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V. | DEMOCRACY |
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Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||
DEMOCRACY
Democracy, a transliteration of the Greek
δημοκρατία
,
is government by the people. The historians and phi-
losophers of the Aegean world invented the term,
situated it within a larger political vocabulary, again
of their own
invention, and provided a mode of politi-
cal
analysis that enjoyed authority well into modern
times. Greek political
institutions did not survive;
Greek political theory did. As a consequence,
attitudes
about popular rule, characteristic of a slave-owning
society, whose social organization permitted direct
citizen-participation,
received attention, even when
the conditions that made Greek
“democracy” possible
had completely disappeared.
As late as the eighteenth century political classifica-
tion schemes and value systems gleaned from
classical
Greek texts were current in the West. The Greek
experience,
transmitted through Rome, was still
thought to be applicable. It mattered
little that many
who cited the Greek (or Latin) texts knew them badly;
their citation was the significant fact. The texts, how-
ever ancient, carried authority. Just as Niccolò
Machi-
avelli, seeking to reestablish
the ">virtù of his native
Florence, thought
it entirely proper to recollect the
glories of republican Rome, so the
American consti-
tution-framers
showed themselves students of the clas-
sical
world, anxious to discover classical texts that
might be useful to their
purposes.
The Greek achievement, then, was not a capacity
for institution-building,
but a genius for developing
modes of analysis that survived even when
filtered
through Roman and Christian experience. There is, in
Herodotus, a fairly primitive formulation of a debate
embellished by Plato
and Aristotle, that still produced
an echo in the eighteenth century.
Herodotus is led
to inquire into the relative virtues (and vices) of
three
forms of political authority—monarchy, oligarchy, and
democracy. The circumstances of the debate are not
without interest: a
decision has to be made concerning
the establishment of a new government
for Persia. The
idea that governments are not immutable, that they
are
chosen, that their selection ought to depend in
considerable measure on
their prospective utility, and
that reasonable men may differ about such
matters,
are all characteristic Greek attitudes. A civilization of
city-states, with diverse political institutions, found the
idea of
debating the relative merits of one kind of rule
rather than another
entirely congenial.
The arguments in Herodotus are simple: democracy's
advocate maintains that
only “popular” government
guarantees equality before
the law; monarchy, by con-
trast, is said to
encourage envy and pride; it is inher-
ently
unstable and leads almost invariably to violence
(Book III, 80-82).
Oligarchy's defender thinks such
arguments specious; disparaging the rule
of the many,
he insists that the masses are feckless, ignorant, irre-
sponsible, and violent; their capacity
for capriciousness
is certainly equal to that of any king. The
multitude,
having never been taught to know what is right, cannot
be
expected to pursue the right. Neither argument
carries the day; instead the
votes go to the spokesman
for monarchy. He argues that democracy is a
political
system that encourages cliques; it stimulates rivalry
among
them and generally ends in tyrannical rule. The
mob, peculiarly susceptible
to the wiles of the dema-
gogue is generally
prepared to abdicate its authority.
Oligarchy is held to be no more stable;
it shows an
equal tendency to degenerate into tyranny. The best
guarantee of freedom, then, is to be found in monarchy,
defined as the rule
of an individual respectful of the
laws.
The Greek preoccupation with order is apparent
throughout; so, also, is the
overwhelming and perpetual
fear of tyranny. Governments are inherently
unstable;
one must search constantly for the least vulnerable
form.
The decision to vest authority—in an individual,
a small group,
the multitude—is recognized to be the
significant political act. Stability and justice are the
desired ends.
Herodotus saw that equality before the
law was the boon promised by
democracy. If, however,
that good might be obtained from monarchy, with
the
added advantage of stability, there was no doubting
its superior
claim.
The democratic theme figures only tangentially in
Herodotus; with his
successor, Thucydides, it is abso-
lutely
central to his purpose (Book II, 35-46). Pericles
funeral oration, often
cited as the single most eloquent
statement celebrating the virtues of
Athenian democ-
racy, is also the classic
defense of democracy's claim
to being the school of civic virtue. Athens,
Pericles
tell us, does not choose to copy the laws of its neigh-
bors; it provides the pattern that others
follow. Athens
is well and justly administered; the many and not the
few are favored; capacity is the sole criterion for
office-holding.
Personal relations are easy; lawlessness
is uncommon; valor in the service
of the city-state is
habitual. Thucydides, in his dramatic rendering of
the
humbling of democratic Athens by Sparta, makes Peri-
clean rule seem a “golden age”
before ignominious
defeats, produced by miscalculations in foreign and
military policy, and before a deterioration in the
Athenian populace causes
the society to change. The
citizens, tried by the rigors of war, are quite
incapable
of rising above their private ambition and private
interest.
No leader, after Pericles, is in a position to
check the insolence and
vanity of the citizenry. In the
age of Pericles, Thucydides writes,
“government was
by the first citizen” (Book III,
37-40). Those who
follow Pericles flatter the multitude, appeal to its
baser
instincts, and create conditions that encourage dema-
goguery. Athens is made to pay heavily
for the blunders
of its citizens.
In describing Cleon, a leader he abominates, Thucy-
dides dwells on the violence of Cleon's words while
never
neglecting to emphasize the approval they in-
spire (Book III, 82-84). Cleon knows how to use the
masses for his
own purposes; contemptuous of gifted
men, he ingratiates himself with those
whom he aspires
to rule. While passages in the history suggest a
concern
to assess individual blame for the final catastrophe that
overtakes the city, this was clearly not Thucydides'
chief interest. His
larger purpose was to probe the
vulnerability of the Athenian democracy, as
it showed
itself in time of war. In peace and prosperity, when
individuals lead easy lives, and adversity is uncommon,
tolerance comes
naturally. In time of war, however,
“imperious
necessity” takes over; prudence, caution,
and justice are the
daily casualties of war. The war
is catastrophic precisely because
violence, excess,
partisanship, greed, and a lust for power, are its inevi-
table results (Book II, 65). Civilized
behavior is rare
in time of war; debate enjoys little respect and
becomes
uncommon. Law itself finds itself impotent before the
incessant calls for action; superiority of every kind
becomes suspect.
