Democracy and Government

Freedom and Control

Democracy is the promise of being released from tyranny of control.  It is the promise to return freedom to the individual with the promise of selecting your own representatives to create a community that grants the individual his freedom to be in control of himself. 

From the beginning the promise was incomplete.  The incompleteness denied the individual the community to promote his individuality and the individual was still controlled in a structure that allowed others to use the individual to promote the success of the few.  But the promise offered the removal of the king, but maintained the king’s replacement, those that had taken away the king’s authority and replaced it with their own.  Sometimes called the industrial revolution.  Let us focus on the revolution.  The world has seen many revolutions.  The Seti Revolution is the farthest in time to the first kings in which I have knowledge.  There were probably prior revolutions.  I am quite sure as kings began to develop their first empires people did not willingly accept their control of them or of the resources of the environment, and it was by gaining the resources necessary for survival that the king was able to force communities to serve him as well.  But these attempted conflicts by those kings were considered insignificant.  These are not revolutions, but rebellions. Revolutions change the persons in charge and maintain the system of the  kingdom with different personages in charge.  It is like our story of man and woman, that could end in divorce and then into remarriage.  History has one rebellion that succeeded, but it was then embargoed and impoverished until its environment was diminished and survival descended into chaos.  That of course was Haiti.  Gaspar Yanga’s revolt, though semi-successful, was more of an escape into an undeveloped area of the environment where they managed to survive for several years until their size began to grow and their presence became known when they needed more resources.  They now became something more akin to a rebellion and began to attack nearby haciendas.  At first rather than trying to confront them directly, minor peonages or slaves were beaten more severely or sometimes killed for infractions that would have not have called for such punishments, to disencourage further recruits To Nyanga’s (Yanga) colony.  Now Nyganga led his followers to stretch beyond the small plunderings for needs and began to attempt to block roadways that made difficult the transport of goods from the port of Vera Cruz to the interior haciendas and to the Viceroy’s capital.  It became severe enough that the Viceroy sent in a few troops.  Yanga was quite old now but encouraged a maroon named la Matosa to use their knowledge of the terrain to defeat the efforts at attempting to subdue them.  Eventually a force was raised sufficient to subdue the rebellion. Becoming aware of this, Nyanga sent a messenger of his willingness to negotiate.  He offered to accept no more runaway slaves and they would cease all hostilities against the haciendas and allow goods to pass through if they were allowed sufficient environment for the needs of those already present to survive.  The Viceroy rejected Nyanga’s terms. So la Matosa again used the terrain to his advantage.  His “warriors” had captured a few guns, but mostly they hid behind trees and threw stones at the Spaniards and their recruits.  But if a settlement were discovered by the Spaniards, the women and children were dismembered and mutilated.  But the stalemate persisted and the Spaniards were unable to achieve a decisive victory. After nearly a decade Nyanga’s terms were agreed to with the provision that Franciscan priests be allowed to enter their colony.  But rebellions are generally dealt with harshly.  They seldom succeed and the enslaved seldom become freed.  

But there have been worker rebellions as well, most notably Wat Tyler’s.  But America has had a-plenty.  After Bacon’s rebellion in 1676, there was the Boston Revolt in 1689, Leisler’s rebellion in New York that began the same year, and just prior to the American revolution the revolt in the Carolinas when mostly smaller farmers and new immigrants tried to unseat the colonial government that had bailed out the large landowners and left them to suffer deprivation after an economic downtown, generally called “the war of the regulators.” 

And of course they were all viciously defeated. After the Revolution, another farm rebellion broke out in Massachusetts that led directly to the constitutional convention, only to be followed by the Whiskey rebellion two years after the constitution had been ratified.  Eight years later was Fries' Rebellion  and William Augustus Bowles' attempt to establish the State of Muskogee with dissatisfied farmers and Native-Americans.

