There were some interesting responses to my last on some of the Lefty mailing lists — I mean really interesting; for once, I’m not being snide. In particular, there were some thoughtful attempts to rescue the idea of ‘rights’ in the context of democracy, which I tried to liquidate. (It’s an old habit of mine). Here’s Comrade McGee (not his real name, of course):

Formal democratic rights, the entitlement of all citizens to free political expression and association, is the true precondition for popular rule, for democracy. So then, the people do not “give” rights– it is the rights that constitute the people as a people, as a democratic subject.

I love it when you talk Hegel to me, McGee. But still, this leaves me wondering: If the people don’t give rights, where do they come from?

It’s possible, isn’t it, to imagine a democracy doing something bad — waging an aggressive or imperial war, for example. In fact it’s been known to happen.

One might wish for some countervailing force to prevent that. But then the people wouldn’t be sovereign, would they?

This is not to trash the idea of democracy at all, but to suggest what a deeply radical idea it is, in spite of the unthinking complacent cant about it ceaselessly spouted by the likes of Comrade Zircon, the media, and American politicians.

A democracy operating in accordance with my own ideas (probably shared, to a first approximation, by most of us) would certainly confer certain universal rights, and enforce them. But there’s no assurance that a democracy would operate in accordance with my own ideas. That’s why a real commitment to democracy, in any strong sense, requires quite a leap of faith — faith in the people. It’s a commitment without any reciprocal guarantees.

McGee, I guess, is trying to argue that certain rights — e.g. the right of universal participation — are implicit in the idea of democracy. I would say however that it’s the fact of universal participation — or rather, the fact that everybody can participate; some may prefer not to, like Bartleby — is what constitutes democracy, not the “right”.

But maybe this is a distinction without a difference.

If the word democracy is going to mean anything at all, there have to be some criteria for applying it; equal universal participation seems pretty good. Do you therefore want to characterize that as a ‘right’?

I don’t, mostly because conflating questions of sovereignty and questions of right seem to muddy the conceptual waters and darken counsel — as ha-Shem says somewhere.

I really loved this guy, and now that he’s gone, I worry about Venezuela.

There’s a reason for the cult of personality. There seem to be phases, in revolutions and national-liberation struggles, when finding the right person is important. It’s not the only thing, it’s not the biggest thing, but it matters.

I suppose you could say that there any number of right people out there, and one of them will surely come to the fore if conditions are right.

Maybe that’s true. I’m sure it’s true that there are plenty of right people out there — mute inglorious Chavezes. I’m not so certain that they will surely come to the fore, or not any time soon, anyway.

So I’m sorry, very sorry, that Hugo is gone. He was definitely the right person, and immensely likable too, I thought. Remember his encounter with the King Of Spain?

My pensive mood, after I read of his death, was rudely interrupted by a first-class creep on one of my lefty mailing lists — let’s call him Zircon — who took the opportunity to piss on Hugo as an ‘authoritarian’ and compare him with Kim III in Korea — or is it IV now?

You’ve gotta admire these finger-wagging American leftists, if only for chutzpah. They’re quite happy to tell our subjects just how they should and should not go about kicking us out. Along these lines, Zircon has a carefully worked-out list of things the Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan upsurges should have done, and didn’t.

And here’s what he thinks ‘we’ should do:

I think we should defend the sovereignty of countries like Venezuela or Cuba but not fall into the trap of assuming that means we must support people like Hugo or Fidel or Daniel [sc Ortega — ed.]. Instead we should argue for the extension of democratic rights to all.

Not to be too obvious or anything, but Fidel and Hugo, and yes, even Daniel, back in the day, did a bit more than ‘argue’.

And ‘we’ should defend their right to revolt, but not their actual revolutions — unless, of course, they come up to our high universalist standards about ‘democratic rights’, whatever those might be. Don’t hold your breath.

Indeed, this gibberish phrase, ‘democratic rights’, seems to be Zircon’s conceptual touchstone, though it makes no sense at all.

Democracy, on any informed understanding of the term, is the negation of ‘rights’. Democracy means that the people rule. They give rights, and they take them away, as their good sovereign pleasure dictates. If you’re really into ‘rights’, you have no use for democracy; and vice versa.

But probably what Zircon really means by ‘democratic rights’ is the same thing that old Dr Karl called ‘parliamentary cretinism’: the right to cast a vote for your next slavemaster. You’ll be whipped no matter what, but you can collectively choose which hand holds the lash. Ain’t that America, as the song says.

Venezuela, during the Chavez years, was a much more interesting place than the US, in spite of the latter’s devotion to Zircon’s notion of ‘democratic rights’. Certainly more democratic; and in fact, I’d say people in Venezuela had more rights.

Sit levis terra tibi, Hugo.