The political reflections of Plato and Aristotle need
to be read in the
context of the history provided by
Thucydides. Both philosophers reflect
the widespread
time. Plato, in commenting on the ignorance of de-
mocracy's political leaders, is appalled by the incom-
petence they show. He has no great admiration for
the gifted amateur. Statesmanship is a disciplined call-
ing: it depends on precise and full knowledge. All states
are riven by a rivalry between those with property
and those without; factionalism and partisanship are
the inevitable consequences of the division between
rich and poor. So long as extremes of wealth and
poverty exist, Plato says, there can be no just society
(Republic, Book VIII, 551f.). Democracy, by definition,
must always be government by and for the many; the
poor who lack property and birth will always control
a democracy. Oligarchy, just as inevitably, must oper-
ate in the interest of the few who enjoy property and
birth. Plato finds both democracy and oligarchy inher-
ently unstable.
Plato, in the Republic, excludes the possibility that
a just state can exist in which all citizens participate;
he explicitly
denies the Periclean ideal. In the States-
man, he gives a six-fold categorization of
states. Three
depend on fidelity to the law; three are essentially
lawless. The rule of an individual produces monarchy
or tyranny, depending
on whether or not the individual
at the head is law-abiding; when a few
rule, the results
are aristocracy or oligarchy; when the many rule,
democracy exists, but again of two kinds, depending
on whether or not the
popular rule is law-abiding.
Democracy, Plato accepts as the best of the
lawless
states, but the least desirable of the law-abiding. Aris-
totle's categorization of states is not
very different from
Plato's. What makes Plato's definitions important,
however, is that he comes close to accepting in the
Laws, the last of his works, that in the real world
there
ought in fact be a mixing of types (Book III, 691-94).
If
moderation is the quality hoped for, it comes only
from combining the best
in monarchy, aristocracy, and
law-abiding democracy. In his Republic, Plato de-
scribes a quite different state, but clearly one that he
does not
expect to be realized in practice.
Aristotle, Plato's pupil, while interested in reflecting
on the ideal state,
showed a greater propensity to study
actual conditions by analyzing the
constitutions of a
large number of existing states. Aristotle is
particularly
concerned to dwell on the class character of the politi-
cal societies that he surveys. Farmers
in an agricultural
society with a democratic constitution may concern
themselves very little with public affairs, preferring to
leave such
matters largely in the hands of wealthier
men who have the leisure to
attend to public business.
This ought not to be taken to mean that citizens
have
given up their authority; they simply choose not to
make use of
it for as long as they think themselves
well-governed. Aristotle clearly considered this kind
of
democracy better than one that saw large urban
populations involving
themselves in the daily manage-
ment of their
affairs; such democratic rule generally
opened the way to demagogues and
almost invariably
ended in some form of tyranny. How to unite an intel-
ligent administration with the power of
the citizens
was the problem that democracy had always to contend
with; and Aristotle makes no effort to minimize its
difficulty.
If democracy involves the whole body of citizens,
oligarchy restricts the
ruling function to some fraction
of them; property qualifications, more or
less stringent,
are generally imposed in oligarchical states.
Oligarchy,
like democracy, easily runs to excess; when it does,
effective government falls into the hands of a small
band of wealthy men,
factionalism becomes common-
place, and the
results are scarcely different from what
happens under the rule of a
tyrant. So long as the
property qualification is not too restrictive, there
is a
chance that oligarchy will not so mistreat the masses
as to bring
about disorder. When, however, it does
become too closed, oligarchy may
prove even more
oppressive than democracy.
Aristotle hopes for a state that will combine the best
features of democracy
and oligarchy; this, he calls a
polity, or constitutional government. Again, the signifi-
cant feature of the constitution is
its class base. If there
are too many rich or too many poor, there is a
danger
to the stability of the state. The instruments of govern-
ment ought to show themselves
hospitable to various
kinds of qualification; while there must be repre-
sentation of wealth, birth, and
ability, there must also
be a sufficient regard for numbers. If oligarchy
and
democracy are inherently unstable, always tending
towards tyranny,
polity gives promise of that modera-
tion which is the only sure guarantee of stability.
Aristotle thought in terms of class when so many
before and after him did
not. This, however, never led
him to question slavery, an institution that
dominated
Greek society. The Greek city-state seemed unimagin-
able without slavery, and Aristotle
never thought to
abolish it. Only in extreme democracy, he wrote,
would
slaves be given “license.” He had no doubts of
how
such a government would end. Aristotle knew that
“most
men find more pleasure in living without any
discipline than they find in a
life of temperance,” but
society could not be constructed on
such a base (Poli-
tics,
Book VI, Ch. 4). Always preoccupied with the
state's survival, Aristotle
feared for the stability of the
political order that he knew. His principal
concern was
to delineate the conditions of political stability, to
emphasize the relation between the constitution of the
state and the
character of its citizens.
The death of Aristotle in 322 B.C. came almost
coincidentally with the
demise of the Greek city-state.
Its heir, republican Rome, was animated by
new values,
though its reliance on Greek thought remained consid-
erable. The extent of the change may
be suggested by
the distance that separates Aristotle from Polybius.
Polybius, born a century after Aristotle died, wrote his
universal history
to show “by what means, and thanks
to what sort of constitution,
the Romans subdued the
world in less than fifty-three years.”
When Polybius
describes constitutions, he uses the six categories em-
ployed by Plato and Aristotle, but his
purpose is new;
it is to explain Rome's success in unifying the world,
which he attributes to her “mixed constitution,” with
the consuls representing the monarchical principle, the
Senate the
aristocratic, and the popular assemblies the
democratic. In checking each
other, these powers pre-
vent disintegration and
disorder. Polybius' history is
a tribute to a constitution, but even more
to a people,
and to its imperial achievement. Greek political theory
lives on in this history; Greek history, however, is
effectively set aside.
The stage is suddenly larger; what
had seemed significant to Thucydides and
Aristotle (the
details of city-state existence) are scarcely alluded
to.
Polybius' purpose is to show why the Roman consti-
tution worked, and why, even were the people to
grow
corrupted by flattery and idleness, showing a tendency
to
violence and arrogance, the constitution would sur-
vive. Its self-regulating mechanism is its genius: the
three
powers are interdependent; each checks and
controls the other.
