The very idea that
‘the will of the people’ can be represented assumes that a common
will can actually exist. Within contemporary theory, the possibility
of a collective will has been widely deliberated. This essay, in
accordance with Peter Hallward’s article entitled The
Will of the People: Notes towards a dialectical voluntarism, argues
that a common will can be made manifest when one reconciles the
perceived theoretical dichotomy between agency and structure. Having
ascertained the possibility for a collective will, this essay seeks
to evaluate the neo-liberal state, and consequently, the supposed
need for civil society. As such, this essay will contend that the
state, which acts in accordance with what Foucault denotes as
‘governmentality’, justifies itself insofar as it provides for
its citizens (Chatterjee, 2004: 34). This is problematic as it
reduces political agents to passive recipients of policies.
Furthermore, it is only where state provision of welfare is
insufficient that the perceived need for civil society, most
prominently conceptualised as NGOs (Neocosmos, 2009: 7) emerges.
In
response, this essay will argue that civil society is insufficient in
engaging with an authentic ‘will of the people’ and, in fact,
also reduces political agents to passive objects in dire need of
representation and aid. While it is undeniably true that marginalised
groups require access to clean water, electricity and waste disposal,
such emphasis on material goods does not go far enough in confronting
deeper political demands. Due to the extent to which NGOs fail to
recognise an authentic ‘will of the people’, they fail to
sufficiently transcend the same limitations of governmentality
experienced by the state. As a result, one needs to theorise beyond
notions of civil society towards what Partha Chatterjee calls
“political society,” (Chatterjee, 2004: 41) that is, a space in
which the poor regain political agency. Recognition of agency is
vital due to the extent to which marginalised groups require more
than what can be promised to them within the discourse of service
delivery. In addition to material demands, people want to be
recognised as legitimate players in the determination of their own
lives and their own well-being, and therefore want to be able to have
a say in the democratic process (Gibson, 2011: 171). This essay will
therefore show, using Abahlali baseMjondolo as a case study, how
instances of political society are the only means through which a
profound, meaningful and authentic ‘will of the people’ can come
about.
- Can ‘the will of the people’ exist?
Within contemporary
political theory, the authentic possibility of ‘the will of the
people’ construed as “a deliberate, emancipatory and inclusive
process of self-determination” (Hallward, 2009: 17) is often
disputed. For Hallward, such discussion is centred on a perceived
dichotomy between agency and structure; the former emphasising an
existential radical freedom, and the latter emphasising determining
constraints of society on ‘the will of the people’. Advocates of
agency tend to support an existentialist account of radical freedom
and the ability of individuals to transcend the facticity prescribed
to them by a literal or abstract third party (Crowell, 2010: 1).
Within this conception, priority is given to the capacity of the
individual to shape their own deeply subjective identity; one is not
limited to one’s prescribed facticity and one is ultimately free to
surpass factual properties of the self (Crowell, 2010: 1).
Conversely, arguments which emphasise the structural role of society
in determining ‘the will of the people’ place primacy on either
indeterminism or hyper-determinism. Within this binary, indeterminism
emphasises the random, chaotic nature of society, while
hyper-determinism highlights the role of antecedent events in
determining the present (Hallward, 2009: 19). Such views necessarily
undermine the agency of people and therefore remove the possibility
of an authentic will, as to will something implies that the
individual or group has the capacity to actively and consciously make
choices in the absence of structural determinism or indeterminism. In
his paper entitled The
will of the people: Notes towards a dialectical voluntarism, Hallward
dismantles the binary of agency versus structure to illustrate how
individuals can have radical freedom and the ability to act as a
collective in defence of a set of interests. This is due to the
extent that one can endorse a Satrean conception of freedom by taking
seriously notions such as self-determination and self-emancipation,
while still taking into account the structural context from which
individuals emerge (Hallward, 2009: 19).
