John Stuart Mill
Why is ‘the tyranny of the majority’ much more formidable and dangerous than the tyranny of political functionaries, according to John Stuart Mill?
According to John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), one of the most influential British political philosophers of hitherto, the tyranny of the majority was regarded as significantly more formidable and dangerous than the tyranny of political functionaries. This essay will argue that Mill attributed the relatively pernicious nature of the tyranny of the majority to three principle phenomena. The first is the omnipresent or all encompassing and thus inescapable nature of the tyranny of the majority. The second factor is the discouragement by such a tyranny of the cultivation of individuality, through the encouragement of ideological compliance. The third component is the inconspicuous or concealed nature of such a tyranny, which by virtue of being hidden, provided the tyrannised or the enslaved with no incentive to escape for there existed no awareness, acknowledgment or perception of the prevailed of such a tyranny by the tyrannised.
In On Liberty, 1859, perhaps John Stuart Mill’s most relevant work, Mill notes that there are two primary forces which seek to limit the liberties of individuals; governments and societies. The former being a political, single, central and concentrated force was easier to contend with. Such a force was identifiable, explicit and conspicuous, rendering it simpler to limit its sovereignty through the instruction right or checks and balances. The latter force, a product of democratisation — the dissemination and dispersion of authority amongst the people — was a decentralised, all-encompassing and inconspicuous force. Influenced by Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), a French aristocracy, political philosopher and historian, Mill notes that authority is necessary inevitable and essential and that within democratic societies, in which all judgements are equally valuable, worthy or important, authority resorts to residing in numbers. This begets a ‘tyranny of the majority’, in which the majority moulds, warps, and influences the political atmosphere. In Mill’s words then, a democracy is not ‘the power of the people over themselves’ but rather ‘the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority the people’.
Mill proclaims that the tyranny of the majority is much more formidable and dangerous thanthe tyranny of political functionaries for it ‘leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself’. As Georgios Varouxakis notes, when the power was centralised, one would evade it and then swear and sing against it, for it did not possess eyes and ears in all realms and kingdoms. However the majority was all-encompassing and all-pervasive, depriving the individual of recourse or respite from it. As mentioned, De Tocqueville had made Mill aware of the ‘majority’ , serving to balance, mitigate or alleviate Mill’s radicalism, a product of his indoctrination by the ‘philosophical radicals’, a group of English political radicals in the nineteenth century founded by Jeremy Bentham and his feather, James Mill. In fact Terence H. Qualter, regards Tocqueville as responsible for Mills ‘desire to provide proper safeguards against the abuse of majority power’ through the development of ‘what are now regarded as overfanciful schemes for the protection of minority rights through proportional representation’. Furthermore, Tocqueville serves to remind Mill that democracy was not the utopia conceptualised by the radicals, incentivising Mill to contend against the radical and naive notion that ‘the nation did not need to be protected against its own will.’
According to Mill another factor as to why the tyranny of the majority posed a greater threat compared to the tyranny of political functionaries was its the discouragement of cultivation of individuality ( the development of the individual), through the internalising of the thoughts, ideas and opinions and of the majority, due to fear of punishment, namely ostracisation or excommunication. Such a fear was intrinsic, possessing evolutionary roots as social expulsion meant the death of species, for homo sapiens are tribal organisms. According to Mill, the cultivation of individuality was crucial to the health of the individual and of society. Individuations vitality for the former is elucidated when Mill maintains that ‘he who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the apelike one of imitation.’ Moreover, its necessity for the latter is demonstrated when Mill contends that ‘eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigour, and moral courage it contained.’
The last reason as to why Mill regards the tyranny of the majority more formidable than the tyranny of political functionaries is because it is inconspicuous or concealed in nature. Such a tyranny by virtue of being decentralised is an elusive force, neither acknowledged nor perceived by its subjects. This ensures an inertia or passivity with regards to the subject's attitudes towards such a tyranny, namely, an absence of a desire to be free. In other words, the subject is not conscious that he is being tyrannised, and therefore never seeks to transcend his shackles. Nadia Urbinati argues that there is a notable difference despotism and tyranny ‘despite the fact that in both cases the ruler, leader, chief acts with complete discretion’. Whereas as tyranny is involuntary and hence often characterised by resistance or dissent, despotism is voluntary. Urbinati outlines that ‘Aristotle had pointed out, is accepted by its subjects.’ The tyranny of the majority can be regarded as despotism, for tyranny by the majority is too accepted in so far as it is not noticed. Such a Tyranny is characterised by the ignorant and blind compliance and consent of the individual. Thus because tyranny of the majority or ‘despotic decisions resemble the outcome of a blindly endorsed faith or dogmatic beliefs shared by subjects and their master by force of habit and inertia.’, it is dangerous. Such an endorsement ensures that the subject never seeks liberty.