Cicero, influenced by Polybius, is again content to
repeat the conventional
Greek classification of states—
monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy—and the con-
ventional
criticisms of each. If a preference is to be
expressed, it is for monarchy,
though the best state is
not monarchical, but one that combines the virtues
of
all three. Cicero, following his Stoic masters, sees the
equality
of men neither in their possessions nor in their
learning, but in their
capacity to reason, to distinguish
between right and wrong. The state is a
res publica,
an “affair of the
people,” which exists to give the
people justice, and derives
its authority from them.
Cicero, like Polybius, created the myth of a
Roman
constitution that combined the love a king bears for
his
subjects (as incorporated in monarchy), the wisdom
characteristic of
aristocracy, and the freedom generally
associated with democracy.
Authority, in theory, pro-
ceeded from the
people, but there was no indication
of what remedies they might avail
themselves of to
thwart a ruler who in fact ignored them.
Republican Rome, in its self-praise, registered its
defiance of those who
thought only of the “corruption”
of states and of
their inevitable decline. Though it
never represented itself as democratic, the Republic
was proud
of its popular instrumentalities, and took
care to protect its fame as
law-giver. Rome's capacity
to survive and expand—to elicit
service and enforce
obedience—contributed to its later
reputation. The
Roman Empire never enjoyed an equivalent success.
Contemporary judgments of its qualities were more
modest; the old
Republican virtù seemed to have given
out.
Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, expresses a view
markedly different from
either Polybius or Cicero. He
suggests that politics are not within the
individual's
power to change; the wise man will not be overly
concerned with political activities. The citizen will,
if asked to do so,
consent to serve the state, but he
will not push himself forward. This new
“quietism,”
influenced also by the religious ferment
of the first and
second centuries, created a political climate
distinctly
different from the one that had previously existed.
There
were no new political institutions to celebrate,
no new concepts of
citizenship to proclaim.
With the barbarian invasions and the destruction of
Roman political
authority, local rule reasserted itself.
In the feudal situation that
developed, older concepts
of citizenship became increasingly irrelevant.
Democ-
racy had no place in a society
increasingly supportive
of a value system that emphasized stability and
custom;
change was thought to be degenerative, political inno-
vation was suspect. The world was a
divine creation;
man's obligation was neither to control it nor to
make
it over. Even the recovery of Aristotle's writings in
the
thirteenth century, important as they were for
medieval scholarship
generally, did not make the po-
litical
concerns of the Aegean world altogether mean-
ingful for men who were confronting problems differ-
ent from those of the Greek city-state.
The genesis of Greek democracy has not been much
studied; the genesis of
modern democracy has been
investigated in the most painstaking manner. In
the
nineteenth century, when the origins of modern de-
mocracy were closely inquired into, there was a tend-
ency to give the most extensive
intellectual and insti-
tutional genealogy
for the “love of liberty and the
capacity for
self-government.” William Lecky, the
English historian, may be
taken as a not unrepresenta-
tive
Victorian scholar, searching for modern democ-
racy's beginnings. His History of the Rise and
Influence
of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865) offers
an
almost classical nineteenth-century Liberal explanation
of how
democracy came into being. In a chapter enti-
tled “The Secularisation of Politics,” Lecky sees
the
increase of wealth and knowledge as predominant
factors; roads,
the printing press, universities, Protes-
tantism—all are declared crucially important. So, also,
Lecky insists, are changes in the art of war; in his
the slow rise of the infantry accompanying the progress
of democracy” (II, 213). The diffusion of Rationalism,
as expressed in the “triumph of tolerance,” and the
growth of free trade are also contributing factors.
Another historian of the period might offer a slightly
different and more
sympathetic listing of factors. All
such accounts would agree in
emphasizing the impor-
tance of the French
Revolution; some would think it
necessary to dwell also on the American
Revolution;
a few would cite the English Civil War. While no one
of
these events had democracy as its goal, and while
the term itself was
little used in its modern form until
after the French Revolution, ideas
that carried with
them the promise of a new politics circulated before
1789. Just as it would be inaccurate to say that puri-
tanism
caused capitalism, so it would be folly to claim
that it caused democracy. Yet, puritanism was inti-
mately involved in historical
developments that were
to have importance for the generation of a new demo-
cratic idea. So, also, were the theories
of Hobbes and
Locke, of Montesquieu and Rousseau, and of a great
many
others.
For a new democratic idea to develop, it was neces-
sary that medieval attitudes be set aside, that man
perceive
himself in a new way and aspire to new
political roles. Such perceptions
began to be common
in England and France after the Reformation; events
in both countries were to have marked influence else-
where. The anxiety that existed in Europe in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries has been
frequently
remarked on. The disintegration of an earlier religious
unity produced a marked disquietude; so, also, did
rapid economic changes,
with large social dislocations
flowing from them. The seemingly
interminable na-
tional and international wars
conducted with a strik-
ingly new
armament—Machiavelli was one of the
earliest to gauge their
significance—contributed to
feelings of insecurity and panic. In
the circumstances,
the theories of someone like Hobbes were compelling.
For Hobbes, the state was a human invention, cre-
ated by man to satisfy a basic need, a release from
the fear that
existed when he could depend on no
protection other than that provided by
his own brute
strength. Man made the state, created the authorities
in
it, and chose to obey them simply because he recog-
nized the utility of doing so. Whatever rights existed
derived
from this decision to form a state and to vest
authority in a sovereign.
Hobbes effectively destroyed
the medieval preference for corporate rights,
hierar-
chy, and divine sanction. Man
creates the state to avoid
perpetual war; it is his reason that tells him
to do so.
When Hobbes, in 1628, published a translation of
Thucydides,
he described him as the most political of
historians and the most hostile
to democracy. In his
own Leviathan (1651), written many years
later, he
shows himself no less dubious about the virtues of
democracy. In considering types of commonwealths,
he recognizes only
three—monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy. While others are
named in the classical
texts—oligarchy, tyranny,
anarchy—Hobbes dismisses
these as being essentially the same
forms of govern-
ment, disliked by the
commentator. The question for
Hobbes is simple: shall sovereignty rest with
one, with
a few, or with the multitude? On purely utilitarian
grounds,
he establishes the advantages of monarchy
over democracy.
