Indian writer Arundhati Roy is hardly a Hoppean critic of democracy (particularly the social democratic welfare state in its more left-leaning incarnation). Yet, in a piece on The Nation‘s website, she asks several very Hoppean questions and ponders a possible conclusion:

Can governments whose very survival depends on immediate, extractive, short-term gain provide this? Could it be that democracy, the sacred answer to our short-term hopes and prayers, the protector of our individual freedoms and nurturer of our avaricious dreams, will turn out to be the endgame for the human race? Could it be that democracy is such a hit with modern humans precisely because it mirrors our greatest folly—our nearsightedness?

But it does look as if the beacon could be failing and democracy can perhaps no longer be relied upon to deliver the justice and stability we once dreamed it would.

Okay, granted, Roy is thinking in environmental terms (the linked essay ends with a comment about the melting of a glacier in Kashmir), and not economic or even social terms. But are these not Hoppean questions?

The problem is the “faith” in democracy. Roy, a Leftist, could typically be relied upon to demand “more democracy” as the answer to the problem of democracy’s failure. That is THE Left response, and it proposes “democracy” as endless meetings seeking total consensus. She doesn’t here, and that’s a good thing. A good thing because “more” democracy (whatever it may mean to the Right and the Left, which have both embraced the faith) isn’t better—it’s worse. The “people” do not want “justice and stability,” they want gain, privilege and advantage (often calling those things “justice and stability”). Democracy gives them the illusion they can have that and make someone else pay for it.

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