Plantations did not exist only in the south. Upstate New York had plantations a-plenty.  They called their system the patroon system.  As the Dutch West India Company sought profit in America they granted large land deed contracts (similar to the land grants that gave rise to the aristocratic plantations in the south) of up to 10,240 acres.  As the Dutch company was struggling to gain a colonial foothold in the New World, finding settlers was difficult because many found simply raiding Spanish galleons and stealing their wealth more personally profitable.  So to entice settlement these large deeds were granted to any company member who could bring at least 50 male settlers of at least 15 years of age to work the land. A Charter Of Freedoms and Exemptions was written up granting these patroons full executive and magisterial rights of management  over these estates and also the right to create all regulatory (legislative) control over their tenants.  And of course, all of the profits from the proceeds of their estates with the exemptions of furs.  They were also forbidden by the exemptions to create looms to weave their own linens and they had to pay a 5% export tax on all products that were shipped back to Europe (they could export anywhere but the tax was paid to the company). These tracts were “forever grants” and created complete perpetual fiefdoms to the patroons, entitling them (but not calling them dukes, lords, or earls) to the same rights over their fiefdoms as if they had been so named.  To attract settlers the patroons offered prospective serfs a ten-year tenancy on the land.  During this tenancy the serfs  were free to sell their own produce to anyone they chose to establish their own wealth with the provision they could do so only if the patroon granted them the opportunity because they first had to offer all products to his patroon and the uncontracted cost of the “rent” was generally higher (probably almost always) than the value the patroon determined their produce to be worth.  In Europe this had been called serfdom but in the new world the serfs were named “tenants”;  and these “contracts’ to the prospective tenant required a ten-year tenancy where they were tied to the land without the freedom to “rent”, or become contracted to another patroon, nor were they free to even leave their patroonship to visit or shop beyond their own patroonship without permission from the patroon. So just as the indentured “servants”, they were promised a freedom that could never come about because at the end of their contracts they had to re-contract for another ten years because they didn’t even have the wealth to depart because their very shoes “belonged” to the master, excuse me, to the patroon, and more or  less bound in perpetuity, with his own heirs, to the land.  In this respect it was an even more severe system than the share-cropping system that developed after the civil war in  the south.  

This system prevailed in New York after the official end of slavery in that state.  In 1837 there was a panic (what we formerly called “recessions”) in the economy.  Patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer III had been a "benevolent"  patroon and  had granted his tenants lifetime tenancies.  Of course that meant they were bound not for the usual ten years, but for their lifetimes, but it was seen as generous because the consequential results were that in thin economic times he could allow the tenants to delay their rents. Now, as in all panics, the workers, laborers,and farmers suffer until the government bails out the owners of the workers, laborers and farmers and when they then re-employ those workers, laborers and farmers.  When the panic of 1837 occurred many of  Van Rensselaer’s tenants were allowed to fall behind as  was his wont, and of course Van Rensselaer experienced a setback in maintaining his own lavish lifestyle and incurred debt which he expected to recover from when the panic ended.  But just as the panic was beginning to recede in 1839 Van Rensselaer died. His heirs of course found they would need to have Van Rensselaer’s debt deducted from their inheritance and so they declined to favor a reduction from their inheritance and demanded immediate repayment from the tenants they were also inheriting.  Thus began the Helderberg, or Anti-Rent War.  The immediate aftermath was the imprisonment and death upon the most voracious of the tenants.  In the long run it appeared to be a victory, as six years later a new government in the state began to relax its support of the patroon system.  And so once again slavery in New York did not fade away without shots being fired.

But while the patroon system began to erode, the patroons sold their holdings and profited.  The tenants drifted to the cities to become laborers or went to “work” on the land for the new owners without even the pretense that someday they could end their dependency on being someone else’s property.  

And maybe this illustrates to some degree that the promise of freedom is in some ways more hideous when denied than actually telling people they are bound.  If you tell a man he is a slave he lacks the vision of a promise that he could be free, and he knows his only recourse is to actively attempt to escape or to join with others and revolt against his bondage.  If you merely present the illusion that he is not bound, that he is somehow free, then you can dangle before him that his democracy is moving towards his liberation.

But when the dangled promise never comes to fruition, then the slave will still seek his freedom and will still revolt.  If democracy becomes the lover in our previous story who dangles the promise of love to the wife to bind him to her instead of the husband then he minds her to the concept of his love without ever granting to her the love she seeks.

As I mentioned at the conclusion of the last article, it was not my story, but the story of all.  Lacking too much imagination beyond what I perceive and how I interpret my experiences by my personality, I confess I framed the story within the confines of my own physical circumstances and my own relationships.  Back in the 70’s I wrote a couple of books perceived as roman a clefs. But in writing those books I combined not only personal experiences but other people's experiences  and mix them into a hodgepodge.  Some tried to find what character was whom but they were all me and all others whom I knew in all of the characters but they lacked any falseness because I lacked the imagination  to invent beyond my experience.  As such they were plotless episodic events with Kafkaesque non-endings because none of the stories were more than episodes I had experienced or those who had conveyed their own experiences to me. I had in my mind a meaning I was trying to convey, but the meaning was not sought as the books were read by acquaintances more interested in trying to identify themselves and others. They were all ongoing and I, in my lack of imagination, have no foresight to create an ending..  

But I know what has happened in these stories.  They do not end well.  The end with the despondent wife taking her own life.  They end with the murder of the husband by the lover convincing the wife to kill her husband, or they end by the wife finding out the lover has his own wife and she kills him or his wife.