Contemporary with Hobbes, others saw the matter
differently. The pamphlet
literature for the years
1640-60, which compares not at all unfavorably
with
the outpouring of tracts in America after 1763, regis-
ters every kind of opinion. Some express a clear pref-
erence for democratic rule. The
Levellers, who enjoyed
a certain notoriety in the years 1646 to 1649, pro-
pounded no formal doctrine, but their
leader, John
Lilburne, argues for the sovereignty of the common
people, who need to be made the masters of Parlia-
ment. Among the demands made by the Levellers and
their
supporters are: universal manhood suffrage, equal
electoral districts, and
biennial parliaments. Their
doctrine seemed radical in the seventeenth
century;
when compared with other groups, the Diggers, for
example,
they emerge as the first of a long line of
British radicals. Their purposes
are overwhelmingly
political; by comparison, the Diggers are early social-
ists. The rights of ownership, the
Diggers recognize
as God-given; they entitle every individual to share
in the bounty of the land. Hostile to private property,
they view it as the
source of human suffering and vice.
Democracy, for them, is not realizable
without a social
revolution.
The Levellers and Diggers were little known in their
own time; they were
minor sects. The same cannot
be said of the larger body of Puritan
“saints” who held
no such radical economic and social
views but who
were the first modern revolutionaries. They developed
and practiced a new kind of politics, scarcely demo-
cratic, but considerably more activist than any common
in Europe
(except in a few Italian cities). As has be-
come
increasingly obvious in the twentieth century,
the English Civil War
provided an early prototype of
a new form of political revolution. As
Michael Walzer
has argued in his Revolution of the
Saints, the Civil
War in England had an international
significance. It
involved the execution of a king and the assertion by
his adversaries of the legitimacy of their action and
the propriety of
their instituting new forms of govern-
ance
to protect them in their rights. It emphasized the
importance of
participation: the traditional idea of
accepting one's status as the
subject of a monarch was
emphasis on individual rights, was not fully articulated,
there was a new “purpose” in politics, very different
from what had been characteristic of medieval Europe.
Finally, the events of the period were highly visible
not only for those who remained in England but for
those who emigrated abroad. The Puritans who came
to the New World arrived with a suspicion of mo-
narchy and a willingness to experiment with govern-
ment.
If Hobbes and those who governed England in the
1640's and 1650's lived at a
time when anarchy seemed
a constant threat, giving them an incentive to
search
for forms of sovereignty that would not be easily set
aside,
that mood was no longer common after the
Restoration. The greatest dangers
appeared to have
been traversed; it was possible to think of
government
in less catastrophic terms. English political thought,
even
before John Locke, showed a tendency to be more
concerned with the rights
of individuals and less pre-
occupied with
the rights of the sovereign. Those who
favored republican
rule—Harrington, Milton, and
Sidney were
prominent—were to be influential in
America years later; none
was a democrat, but each
was concerned with precisely the kinds of
electoral
and political safeguards that later democrats would
value.
The republicanism of the seventeenth century
favored a
“commonwealth” closely modeled on that
of ancient
Greece or republican Rome, with an
“aristocracy of
talent” governing in the name of the
people.
John Locke emerges as the political philosopher of
the later years of the seventeenth century. Like
Hobbes, he is concerned
with developing a rationale
for political authority. His state of nature is
not like
that of Hobbes; it is not a time of terror and conflict;
man,
endowed with reason, enjoys a certain equality.
Unhappily, however, there
is no common authority to
whom all men give obedience; each interprets the
laws
of nature as he wishes. The uncertainty that develops
is contrary
to the interests of the individual, and in
order to escape the
inconveniences of the state of
nature, each joins with the others to form a
society.
It is man's reason that tells him to enter into this
contract
with his fellowmen; necessity does not drive
him to it. By the social
contract, the individual gives
up his personal rights to interpret the laws
of nature
in return for a communal guarantee that his rights of
life,
liberty, and property will be maintained.
Once the political state is established, authority has
to be fixed within
it. In this, Locke follows the Aris-
totelian example in his categorization of states, but
recognizes
that the disposition of the legislative power
is the all-important
decision; the executive and judicial
powers will be dependent on the
legislative power.
Locke does not believe, as Hobbes had, that authority,
once
established, can never be broken; the community
is always free to remake
its constitution. While ac-
cepting that
monarchy is the original form of govern-
ment, he refuses to accept Hobbes' view that it is the
best. As for
oligarchy, it tends to favor the interests
of a few, to the disadvantage of
the many. Democracy
offers the only adequate solution for a just rule.
Locke
argues that the legislative power ought to be one in
which the
delegates are controlled by popular election.
Locke accepted the fact that
monarchy would con-
tinue; his main concern was
that the monarch should
not have the supreme legislative power.
These ideas were important in the eighteenth cen-
tury; they did not, however, create democratic gov-
ernment. In England they provided a defense for the
Glorious Revolution and a rationale for the legislative
supremacy that
gradually developed under the Hano-
verian
kings. In France they provided an additional
incentive for comparing the
“free” institutions of Great
Britain with the more
despotic institutions of the
Bourbon monarchy. Great Britain, for Voltaire
and
Montesquieu, and for many others as well, became the
standard
against which they compared their own soci-
ety.
This is most apparent in Montesquieu, particularly
in his Book XI of the
Spirit of the Laws (De
l'esprit
des lois, 1748), where he dwells on what he
assumes
to be the genius of the British Constitution—its sepa-
ration of the executive, legislative, and
judicial powers,
and its balancing of these powers, one against the
other.
The inadequacies of the theory, and its irrelevance to
historical facts, were not demonstrated until later in
the century when
Jeremy Bentham corrected William
Blackstone, who had followed Montesquieu
in this
general description. Montesquieu's work, apart from
its
putative influence on the American revolutionaries,
contributed to making
the philosophes more aware of
the British political
achievement. Even in romanticiz-
ing that
achievement, he, together with Voltaire, gave
the French a sense of the
gulf that separated England
and France in the kinds of freedom that
subjects en-
joyed on either side of the
Channel. Church and State
in France were exposed to a kind of criticism
that
neither had previously known.
