The English sad boy, JS Mill, outlined how the tyranny of the majority can be just as
dangerous as traditional tyranny.
And every amateur philosopher uses it as justification for why socialism can’t work.
The Brexit vote, Trump’s Presidency, and 6ix9ine’s career, the list of popular disasters
is endless.
But how much should leftists worry?
[click] The deeper you dig, “tyranny of the majority”
is pretty relative.
Since everyone always feels like they're being tyrannized by the majority!
Slavery is a pretty clear example of majority
tyranny that we can all agree to, right?
Well, the famous slave-owner John C. Calhoun thought it was slaveowners who were being
forced to follow the whims of the masses.
And actually, slavery is better understood as an example of minority tyranny, where the
wealthy imposed their will and made it the law of the land.
That’s how we got the Fugitive Slave Acts after all, until their tyranny became so unruly,
that’s when the Civil War happened.
What about Jim Crow?
This one is complicated, because while the racist culture that drove Jim Crow had a life
of its own, it was deeply embedded in the scientific racism used to justify colonization
and slavery.
In fact, almost all cases of popular tyranny have material conditions that make the hate possible.
American-Japanese internment camps were rooted in economic anxiety and feelings of unfairness,
precisely the same fears Germans had of the Jewish people.
When you eliminate profit-motives for discrimination, I won’t pretend hate will disappear overnight,
but it’ll be a lot harder to stir up anti-minority sentiments in a society that doesn’t incentivize
you to do so.
Going back to profits, there’s little doubt that for American revolutionaries, the P and
M in protection of minorities mainly stood for property and money.
The common narrative surrounding majority rule was that the dumb peasantry would run
the republic into the ground if not for anti-democratic measures.
This is a common argument against us: the abandonment of rationality.
It asks, well what if the masses are convinced that GMOs are bad, despite what sciene people say?
There needs to be something in place to wrestle power away from the idiots!
Irrational group think could end us!
Eh, that’s not likely.
Take a workplace syndicate with no chosen leaders, there will be the more experienced
and less experienced, the more educated and the less educated.
If a culture of deferment is established, like the one we have today, there’s no reason
to think people will suddenly stop respecting their elders or natural superiors.
And since socialist countries, historically and theoretically, have a higher quality of
life and rate of education, there will be less people believing straight up fabrications.
But, there is one final example of majority tyranny outlined by John Stuart Mill: social
tyranny.
What if a community, say, looks down on heterosexuality.
They don’t criminalize it, ¬but you’ll be isolated for sure for simply living your
life a certain way without hurting others.
It’s possible that without federated nations or centralized control, some pockets of society
will choose to organize themselves in undesirable ways.
The easy answer here is free association.
If you don’t like it, you can leave.
This answer works under a leftist society because, the economic restraints that usually
exist in capitalist one don’t exist here.
But it’s a possible issue.
What happens when you give people freedom, and they use it to tyrannize others?
In cases of a rouge community, is it right for surrounding communities to force independent
people to be righteous?
There’s no easy answer.
But, in any transition towards a socialist, communist, or anarchist society, these ideas
will have to be dealt with intentionally if we want to live in a harmonious multicultural
world.