Hallward manages to
reconcile the binary of agency versus structure in order to advocate
for dialectical voluntarism, a discipline which puts forward a
qualified definition of ‘the will of the people’. Within this
conception, an authentic and collective will is made possible when
there is “assembly, deliberation and determination [on behalf of] a
collective volition” (Hallward, 2009: 17). Hallward’s account
takes seriously the presence of individuals within a group, as well
as the structural limitations placed on collective formations. This
is due to the extent to which he does not conceive of the collective
as a wholly integrated and entirely homogenous unit, but rather as a
group that “in any given situation, formulates, asserts and
sustains a fully common interest, over and above any divisive or
exclusive interest” (Hallward, 2009: 18). Therefore, ‘the will of
the people’ authentically construed does not imply an indistinct
mass, but rather a group of people who share a common set of
experiences and responses. This definition rules out any conception
of ‘the will of the people’ as a fascist organisation based on
the suppression and subordination of its constituents, that is, ‘the
will of the people’ authentically manifested can only arise from
voluntary consensus in the present (when people choose to enter into
the common will) and in the future (when considering the imminent
trajectories of the collective).
- State logic and the perceived need for civil society
According to
Chatterjee, the contemporary conception of the nation is legitimised
by the notion of popular sovereignty (Chatterjee, 2004: 27), that is,
the idea that the state is endorsed by, and representative of the
national population. Whether or not the state is governed by
undemocratic or authoritarian regimes is irrelevant; what matters is
for the state to claim that its authority derives from ‘the will of
the people,’ as opposed to “divine right or dynastic succession
or the right of conquest” (Chatterjee, 2004: 27). While state
legitimacy, in terms of sovereignty requires “a certain amount of
participation by citizens in the affairs of the state,” (Neocosmos,
2009: 10) this is not necessary within the current status quo.
Instead, Chatterjee correctly asserts that the modern state is
justified by what Foucault denotes as ‘governmentality’
(Chatterjee, 2004: 34). Within this formation, the role of the state
is to provide goods and services for its citizens in accordance with
the discourse of universal human rights (Chatterjee, 2004: 32). Such
an emphasis on human rights, and the provision of goods required to
realise them, has “emptied [the state] of all serious engagements
with politics,” (Chatterjee, 2004: 35) to the extent that it is a
predominantly technical enterprise in which “administrative policy”
(Chatterjee, 2004: 35) on behalf of experts takes preference over
adequate political engagement. In order to facilitate “the
governmentalisation of the state,” (Foucault in Chatterjee, 2004:
34) in which governments are merely the administrators of policies,
the state perceives its citizens in terms of populations. This mode
of organisation enables the use of statistical analysis to derive
conclusions regarding the supposed desires and needs of the governed
(Chatterjee, 2004: 34). Emphasis on welfare and the provision of
goods and services therefore gives rise to “the disciplines of
demography and statistics…as the population needs to be classified,
categorised and measured” (Neocosmos, 2009: 10). Such a perceptual
shift is useful for the authoritative nature of the state insofar as
it undermines the individual agency of people and therefore the
“normative burden” (Chatterjee, 2004: 34) and policy difficulties
associated with treating people as unique citizens with
agency.
Governmentality
necessitates deconstructing the nation into heterogeneous groups in
order to apply different policy measures to different spheres of
society (Chatterjee, 2004: 35). Such a conception is necessarily
inegalitarian and leads to empowerment or marginalisation, depending
on one’s place within society. Due to the extent to which the state
is considered to be the bearer of welfare and rights, any perceived
deficiencies logically stem from the inability of the state to
provide adequately for its citizens. Within contemporary global
society, the failure of the state to provide for its citizens is
reinforced by a neo-liberal orthodoxy which discourages welfare and
state intervention in favour of laissez-faire
policies which
supposedly ‘trickle down’ to the poorest members of society
(Rapley, 2004: 4). Tension therefore arises from competing ideologies
of neo-liberalism, which requires inequality (Rapley, 2004: 4) and
human rights, which regards all individuals as inherently equal.
Civil society (as an ideal) emerges, therefore, as a means of
responding to state deficiencies which are conceptualised as a
failure to provide resources for citizens (Neocosmos, 2009: 7). The
goal of civil society is then, arguably, to act as a mediator between
human rights and capital interests, that is, to improve the
capability of individuals to exercise their rights without
overhauling the global structure (Neocosmos, 2009).