Still, neither Montesquieu nor Voltaire produced
anything that could be
appropriately described as a
theory of democracy. This was the major
contribution
of Jean Jacques Rousseau; departing from Greek and
Latin
texts, showing himself independent of Aristotle
and Polybius, but
independent also of his Enlighten-
ment
contemporaries, he produced an original formu-
lation of the problem of political obligation. While
there are
evidences of indebtedness to Locke in Rous-
seau's psychology and to Montesquieu in his sociology,
his overall
thesis is novel. With Rousseau, a new con-
interests in common that creates the bond between
men. What are those interests? For Rousseau, they
derive from a single determination—to prevent in-
equality among men. Though the term “general will”
had been used before, it was Rousseau's use of the term
that gave it a general currency.
The “general will” expressed the interest that men
shared. Kings might pursue war and trade and seek
to make it appear that
they were acting in response
to the will of the people; this was an
elaborate fiction.
The “general will” operates best
in small states, where
citizenship is felt, and where the identity of
interests
is real. Large states, ruled by monarchs, inevitably
deteriorate into tyrannies. There is no “sovereignty of
the
people” possible in such societies. Without equality
there can
be no liberty. For Rousseau, neither kings
nor representative parliaments
can bring about justice;
only the “general will” can
enforce justice, since it is
based on mutual respect and the absence of the
type
of subordination that is the essence of what passes for
“civilization” in the modern world. The people, Rous-
seau believes, are capable of making and
being faithful
to such avowals of self-control and mutual respect; the
rich and the intellectual can never be expected to abide
by such an ethics.
This, for Rousseau, is the essence
of citizenship; it is the opposite of
the subordination
that “subjects” experience under a
king or other form
of imposed rule. Man, through the “general
will,” is
inclined to do what duty tells him he ought to do.
Many have argued about the “modernity” of Rous-
seau's theory; some insist, however, on
seeing him as
the last of the ancients. Both interpretations are possi-
ble. In understanding the
“passion for equality,” Rous-
seau anticipates the nineteenth century, describing a
phenomenon
that will increasingly preoccupy both
Socialists and Liberals. Rousseau, in
linking equality
and liberty, throws down a challenge to those who
imagine that one is possible without the other, or even
inimical to the
other. In another sense, however, Rous-
seau is
writing for a world still familiar with the ancient
texts, and still
respectful of classical insights. Rousseau,
despite his efforts to
disassociate himself from many
of his fellow intellectuals, belongs to a
European intel-
lectual society for whom
the events of Greece and
Rome are immediate, and the categories developed
by
Plato and Aristotle are meaningful. His is a voice in
a political
dialogue that had been proceeding, with
interruptions, for more than two
millennia. That dia-
logue, however, even among
intellectuals, was losing
its force. It was not that the educated lacked
the re-
quisite Greek and Latin to consult the
original texts
(many had known the ancients imperfectly even before
Rousseau), and many (in America and elsewhere)
quoted them without knowing them. What was new,
after 1776, and
even more after 1789, was not that
men could not (or did not) consult the
past, but that
the more recent past became a more compelling sub-
ject of concern to them. Talk of democracy
increased,
but examples were no longer borrowed from Greece
in the
time of Pericles; the greatness of the American
political experiment or the
horrors of the Revolution
in France, depending on the point of view taken,
were
the new subjects of major political discourse. The de-
bate on democracy entered an entirely new phase; it
was now linked to contemporary events and to theo-
retical reflections they had incited.
In the decade preceding the American Revolution,
the British colonists in
the New World produced a large
and varied pamphlet literature to
demonstrate the
injustice of Parliament's claim to certain types of juris-
diction over them; they insisted that
a new kind of
social and political justice was possible in the New
World. The colonists supported their arguments with
citations from a
political literature that originated in
the English Civil War and continued
on into the eight-
eenth century; it
contained a radical critique of the
prevailing political system. The
warnings about politi-
cal corruption, common
in the age of Walpole, had
dwelled on the dangers of autocracy. They were
taken
seriously and served the colonists' purposes in their
own
quarrel with the King and Parliament.
The Americans saw themselves as maintaining a
tradition of opposition that
had already shown its
strength in the mother country. There was little
explicit
democratic sentiment in their philosophy; it was not
overly
concerned with either economic or social re-
form. Their hostility was to certain forms of govern-
ment, based on corruption, that threatened
traditional
liberties. The power of a few—officeholders and
mem-
bers of Parliament—was
endangering the freedom of
the many. Despotic government, for the colonists
at
least, seemed a real possibility. There was a conspiracy
abroad—its purpose was to destroy the English consti-
tution and, with it, the liberties of
free-born English-
men. Parliamentary
legislation after 1763 confirmed
the colonists in their belief that a
ministerial conspiracy
existed to destroy their liberty, and that their
mission
ought to be to preserve it, to save it for all mankind.
This
was the special “duty” to which they felt them-
selves called. In the process, they
developed a new idea
of representation, one that was to have the
greatest
importance for democracy (though no one viewed the
matter in
this light at the time).
The colonists disputed Parliament's claim to author-
ity over them. While members of Parliament might
claim that the
colonists were as much represented in
Westminster as the “nine
tenths of the people of
criticized this notion of “virtual representation.” In
England, where representation was traditionally by
“interests,” the idea of personal (or individual) repre-
sentation was unknown. The member of one seaport
city could be held to represent the interests of all
others. This, the Americans refused to admit. They saw
no one in Parliament at Westminster who represented
their “interests,” who stood to lose or gain in the way
they would through new taxation. The idea of “virtual
representation” was condemned, and support grew for
the principle that a man could be bound only by his
own assent or by that of a representative for whom
he had voted. This was a radical notion, whose demo-
cratic and republican implications were perceived, and
refuted by many. Still, the idea of “virtual repre-
sentation” was clearly on the defensive.
There were other changes also, no less subtle, with
large implications for
democracy, though scarcely rec-
ognized as
having that import at the time. Increasingly,
Americans came to define a
constitution as a “set of
fundamental rules” that
even the legislature was for-
bidden to alter.
These rules, they insisted, ought to be
instituted by delegates elected by
the people, and could
be altered only by procedures that involved the
people.
