This anti-ideology has a new and very ugly name: it is called “Government by Consensus.”
If some demagogue were to offer us, as a guiding creed, the following tenets: that statistics should be substituted for truth, vote-counting for principles, numbers for rights, and public polls for morality—that pragmatic, range-of-the-moment expediency should be the criterion of a country’s interests, and that the number of its adherents should be the criterion of an idea’s truth or falsehood—that any desire of any nature whatsoever should be accepted as a valid claim, provided it is held by a sufficient number of people—that a majority may do anything it pleases to a minority—in short, gang rule and mob rule—if a demagogue were to offer it, he would not get very far. Yet all of it is contained in—and camouflaged by—the notion of “Government by Consensus.”
This notion is now being plugged, not as an ideology, but as an anti-ideology; not as a principle, but as a means of obliterating principles; not as reason, but as rationalization, as a verbal ritual or a magic formula to assuage the national anxiety neurosis—a kind of pep pill or goofball for the “non-boat-rockers,” and a chance to play it deuces wild, for the others.
It is only today’s lethargic contempt for the pronouncements of our political and intellectual leaders that blinds people to the meaning, implications, and consequences of the notion of “Government by Consensus.” You have all heard it and, I suspect, dismissed it as politicians’ oratory, giving no thought to its actual meaning. But that is what I urge you to consider.
A significant clue to that meaning was given in an article by Tom Wicker in The New York Times (October 11, 1964). Referring to “what Nelson Rockefeller used to call ‘the mainstream of American thought,'” Mr. Wicker writes:
That mainstream is what political theorists have been projecting for years as “the national consensus”—what Walter Lippmann has aptly called “the vital center.”
Political moderation, almost by definition, is at the
heart of the consensus. That is, the consensus generally sprawls over all acceptable political views—all ideas that are not totally repugnant to and do not directly threaten some major segment of the population. Therefore, acceptable ideas must take the views of others into account and that is what is meant by moderation.
Now let us identify what this means. “The consensus gen
erally sprawls over all acceptable political views ” Accept
able—to whom? To the consensus. And since the government
is to be ruled by the consensus, this means that political views
are to be divided into those which are “acceptable” and those
which are “unacceptable” to the government. What would be
the criterion of “acceptability”? Mr. Wicker supplies it. Ob
serve that the criterion is not intellectual, not a question of
whether certain views are true or false; the criterion is not
moral, not a question of whether the views are right or
wrong; the criterion is emotional: whether the views are or
are not “repugnant.” To whom? “To some major segment of
the population.” There is also the additional proviso that
those views must not “directly threaten” that major seg
ment.
What about the minor segments of the population? Are the views that threaten them “acceptable”? What about the smallest segment: the individual? Obviously, the individual and the minority groups are not to be considered; no matter how repugnant an idea may be to a man and no matter how gravely it may threaten his life, his work, his future, he is to be ignored or sacrificed by the omnipotent consensus and its government—unless he has a gang, a sizable gang, to support him.
What exactly is a “direct threat” to any part of the population? In a mixed economy, every government action is a direct threat to some men and an indirect threat to all. Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. By what criterion of justice is a consensus-government to be guided? By the size of the victim’s gang.
Now note Mr. Wicker’s last sentence: “Therefore, acceptable ideas must take the views of others into account and that is what is meant by moderation.” And just what is meant here by “the views of others”? Of which others? Since it is not the views of individuals nor of minorities, the only discernible meaning is that every “major segment” must take into account the views of all the other “major segments.” But suppose that a group of socialists wants to nationalize all factories, and a group of industrialists wants to keep its properties? What would it mean, for either group, to “take into account” the views of the other? And what would “moderation” consist of, in such a case? What would constitute “moderation” in a conflict between a group of men who want to be supported at public expense—and a group of taxpayers who have other uses for their money? What would
constitute “moderation” in a conflict between the member of a smaller group, such as a Negro in the South, who believes that he has an inalienable right to a fair trial—and the larger group of Southern racists who believe that the “public good” of their community permits them to lynch him? What would constitute “moderation” in a conflict between me and a communist (or between our respective followers), when my views are that I have an inalienable right to my life, liberty, and happiness—and his views are that the “public good” of the state permits him to rob, enslave, or murder me?
There can be no meeting ground, no middle, no compromise between opposite principles. There can be no such thing as “moderation” in the realm of reason and of morality. But reason and morality are precisely the two concepts abrogated by the notion of “Government by Consensus.”
The advocates of that notion would declare at this point that any idea which permits no compromise constitutes “extremism”—that any form of “extremism,” any uncompromising stand, is evil—that the consensus “sprawls” only over those ideas which are amenable to “moderation”—and that “moderation” is the supreme virtue, superseding reason and morality.
This is the clue to the core, essence, motive, and real meaning of the doctrine of “Government by Consensus”: the cult of compromise. Compromise is the pre-condition, the necessity, the imperative of a mixed economy. The “consensus” doctrine is an attempt to translate the brute facts of a mixed economy into an ideological—or anti-ideological— system and to provide them with a semblance of justification.
A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls— with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship. A mixed economy has no principles to define its policies, its goals, its laws—no principles to limit the power of its government. The only principle of a mixed economy—which, necessarily, has to remain unnamed and unacknowledged—is that no one’s interests are safe, everyone’s interests are on a public auction block, and anything goes for anyone who can get away with it Such a system—or, more precisely, anti-system—breaks up a country into an ever-growing number of enemy camps, into economic groups fighting one another for self preservation in an indeterminate mixture of defense and offense, as the nature of such a jungle demands. While, politically, a mixed economy preserves the semblance of an
organized society with a semblance of law and order, economically it is the equivalent of the chaos that had ruled China for centuries: a chaos of robber gangs looting—and draining—the productive elements of the country.
A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups. It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government—i.e., by force. In the absence of individual rights, in the absence of any moral or legal principles, a mixed economy’s only hope to preserve its precarious semblance of order, to restrain the savage, desperately rapacious groups it itself has created, and to prevent the legalized plunder from running over into plain, unlegalized looting of all by all—is compromise; compromise on everything and in every realm—material, spiritual, intellectual—so that no group would step over the line by demanding too much and topple the whole rotted structure. If the game is to continue, nothing can be permitted to remain firm, solid, absolute, untouchable; everything (and everyone) has to be fluid, flexible, indeterminate, approximate. By what standard are anyone’s actions to be guided? By the expediency of any immediate moment.
The only danger, to a mixed economy, is any not-to-be-compromised value, virtue, or idea. The only threat is any uncompromising person, group, or movement. The only enemy is integrity.
It is unnecessary to point out who will be the steady winners and who the constant losers in a game of that kind.