Heresy happens when we act in ways that are contrary to either official or popular opinion. Anne Norton’s Wild Democracy, with its outlaw’s attitude toward conventional democratic practices, certainly fits Oxford University Press’s book series on heretical thought. Norton’s mission is to reform how we think about democracy and act on it. This mission is presented through Wild Democracy’s argument, which is that a person and the people they can make up or be a part of need to have the courage to be anarchists. Anarchy is given in the sense of an-arkhos, which, in translation from the ancient Greek, means a person or group of persons living without rulers.
In short, the book is about being ruler-less and not falling for the temptation of ruling over others when there is the opportunity to do so. But given how accustomed we are to being ruled and, for some, to ruling over others, there is need for instruction—of guidance and insight—on how to be wild and on how to rule the law and not, by contrast, be ruled by it.
Wild Democracy is divided into 15 chapters that serve as thematic categories for 79 theses on democracy (theses in the reformist Martin Luther sense). Themes vary in their development from having one thesis (e.g., on taxes, 100–4) to 10 theses (e.g., “rights are born in the body,” 43–62, and “the problem with liberalism,” 105–29). Although more points are made about certain themes, this does not diminish the impact of the statements to which Norton gives less attention. For example, in the thesis on taxation, Norton states, “Taxes are how we pay for the work we choose to do together” (101). This one sentence embodies Norton’s mission because of how difficult it is for a person and a people to control how their taxes should, in their opinion, be used. None of Norton’s theses are easy to accomplish.
The book begins with a focus on anarchy (the rule of none) and democracy (nonrulers forming agreements as equals). However, given that some theses are short (e.g., only one page long; see “rebellion is not only a right, it is a duty,” 28), there is a nonobvious narrative at play from cover to cover. This narrative does not arc, it does not offer microscopic detail, and it does not expound lengthily about, for example, the relationship between anarchy and democracy.
Rather, Norton’s book can be opened at random for its teachings, and given its conciseness and portability, it can be consulted at any moment of one’s day for inspiration or guidance. It is a book that can be read back to front and one that is finished by a helpful list of imperatives (of should-dos, 199–200) that are distilled from the text. See, for example, my preferred imperatives, accompanied by my notes from my reading:
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○ “We are all of equal worth. Act accordingly.” (Difficult! How to balance Putin?)
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○ “Undo empires. Decolonize.” (Am trying. Wish more tried.)
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○ “Support no war you will not fight in yourself. Do not ask anyone to die for you.” (Makes me think of the Jain diet.)
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○ “Tell the truth. Democracy depends on truth.” (What is the truth, though?)
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○ “Sing.” (Yes! Your love is like bad medicine…)
Norton has produced a book that is democracy’s equivalent to the Tao Te Ching, because Wild Democracy demonstrates a courageous and sometimes mystical quality. Consider these sentences: “Free people will make themselves as they choose” (89); “It is easy to see citizens who have become submissive” (117); and “Everyone sees the joy, the festivity of the revolutionaries” (161). Norton often moves quickly from one aphorism to the next. It is therefore up to the reader to extend the aphorisms based on their own experiences.
It takes a balance of talent and daring to succeed here. But such a book—such an accomplishment—also requires sufficient personal experience with the status quo. One needs time to develop a program of alternatives to the displeasures with how “democracy” is done and thought of today. Undoubtedly, as a long-time critical observer of democracy, mainly in the United States, Norton nails it. Consider the haunting echoes of J. J. Rousseau when Norton writes, “Over and over again, people demand freedom and equality, the right to rule themselves, and live as they choose, yet they remain chained” (141). Clearly, clinging to the status quo will not set us free.
The point of this book is to reform the reader’s impressions of democracy in the hope that, if enough readers put its teachings into practice, it will generate a movement that allows democracy to go to seed and to escape its masters: present-day rulers, the experts, the otherwise powerful. When democracy goes to seed, it becomes primordial, and like a beating heart, it is born/e by how free people live. As Norton writes, “We have seen only shadows of democracy and only a few types of democratic institutions. We should expect to see many more as people become more skilled in governing themselves” (83).
Political theorists will sense the presence of Jacques Derrida, Sheldon Wolin, Wendy Brown, and Karen Orren, among other celebrated thinkers, in Norton’s position. What people believe to be democracy today is, Norton avers, merely a disappointing collection of corrupt or otherwise limited impressions of the real thing. Democracy promises more, and it requires the union of all the cultural resources that a person can wield to realize that promise.
This is why Norton also relies on al-Farabi, Rudyard Kipling, Umberto Eco, Ibn Khaldun, the Haudenosaunee, Navajo, Lakota, Islam, Walt Whitman, Bob Marley, the Viking’s althing, good pirates, Woody Guthrie, and Stolpersteine. It is also why Norton— our benevolent time-traveling bandit—attacks militarists, knavish billionaires, populists, dictators, bigots, and effectively anyone or any institution/system that stands in the way of a person, and a people, living free. Indeed, Norton delivers point-blank the assertion that it is the democrat’s responsibility, their duty, to reject the rule, reject the intimidation, and reject the influence of anyone who dares to rule them (27). The democrat must bristle and risk everything to be free.
Although Norton could have made more connections with existing political science literature (e.g. “We need to mend [democracy]” (15) could have connected with Carolyn Hendriks, Selen Ercan, and John Boswell’s Mending Democracy, 2020), I do sympathize that there are limits for a book that must extend many open and beckoning hands. In the marginalia of my well-worn copy, I wrote some of Neil Young and Frank Sampedro’s satirical lyrics from “Keep on Rockin in the Free World” next to thesis 48—“punishment demeans the free” (136)—and Ralph Ellison kept coming to mind for theses 66–71 in the chapter titled “Democratic Spaces” (173–82).
But that is Wild Democracy’s appeal. You are meant to join hands with it, to connect your meaning within it, again and again. (For more on joining hands, see James Tully and coeditors, Democratic Multiplicity, 2022.) If you allow Wild Democracy to suffuse your innermost understandings of living with yourself, of being at home, school, or work—if you consult it during your engagements with public things (Bonnie Honig, Public Things: Democracy in Disrepair, 2017)—then you just might become a courageous, wild democrat.
What an unusual and pleasantly welcome feeling it is to write as such about an Oxford University Press book on democracy. Our field needs more theorists like Norton.
