more democratic future.

  King provided Americans with our last great call to conscience about the intertwined evils of race and empire, calling on us to choose between democracy and empire, between democracy and white supremacy, between democracy and corporate plutocracy. (We would add between democracy and patriarchy, homophobia, and ecological abuse.) Since his death, we’ve witnessed a conservative realignment of the citizenry principally owing to racially coded appeals (crime, busing, welfare, affirmative action). We have seen the southernization of American politics and the de facto racial segregation of American schools, churches, and neighborhoods. King’s movement did slay (legal) Jim Crow, yet (actual) Jim Crow Jr. is alive and well. And on the global front, American imperialism rules—with invasions of Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq (though not troubling with U.S.-friendly dictators in Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or China). The overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s ugly totalitarian regime was desirable, yet we supported him for many years and have yet to fulfill any substantive promise of Iraq’s democratization. In this way, our imperial invasion fits a pattern of U.S. interests, not democratic principle.

  Americans must realize that America truly has become an empire—a military giant, a financial haven, a political and cultural colossus in the world. The U.S. military budget accounts for over 40 percent of the world’s total military spending. It is six times the size of the military spending of the number two nation (Russia) and more than that of the next twenty-three nations combined. America is the greatest nuclear power (nine thousand nuclear warheads) and has over 650 military facilities with 1.45 million soldiers in 132 countries (on every continent except Antarctica). And its firepower—missiles, ships, smart bombs, robotic weapons, airplanes, and tanks—is unrivaled in history, past and present. In finance, the U.S. dollar is the global reserve currency—with the stocks on Wall Street constituting two-thirds of th
e value of the world’s stock markets. The United States is the world’s biggest debtor nation because foreign investors hold their savings and reserves in dollars for security. American trade and budget deficits as well as American consumer debts are sustained by this foreign investment.

  The most powerful international financial institutions—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Multilateral Development Banks—are U.S.-dominated. Yet only 0.2 percent of the total gross national product of the United States goes to foreign aid—more than 50 percent of it to Israel and Egypt. The poorest nations, especially in Africa, receive hardly a drop in the bucket. In global politics, the largely U.S.-financed United Nations is disproportionately influenced by U.S. interests—with its symbolic veto power in the Security Council (along with Russia, China, Britain, and France). And the clever deals, outright bribery, or raw bullying of some of the other 190 nations in the world reflect U.S. political prowess. On the cultural front, the seductive presence of McDonald’s, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, hip-hop, and Hollywood around the world is astounding.

  The fundamental question of any serious engagement of democracy matters in the age of the American empire is how to make the world safe for the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and his secular democratic allies of all colors. If we want to do a better job of promoting democracy around the world, solving difficult problems at the heart of the Middle East, and facing the other challenges to democracy that will inevitably present themselves, then we will need to reckon finally with the depth of racism and imperialism we have inflicted not only on so many of our own people but on the peoples of color around the world as well.

  To talk about race and empire in America is to talk about how one musters the courage to think, care, and fight for democracy matters in the face of a monumental eclipse of hope, an unprecedented collapse of meaning, and a flagrant disregard for the viewpoints and aspirations of others. Niggerization in America has always been the test case for examining the nihilistic threats in America. Yet we rarely view niggerization as constitutive of America—just as we rarely think nihilism is integral to America. For so long niggerization has been viewed as marginal and optimism central to America. But in our time, when we push race to the margins we imperil all of us, not just peoples of color. If we are to grapple with the contemporary forces of evangelical, paternalistic, and sentimental nihilism prevailing in the country today, we must draw on the deep well of insight into the scars of our racism and imperialism to be found in the democratic tradition that has run alongside those nihilistic forces. The voices and views of nihilistic imperialism may currently dominate our discourse, but they are not the authentic voice of American democracy.

  The major shortcoming of our contemporary nihilists—evangelical, paternalistic, and sentimental ones—is that they lack a substantive democratic vision grounded in a deep commitment to the ideals they profess to uphold. Evangelical nihilists like President Bush and Karl Rove give us a raw and robust imperial vision of America as a lone sheriff unilaterally policing a world more and more dependent on foreign oil, trade, and investment while obscene wealth inequality escalates at home. In short, to them genuine democracy matters little, plutocracy reigns, and empire rules. Paternalistic nihilists such as Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator John Kerry put forward a seductive yet weak technocratic vision of America as the economic engine of a global economy that uses its soft (nonmilitary) power to ensure its hegemony while wealth inequality stabilizes (or slightly declines) at home. On this view, democracy matters somewhat, corporate elites reign tempered by some liberal conscience, and empire speaks softly and carries a big stick. Namely, the paternalistic nihilists have all too willingly accepted the script put out by the evangelical nihilists of the American empire, so we, as a mass public, have not engaged in the deep questioning that might have followed 9/11. Ironically, the sentimental nihilists of the media, who ought to have encouraged this questioning, instead all too happily accepted the Bush administration’s script about WMDs and Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda, and relished the media frenzy of war, even as they failed to spotlight the truth about Bush’s tax cuts or put their lens on the environmental and social travesties being inflicted by the administration. They are becoming mere parasites on their evangelical and paternalistic nihilist hosts.

