If you want democracy, you must do democracy

All that glitters…

Once upon a time there was an evil queen who ruled the land with cruelty and malice and all the people suffered. …

Then all the usual stuff happens.

… and the good prince took our brave heroine to be his bride and together they ruled the kingdom in peace and gladness happily ever after.

Downton Abby, Upstairs Downstairs, Cinderella, Snow White, The Frog Prince, changing of the guard at Buckingham palace, King Richard the Lionhearted, Charlemagne, Henry the VIII, Catherine the Great, The Queen Mum. We love feudalism! It’s glamorous and cool. The clothes, the jewels, the swords!

We have a lot of unconscious romantic ideas about kings, queens, princes and princesses, but when it comes to nearly everyone living a peaceful and happy life, those ideas begin to stink.

Highly feudal of you Jeeves!

The greatest obstacle to freedom and democracy is neither communism nor socialism.

It’s feudalism.

Quoting from Wikipedia: “Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for structuring society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour…. In its classic definition,…feudalism [is] a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations among the warrior nobility, revolving around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs.”

I have a strong quibble with Wikipedia. Feudalism did not end in the 15th century. It’s been with us in modified form for all the centuries since and it is still with us today.

Feudalism is natural. It’s normal. Some people are born lord of the manor, you were born a vassal. The lord of the manor has good breeding, blue blood and a natural superiority over you — they don’t call him Lionhearted for nothing. And all that wealth, good breeding and blue blood prove that this is how God wants it. It’s the natural order of things. Yes, that argument is circular, but trust me, rich people know what God thinks.

Democracy and the ideas of liberty and equality overturned the feudal society. The Rights of Man and the Bill of Rights replaced the privilege of the nobility.

And now, with the installation of Good King Trump, we are drifting back to that bygone era.

As time goes by, more and more wealth is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. According to the Pew Research Center, the top 7 percent of all U.S. households own 63 percent of all the wealth in the country. That means 93 percent of us are dividing up 37 percent of the leftovers. Now obviously we are not fighting each other for scraps. Thirty-seven percent is still a very vast amount of wealth. But the direction of the drift is obvious.

Capitalism is naturally egalitarian and inevitably leads to democracy.

Feudalism is dictatorship with cool clothes and lace pants. Great outfits aren’t a requirement, though. Saddam Hussein was a king. Gadaffi was a king. Assad is a king. Kim Jong Un is a king. Kings are lousy for business. Almost every third-world hell hole is ruled by a dictator and a handful of wealthy families who own everything and who may or may not pretend to hold elections.

Only capitalism and democracy can widen access to a peaceful and happy life. Feudalism always feels like it should do that. If we only vanquish the evil queen and install the good king we’ll all be happy, right? Well, one percent of us might be. The rest of us vassals may get left out of the happy picture.

Before democracy, capitalism was loosening the feudal grip on society. With capitalism you don’t need land to generate wealth. Feudalism doesn’t require an economy or infrastructure. It doesn’t need a banking system, roads and bridges, markets, literacy or science. All those things are vital to capitalism. Feudalism is psychologically comfortable but it’s win-lose.

I own everything including you. End of story.

Capitalism is win-win. I own sheep, you need wool. You own a loom, I need clothes. Everybody wins. And one of the ways everybody wins in these transactions, is that every person involved has more or less equal value as a human being.

By the time democracy showed up, capitalism had been setting the stage for centuries. Merchants and capitalists were still regarded contemptuously as little better than peasants, but Kings had gotten weaker. Land-based wealth had become less and less important.

Capitalism alone is not the answer

Sadly, almost always, when a capitalist becomes successful, they turn on a dime and become feudalistic. They carve out their turf, their market share and do everything in their power to eliminate competition. They fix prices. They set up monopolies and cartels. They try to get as close as possible to slave labor. They will certainly buy as much political power as they possibly can. Where there is power, there is always power for sale.

So why do we have the tendency to drift back to feudalism given half a chance? Because it’s neat. It’s tidy. Terry Pratchett put it nicely when he wrote “One Man, One Vote, in which [the king] alone is the Man, and he has the Vote.”

Other than democracy, pretty much any political system is immoral. Aristocracies and monarchies are immoral. But we have an unconscious tendency to think they are okay, they’re natural. And, of course, monarchy is glamorous, it’s elegant. The clothes are fabulous. Check out the jewelry. OMG! Princess Diana!

And democracy is incredibly messy. You have to keep track of things and what’s going on out in the greater world. You have to know the issues. You have to figure out who is lying and who is honest. You have to know when and where and for whom to vote. Then when you do vote, it doesn’t seem to have much impact. The person who seemed so honest and forthright turns out to have one hand in the till and the other in his neighbor’s pocket.

Capitalism is messy too. When done well, money circulates throughout the system like lifeblood. 350 million people really can live pretty well on 37 percent of the country’s wealth. But that’s when everything is working as it should. When it’s not working, the blood pools up in one place and the organism — democracy — begins to die. We slide back into comfortable, cozy feudalism. We tell ourselves all we really need is a good king. A nice king who will not be too hard on the vassals and peasants.

Except it doesn’t happen. The nicest king on the planet can’t provide freedom without abdication or something like it. The queen of England, the King of Sweden, the king of Denmark are all historical artifacts with no actual relevance politically. They still exist because they are vastly wealthy and wealth buys some power, if only tacitly and because not all societies are ready to give up the dream of a feudalism that works right.

Feudalism is easy, democracy is hard.

I’m afraid we are going to have to do it the hard way.

And speaking of hard, you should vote, but voting is absolutely the least you can do. Without voting you are allowing the nobility to have its way entirely. Adding your body to a protest is the second least thing you can do. Don’t hesitate to do it, but remember it’s not much.

The only way to keep democracy is to do democracy. We must form relationships with elected officials. We need to lobby, write letters to representatives. Persuade your fellow citizens with letters to the editor in whatever remains of the local newspaper. Call and chew out the poor unpaid intern who answers the phone in the congressional office. Don’t worry about hurting her feelings, she signed up to do it.

It isn’t easy. We all get lazy or busy. But democracy requires participation. That’s the nice thing about feudalism. Under a feudalism, life may be nasty, brutish, and short, but not much is required of you. And you can tell yourself that life would be better if the king were a nicer person. Or something.

The arc of human history does, indeed, bend toward justice. But history can’t do it without us. It’s not going to happen on its own any more than a two-year-old will automatically have nice manners.

Feudalism is, in my view, a natural state for humans and egalitarianism is not. However, brushing your teeth isn’t natural. Wearing glasses isn’t natural. Writing and reading books are not natural. Good manners aren’t natural.

In spite of all the vast benefits of capitalism and democracy, nothing will kill feudalism — except the moral maturation of the human race.

But we can do it. We are doing it. Yes, the need for a benign ruler brought us Trump the Twitter King, but feudalism is not a happy way to live for most people and eventually the King will fall.