Can we build a Socialism that works?

Can we build a Socialism that respects the basic human rights of minorities?

What I notice, over and over again, is my comrades on the Left want 3 things:

1. a government that is populist (here defined as a majoritarian chauvinism)

2. a government that is socialist

3. a government that respects people's basic human rights

I would say, "Choose any two." You can't have all 3.

If you are a decent person, you will chose 2 and 3.

But that means you should oppose any kind of populism, understood as a majoritarian chauvinism. Because, historically, movements that gain power as majoritarian chauvinist movements will eventually be hostile to the rights of minorities. In the USA, two Presidents who were famously on the side of the working class, in a populist style, were Andrew Jackson and FDR, both of whom built concentration camps for racial minorities (Jackson for the Cherokee and FDR for citizens of Japanese descent).

We can build a socialist society that also respects the rights of minorities, and the rule of law, but only if we adopt certain structures that limit the power of the majority, and therefore can be understood as anti-populist measures.

Perhaps the most crucial issue is how a socialist society should think about its constitution, and how that constitution should change -- by who, and at what speed. I’ve written about that previously.

For now, much of the Left seems to be in a populist mood. They don't want to talk to much about the kinds of limits that need to be imposed on the power of the majority so as to ensure that a Socialist society can also maintain its commitments to the basic human rights of racial, religious, sexual, and political minorities. On this subreddit I've seen people use old slogans such as "All power must come from a mandate of the masses" which sounds nice, but what does it actually mean? It sounds as if the majority should have absolute power, which will of course lead to a "tyranny of the majority" and much abuse of minorities. These concerns are basic to political science, but many of my comrades on the Left seem to prefer to avoid hard thinking on these subjects. But anyone who still uses old slogans about a "mandate of the masses" without carefully specifying what limits they want to see on the power of the majority is going into dangerous territory. And worse, they are going into old territory, at a time when we very much need new, creative, original thinking.

Let’s avoid getting caught up in some kind of nostalgic or romantic aesthetic of past movements. Let's think with scientific precision about exactly what it means to build a socialist society that respects the rights of minorities.

I mentioned elsewhere that it was important to put limits on the power of the majority. I was asked:

“What kind of limits do you want on the majority?”

Start with the ones we have:

1. courts must be independent

2. many countries have a bicameral legislature to further limit the power of the current majority, and to put distance between the current mood of the public and the mood of the legislature.

3. the press, and other media, must be free to publish ideas that are unpopular with the majority

4. In the USA, the Senate has terms of 6 years to better insulate it from the mood of the public, elections are staggered so the majority of the Senate is never facing election in any given year.

5. In Germany, the provinces directly appoint agents to represent them in the upper house (the Bundesrat) and the provinces themselves have elections on a staggered schedule, thus protecting the Bundesrat from the mood of the public

6. Most Western democracies have elaborate processes for changing the Constitution or Basic Law, so that the current majority cannot easily change it.

7. each individual is granted the power to choose their own religion, even if the religion is unpopular with the majority

8. the rule of law is generally understood as a system whereby the laws apply to each person equally, whether they belong to groups that are popular with the majority, or hated by the majority

9. a complex hierarchy exists of local, state/province and national government, typically with a large number of special zones and autonomous bodies. Every region is allowed to have a political system that might be at odds with the national majority

These were the basic strategies that grew out of the European Enlightenment of the 1700s. History has shown us that these limits are not sufficient to protect the rights of all minorities, as most Western democracies have all of the above and still have a sad history of abusing the rights of minorities.

It's also clear that Socialism raises some unique risks regarding centralization, which can make accountability more difficult.

So if we want to build a Socialist society that respects the basic human rights of minorities, we're going to need new limits on the majority, much more than what I've listed above.

Western political thought emerges in recognizable form 2,500 years ago with Plato and with Thucydides. Since that time we've developed a variety of traditions: liberal, libertarian, guardianship, scholastic, socialism, fascism, communism, anarchism, feudalism, theocracy, oligarchic.

Moving forward will need us to mine the best and most humane ideas from these traditions, to try to come up with a new synthesis, and therefore a new way forward. Especially when building a humanistic Socialism, we will need to review the world's guardianship and scholastic traditions (more popular in east Asia than in the West) to find ideas to balance the power of the government against the will of the majority while still providing mechanisms of accountability.

Perhaps the simplest step is to better stagger the election of the legislatures?

Perhaps the simplest step is to better stagger the election of the legislatures, and this is more easily done if each legislator is elected for a longer term, an idea with a lot of discussion about it in the guardianship tradition (for instance, Plato wanted his Guardians to serve for life, currently we only take that approach for judges). Although the guardianship tradition is sometimes perverted to justify authoritarian government, most Western democracies have also borrowed from this tradition when designing the judiciary. We should think about how these ideas might also reinforce other parts of the government.