This was a far cry from the notion that Parliament
could by
simple legislative enactment make or unmake
any rule. For Blackstone,
sovereignty rested in Parlia-
ment—King, Lords, and Commons. The American
response was
to question the notion, so popular in the
seventeenth century, of the
necessity of this undivided
sovereignty. Sovereignty might be limited; an
authority
might have full power in one sphere and none in
another
(where a distinctly different authority might
govern). The idea of
federalism was nascent in the
Americas of the early 1770's. Also,
increasingly, there
was talk of the fact that human rights existed
above
the law, and that the law's purpose ought to be to
uphold these
rights. The statement might have been
made by Locke; the rhetoric suggested
that something
more was intended by it.
While all such criticisms of British constitutional
practices showed
hostility to the status quo, the colo-
nists
were reluctant to carry out the full implications
of their theoretical
positions. They used the term “re-
public” increasingly, as they did the term “democ-
racy,” but they felt
embarrassed by both. Thomas
Paine, in 1776, just a few months before the
Revolu-
tion, published Common Sense; it was the first explicit
defense of democracy.
Paine saw America's cause as
“the cause of all
mankind,” and, refusing to follow
Montesquieu or Blackstone, saw
the English consti-
tution not as a finely
balanced artifact with each au-
thority
checking the other, but a combination of two
ancient tyrannies—monarchical and
aristocratic—
compounded with “new republican
materials.” The
two powers, by being hereditary, were
independent
of the people, and “contribute nothing towards
the
freedom of the states.” Paine saw monarchy as essen-
tially oppressive, imposing a
distinction between kings
and subjects for which there could be no rational
de-
fense. The time had come for a
“final separation”
between the colonies and the
mother country. Paine
called for a “more equal”
system of representation, one
that would create unicameral assemblies in
each of the
colonies, and provide for a continental unicameral
legislature as well. As for a King, there ought to be
none; the law would be sovereign. The alternative to
his
proposal, Paine insisted, was a perpetuation of royal
tyranny.
John Adams was only one of many who saw the
democratic implications of
Paine's scheme and who
had reservations on that as well as on other
accounts.
Power could not be vested safely in a single national
assembly elected democratically. Though one might do
away with king and
peers, Adams wrote in his Thoughts
on Government
(1776), other balancing authorities
would have to be introduced. There were
many who
wondered what the final consequence of such emphasis
on
equality and the right of citizens to choose their
governors would be.
Would it not lead in time to a
denigration of all authority and a constant
defiance of
existing institutions?
The Americans saw themselves as reinventing a form
of government that had
once existed but had fallen
into decline. Their
“republic” would not, however, end
in the manner of
Rome. The word republic, Paine
explained, “means the public good, or the good of the
whole, in
contradistinction to the despotic form, which
makes the good of the
sovereign, or of one man, the
only object of the government.”
When Americans set
about establishing their new state governments,
they
showed little inclination to choose the “simple democ-
racy” that Paine argued for.
The greater number chose
to establish bicameral legislatures; and only in
Penn-
sylvania, where a radical spirit
dominated, did the
Constitution provide for a unicameral legislature,
with
annual elections and rotation of office. The Pennsyl-
vania Constitution was subjected to immediate
attack;
first, by those who argued that only in a bicameral
legislature would wealth and talent be duly repre-
sented; second, by those who insisted that the existence
of two
houses simply gave an additional guarantee
against hasty and ill-considered
action.
Important as this issue might be—it continued to
arouse
discussion at the time that the Federal Consti-
tution was drafted and debated—another exercise of
popular power was taking place that would have im-
mon for the state constitutions to be drafted by con-
ventions called explicitly for that purpose, and having
no other responsibility. The convention that drew up
the Constitution for Massachusetts was elected by uni-
versal male suffrage; other states showed an equal
readiness to make the constitution-framing and consti-
tution-amending procedure democratic. Ratification of
the Massachusetts Constitution (1780) was by two-
thirds vote, with all male residents of the state being
eligible to vote. This did not mean, however, that all
men would also vote for members of the legislature.
In Massachusetts, as in many states, property qualifica-
tions were introduced. Still, the people had been con-
sulted, as they were to be again at the time of the
ratification of the Federal Constitution.
In the 1780's, alarms were sounded concerning the
new republican system.
Americans were said to be
losing their traditional
virtues—industry, frugality, and
the like—and tending
towards luxury and extrava-
gance. In the
absence of virtue, there would be no
commonwealth. This threat led Jeremy
Belknap to
write in 1784 that “the people of this country are
not
destined to be long governed in a democratic form”
(Wood, p. 425). Jefferson, however, refused to despair.
To live in a
European capital, he explained, was to
be made aware of the worth of
republican governance.
Benjamin Rush expressed confidence that
“our republi-
can forms of
government will in time beget republican
opinions and manners. All will end
well” (Wood, p.
426).
This opinion was not shared by John Adams. The
experience after independence
told him that though
hereditary dignities might be abolished, the
scramble
for place and property would continue unabated. He
believed
that “a free people are the most addicted to
luxury of
any.” The desire for luxury and distinction
created new
divisions, and there was no longer a he-
reditary monarch to serve as a scapegoat. Americans,
he insisted,
were no different from any other people;
republican institutions make them
no better than any
other. The “rich, the well-born, and the
able” were
dangerous, but so also were the poor and the
ignorant.
Adams searched for an authority that would keep the
peace
between these contending elements; he thought
he discovered such an
authority in a strong executive.
Adams continued to yearn for something
like the bal-
anced constitution that
Montesquieu and Blackstone
had admired (and, in part, invented). He thought
in
terms of monarchs, aristocracies, and popular repre-
sentatives. Other Americans had
gone far beyond this.
They insisted that they had instituted a
government
and made its officials answerable to themselves. As John
Taylor was to say in the nineteenth century, “all our
governments are limited agencies”; the people remain
sovereign. It was the popular self-interest that had to
be
counted on, and not the people's virtue. This, alone,
made a republic
secure.
By the late 1780's Americans were referring to their
governments as
democracies, but democracies of a new
kind, “Democratic
Republics,” or to put the matter
another way,
“representative democracies.” Madison
saw the novelty
of the American experiment in “the
delegation of the government
to a small number of
citizens elected by the rest.” James Wilson
said that
the Federal Constitution was “purely
democratical,”
since “all authority of every kind is
derived by repre-
sentation from the
people and the democratic principle
is carried into every part of the
government.”
