Halachic Perspectives On Democracy

With the recent demonstrations in Hong Kong
protesting the Chinese government, this week’s article will focus on the right
(or duty) of revolution, and explore some of the halachic perspectives on
democracy.

The Right (Or
Duty) Of Revolution

A strikingly
undemocratic stance appears in Abravanel’s commentary to the Biblical discussion
of monarchy. He raises the question of the propriety of a nation rebelling
against and overthrowing a king who is “evil and scoundrelly”. He records that
“the sages of the nations” have analyzed this question, and determined that it
is indeed appropriate, “but I spoke on this topic before kings and their sages,
and I demonstrated that it is not appropriate, and that the nation has no right
to rebel against the king and remove his dominion and kingship even should he
commit all manner of villainy”. He bases this upon three arguments, the first
two applicable to any king, and the third specifically to Jewish ones:

  • The irrevocability of the social contract: the nation’s
    covenant of obedience to the monarch is absolute and unconditional, and the
    former does not have the right to judge the latter’s righteousness or villainy.
  • The monarch’s place in the land is analogous to Hashem’s
    in the world, and lifting a hand against the former to remove him from his
    position is therefore equivalent to lifting a hand against Hashem Himself.
  • One without the autonomy to choose a king cannot have the
    authority to depose him. The choice of a Jewish king is not in the hands of the
    people, but in that of Hashem (as per the Biblical verse opening this article),
    and since the people do not grant the kingship, they may not withdraw it.
    Hashem does not grant the nation the right to rebel and overthrow the king, no
    matter how evil he is, and its only recourse is appeal to Him.

The Abravanel notes that “we have not seen anything
on this in the words of our nation’s sages”, and I do not know to what extent
this reactionary perspective is accepted and shared by other Jewish thinkers.
Although he asserts that he has “demonstrated” that revolution is illegitimate,
his arguments, particularly the first two, hardly seem compelling.

Consent Of
the Governed As the Basis Of Governmental Legitimacy

The
Lockian-Jeffersonian idea that governmental legitimacy derives from the consent
of the governed finds expression in the Rashbam’s famous explanation of the
Talmudic principle of dina de’malchusa dina (“the law of the government is [halchically
recognized as] the
law”):

For all the
subjects of the government willingly accept upon themselves the decrees of the
king and his laws and it is therefore the absolute din.

According to
the Rashbam, it seems obvious that if Chazal asserted the principle of dina
de’malchusa dina
in
the context of the autocratic governments of the ancient world, a
fortiori
does it
apply to modern democracies. Indeed, the consensus of the modern poskim
does so extend the
principle, arguing that even according to the alternative rationales for the
principle, a democratic government is no worse than a monarchy, with some going
even further and arguing that some of the limitations of the principle
established by the poskim do not apply to the legislation of
democratic governments. Moreover, some poskim argue that democratic, consensual
government can derive its legitimacy from additional halachic
frameworks such as
partnership (shutfus) or municipal government (sheva
tuvei ha’ir –
see
below), although these ideas are controversial.

Local
Government

Another
context in which halacha endorses the democratic idea is that
of local government. The Maharam of Rottenberg, responding to a community riven
with strife that could not reach consensus on the appointment of leaders (“roshim”), laid down the following procedure:

All the
householders who pay taxes shall be assembled, and they shall accept
upon themselves under penalty of anathema (“beracha”) that everyone shall express his
opinion for the sake of Heaven and for the good of the city, and they shall
follow the majority, whether to select leaders, to establish chazanim, to institute a charity fund, to
appoint gabai’m, to build or to demolish the
synagogue, to add and detract, to purchase a wedding hall and to build and
demolish therein, to buy a bakery and to build and demolish therein.

The bottom
line is, any communal need shall be addressed at their direction, according to
whatever they say, and if the minority shall refuse and stand in opposition, …
the majority, or whomever the majority shall appoint as leaders, have the power
to compel and force them via either Jewish law or the law of the nations, until
they say “we desire [to comply]” …

One
Dollar, One Vote?

The Maharam
apparently takes for granted that suffrage is limited to taxpayers; his
student, the Rosh, propounds a similar view, at least in the context of
financial matters:

A community
that institutes an anathema (“cherem”), if it is in the context of
financial affairs, we follow the majority of wealth … and it cannot be that the
majority of individuals who pay the minority of the taxes shall decree an
anathema on the wealthy according to their views.

The acharonim
debate whether the
Rosh means that the wealthy minority can actually impose its will on the
impecunious majority, or merely that we view the two groups as equally
balanced, and they must therefore reach some consensus, or that those who do
not pay the relevant tax do not vote, but all those who do pay tax are counted
equally, regardless of the differences in their assessments.

Socialism
and Communism

The Chavatzeles
Ha’Sharon
insists
that socialism and communism are fundamentally anti-Torah:

It is known
to us that the primary support for this [post Great War rent control]
legislation comes from certain free [thinking] elected [representatives], who
have among them the opinions and doctrines of the communists and socialists, to
squeeze the wealthy and to take their money, and all these doctrines are
against da’as Torah.

Similarly, R.
Yehudah Silman concludes that at least the extreme case of the blanket nationalization
of property is illegitimate: it is considered theft, and not covered by the
principle of dina de’malchusa dina.