john porter's sociology and liberal democracy

John Porter's Sociology and Liberal DemocracyAuthor(s): Harvey RichSource: The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 17, No. 2(Spring, 1992), pp. 193-198Published by: Canadian Journal of SociologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3341198 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 10:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Canadian Journal of Sociology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheCanadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.89 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 10:40:04 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cjs

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3341198?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Notes on the Discipline/Notes sociologiques

John Porter's sociology and liberal democracy

Harvey Rich University of Calgary

Everybody, well, almost everybody honours the memory of John Porter by reference to the monumental contribution he made to Canadian sociology. When it comes to specifying just what that contribution was and which elements in it will turn out to be of enduring value, there turns out to be considerable disagreement.

I intend to enlarge the area of disagreement by saying some nice things about Porter as a liberal democrat. Others may have taken notice of Porter's kinship with liberal democracy, but I have yet to run across anyone praising Porter for it. Curtis and Richardson (1988: 2), referring to The Vertical Mosaic (Porter, 1965) write: "... [S]ome of the theoretical arguments and policy suggestions of the book, seem, from our vantage point, to be based on a kind of naive liberalism." Similar comments are to be found in the special issue of The CanadianReview ofSociology andAnthropology 18 (December 1981) to honour the memory of John Porter, who died in 1979. Few other references to his liberalism appear in the numerous articles and books that make use of his work. These are presented, typically, as if his liberalism was an idiosyncracy, out-of- character considering his otherwise radical stance.

The truth of the matter is that Porter was viewed by many of his admirers as a Marxist manque. His scathing critique of Canadian society was co-opted by Marxists who found his empirical data highly useful for condemning Canada as a retarded "bourgeois democracy." Viewed dialectically, this was taken to mean that Canada's retardation made it a more promising candidate for radical social change. Movement towards a less retarded bourgeois democracy would result in

Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 17(2) 1992 193



a further bourgeoisification of the working class. Porter viewed the United States as more egalitarian and achievement-oriented than Canada. Many of his admirers and co-workers saw Canada as closer to the Marxist scenario for radical social change precisely because it was more elitist and less achievement-oriented. As viewed in the mid-sixties when The VerticalMosaic was published and for some time thereafter, "worse was better." Those committed to this view of the dialectic were not alone. Their perspective dovetailed nicely with the mainstream view of sociology as the morality taskmaster of the social sciences. Every expose of the seamy side to whatever institution was being investigated became another act in a never-ending morality play.

Certainly, Porter was scathing in his criticism of the wide gap between the promise of equality of opportunity in Canada and the obdurate reality of large- scale inequalities in many spheres. But, lacking an apocalyptic vision of a heaven on earth, Porter tempered his criticism with a recognition of limitations that could not be transcended and of the dangers inherent in the attempt to go beyond such limitations.

Liberal democrats believe that the need to control political power will always be with us. The potentially oppressive side of political institutions will not vanish with the vanquished bourgeoisie. The expertise of public officials will continue to pose a problem of bureaucratic power. There will continue to be a need for due process of law and an independent judiciary. An expansion of citizenship rights will remain on the agenda. These are liberal-democratic concerns which are largely neglected in sociology textbooks. We have little to say to our students about these matters as positive achievements.

What about John Porter's recognition of liberal democracy as a valued achievement? The Vertical Mosaic was a different book as it was written compared to how it was taken. Those of us who have become acquainted with it and Porter's other works secondhand may have missed the way Porter himself perceived the problem and the promise of democracy. The problem is com- pounded by the fact that political sociologists such as Clement (1975) and Olsen (1980), who were among his main interpreters to the larger community of social scientists, rejected liberal democracy outright and virtually ignored Porter's positive references to it. In addition, Porter sometimes attempted to straddle a commitment to a more radical "thoroughgoing" (1965: 372), democracy and a recognition that we may have to settle for elitist democracy, at least at the societal level. As a result, his work sometimes reads like damning the latter with faint praise. At times, Porter comes across as a liberal democrat malgre lui. Given these complications, I shall proceed with copious references to Porter's own writings with a running commentary of my own.

How did Porter view the status of political democracy in Canada? He concluded: "There can be no widespread participation in the making of major decisions in any modern society" (1979: 18). But Porter did not leave it at that.