The willingness of
NGOs to uphold the neo-liberal status quo stems, arguably, from
funding on behalf of the states and wealthy elites, as well as the
fact that “NGOs are sociologically staffed by middle-class
professionals for whom they provide vehicles for employment and
social entrepreneurship” (Neocosmos, 2009: 8). The way in which
NGOs work within the status quo can be seen, for example, in terms of
the TAC (Treatment of Action Campaign) which was founded in South
Africa in the late 1990s. The TAC, by appealing to the rights to
dignity and healthcare, managed to force the government to provide
free antiretroviral drugs for its HIV positive citizens (Heywood,
2009: 15). While this was necessary given the trend of denialism in
South Africa at the time (Heywood, 2009: 20), it was insufficient, as
the TAC did not address deeper political concerns. For example, the
TAC did not provide an adequate critique of the way in which
neo-liberal ideology impoverishes people to the extent that they
become dependent on the state for access to medication. In addition
to this, the TAC did not address issues of psychological
vulnerability that arise from laissez-faire
market structures,
which can lead to individuals engaging in unsafe sexual practices
(Smit, 2006:
534). This is relevant as a study done by the Royal Institute of
Public Health concludes that there is a correlation between
depression and anxiety (as a result of unemployment and inequality)
and a willingness of people to engage in risky sexual intercourse
(Smit, 2006: 537). Despite the TAC’s obvious material success, it
has managed to de-politicise the HIV/AIDS debate in South Africa to
the extent that it is formulated only in terms of “technical
bio-medical discourse,” (Neocosmos, 2009: 9) and is thus not deemed
appropriate for popular discussion. Therefore, the TAC illustrates
the fundamental error of civil society, that is, the idea that “[in
civil society rights are] realised in a manner which keeps them
firmly away from any (emancipatory) politics which question the
liberal state itself” (Neocosmos, 2009: 7).
- Civil society: a critique
Critiques of civil
society in the form of NGOs are threefold. Firstly, many theorists
argue that NGOs are conceptualised as corporate organisations which
place a disproportionate amount of emphasis on the acquisition of
funds and the need to perpetuate a positive self-image and reputation
(Sangtin Feminist Writers, 2006: 113) within the global sphere.
Related to this is the tendency for NGOs, often reliant on external
funding laced with conditionality, to be more upwardly accountable to
patrons, such as states and wealthy elites, than downwardly
accountable to communities (Ebrahim, 2003: 814). Due to the corporate
nature of NGOs and the fact that they are often funded by wealthy
elites and states, NGOs are seldom able to be critical of
class-differences which arise within a neo-liberal schema. Indeed,
numerous experts operating within NGOs occupy positions of privilege
(Ebrahim, 2003: 819) and therefore have very little incentive to
delve deeper into the underlying reasons for oppression, for example,
the manner in which neo-liberalism requires inequality in order to
generate wealth (Rapley, 2004: 3). Given the current proliferation of
NGOs within the global community, such corporatism is perhaps
necessary for organisations to survive in a highly competitive
domain, but does little to empower communities beyond discourses of
human rights and service delivery. A further problem with the
commercial nature of NGOs stems from an emphasis on centralised
decision making on behalf of a circle of elites who have not been
democratically elected to represent ‘the will of the people’
(Sangtin Feminist Writers, 2006: 113) This is supposedly justified
insofar as poor communities are seen as desperately in need of
empowerment on behalf of experts within NGOs (Neocosmos, 2011: 2).
Such a victimage mechanism assumes that poor communities are not in
any position to partake in an active discussion that would enable
them to play a part in determining their own future trajectories.
