The princes of industry

The previous chapter discussed one of the most visible consequences of political pluralization: the diminishing role of mass democracy. Relative to the model, the fictitious world, of sovereign nation-states, political pluralization means that, on the one hand, states cover less political ground, no longer cover it exclusively, or cover it jointly with others; on the other hand, it means that the conglomerates of cooperative superstructures ‘replacing’ the state gain a degree of relative autonomy. As a result of the latter development, the link between a population that is at least theoretically in ultimate control and the elite that governs it on its own behalf is weakened. Both these non-elected elites and the ‘old’ state elites who must operate ever more as agents and ever less as delegates (in so far as they aim to remain representatives) nevertheless remain citizens of a politically pluralized metropolis: citizens of all sorts of cités trying to create coordinating superstructures, the legitimacy and authority of which remains derived from the allegiance or – at its most inactive – sufferance of the individual members of individual cooperative ventures. The elites may be rulers, but they remain citizen-rulers. As citizen-rulers, they can make a difference for other citizens who are not – or are no longer – directly represented, not to mention for the stability of the cooperative schemes of which they remain members. That elites would need to be actively consultative elites is one thing; whe-

ther such consultative elitism is feasible is a totally different matter. Why should elites bother to do more in terms of consulting, answering and voluntarily representing than the bare minimum required to stay in power? The next sections explore this question by looking at one case of a cooperative superstructure (cité) operating within a larger context: the elite within enterprises. First, the present section gives a more general, less detailed picture of the kind of citizen a citizen-ruler is (not) forced to be. Political pluralization is an in itself understandable and justifiable process

of fragmentation and realignment of cooperative structures. In theory, it reflects changed needs for cooperation and changed preferences for types of cooperation. In that sense, it contributes to human emancipation, offering a

more demand-sensitive diversification of what Will Kymlicka (1995: 82) calls the ‘contexts of choice’. That it also implies that, as a citizen, a member of cooperative superstructures, the individual has to become an Arendtian rather than a Marshallian citizen, i.e. more proactive and less rights-consumptive, is not necessarily a disadvantage – again, in theory – because proactive citizenship can be interpreted as contributing to both personal development, to building communities (cités and polities) on genuine, personal commitment, and to tearing down the walls between the traditional, non-chosen, mono-cultural and inherently xenophobic and bloodthirsty national communities of the past.1 In practice, political pluralization confronts one class of citizens, ordinary citizens with limited resources, pursuing plans of life in which political activity plays an at best minor role, with an increasing number of often unpredictably interconnected polities in which they need to participate more often, more proactively and more informed than before – while another class of citizens is more and more free of the constraints of peer control. The former group will increasingly depend on the latter to represent its interests, but like love, representation has to come from two sides. Political pluralization also means the tearing down of walls between the

political and the private: the processes of social interaction within cooperative schemes are no longer designated by, and derived from, a sovereign authority, the context defining the cooperative scheme’s sphere of interaction – i.e. cité and polity – are more and more created, or even chosen, and less superimposed than before. A classic illustration of this is the role of the enterprise in society: it does not just buy resources, transform them into something else and sell the product, it also transforms the communities from which it gets its resources – for better and for worse – the communities where it locates and performs its transubstantiating magic, and the communities where it leaves its products (not to mention waste by-products). A small enterprise in a world of sovereign nation-states does not have to concern itself with politics: it operates within a framework of laws and customs defining its role and potential. A large company in a politically pluralized world can, and often must, define its own context: if politics is the development of rules of engagement for situations where those rules do not yet exist, then a company becomes a political actor the moment it introduces foreign trade in a previously closed society, offers health services to its workers, builds their homes, buys or sells a subsidiary providing a service to a community, builds roads and opens up mines in underdeveloped regions, etc. The enterprise is not alone, though, in influencing, shaping or even defin-

ing its socio-political context. The same applies, albeit to differing degrees, to every cooperative scheme in a pluralized world: the local football club, the regional theatre, the labour union, the global genealogists’ network – all of civil society. They – more specifically their controlling or executive elites – have become political actors, with varying degrees of responsibility as citizen-rulers. It stands to reason that a ruler, no matter how small his or her

