Democratic Peace Theory

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I figured I would do my part to once again try to elevate the level of debate on the forum.

Good idea (to risk understatement actually). Will make some comments on the theory later, but for now some random remarks about related details:

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What erroneous and anachronistic notions do people have about the German state before 1918? It was certainly undemocratic*, militaristic and expansionist. O/c insisting that Germany was soley (as opposed to mostly) to blame for the War would be both erroneous and anachronistic, but how many people think that these days?

*There were, of course, elections, but they were to a legislative body that was (in my opinion anyway) halfway between a sham and a talking shop. Neither the U.K nor France were especially democratic as far as I'm concerned (women didn't have the vote in either country (didn't get it in France until, IIRC, after the Second World War) and neither did a very large proportion of working class men in Britain; not sure about France on that point. Various property-linked idiocy as well), but both were vastly more democratic than Germany at the time (I accept that I might be accidentally exaggerating how democratic the Third Republic was; I'm not as familiar with the details as I'd like to be).

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Not so. Came to power via constitutional means though.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In terms of civil liberties, Germans were at least as free as the French and English citizens.

Again I have to be a little hesitant as far as the Third Republic goes (this settles it; must get round to buying myself a decent book on the subject), but I don't think that's true. Civil liberties aren't really my area o/c.
Should note that only concrete(ish?) fact that I've got is the fact that it was possible in pre-war Germany to ban large political parties and to impose draconian new restrictions on religious minorities.

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I never said that it did. But those are two key notions that people have of the German Empire.

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Obviously I disagree, and very strongly so, here.
I believe that the Soviet Union sometimes had a parliament of sorts (I forget the name; not that it matters as it was just a talking listening shop), but I don't think it's possible to seriously argue that it was a democratic institution.

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Pre-war Germany didn't have any democratic institutions. You had the Reichstag o/c, but that was worse than powerless. Aristocratic and oligarchic institutions were much more powerful so, I think, were (some?) state Parliaments. Which certainly weren't democratic, you know what the Dreiklassenwahlrecht was, right?

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Also not true. But then again, the courts weren't fair anywhere else in Europe.

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That depends what you mean by "officially". Not that it really matters; I'm certainly not arguing that the U.K in 1914 was a model state or anything like that (quite the opposite actually). But I do think that it, and France, was more democratic than Germany at the time. Not that that's hard.

Btw, you seem to be operating under the assumption that I'm anti-German. I'm not; quite the reverse actually.

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An unwritten constitution is still a constitution.

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That depends how you look at it. The German government was, in my opinion anyway, largely responsible for turning a small regional dispute into one of the worst wars in human history. And largely for expansionist delusions mentioned earlier. And, of course, Germany was a key player in all the idiotic-to-evil-to-suicidal-and-back-again buildup in the years (decades...) before the war, but was hardly alone here. You can't have an arms race with just one country playing.

O/c this could all be taken back to the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war and so on and so forth, but those arguments are exceedingly tedious.

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Don't be silly. None of those bloody treaties (yes, the pun was intentional. I'll go and hang my head in shame now...) was even slightly honourable and the honouring of them wasn't noble, but an excuse (and not a very good one; but that hardly mattered) for war.

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I've never claimed it was a war of ideologies.

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There were some ideas along the same general lines before 1918 IIRC. Became more mainstream after then though.

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I didn't mention the Reichstag fire and didn't intend to. My point was different; German democracy was already dead by the time Hitler took over (the villain here, and, according to some, in other respects, was Brüning) and he didn't take power as a result of an election (in fact the NSDAP lost ground in the last free elections in Germany before the War; some maps of that election can be found here: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;id=2 </blatant plug>) but after a backroom carve-up with Papen and other ultra-conservative idiots. Which was constitutional, but not democratic.

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You mean the elections of 1933? Not free, not fair. And, despite that, the NSDAP still didn't win a majority (though was able, by merging the remains of the DNVP into it and by preventing the Communists from taking their seats, to get one after those "elections").

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Certainly there were movements in Germany against certain political groups and minorities (the kulturkampf against Catholics is a prime example).  But if your mesaure of democratic government is that no one gets discriminated against, then democracy doesn't exist.  Its the nature of people, and thus governments, to discriminate against someone or something.

My point here isn't that discrimination doesn't exist in democracies, more that a system of government in which it is possible to introduce new restrictions on minority groups and, perhaps more importantly, to effectively ban political parties with a mass following (in this case the SPD for a while) is probably not very democratic. And certainly less democratic than the U.K at the time and, I think, France as well.

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Because you mentioned something about people having inaccurate ideas about pre-1918 Germany. That the German state was millitaristic and expansionist is a historical fact. And, I think, knowledge of this fact was important in popularising DPT.

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I thought you were the one that mentioned institutions. I have no problem accepting that many alledged "democratic" institutions are nothing of the sort; which is why I gave the example of the U.S.S.R.

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Must you?

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I never mentioned "freedom". Elections (and the political (as opposed to electoral) results of elections) are a very good indication of how democratic a country is.