194



Given this limitation, there were still important choices to be made. In the same essay, Porter went on to stress that a diffusion of power was more desirable than ". .. the tendency for power to be concentrated through ideological commitment" (1979: 19).

Porter raises the question of "whether or not there can be collective goals in a differentiated society... without bringing about a monolithic homogeneity in social life" (1965: 372). He responds to this question by emphasizing that "... a great deal of institutional experimentation is necessary to avoid monolithic government" (1965: 372).

I would like to make two points here: 1. Porter expressed concern for the negative consequences of an ideologically

unified society, regardless of the content of that ideology. This is vintage liberalism.

2. Porter did not regard the inequalities of resources (and the resulting power differentials) in Canadian society as the greatest evil that could befall us. The costs of any particular project to transform Canada into a more egalitarian society need to be carefully scrutinized and pursued with continuous monitoring of the multiple consequences. Destroying capitalism could result in generating concentrations of power other than that based on ownership of capital- producing property. This too is vintage liberalism. A number of Porter's observations on electoral democracy as an instrument

of social change are stated in an elliptical fashion which may obscure his commitment to elitist democracy. Here is an example: It has been argued that... it is unlikely that... classes can, through conflict, provide the dynamics of social change. They may, however, be the source of important dynamic elements to be mobilized by institutional leaders. (1965: 28)

It appears that Porter sometimes retained a kind of Rosa Luxemburgian view of the virtues of direct, spontaneous, mass action.

Here is another example of Porter acknowledging the value of competing elites and electoral democracy in reducing inequality, but stated in a way that conveys ambivalence:

If [the economic elite] are forced at times to accept changes like labour legislation or health insurance it is not because of an opposing social movement based on class conflict, but, because other elites, such as the political, are at work seeking to consolidate their power. (1965: 305-6)

Referring to his model of competing elites, Porter comments:

The argument is, then, that power tends towards an equilibrium of competing elites. The checks and balances ... come from the tradition of independence built up by elite groups within a system of juridical norms. Elites guard jealously their spheres of activity .... [P]oliticians can enhance their power by arousing public sentiment when large corporations exploit too much. (1965: 214)

Porter emphasizes the importance of electoral democracy in the extension of citizenship rights:

195



In the political system all share a common status of citizenship. With universal adult suffrage the right to participate in the political system has led to the emergence, in the twentieth century, of social rights .... Social rights are the claims on the social system of all members of the society to a basic standard of living and to equal opportunities for education, health, and so forth.... The fact remains... that ever since the propertyless and the underprivileged have been enfranchised, political elites have been able to acquire power by offering piecemeal extensions of welfare. In Canada, as in other industrial societies, there has been some extension of social rights.... (1965: 370)

Again:

Universal suffrage frees the political institutions from control by a class which benefits from a limited franchise. It therefore makes possible the building up of the political system into a system of power to counter the power of other institutional elites. The political system and its elite could become the dominant power system within the differentiated society. (1965: 371)

This has been the "continental divide" for much of the past century or so, separating (amidst bitter denunciations) Marxists d la lettre from revisionists. Is liberal democracy so completely wedded to capitalism that a serious challenge to the existing economic system would expose the "democratic-constitutional" state for what it really is, the defender of bourgeois property? Porter sometimes conveyed a kind of cynicism regarding the motives of politicians:

[P]oliticians are unlikely to run afoul of the economic elite except at times... [ inter alia] when they are forced, in order to get elected, to advance a further stage in the provision of welfare services. (1965: 607)

In speaking of the rights of institutional elites, Porter notes:

If one elite threatens these rights it will be challenged by other elites whose positions are threatened. The rights of association and the right to strike, for example, are essential weapons without which trade union leaders would be powerless, and any limitation on these rights, requiring further strike

voting procedures, is resisted. (1965: 214)

A leading theme of "Power and Freedom in Canadian Democracy" (1961, republished in 1979) is Porter's concern that even that brand of socialism that results from "reforms within a framework of democratic institutions and civil liberties" (1979: 207) will simply not be enough. In his introductory remarks to the republication of this essay, written shortly before his death, Porter concluded: "The paper... remains a strong critique of the effects of bureaucratic forms of organization, and its call for worker participation in management and democratic

planning processes is still very contemporary" (1979: 209). This may sound more like social democracy than liberal democracy. How-

ever a persuasive case can be made that in contemporary industrial societies, liberal democracy, fully realized, is social democracy (e.g., Hall, 1987: 206-15).

