At 09:32 PM 1/29/99 -0500, you wrote:
>So an unambiguous fact about Democracy, is that Iceland has had one
>longer
>than any Western Country as was pointed out to me on this list last
>year.
>
>There are also many pure Democracies in traditional cultures around the
>world.
>They are however, remarkably weak militarily and usually small in
>numbers.
>
>We had several in this hemisphere with the "Cuna" in Panama being the
>oldest.
>It is generally considered to be a couple of thousand years old,
>although
>I don't know how they can tell. Their governmental form is the "town
>meeting" similar
>to the old New England version that the settlers took from the Quakers
>and the
>Iroquois Confederacy's "Great Law of Peace".
>
>It is my understanding that the Maori in New Zealand are also a pure
>Democracy
>but perhaps one of our New Zealand list members could help with that
>more than I.
>
>From what I have read on this list regarding democracy several themes
stand out. One of these themes seems to be that much of what has been
said is very idealistic and divorced from reality. One of these is this
idea of "pure" democracy, whatever that means. Some systems may be more
democratic than others but no system can be said to be "pure".
When Abraham Lincoln gave us that simplistic definition of democracy,
"Government for the people, by the people, of the people," he was taking
on the role of an idealist since in no situation is this definition
strictly true. The idea of "pure" democracy sounds suspiciously like
pluralism where it is claimed consensus is reached by balancing out the
claims of competing interest groups to reach an amicable solution.
Maybe you might like to explain again - I probably missed it - what you
mean by "pure democracy". I could be taking the wrong interpretation out
of it as obviously my interpretation differs from your interpretation.
But democracy is not about consensus, it is about strategies and tactics by
those wielding the power including vested interests and lobby groups (
multinational corporations, employer groups, unions, etc), some of whom
wield a very powerful influence on 'public opinion' (again, how are we to
define 'public opinion'?) and the mechanics of government. It is about
half truths and in some cases straight out lies, just so long as these lies
are made to appear like 'the truth'. It is about money and lots of it.
The vast resources that some organisations can pour into swaying 'public
opinion', (the 'public' has got a lot to answer for).
Above all, democracy is about manipulation and control in how people, or at
least the majority of the people think, so that at the end of the day, the
opposition is thoroughly discredited and your side can claim 'victory' by
whatever means at your disposal. Whether there is any justification for
discrediting 'the enemy' is irrelevant.
It is for these reasons that pluralism and the idea of "pure" democracy has
to be rejected.
If my interpretation is correct and getting back to New Zealand's case, at
no stage could the case of the Maori in New Zealand be said to be an
example of "pure democracy". Anyone who knows anything of the history of
the Maori in New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) knows that it is
a history of conflict between the indigenous culture (the Maori) with
values based around The Land and collectivism. The mana of the tribe is
more important than the interests of any one member. In Maori culture
great stress is placed on the spiritual values surrounding these concepts.
The early European colonists on the other hand brought with them values
diametrically opposed to those of the Maori. These were the
individualistic values associated with capitalism, namely private ownership
and extreme materialism. What is more, the early colonists and
missionaries were extremely ethnocentric in that it was assumed that
European culture was "superior" to that of the indigenous culture. There
was a mission to bring 'civilisation' to the 'backward savages'. It was
not recognised that Maori culture was not 'inferior' - it was just
different. Thus, integration was the prevailing attitude of the 19th
Century rather than partnership, which the Treaty of Waitangi was suposed
to stand for. Such attitudes are not dead today by any means, though
significant progress has been made to settle disputes, such as the
confiscation of land last century, through the Waitangi Tribunal.
This brief outline traces the roots of calls within New Zealand for Maori
Sovereignty, a separate Maori parliament (Kiwi version), and a separate
Justice and Education System. It is an attempt to show that while Maori
may have integrated fairly well into the Westminster style of parliamentary
democracy imported into New Zealand by the early settlers, there are still
deep divisions within New Zealand society between pakeha (Maori name for
'the White man') and Maori, an inevitable consequence of imposing one
culture on another. These divisions relate to land, righting the
injustices of the past and other issues relating to cultural
understanding, inevitable given that Maori culture was so different from
Maori.
For all of these reasons, there is just no way the position of Maori in New
Zealand can be described as a "pure" democracy.
Finally, how does all of this relate to the future of work, with which this
list is vitally concerned? I believe it is relevant because I have touched
on issues which lie at the heart of high Maori unemployment and
disadvantage in New Zealand. If one is going to explain and understand why
Maori unemployment rates are so much higher than pakeha, or why Maori fill
our prisons in much the same way that Negro fill American prisons, these
issues provide a place to start.
Cheers
Ross
