Throwing Dice: Luck of the Draw and the Democratic Ideal

Abstract

Is democracy a gift economy—that is, one essentially distinct from, and opposed to, reduction to transactional exchanges such as those typical in a market economy? Beginning with a case study of success, this paper considers the role of scaleable effects in destabilizing the relationship between merit and reward. This opens up the question of how the general issue of “title” functions in larger systems of merit and reward, crucially including politics. Pursuing Jacques Rancière’s insights concerning hatred of democracy, we can begin to see the importance of “the drawing of lots” in mechanisms of political legitimation—the paradoxical “title which is no title,” which might just be the gift we democrats are looking for.