The idea that authority existed outside the people
and had to be limited by
the people, so that govern-
ment would not
degenerate into tyranny, was felt to
be old-fashioned. There were no longer
evil kings or
illegal acts of Parliament to rail against. Within gov-
ernment, in its several branches, the
people were rep-
resented. The struggles
would take place within gov-
ernment between
authorities seeking to please
constituencies who never lost sight of their
self-interest.
Madison, in defending the Constitution, said that his
object was to establish a nontyrannical republic. To
do this, it was
necessary to avoid the accumulation of
powers—legislative,
executive, and judicial—in the
hands of any one group; factions
were always danger-
ous. Minority
“factions” could be controlled by the
operation of
majority vote; majority “factions” would
develop less
easily if the electorate was large and
disparate in its interests.
However much Europe might interest itself in the
events of the American
Revolution, honor its heroes—
Ben Franklin and Thomas
Jefferson—and construct its
own mythology to explain what was
happening across
the Atlantic, the events of a distant continent,
sparsely
populated and little known, could not call forth the
enthusiasms generated by the electrifying news that
came out of Paris in
the summer of 1789. The nation
that had made “reason”
the emblem of its modernity
was seen to be dismantling the political
institutions of
an earlier age. This was an event of the greatest
import
to all who heard of it anywhere in the world. The fall
of the
Bastille, followed closely by the National As-
sembly's actions in destroying traditional feudal privi-
lege, was overshadowed only by the
issuance of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen,
adopted by the National Assembly on August 26, 1789.
Comparable statements had been issued years earlier
in America, but neither
the Virginia Declaration of
Rights nor the Declaration of Independence
itself could
match the French statement in its appeal. That all
sovereignty rested in the nation, that the aim of all
political association
was to preserve the natural rights
authority that did not emanate from the nation, that
all citizens had the right to participate personally, or
through their representatives, in the making of law and
in the voting of taxes, that every man was presumed
innocent until judged guilty, that punishments had to
be established by law, that freedom of speech and press
was guaranteed, that no one could be disturbed for
his opinions, even in matters of religion, provided that
he did not trouble public order as established by
law—to assert all these things was to bring into exist-
ence a new concept in Europe—that of the citizen,
possessing rights that could not be trespassed on.
The sovereignty of the people was explicitly de-
clared, and with it the principle that there would be
one law for
all, with public office open to citizens on
the basis of their abilities.
These ideas, in germ, circu-
lated in Europe
many years before the French Revolu-
tion,
but there was a significant difference between the
Abbé
Sieyès, in a provincial assembly in 1787 urging
the nobility to
give up their privileges, and the Na-
tional
Assembly voting, in effect, to institute a demo-
cratic constitution. It was precisely the authorship of
the
declaration that gave it its dignity, its importance,
and its legality.
Democracy, a term not much used in the eighteenth
century, though a number
of Swiss cantons and German-
cities thought
themselves “democratic,” now came into
more general
favor, though it was still not employed
with the frequency that is
sometimes imagined. Other
terms—republican, Jacobin,
patriot—were more com-
mon. What is
important, however, is that whereas for
Rousseau, Helvétius, and
others it was taken for
granted that “pure democracy”
could exist only in
small states, the question now raised was whether
it
was not also a viable system for large and complex
kingdoms. The
excitement that the revolutionary
events generated, particularly in the
intellectual
classes, was well-nigh universal.
It was not until the end of 1790, when Edmund
Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France
ap-
peared, that someone of some intellectual
prominence
thought to condemn the events of the French Revolu-
tion. Burke's misgivings, expressed
earlier in the year
in Parliament, had not been generally noted. He
had
warned England that she would not be untouched by
the
“distemper” raging across the Channel. Were
England
to imitate the French example, he said, the
result would be confiscation
and plunder in the name
of democracy and the replacement of religion by
athe-
ism. Even his threat to
“abandon his best friends and
join with his worst
enemies” if he found them on the
side of the revolutionaries
caused no stir.
The same could not be said of the blast that he issued
later in the year.
The Revolution, Burke insisted, was
a threat to all Europe and all mankind. It taught false
principles; it questioned hereditary right and threat-
ened inherited liberties; it justified the overthrow
of
governments on the flimsy charge of misconduct; it
pretended that
sovereignty lay with the people; it took
power from the gifted and gave it
to men who had
no experience of government. Burke was unimpressed
with
the fact that Revolution gave citizens the right
to elect representatives;
small men were not made
great by their having been popularly chosen.
Burke
fixed on a sermon preached by Richard Price and
contemptuously
dismissed him along with other
“democratists” who
spoke as he did.
Burke's attacks elicited a large number of responses;
none was more
devastating, perhaps, than that issued
by Tom Paine, who, in The Rights of Man (1791-92),
accused Burke of
pitying the plumage but forgetting
the dying bird. In A
Vindication of the Rights of Man
(1790) Mary Wollstonecraft wrote:
“I pause to recollect
myself; and smother the contempt I feel
rising for your
rhetorical flourishes and infantine
sensibility.” Others
were more civil. All, however, contributed
to an un-
paralleled international debate
on the ends of govern-
ment, the rights of
the citizen, and the advantages of
representative rule.
Throughout the 1790's, in England, but on the Con-
tinent more generally, groups argued about the sover-
eignty of the people and the
implications of the con-
cept. With the
dethroning of Louis XVI and his
execution, new attacks on the Church, and
the impris-
oning and beheading of the
moderate Girondins, opin-
ion grew increasingly
divided. The term “Jacobin” or
“democrat” became pejorative, at least in the mouths
and writings of those who considered themselves part
of the established
order. When Europe's monarchs
went to war with the
“revolution,” those who held
“democratic” opinions were seriously threatened. Even
in Britain, which so prided itself on its constitutional
liberties, the
life of the “radical” became exceedingly
dangerous.
The “treason trials” of 1794, following on
the
suspension of habeas corpus, testified to the
hazards
encountered by those suspected of holding “revolu-
tionary” opinions.
Meanwhile, in France, a Jacobin idea of “the nation”
developed. Increasingly, it was made synonomous with
“the
people.” Popular sovereignty was also increas-
ingly pitted against the “old
order,” with its royal,
aristocratic, inegalitarian traditions.