But whatever the ending is, it is the same.  It is a tragic ending, a non-solutive ending, so why put an ending into a story that will always end the wrong way.  I suppose at one time, writers of books had to wrap up all the tragedies with a happy ending.  It’s an ending I always hope for and never find satisfactory, for I have never witnessed all travails ever going away.  I don’t think history repeats itself, I think the story is always the same, we are always reading it over again.  And history, after all, is the same book of life that cannot end happily ever after in a utopic future if life continues to be the same story.  The happy ending is the promise that can never come as long as the characters and the plot remain, and only changes the name of the characters within the frames of the plot.

Democracy is the dream we share to create the happy ending.  It is the promise of that ending we are enticed with but if the plot remains only with the names of the characters changed, the happy ending can never be satisfactory because it will not arrive.

If a rebellion is an attempt to escape from the plot, a revolution only attempts to change the names of the characters within the story.  And this was the industrial revolution.  The kings lost control of the resources and the corporations and industrialists gained control of the kings but maintained control of the workers.  The king became the capitalist, the serf became the farmer and the slaves and servants (if they were differentiated) became the worker.  But the king who owned the slave was now the industrialist who “employed” the worker who worked for the resources the employer owned. The delusion  that capitalism can offer freedom through a system called democracy is nothing more than that.  Eventually those owned rebel against their enslavement.  Rebellions rarely succeed although sometimes there is the temporary seeming progress, like the social movements of the 60’s and 70’s.  

This is the lover offering love, then withdrawing that love with the expectation more love will follow if you turn against the husband and love him, the lover, and do what he wants of you to earn his love. American history is ripe with rebellions–both slave and worker rebellions.  But the progress, or change in the plot  never comes.  It is a promise that it has changed that maintains obedience for only a little  while, because of the promise that freedoms are growing.  

The American Revolution changed the characters.  The British kings and corporations were changed and the American landmasters and merchants replaced them.  The promised equality to the rest of the Americans didn’t arrive and rebellions were constant both by the slaves in the south and the workers in the north and the farmers in the west. 

The civil war was a revolution, not a rebellion, proposed by the south as self-defense to maintain their “way of life” , but the north’s fight against them was framed as a progression towards liberality, to end slavery.  Northerners who fought to free the slaves were fighting for their own freedom from slavery as well as, or probably more so, than the freedom of black slaves.  But the promise to both was short-lived despite the amendments after the war to assure the promise would this time come true.  The new former slaves returned to work for their former masters and the advanced industrialization that allowed the north to “win” the war increased the servitude of the laborers in the north.  And the railroads that carried the farmer’s produce to the markets took even more sustainability from the farmer forcing him to sell his produce indirectly to packagers to ship his produce and gain control over the farmer.  

Today however we face both a revolution and a rebellion.  The leaders of what we are calling the new right are revolting to shift the capitalist balance to their favor and are threatening the established institutions.  The “left” response is to fight to maintain the institutions with the pablum that the right is taking away progressive gains that have advanced freedoms that people have not really ever had.  Yes, Dobbs challenged the right to an abortion, but a right is a grant and not a freedom. Grants can come and go, freedom is in the inheritance of our species.  Grants are the lover's promise to tempt one to believe one is becoming free.  Of course the recognition that individuals are free to abort or not abort cannot be given by grant, because people can determine to do that for themselves.  The grant to do so does not give one more than a promise of a freedom a person already has will not be made punishable when exercised.  But history has shown us that promises made have to be limited or the social order of authority of the king decays.  If grants for abortion rights lead to grants that same-sex couples can marry, a social order maintained by corporate kings become fearful of anything that might threaten their own kingdom, and the greater the expanse of the kingdom the more the limits on grants to possible challengers become.  And these corporate kings began fomenting a breed of support to propagate notions that those grants must be curtailed. And the disillusioned become attracted to the revolution of dismantling the system being propagated by its proponents and see their cause as a rebellion against it.  Unfortunately for the rebels, they are being misled to believe that the rebellion they are seeking against the plot of the story is not a revolution that only will change the main characters in the story.

Revolutions change only the characters leading the parade, rebellions, even when successful, are very temporary alterations in the color of the ink. Is there a solution?  Can democracy really become democratic? Can the lover give love to the love-starved wife? Or was the problem when the wife and husband married to the promise of eternal physical attraction unfilled because the promise itself was incorrect and the lover was already written into the plot on their marriage day? Is a democracy doomed if there are still those who can grant rights and limit rights but do so, only, as our lover, to keep one aligned and under one’s control by the promise of freedom in the morrow?