Porter's conception of democratic socialism is closer in spirit and content to the views of some fellow liberal democrats than it has been to those of his admirers who have sung his praises at the same time as they have engaged in sweeping attacks on their (Marxist-inspired and often distorted) versions of liberal democracy. There are some indications that this blanket condemnation of

196



"bourgeois democracy" may be changing. Robert J. Brym, a Marxist-inspired sociologist, has recently made an argument against the one-dimensional view of Canada as a bourgeois (ersatz) democracy. Instead, he calls upon sociologists to "appreciate the consequences of the fact that Canada is both a democracy and a capitalist system" (Brym, 1989: 170).

Thus far, it has been liberal democrats (e.g., Dahl, 1982; 1985; 1989; Hall, 1987; Lindblom, 1977; 1990), seeking greater political equality and the democratization of economic institutions, who have gone further than many Marxists in completing Porter's agenda in his introduction to "Power and Freedom in Canadian Democracy":

[D]emocratically planned societies, even when they are based on large-scale industry, must solve the dilemma of power by building in mechanisms of achieving political and social consensus which are responsive to human needs as these are expressed by mobilized publics. (1979: 209)

Robert Dahl (1985) in particular, whose concerns about power inequalities mirror those of Porter, makes a cogent case, from a liberal democratic rather than Marxist standpoint, for democracy in the workplace. Similarly, David Beetham (1987) argues, persuasively, that an effective antidote to bureaucratic power must rest on a foundation of democratic pluralism.

If the liberal state means equal treatment under the law, the liberal-democratic state means equality of persons or citizens. While liberalism and capitalism have historically had a close relationship, liberalism is not inextricably tied to capitalism. This means the democratic rights of citizens take precedence over property rights, wherever the two are in conflict. The process of democratization, particularly in the direction of achieving greater economic equality, generates intense political conflict.

The Marxist wager with history, that a change in the mode of production from private to public ownership will necessarily result in greater democracy, is a wager that Porter and other liberal democrats have not been prepared to make. Socializing the means of production may result, Porter noted, in a "monolithic homogenity in social life" and a "monolithic government," outcomes which Porter considered as possible and which he explicitly rejected (1965: 372).

References Beetham, David

1987 Bureaucracy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Brym, Robert J.

1989 From Culture to Power: The Sociology of English Canada. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Clement, Wallace 1975 The Canadian Corporate Elite. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

Curtis, James and C. James Richardson 1988 "Introduction" to The John Porter Memorial Lectures: 1984-1987. The Canadian

Sociology and Anthropology Association.

197



Dahl, Robert A. 1982 Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1985 A Preface to Economic Democracy. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1989 Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hall, John A. 1987 Liberalism: Politics, Ideology and the Market. Durham, N.C.: The University of North

Carolina Press. Lindblom, Charles E.

1977 Politics and Markets. New York: Basic Books. 1990 Inquiry and Change. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Olsen, Dennis 1980 The State Elite. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

Porter, John 1961 "Power and Freedom in Canadian Democracy." In Michael Oliver, ed., Social Purpose

for Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1965 The Vertical Mosaic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1979 The Measure of Canadian Society. Toronto: Gage Publishing Limited.

AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL RESEARCH

Research articles and book reviews covering the full spectrum of sociological inquiry

Noted for its investigations of:

The Arts & Society Criminology & Deviance

Gender Relations Labor Markets & Political Economy

Politics & Power Race & Ethnic Relations

Sociology of Religion Southern Culture Urban Ecology

FOR The Canadian Journal of Sociology READERS ONLY $25 FOR 1 YEAR, OR $70 FOR 3 YEARS.

(Add $8 per year for postage i outside U.S.)

Order from: Social Forces Subscriptions The University of North Carolina Press Box 2288 Chapel Hill, NC 27515

198



john porter's sociology and liberal democracy

Documents