Sunday, January 10, 2021

Electoral and Procedural Legitimacy for Democratic Skeptics

I'm on the record saying the legitimacy of the state, period, and of democracy are very much in question.

Given that I think that--and many of the others here do too--you might wonder what I am opposed to Trumpist Capital invasion last week, or why I believe Trump should be removed from office, even though he has only a few days left and his removal would largely be symbolic. (I am taking it for granted in this post that he did indeed induce an angry mob to attack the Capitol to stop it from certifying Biden's victory.) Instead, the question is, given my background philosophy, why would I think Trump is obligated to go along with the process? Why can't he or his goons override the system?

As an analogy, consider how sophisticated Marxists such as G. A. Cohen or Brian Leiter react to private property in the means of production. Cohen and Leiter both think that capitalism is unjust and should be replaced by an alternative economic system. There should not be private property in the means of production. Nevertheless, neither of them thinks (I'm pretty sure) that because capitalism is unjust, any person can steal from any private productive enterprise at any time for any reason. One reason is that if it's illegitimate for Elon Musk to have $200 billion, then it's also illegitimate for me to have $200 billion after stealing it. But more importantly, they both recognize (I'm pretty sure) that even when you are in an unjust economic system, willy-nilly and ad hoc thievery simply imposes great harm and causes chaos without doing anything to fix the system. Leiter doesn't steal from or firebomb Amazon warehouses, and he wouldn't do so even if he could get away with it. 

Similarly, suppose the NFL's Competition Committee decides, for demonstrably corrupt reasons, to eliminate the forward pass next season. Suppose they took bribes from QBs with no passing game. This may well give teams and referees grounds to engage in collective, widespread "civil disobedience" by continuing to use and recognize forward passes But it would not license or justify players deciding that since the governing board is corrupt, they, the players, should do whatever they want whenever they want.

Even if a system is unjust or deeply unjust, there might be reasons to play along with certain parts of it, and play along with certain rules. 

Let's apply some of this to the Trump election of 2016. Trump's election resulted from demonstrable voter incompetence. If voters had been adequately informed and reasoned in an adequate way, Trump would not have been the Republican candidate, let alone the winner. Nevertheless, it would not be acceptable for me, on January 21, 2017, to depose Trump and attempt to install myself as the new president. Doing so would cause massive chaos and violence, and further, even if (thanks to the Competence Principle) Trump should not rule, there is also no legitimate reason why I should rule. 

Biden was lawfully elected. Even within the rules of the election, Trump did not have grounds for rejecting Biden's win. But even if you think, as I do, that anarchism is just, or that certain forms of epistocracy are probably more justifiable than democracy (though they are unjust because they are statist), that doesn't mean you should think it's acceptable for a standing president to induce a mob to attack the Capitol to overthrow an election. The background injustice of the system is not a blank check for anyone to seize power or to attack legislators whenever they dislike their decisions. 

I think there's good work to be done here on "playing along" inside unjust systems. I discuss some of that here, in When All Else Fails: The Ethics of Resistance to State Injustice. For instance, I argue that if you were to take a job with the Nazi government doing a legitimate function, such as teaching schoolchildren to read, you should still do it competently, even though others should try to sabotage its illegitimate functioning.