Thanks for the reminder that political freedom grows through shared work, mutual obligation, and institutions that teach strangers to regard one another as fellow citizens. Trade unions, churches, neighborhoods, and civic associations help form the democratic character that elections can only register.
My one reservation concerns the sharp contrast between “true power” and governmental power. Democratic communities must do more than create public spaces; they must govern, distribute goods, restrain domination, and make binding decisions. Solidarity’s mistake was not entering politics but failing to carry its civic practices into political institutions—to build, as your essay recognizes, a durable bridge between movement and state.
Ahh, Bryce: thanks for provoking important thought!
William, thank you so much for your generous comment! Your distinction between public spaces and governing approximates for me Arendt's distinction between public spaces and political places, a distinction that I admire. Thank you for your willingness to explore how our thinking at different places runs parallel, intersects, and diverges! You always push me in good directions.
I don’t like my earlier comment. I was attempting to be politic, but I was cagey. The candor and good faith evident in your comment certainly deserve better, and I apologize. I’ll be more forthright in this comment. I struggle with our modern notion that elections are democratic—or speaking perhaps from another perspective, that they lead to good governance. They certainly can, though historically they also eventually devolve into other forms of government. Part of our duty, I think, is to operate in the system we have and to speak and act so as to prolong what’s left of our republic. Sensible of that duty, I’ll vote this fall as I always do. And I’ll work against unfair practices surrounding elections, such as those stemming from the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais.
But I think these times give us a space—in fact, they almost require us—to reconsider some of the assumptions that we have about our Constitution and about governance.
Some of my posts might be understood as supporting our Constitution, and some might be understood as questioning some of its provisions and underlying assumptions—if not the founders’ assumptions, then at least our own. Because our Constitution provides for its own amendment, I think all of my posts in a broader sense support the Constitution.
My agreement with Guinier and Torres’s understanding of Solidarity’s missteps, and their understanding of our underlying assumptions about the nature of power, fall in the latter constitutional category. How can we, in the founders’ spirit, form a more perfect Union? I agree with you that Solidarity would have been more true to itself and its members had it worked to carry its civic practices into the existing political institutions. But I think Solidarity should have worked to replace some of those institutions. What if the Polish revolution had led to a different constitution that enshrined the kind of power Solidarity had discovered and exercised before it “took power”?
Here are three articles I’ve written that flesh out my thoughts in these areas:
“Public space wants place.” I ruminate on Arendt’s distinction between public space and political place, and I argue that public space always points beyond itself. An essence of public space is the hope it brings and the object—a place—that it insists on. This is why I like your comment’s emphasis on governance.
“It’s time for Thomas Jefferson’s village states.” Published on the Elysian, this post describes how one form of political place, Jefferson’s “little republics” of something like a hundred citizens each would, in Jefferson’s way of thinking, become “the salvation of the [larger] republic.”
“Voting isn’t democratic. It’s oligarchic.” A long post (even for me) that examines how political theorists before the 19th century—and some during that century—understood elections as instruments of either aristocracies or oligarchies and not of democracies. It also mentions more historically democratic institutions and how they could work, even in a large republic, with elections or in their stead.
I love your point that “Trade unions, churches, neighborhoods, and civic associations help form the democratic character that elections can only register.” But I wonder why, so often, elections fail to register that democratic character. Part of the problem, of course, is our societal atomization. Elections aren’t neutral here, however. They contribute to our atomization and to our undue focus on our private concerns, as Jefferson and Tocqueville both came to realize.
Larger portions of our atomized society seem to distrust elections as time goes on. The president and his party bear their share of responsibility for this, but I’m more interested in the longstanding opening that they exploited.
I have gone way beyond your excellent comment’s purview. I have rattled on here to explain myself—maybe even to explain myself to myself. I didn’t do right by your comment earlier. All the best.
Bryce, no apology needed. Your first reply was generous, and I’m glad you said more. Your post helps me see what my comment missed: after Solidarity’s leaders won office, they lost touch with the people and practices that had given the movement its power. My line about elections “registering” democratic character was too easy.
Your discussion of councils linked across a country gives me a more concrete picture of what Solidarity might have built. I still wonder how the power citizens generate by acting together could become a form of government without losing its source. Such councils would have to make binding decisions, distribute resources, and answer to people who disagreed with them. How could they do that while keeping citizens active in governing? I’m grateful you pressed the question.
