What would happen then? He’d get thrown out and someone else
would be put in as CEO. These are institutional problems.
Why is it important to keep the general population in line?
Any form of concentrated power doesn’t want to be subjected to
popular democratic control—or, for that matter, to market
discipline. That’s why powerful sectors, including corporate wealth,
are naturally opposed to functioning democracy, just as they’re
opposed to functioning markets...for themselves, at least.
It’s just natural. They don’t want external constraints on their
capacity to make decisions and act freely.
And has that been the case?
Always. Of course, the descriptions of the facts are a little more
nuanced, because modern “democratic theory” is more articulate
and sophisticated than in the past, when the general population was
called “the rabble.” More recently, Walter Lippmann called them
“ignorant and meddlesome outsiders.” He felt that “responsible
men” should make the decisions and keep the “bewildered herd” in
line.
Modern “democratic theory” takes the view that the role of the
public—the “bewildered herd,” in Lippmann’s words—is to be
spectators, not participants. They’re supposed to show up every
couple of years to ratify decisions made elsewhere, or to select
among representatives of the dominant sectors in what’s called an
“election.” That’s helpful, because it has a legitimizing effect.
It’s very interesting to see the way this idea is promoted in the
slick PR productions of the right-wing foundations. One of the most
influential in the ideological arena is the Bradley Foundation. Its
director, Michael Joyce, recently published an article on this. I don’t
know whether he wrote it or one of his PR guys did, but I found it
fascinating.
It starts off with rhetoric drawn, probably consciously, from the
left. When left liberals or radical activists start reading it, they get a
feeling of recognition and sympathy (I suspect it’s directed at them
and at young people). It begins by talking about how remote the
political system is from us, how we’re asked just to show up every