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The Problem of the Public Forum
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The Problem of the Public ForumThe main idea of Political Liberalism is that democracy is possible through a public forum which includes all members of society, gives them all a chance to speak, and asks that they all adhere to the principles of public reason. Like his German counterpart, Jurgen Habermas, Rawls believes that public discourse, rather than private elitism, will ensure good decision making and public participation. While these are good ideas, ideas that ring true to those concerned with participatory democracy, my argument is that Rawls ignores the material conditions that currently prevent such a public forum from becoming actualized. Because he ignores the current reality of unequal access to public discourse, Rawls is forced to look to institutions like the Supreme Court as harbingers of public reason, when in fact these institutions lack the fairness and equality that are true prerequisites to democracy. To begin with, only a few elite institutions control current public discourse, and ordinary citizens really have no access to speech OR the kind of information required to make sound public decisions. To demonstrate this, I turn to the work of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, who, in their “Propaganda Model,” lay out the current state of public discourse. Herman and Chomsky argue that there are currently five “filters” which prevent genuine democratic discussion of ideas. First, there is the size, ownership, and profit orientation of the mass media. Very few (perhaps nine or ten) multinational firms control the vast majority of the world’s news media, music, television, radio, internet, etc. Those corporations have virtually identical value systems, reflected in the news and views they choose to disseminate. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of information we receive regarding politics is chosen and represented by only a few people, with basically elitist values. The second filter is advertising. Since advertising is the primary source of income for the mass media, reporters, editors, and publishers do not want to do anything that would upset their advertisers. They will not run stories critical of corporations. They will seldom report on economic issues from any point of view except that of the corporation (for proof of this, check and see how major newspapers cover strikes and labor disputes). The idea of a press acting as a watchdog against the powerful is really a myth according to Herman and Chomsky. News organizations cannot go against their sources of income. The third filter is known as “sourcing.” This refers to the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and `experts' funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power. It also refers to the dominance of private public relations firms in “making” news. Most of the news we receive is not “dug up” by reporters. Skilled public relations experts inside and outside of the government manufacture it. Herman and Chomsky refer to the fourth filter as “flak and enforcers.” If news organizations actually work up the courage to criticize public officials or powerful corporations, those officials and corporations retaliate by criticizing the press. Essentially, the media is “disciplined” through lawsuits, public criticism, labels such as “liberal” and so forth. This, in turn, hurts advertising and other sources of income, which makes the media think twice about criticizing public figures in the future. Finally, the fifth filter of control used to be called “anticommunism,” but can now be referred to merely as “enemy creation.” If the media criticizes policy decisions, politicians can accuse the media of being sympathetic towards whatever “enemy” we are fighting today, whether it be “communists,” “terrorists,” or whatever. Again, those few elite corporations which control the news will think twice about running stories that are in any way critical, if they are “punished” for it by being accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. (http://www.utexas.edu/coc/journalism/SOURCE/j363/chomsky.html). Remember that these filters are ideological, but all have a material context. The main argument against current faith in democratic public forums is that these forums are controlled, economically and politically, by elites whose interests do not coincide with ordinary working people. Once again, material reality trumps Rawls’ philosophical ideal The second major problem with Rawls’ idea of a public forum concerns his insistence that participants cast aside their “comprehensive doctrines” and instead debate the within the inclusive, agreed-upon values which will not offend any other participants or marginalize groups of society who wish to participate in the public forum. My argument is that the idea of a public forum casting aside comprehensive doctrines can only favor the ideologies and beliefs which are already so dominant in society as to seem “reasonable” when compared to other, more radical ideals. In other words, the idea of “public reason” merely privileges the values of those classes of people who are already dominant members of society. Two examples should suffice to illustrate my argument that people cannot reasonably be expected to cast aside their comprehensive doctrines in public discourse. First, take the example of feminism. Feminists, by and large, believe that there are ideological harms in the private thoughts and attitudes of patriarchy. The Rawlsian public forum, however, cannot entertain such a critique, because it is too “comprehensive” and unwilling to compromise with those participants in the public forum who see no problem with patriarchy. The second example of a “comprehensive doctrine” that would be excluded by Rawls is, of course, Marxism. For Marxists, there are many reasons why any genuine critique of social evils requires us to be “comprehensive.” For Marxists, capitalism itself is responsible for the kinds of inequality and alienation that contextualize many of the social problems presumably discussed in the public forum. But Rawls would not allow the Marxist to make that argument, because it involves the embrace of an “absolutist” worldview, contrary to the more “reasonable” discourse in the public forum. It seems that, the more we think about who is and is not welcome in the public forum, the more clearly the picture emerges: To be welcome, one should not believe anything controversial. Moreover, the second objection to the Rawlsian public forum becomes even more lethal when augmented by the first objection. For those “comprehensive doctrines” which actually question the inequality of the public forum itself (let’s go ahead and use feminism and Marxism again, since these are the most articulate critiques of the public forum) will naturally be rejected by liberals who believe their own political positions are more “reasonable” and less comprehensive. In other words, the feminist who argues that the idea of a public forum rests on a public/private dichotomy which favors patriarchy will be dismissed by the Rawlsian liberal as “unreasonable” because feminism is a comprehensive doctrine which questions the underlying ideological structures of liberalism. Similarly, the Rawlsian liberal will ignore the Marxist who argues that deliberative democracy is impossible without economic democracy because it is “unreasonable” to expect us to reformulate the material foundations of society. This leaves us with a very odd and scary public forum. While clinging to the concept of deliberative democracy rhetorically, the Rawlsian liberal will brook no criticism on the part of feminists, Marxists, or others who dare question the very notion of accessibility that is supposed to be the basis of the public forum. One is left with the impression that the Rawlsian cares less about genuine access than apparent access. Just as A Theory of Justice paid lip service to economic justice without actually accounting for the material causes of injustice, Political Liberalism raves about the idea of political participation, while systemically discouraging any attempts to achieve the kind of society where people could truly participate. Conclusion I hope I have shown that the philosophy of John Rawls is an idea whose time has not yet come. My intention was not to refute the ideal promise of his philosophy. Instead, my point throughout the essay has been that Rawls’ ideas require different material arrangements than those that presently exist. Moreover, Rawlsian justice absent the material arrangements which make it possible may even be dangerous, because it falls into the same liberal traps as most present reforms: satisfying the charitable sentiment of academics while actually diverting attention from the material changes which need to take place before true social justice is possible. Until that time, people ought to read Rawls as a dream unfulfilled. 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