Here, language of victimhood facilitates the silencing of certain
groups in order to render their potential agency “unthinkable”
(Trouillot, 1995: 73). NGOs therefore work in a similar way to
state-orientated regimes which construct their own version of ‘the
will of the people’ in order to justify their authority as
ultimately for the sake of a greater societal good (Chatterjee, 2004:
27). As such, structures put in place to ‘represent’ the poor are
seldom a result of a rational endorsement on behalf of communities,
(Sangtin Feminist Writers, 2006: 115) and fail to take into account
the idea that marginalised communities are often not in search of
passive aid, but rather desire the ability to represent themselves as
rational agents in the decision-making process (Gibson, 2011: 171).
Emphasis on the
acquisition of funds in order to empower groups within a paradigm of
human rights is also potentially detrimental due to the way in which
NGOs can make instrumental use of ‘victims’ in order to further
their agendas. An example of this is provided by the Sangtin Feminist
Writers who describe an NGO event in which marginalised women were
invited to share their experiences of violence (Sangtin Feminist
Writers, 2006: 120). This event was used to attract media attention
and funding for the NGO, but made no effort to rectify the injustices
experienced by the speakers. As a result, the women were merely
“exhibited…as cases of victimisation [and became] tools to
publicise and popularise the organisers and their establishment”
(Sangtin Feminist Writers, 2006: 121).
A final problem
relating to the corporatism of NGOs concerns the business-like modes
of evaluation which are employed in order to grade performance, often
for the sake of reassuring donors. Assessing progress is difficult
when one attempts to quantify qualitative notions of political
empowerment and emancipation (Ebrahim, 2003: 817). Therefore, the
assessment of progress is made easier when one has to measure
tangible outcomes such as “[the amount of] schools built, trees
planted and land irrigated” (Ebrahim, 2003: 817). Consequently, in
order to feign progress and continue to receive funding, NGOs are
limited, by their accountability to patrons, to do work which
produces quantifiable results.
Related
to the notion of NGO corporatism is the detachment of NGOs from rural
communities. Such detachment brings about an element of ignorance and
naïve idealism on behalf of civil society. This can result in an
entirely ineffective representation of ‘the will of the people,’
or it can bring about tangible harms to communities. Organisations,
such as Amnesty International, which seek to empower communities by
making use of human rights education often do little to change the
actual circumstances faced by communities. This is due to the extent
to which marginalised communities are often “only tenuously, and
even then ambiguously and contextually, rights-bearing citizens [and
therefore not] proper members of civil society” (Chatterjee, 2004:
38). Within this context, knowing one’s rights does little to
change the actual lived experiences of communities; it is of no value
to know one’s right to justice and equality when state apparatuses
seek to actively disempower one. This can be seen in contemporary
South Africa whereby police use illegitimate violence against
marginalised communities. For example, recent protests in
Thembelihle,
an informal settlement in Lenasia, saw the police firing rubber
bullets into the face of an eleven-year-old boy, amidst other
instances of violence against the community as a whole (SAPA, 2011:
1). The state
justifies this behaviour by claiming that shack settlements are
strictly illegal manifestations, and therefore the citizens who
comprise such spaces are not necessarily regarded as having rights
(Gibson, 2011: 151). As result, those who experience the most severe
violations of their human rights are often conceptualised as
criminals to whom the discourse of human rights does not wholly apply
(Gibson, 2011:148).