realm, needs a plan: some idea of the goals that ought to be achieved and of feasible and permissible ways of achieving them. Unlike the passive Marshallian citizen, the post-cosmopolitan citizen has exactly such a plan, and the post-cosmopolitan conception of citizenship seems to suit a politically pluralized world very well: it rejects borders between states and between public and private, and insists that citizens have a positive duty to better the lives of their fellows. Although I have already briefly indicated above where the flaw lies in the argument for post-cosmopolitan citizenship (ultimately, in the incompatibility of its positive conception of freedom with moral pluralism and human emancipation), it is worthwhile to highlight one aspect of this flaw in detail, because it sheds a revealing light on the role of the plan, the inspiration, of the citizen-ruler. Like many political theories, post-cosmopolitanism demands sincerity:

political agents are expected to believe in a social ideal and act upon it. Apart from classic jokes about the ontological incompossibility of politics and sincerity, there are also moral reasons to reject sincerity as a necessary condition for good political agency – including good governance. This is not to say that sincerity in politics may not be commendable at times, or even in general, or that it may not be prudent; it is just not something we should demand of citizens in general, and of citizen-rulers in particular. Sincerity as a conditio sine qua non of politics is both oppressive – i.e. illiberal – and imprudent. As for political sincerity being illiberal, the best way to present this argu-

ment is by summarizing an argument I made elsewhere (Wissenburg 2001c) on sincerity in ecologism. Ecologists have argued that liberalism is fundamentally incompatible with a greener world – i.e. a world where a substantive green morality is adhered to – because of its preference for impartiality. It would fail to give a reason to ‘virtuously’ care about nature, and even fail to support any reason at all for caring about nature. The same argument can be made and has been made, mutatis mutandis, for reasons to care about equality of opportunity, drugs, alcohol and tobacco, religion – in brief, everything that could be part of a citizen’s plan for the good society. It is true that liberalism – or at the very least modern liberalism – tries not

to support any particular theory of the good. Liberalism offers code of behaviour for the public sphere designed to allow individuals to coexist in whatever walk of life they choose – vegetarians, fetishists, shopkeepers, etc. – provided they share (not: believe in; just: share) a minimum of public rules. Private convictions can be of two types: obligations (prescribing that one should act in accordance with virtue or rule X) or personal motivations (prescribing that one should act according to X and believe X). To realize X – say, a sustainable society – we need only the former. Liberalism contains no necessary, let alone sufficient, conditions for the

creation or evolution of virtuous, green, or virtuously green individuals. Liberalism only cares about (and may interfere with) personal convictions if they harm others, if they illegitimately infringe on their freedoms and lives,

and convictions cannot do that unless they are translated into practice. At least in principle then, liberalism only interferes with practices, which is enough: just as we do not need to become Christians to follow the rule that ‘thou shalt not kill’, we do not have to become vegetarian Gaia-worshippers to save the earth. What liberalism excludes is not the existence of a world that scores perfectly on its being organized according to any specific substantive good; it excludes a world in which each and every individual is forced to believe that ideal uncritically. If we want to be sure that people do things for the right reasons – or at least not for the wrong reasons – we have to influence the genesis of preferences and not just the exercise of rights. To allow this would be to deny that human reasons are based on fallible knowledge and ever-questionable moral convictions; it would take us back to the dark ages before the Enlightenment. Not only does influencing preferences in a ‘right’ direction presume an outdated epistemology, it requires questionable techniques. To ‘turn’ people ‘green’ for instance, it is not sufficient to offer them the option of a green life as an alternative to its absence (‘you don’t know what you miss until it’s gone’) or even the experience of such a life; such a strategy would only work if it were accompanied by an ideological offensive promoting one view of the good over all others, pre-empting any public debate on the good life by framing it. Demanding, rather than merely hoping, that citizens sincerely believe in

what they do is not only illiberal, it is also, for a far more simple reason, imprudent: if each and every individual stuck to his or her beliefs religiously, deliberative agreements on a modus vivendi, a policy telos, let alone an overlapping consensus, etc., would become impossible. Since members of elites must be politicians but do not have to be sincere,

let alone be sincerely inspired by an ideal of the good society, they can be machiavellian – which gives us all the more reason to ask why they would bother about actively consulting and representing a ‘constituency’ and showing ‘social responsibility’. As we shall see in a rather tough case – the princes of industry are, after all, often believed to have but one aim in life: money – there is a better argument than noblesse oblige (cf. Barry 2005: 144) or sincere belief in the intrinsic goodness of a well-ordered world: the ever-popular enlightened self-interest.