Thanks for the reminder that political freedom grows through shared work, mutual obligation, and institutions that teach strangers to regard one another as fellow citizens. Trade unions, churches, neighborhoods, and civic associations help form the democratic character that elections can only register.
My one reservation concerns the sharp contrast between “true power” and governmental power. Democratic communities must do more than create public spaces; they must govern, distribute goods, restrain domination, and make binding decisions. Solidarity’s mistake was not entering politics but failing to carry its civic practices into political institutions—to build, as your essay recognizes, a durable bridge between movement and state.
Ahh, Bryce: thanks for provoking important thought!
William, thank you so much for your generous comment! Your distinction between public spaces and governing approximates for me Arendt's distinction between public spaces and political places, a distinction that I admire. Thank you for your willingness to explore how our thinking at different places runs parallel, intersects, and diverges! You always push me in good directions.
Wonderful!
I don’t like my earlier comment. I was attempting to be politic, but I was cagey. The candor and good faith evident in your comment certainly deserve better, and I apologize. I’ll be more forthright in this comment. I struggle with our modern notion that elections are democratic—or speaking perhaps from another perspective, that they lead to good governance. They certainly can, though historically they also eventually devolve into other forms of government. Part of our duty, I think, is to operate in the system we have and to speak and act so as to prolong what’s left of our republic. Sensible of that duty, I’ll vote this fall as I always do. And I’ll work against unfair practices surrounding elections, such as those stemming from the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais.
But I think these times give us a space—in fact, they almost require us—to reconsider some of the assumptions that we have about our Constitution and about governance.
Some of my posts might be understood as supporting our Constitution, and some might be understood as questioning some of its provisions and underlying assumptions—if not the founders’ assumptions, then at least our own. Because our Constitution provides for its own amendment, I think all of my posts in a broader sense support the Constitution.
My agreement with Guinier and Torres’s understanding of Solidarity’s missteps, and their understanding of our underlying assumptions about the nature of power, fall in the latter constitutional category. How can we, in the founders’ spirit, form a more perfect Union? I agree with you that Solidarity would have been more true to itself and its members had it worked to carry its civic practices into the existing political institutions. But I think Solidarity should have worked to replace some of those institutions. What if the Polish revolution had led to a different constitution that enshrined the kind of power Solidarity had discovered and exercised before it “took power”?
Here are three articles I’ve written that flesh out my thoughts in these areas:
“Public space wants place.” I ruminate on Arendt’s distinction between public space and political place, and I argue that public space always points beyond itself. An essence of public space is the hope it brings and the object—a place—that it insists on. This is why I like your comment’s emphasis on governance.
“It’s time for Thomas Jefferson’s village states.” Published on the Elysian, this post describes how one form of political place, Jefferson’s “little republics” of something like a hundred citizens each would, in Jefferson’s way of thinking, become “the salvation of the [larger] republic.”
“Voting isn’t democratic. It’s oligarchic.” A long post (even for me) that examines how political theorists before the 19th century—and some during that century—understood elections as instruments of either aristocracies or oligarchies and not of democracies. It also mentions more historically democratic institutions and how they could work, even in a large republic, with elections or in their stead.
I love your point that “Trade unions, churches, neighborhoods, and civic associations help form the democratic character that elections can only register.” But I wonder why, so often, elections fail to register that democratic character. Part of the problem, of course, is our societal atomization. Elections aren’t neutral here, however. They contribute to our atomization and to our undue focus on our private concerns, as Jefferson and Tocqueville both came to realize.
Larger portions of our atomized society seem to distrust elections as time goes on. The president and his party bear their share of responsibility for this, but I’m more interested in the longstanding opening that they exploited.
I have gone way beyond your excellent comment’s purview. I have rattled on here to explain myself—maybe even to explain myself to myself. I didn’t do right by your comment earlier. All the best.
Bryce, no apology needed. Your first reply was generous, and I’m glad you said more. Your post helps me see what my comment missed: after Solidarity’s leaders won office, they lost touch with the people and practices that had given the movement its power. My line about elections “registering” democratic character was too easy.
Your discussion of councils linked across a country gives me a more concrete picture of what Solidarity might have built. I still wonder how the power citizens generate by acting together could become a form of government without losing its source. Such councils would have to make binding decisions, distribute resources, and answer to people who disagreed with them. How could they do that while keeping citizens active in governing? I’m grateful you pressed the question.