The second result of detached ignorance can be actual harms incurred to communities as a direct result of NGO intervention. This occurs when NGOs, without understanding the nuanced complexities of certain communities, impose their own will without considering the consequences thereof. The Sangtin Feminist Writers describe an instance of this. Sangtin organises trips for women outside of their immediate communities with the intention of “[allowing] them to see the world, to become wiser and more confident” (Sangtin Feminist Writers, 2006: 116). However, this separation of men and women invariably seeks to fragment the community and ultimately leads to a hampered ability to act as a collective unit in defence of a common and authentic will. In this case, one can argue that Sangtin interfered with the community by implementing its own feminist agenda, without considering the broader context of “caste and class differences” (Sangtin Feminist Writers, 2006: 116) and therefore undermined a process of real, unified empowerment. The final problem for civil society concerns the legal realm within which it operates. Due to the extent to which NGOs seek to advocate for human rights, they tacitly operate within an agreed upon, democratic discourse within which there is “an acceptance by all contenders for power of ‘the rules of the game’, [that is], a consensual value system based on the mutual acceptance of each other’s rights and the rule of law” (Neocosmos, 2011: 2). As such, NGOs cannot make use of ‘illegal’ modes of democratisation in order to aid marginalised communities as, to do so, would entail a breach of their human rights agenda which precludes the use of violence and force. This is problematic due to the extent that an authentic manifestation of ‘the will of the people’ often requires a degree of disregard for normative and strictly legal institutions (Bayat, 1995: 55). In these instances, individuals and groups may realise that their actions are “illegal and contrary to good civic behaviour, but they make a claim to a habitation and a livelihood as a matter of right” (Chatterjee, 2004: 40). NGOs, by virtue of their aforementioned corporate allegiance to neo-liberalism, are prevented by their discourse from realising that marginalised groups are often justified in ‘stealing’ services such as electricity, a commodity which is supposedly guaranteed to them as a basic right. While these kinds of acts are often criminalised and essentialised as dangerous and abhorrent, this is not necessarily the case. The act of ‘stealing’ electricity is often done as an alternative to other methods such as burning candles and paraffin (Birkinshaw, 2008: 3). The potential consequences arising from accidents related to candles are paraffin include, but are not limited to, the burning of entire areas of settlements due to the proximity of dwellings, the poisoning of children who accidently ingest paraffin, the loss of life and the loss of livelihood in the form of clothes, official documents and tools (Birkinshaw, 2008: 1). In response to this, Abahlali baseMjondolo activist Philani Zungu states (Zungu in Birkinshaw, 2008: 10):
We have experienced
fire shacks, we rather have other problems…it’s dangerous to
connect but not as compared to fire. We can get electrical shock,
arrest, but not worse than shack fire. I always prefer electrical
consequences. If I had a fire, my family would have no clothing,
facility to cook, no change to go to school because it would all be
burnt. A fire is worse.
Therefore,
while communities understand the complex relationship between the
need for electricity and the act of connecting ‘illegally’ and
‘unsafely’, civil society cannot regard this act as anything but
criminal and innately dangerous. Civil society cannot, therefore,
accommodate instances in which groups justifiably act in a
quasi-legal manner in order to bring about access to basic, but
highly necessary commodities (Birkinshaw, 2008: 10).
- Political society as an authentic manifestation of ‘the will of the people’
Having discerned
that civil society, construed as NGOs, is unable to represent ‘the
will of the people’ (and in some instances, actively fragments the
collective will) due to its corporate, detached and legal framework,
the burden of proof now lies in finding an alternative means of
channelling such a collective will. At this point, this essay argues,
in accordance with Rancière, that “Politics is not the exercise of
power. Politics ought to be defined on its own term, as a mode of
acting put into practice by a specific kind of subject and deriving
from a particular form of reason” (Rancière, 2001: 1). Here, one
can look at Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM), a social movement that began
in Durban in 2005 with a road blockade which sought to protest the
selling of a piece of land for commercial development that had been
promised to the residents of Kennedy Road as space for housing (AbM,
2006: 1). Later, in 2006, the movement successfully organised an
election boycott with the slogan “No Land, No House, No Vote”
(AbM, 2006: 1) which explicitly placed them outside the space of
electoral politics. The key demands of the members of Abahlali
baseMjondolo involve: access to land within close proximity to the
urban centre, bottom-up modes of democracy, ending forced and illegal
evictions, as well access to sanitation, education and electricity
(AbM, 2006: 1). However, members of the organisation do not
conceptualise their demands within the discourse of service delivery
as, instead, they insist that their demands are “about being human”
(Gibson, 2011: 157). In place of hierarchical modes of organisation,
AbM has managed to develop “horizontal links among shack
settlements [suggesting] a new kind of movement in the making”
(Gibson, 2011: 148). The internal organisation of the movement itself
is radically democratic with rotating leadership positions and
frequent, open meetings (Gibson, 2011: 158). Within AbM all decisions
are made collectively and there is emphasis on the need for
transparent discussions regarding the use of funds (Gibson, 2011:
159).