  The aim of this book is to put forward a strong democratic vision and critique, rooted in a deep democratic tradition forged on the nightside of the precious American democratic experiment—a tradition of Socratic examination, prophetic practice, and dark hope. This vision takes us far beyond those of the American nihilists. It is a Socratic-driven, prophetic-centered, tragicomic-tempered, blues-inflected, jazz-saturated vision that posits America as a confident yet humble democratic experiment that should shore up international law and multilateral institutions that preclude imperial arrangements and colonial invasions; that should also promote wealth-sharing and wealth-producing activities among rich and poor nations abroad; and that should facilitate the principled transfer of wealth from well-to-do to working and poor people by massive investments in health care, education, and employment, and the preservation of our environment. On this vision—filtered through the lens of race in America—democracy matters much, hardworking and poor citizens reign, and empire is dismantled so that all nations and peoples can breathe freely and aspire to democracy matters, if they have the courage and vision to do so.

  3

  THE DEEP DEMOCRATIC TRADITION IN AMERICA

  We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; on another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the concept of perpetual warfare…. But around and under and above it is another reality; like desert-water kept from the surface and the seed, like the old desert-answer needing its channels, the blessing of much work before it arrives to act and make flower. This history is the history of possibility…. All we can do is believe in the seed, living in that belief.

  —MURIEL RUKEYSER, The Life of Poetry (1949)

  If the first hope of the democrat is the hope of building in the zone of overlap between the conditions of practical progress and of individual emancipation, the second hope is that this work respond to the felt needs and aspirations of ordinary men and women. Democracy cannot go forward as the unrecognized gift of a cunning history to a reluctant nation.

  —ROBERTO MANGABEIRA UNGER, Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative (1998)

  To many, our democratic system seems so broken that they have simply lost faith that their participation could really matter. The politics of self-interest and catering to narrow special interests is so dominant that so many ask themselves, Why vote?

  This disaffection stems both from the all-too-true reality of the corruptions of our system and from a deeper psychic disillusionment and disappointment. The political discourse is so formulaic, so tailored into poll-driven, focus-group-approved slogans that don’t really say anything substantive or strike at the core of our lived experience; the lack of authenticity of discourse—and the underlying lack of gravitas, of penetrating insight and wisdom on the part of politicians—is numbing. But we must keep in mind that the disgust so many feel comes from a deep desire to hear more authentic expressions of insights about our lives and more genuine commitments to improving them. Many of us long for expressions of real concern both about the pain of our individual lives and about the common good—hence the power of Bill Clinton’s claim that he felt our pain—as opposed to the blatant catering to base interests and to narrow elite constituencies. We long for a politics that is not about winning a political game but about producing better lives.

  The reality of what we get is so far from this that the hope for the kind of authentic voice in our politics that we want to hear has come to seem almost ridiculously naive. And yet, it is the longing for such honest discourse that was surely behind the passion of the early support for Howard Dean. It was no accident that he so energized
younger adults in particular—they tend to be less beaten down by the disillusionments of the system. For this reason the angry anti-Bush rhetoric that Dean had to offer was for a while emotionally satisfying, but it was ultimately too limited. It lacked the substance of deeper insights and a positive democratic vision. Both the Republican “vision” and the Democratic “vision” are deeply problematic. Our national focus has become so dominated by narrow us-versus-them discourse that it has all but drowned out authentic debate over issues. Though many voters are mobilized by the increased polarization of our party politics, there is an underlying disgust about the preoccupation of our political leaders with partisan warfare.

  The uninspiring nature of our national political culture has only enhanced the seductiveness of the pursuit of pleasure and of diverting entertainments, and too many of us have turned inward to a disconnected, narrowly circumscribed family and social life. White suburbanites and middle-class blacks (and others) are preoccupied with the daily pursuit of the comfort of their material lives. In many cases they literally wall themselves off into comfortable communities, both physical and social, in which they can safely avert their eyes from the ugly realities that afflict so many of our people. Because they are able to buy the cars and take the vacations they want, they are all too willing to either disregard the political and social dysfunctions afflicting the country or accept facile explanations for them.

  The black community is increasingly divided, the upper and middle classes as against the feeble institutions of the inner cities. Too much of the black political leadership has become caught up in the mainstream political game and has been turning away from the deep commitment to a more profound advocacy for poor blacks. Meanwhile a generation of blacks who have suffered from the cataclysmic breakdown of the civic and social structure in the inner cities are consigned to lives of extreme alienation and empty pursuit of short-term gratifications.