Mancur Olson repudiates the idea or conception that a majority tyrannises a minority, for dominance within the political realm is not determined by quantity but rather by quality. In other words, influence within a kingdom is established not by the number of advocates of an idea but by the potency, strength and intensity of faith in such an idea. It is oft the case that committed, dedicated, intentional, focused or driven minorities make a substantial difference, not apathetic, unintentional, scattered, stagnant, inert and passive majorities. The passionate nature of the minority ensures the assertion of their interests, consequently facilitating its dominance over the majority. Such a claim is in alignment with anarchist Michael Malice’s contention that seemingly, apparently or purportedly popular revolutions are in fact coup d’états, perpetrated by ardent and zealous minorities. For instance, despite being depicted as a people’s or grassroot’s revolution, the October revolution of 1917 was characterised by the seizure of power by a small group of revolutionaries, namely the Bolsheviks. Or for example, although Germany in the 1930s is regarded as being utterly blinded by and infatuated with Nazism, it is the case that though the Nazis were a majority in the Reistag, that they overall and fundamentally failed to accumulate more than 30 percent of the nation’s support, at its inception in January 1933.
Furthermore, Mill’s notion that a tyranny of the majority is more formidable than a tyranny of the government or state, for reasons that it is easier to avoid, escape or flee, is perhaps undermined by an observation of twentieth century totalitarian regimes, such as the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Nazi Germany, Communist Kampuchae etc. Such regimes reveal the unassailable omnipresence of political forces (the state) in contrast to social forces (the majority). An investigation of subjective (memoires or diaries) and objective (statistics or government documents) elucidate the nature and extent of the penetration of all domains of life, within totalitarian regimes, by the state. The invasion was both physical or of the boy and psychological or of the mind, akin to the tyranny of the majority. The principle apparatus of violation or permeation or tyranny was the secret police and a monopoly of the media, characteristic of such regimes as delineated by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951.
Nonetheless historians, such as Christopher R. Browning, Sheila Fitzpatrick or Robert Gellately, whom, having engaged with or studied the masses or to utilise Millian terminology, the ‘majorities’ constituting such regimes, maintain that such people were prerequisites to the manifestation of tyranny. In other words, without the cooperation or collaboration of ordinary people with the state, tyranny or terror could not have prevailed. For instance Browning argues it was unindoctrinated ordinary men, such as men like that of Reserve Police Battalion 101, who responsible for the genocide of the Jews, namely through mass shootings and the collection of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Moreover Fitzpatrick, having explored various sources such as memoirs, secret police reports on public opinion, newspaper articles or the post-WWII interviews of former Soviet citizens known as the Harvard Project, conluded that ordinary people importantly though not exclusively through denunciation, ‘found themselves becoming participants in the process of terror’. In accordance with Fitzpatrick’s claim, Gellately having investigated the Gestapo, the secret police of the Third Reich, notes that terror, and tyranny was importantly facilitated, accommodated and perpetrated by the ordinary population. The Gestapo’s lack of technological means (inability to survey society at a large scale) and the insignificance of its size, act as a testament to its inability to operate alone in its penetration of all realms of life. To elaborate, in Dusseldorf, a city with a population of approximately five hundred thousand individuals, there were merely one hundred and twenty six Gestapo officials. A history from below reinforces the validity of Mill’s assertion pertaining to the pernicious nature of the tyranny of the majority in contrast to the tyranny of political functionaries.
In conclusion the tyranny of the majority is importantly more treacherous than the tyranny of political functionaries. Mill ascribes such danger to its omnipresence; rendering it unavoidable, its discouragement of the cultivation of individuality; promoting conformity through the threat of social exclusion and its hidden nature; ensuring that people notice it not, thus remaining forever incarcerated. This observation by Mill is vital to understand if one seeks to transcend the clandestine threats to individuals liberty, especially at the age of the internet, a time characterised by the intensification of the decentralisation of power and authority.
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