What
differentiates movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo from NGOs such
as Amnesty International and Habitat for Humanity, is the extent to
which the former requires that members act as rational agents capable
of leading themselves (indeed, without the participation of people
within Abahlali baseMjondolo, the movement would cease to exist),
while the latter requires a degree of subordination in order to
conceptualise communities as “convenient instruments for the
administration of welfare” (Chatterjee, 2004: 40). Within the
former mode of emancipatory politics, ‘the will of the people’ is
necessarily made manifest as a result of conscious discussions and
deliberations on behalf of actional, agential citizens. This
approximates what S’bu Zikode describes as “a homemade politics
that everyone, every old gogo,
can understand and find a home in” (Zikode in Pithouse, 2006: 6).
Within social movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo, technocrats
are only involved in decision-making processes insofar as they are
invited to do so by the movement. Nigel Gibson, in his book entitled
Fanonian Practices in
South Africa, explains
how Abahlali baseMjondolo is sceptical of aid which comes from
so-called experts (Gibson, 2011: 164). Indeed, there is a shared
belief that linkages with the state and state-like organisations
compromise the movement’s “autonomy and independence [and give
rise to] the threat of co-option and professionalization” (Gibson,
2011: 164). Members of Abahlali baseMjondolo are also weary of modes
of civil society which result in relationships of dependency (Gibson,
2011: 158). While the movement has made use of professionals, such as
lawyers, the role of experts in emancipation is considered secondary
to “a mode of organisation from the bottom up, through constant
consultation and principled refusal of ‘biryani money’”
(Gibson, 2011: 158). Thus, AbM is able to set its own political
agenda and is not prohibited from addressing fundamental, structural
issues.
Social movements,
such as Abahlali baseMjondolo, operating within political society are
able to avoid the problems associated with civil society which this
essay has addressed. Firstly, they do not succumb to corporatism
insofar as they are reluctant to accept external funding and the
prescriptive advice of purported experts (Gibson, 2011: 158).
Secondly, they are not vulnerable to issues of detachment and naïve
idealism due to the extent that the majority of social movements are
constitutive of individuals living within poor and marginalised
communities. As a result, their involvement within the movement stems
from their direct “existentially experienced situation of being in
the shacks” (Gibson, 2011: 159). One can argue that, due to the
unmediated discussion and decision-making process, this involvement
is not a representation of ‘the will of the people’ (which NGOs
strive to approximate) but, in fact, is
the purest form of a
collective volition. Finally, due to the extent to which the state
acts in an illegitimate manner towards such communities (Gibson,
2011: 168), unlike NGOs, social movements in political society are
not necessarily under a moral obligation to adhere to the rules
prescribed by liberal democracy. As a result, these social movements
are able to partake in acts which are deemed illegitimate, in order
to bring about emancipation and liberation which does not have to be
limited to the normative prescriptions of the state. This was the
case when, despite pleas on behalf of Thabo Mbeki for daily
demonstrations linked to Abahlali to desist, they continued anyway
(Gibson, 2011: 149).
- Conclusion
Therefore, while
civil society in the form of NGOs is often uncritically heralded as
the means towards emancipation and liberation, this is not
necessarily accurate. Indeed, NGOs (like states) necessarily
construct ‘the will of the people’ in order to feign
justification for their technocratic authority. While this has
undoubtedly led to material improvements in the lives of poor and
marginalised communities, it does not approximate a genuine ‘will
of the people’. This is due to the extent that NGOs are corporate,
detached and operate within a legal framework that cannot
conceptualise the political sphere in which poor communities exist.
While it is certainly the case that state structures need to be
challenged in the name of a collective will, it is unlikely that such
a manifestation can take place within the confines of civil society.
Therefore, one needs to give primacy to events which occur within
political society, which is not restricted by state logic and
‘expertise’, in order to fully comprehend actual, concrete
manifestations of ‘the will of the people’.
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