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Define "Mob". It's important.

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I don't think that the ruling classes in France and Germany were especially enamoured of their subjects either. If the Anglophone world has seen less bloody revolutions than the norm over the past few centuries it isn't because the rulers of these countries were especially afraid of King Mob; more that they weren't as brutally reactionary as those elsewhere.

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This looks like whiggery to me. Anyways, the ruling classes here would never have allowed the state to become more democratic if their social "inferiors" hadn't spent the better part of a century doing all they could (not much, but, eventually, enough) to change things.

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Sure about this?

Where be the bearded lefty from Frankfurt when you need him?

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Regrettably I don't know enough about the American legal system in order to comment here. Do you have a problem with Jury Nobbling or something?

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I do indeed think that. I also happen to be correct. But I don't actually believe in DPT, at least not in a conventional sense.

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It has to be possible to enforce legislation for it to have any effect, so that's pretty much true.

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Yes, of course. An understanding that the powers that be have No Right To Do That is an essential part of a healthy democracy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Got to go now. Reply to rest as soon as I get back.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Part II:

My point is that Germany was no more at fault that any of the other countries that were involved in the war...

This is clearly not true; there would have been no war on the Western Front but for (pre-planned) German aggression.

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The principle reason given to the public here at the time was a mixture of "Brave Little Belgium" and crude jingoism. Variations on this theme dominated everywhere o/c.

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Yes. More or less. But just because everyone is to blame doesn't mean that one person (or government in this case) isn't more to blame than the rest.

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Isn't that obvious? But even so, that comment doesn't apply to the situation in Germany in the early 1930's.

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You've missed my main points here. To recap:

1. Democracy in Germany had already been abolished by the time Hitler came to power (via Brüning). Chancellor's were no longer accountable to the Reichstag, meaning that they were no longer accountable to the people. A government not accountable to the people is not a democracy by definition.
2. I've never denied that Hitler came to power by constitutional means. But constitutional means and democratic means are sometimes totally different; as they were in this case.

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Had they? Elections in Weimar Germany are notable for the lack of "decision". That was part of the problem.

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In the last free elections in Germany until 1949, the NSDAP polled 33% of the vote. A very high figure, but not a majority and not close to one.

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I disagree; how many cases are there of a democracy being destroyed by the fact that it's a democracy? Weimar was killed off by horrific economic crises and undemocratic elements in the   constitution and in the State.

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People meaning "the military", yes?

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Must you?

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Does it? What is "liberty" anyway?

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Because there is a fundamental difference (more than one actually) between what we now call "democracy" and mob rule.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

When I minority is discriminated against with the approval of the majority, then it is perfectly democratic, in the strictest sense.

Depends what is meant by democracy, doesn't it? In any case these things were imposed by an unaccountable state, not by "the people".

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Don't think so.

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This is only true if you claim that Germany was the only state at fault.

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I would change this to say that in order to have a democracy, full stop, you need to have more than legislatures and elections.

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"You?"

At the time of the American Revolution my ancestors, the British ones at least, lived in rural poverty, generally in very remote areas. Had they known of events in North America (and obviously I've no way of knowing that) they would almost certainly have supported the Americans as they were largely on the radical side of the religious (and thus political) spectrum.
Even the Establishment was divided over that war, with most Whigs supporting (and often openly) the Americans.

But that's moving off-topic a wee bit. Anyways, my main objection to that film being quoted is because it's historically inaccurate to an almost comic degree.

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But I'm talking about democracy

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Would a crowd of demonstrators count as a mob? Because the state here had no problem with butchering them:

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Certainly an element of truth to that.

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True. But not as different as many here would like to (and do) believe.

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That's not really Nobbling, but it's still bad. How come it's legal?

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Up to a certain point, of course.

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If Mr. Personality-cult wins 80% of the vote, I would say that there's at least an 80% chance that the election was not fair.

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I would agree here.

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A government never grants personal liberties anyway. Think why.

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I've never suggested that.

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Not at all. Ordinary citizens never have much power and never really expect much. In modern societies, all power is in the State (writ large).

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Almost there, but not quite. What do you think I mean by "healthy"?

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Not really; the main difference between our positions here seems to be defining "democracy" and "democratic government".

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This a theoretical thing? Can't think of many cases of "oppression by the masses". Modern oppression is almost always by the State (writ large), which is why there can be none of this liberty thing without democracy.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You act as though "the State" is just this distant faceless entity that no one "down below" has anything to do with.

Does it look like that? Damn. I'd explain my views on that issue in detail now, but I have to be on a train in about... er... half an hour... so... trying to explain this quickly might make things more confused, but I'll give it a go anyway. I said the State - writ large, and that's the key here. I mean all institutions (whether open or secret, in the public or private sector...) that follow a certain set of rules and which, collectively, rule/run a country. I don't mean the government, though the different elements of that are obviously at the core of the State.
I don't think that this is good or bad, it's just (in my opinion at least) a fact of modern societies.

More in a few hours.