Robespierre,
faithful to Rousseau, had great suspicion of parlia-
mentary assemblies, which might
easily become “rep-
resentative despotisms.” Only through direct popular
control over assemblies—direct popular action in
them—could representatives be kept honest. The con-
stitution of 1793, with its universal
suffrage, unicameral
legislature, and collectivist Bill of Rights (very different
ambitions of the Jacobins. The constitution, over-
whelmingly accepted in a national plebescite, was,
however, suspended until the end of the war. The
Terror and the rule of Robespierre only raised new
questions about popular rule, and while some imagined
that Thermidor and the execution of Robespierre sig-
nalled the end of the Revolution, many saw that it only
marked the end of an episode in the larger history.
A good argument can be made that “revolutionary
democracy” reached its zenith in Europe in the eight-
eenth century not in 1794 but in 1798; it was then
that democratic enthusiasm seemed most widespread.
This was the time when
republican ideas, as inspired
by the French example, enjoyed currency with
men
of all classes who held “advanced” opinions. The
basic
rights to liberty, equality, security, and property were
constantly reiterated; so, also, was the notion that
sovereignty lay with
the “citizenry as a whole,” and
that the right to
vote ought to be extended generally
to male citizens. The Revolution
created its own mys-
tique or mystery about the
virtues of the people, in
which ardent democrats believed. Those who
espoused
democratic ideas had a new sense of time, a new set
of
values, and a new kind of self-confidence. Democ-
racy was a term scarcely used before the French Revo-
lution; by the beginning of the
nineteenth century it
had its firm adherents and its equally ardent
enemies.
The repression of democratic (or Jacobin) opinion
was common during the last
years of the eighteenth
and the first years of the nineteenth centuries.
During
the long years of Napoleonic rule, in England there
were the
beginnings of a new democratic or “radical”
school.
The sources of the “philosophical radical” tra-
dition are not easily given; it is
generally accepted that
Bentham's conversion to democracy began with
his
friendship with James Mill in 1808. Not until 1818,
however, did
Bentham draw up his Resolutions on
Parliamentary
Reform, which established his support
of universal male suffrage and
the secret ballot. The
“philosophical radicals” were
never numerous, but
they were effective publicists and held views
different
from those of the “radicals” of the 1790's.
They issued
no call for violent revolution; they never suggested that
government might one day be abolished. Instead, they
propagated the idea
that under a system of universal
suffrage many opinions would be
registered, that these
would cancel each other out, and that what was com-
mon to the majority would in time become law.
Bentham believed that Blackstone was essentially
mistaken in his ideas about
the virtues of a constitution
characterized by checks and balances; he
refused to
believe that bills of rights effectively restrained gov-
ernment. The only good government was
derived from
the people; the interest of the people needed to be
the same as
the interest of the government. Public
opinion ought to weigh heavily; the
education of the
electorate was a prime responsibility, since it gave
the
greatest promise of opinion being informed. The mid-
dle class, in James Mill's opinion the wisest part of
the community, ought to be enfranchised. They would
give the lead to the
lower classes, who could be ex-
pected to
follow their example. Through each man
pursuing his individual interest,
the greatest good of
the greatest number would result.
The philosophical radicals, believing in the middle
class, argued for a form
of government that would be
responsive to educated opinion, that would, in
short,
be capable of rationalizing institutions and making
them
efficient. Crucial to their philosophy was the idea
that the government
must encourage each individual
to pursue his own interest, and that there
be no delu-
sions about what government might
do for man. This
was to be a representative government, certainly, but
if a certain level of competence was to be assured,
there must be room in
it for those who had special
skills.
In his earliest writing, his anonymous Fragment on
Government, published in 1776, Bentham wrote: “The
age
we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is
rapidly advancing towards
perfection. In the natural
world, in particular, everything teems with
discovery
and with improvement” (ed. Harrison, p. 28).
Since
nature had “placed mankind under the governance of
two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure,” it was es-
sential that it not be placed under any other, but that
it be free
to determine its own destiny. Governors
should not choose for the governed;
this was to demean
them. The right and proper end of government was
the greatest happiness of the greatest number, “and
this could
not be legislated for.” Men had to be pre-
vented from doing harm to others, but governments
ought not to
seek to direct them in doing good for
themselves. There were agencies in
society other than
the state which could be depended on to look after
the social needs of men. A legislator inevitably imposed
his will on others
when he passed a law; he should
do so only when he was persuaded that good
would
come out of his action. Men's needs were different;
they ought
to be permitted to seek their happiness in
the way they thought most
reasonable. There were
some areas where governmental intervention was
clearly called for, but these were fewer than was gen-
erally thought.
Modern democracy could be trusted. “I have not
that horror of the
people,” Bentham wrote; “I do not
see in them that
savage monster which their detractors
dream of” (Letwin, p.
152). Still, Bentham had no
virtues; it was simply that if all were permitted to
pursue their interests, that would itself provide the
check that was needed. The new society had no need
of the mythological “natural rights” and “constitutional
balances” that others favored; the principle of utility
was a sufficient guarantee of good government.
Bentham's individualistic creed never lacked critics.
What made his ideas
important, however, was that they
provided a rationale for a new kind of
“liberalism,”
one that became the dominant political
philosophy in
Britain after the 1820's, influencing democratic theory
in many countries for the rest of the century. In
Bentham, as in his
collaborators, there was an explicit
preference for individual over
collective action; and
with it went an absolute confidence that there
would
be material progress and improvement in the condition
of men's
lives if men obeyed the new principles of
political economy. Bentham and
the philosophic radi-
cals accepted the
industrial revolution; they took for
granted that they were living in a new
age and that
this required them to search for new knowledge. For
the
state to tamper with industry or trade was to say
that government
understood an individual's interest
better than he himself did. This was
unthinkable. The
legislator was right to concern himself with the
needs
of the indigent, but he ought to take care to define
that class
closely and not make the mistake of believing
that humanitarian impulses
would be productive. Su-
perstition, war,
indolence—all the evils of the past
were to be swept away
through the pursuit by each
of the possibilities inherent in an industrial
society.
Such an idea was anathema not only to men like
Coleridge,
Newman, and Carlyle, but also to many who
might have been expected to be
most sympathetic to
such ideas.
John Stuart Mill, reared to be the heir of the Ben-
thamite legacy, found himself increasingly alienated
from what
he thought to be its narrow, limited, and
ungenerous perspectives.
Influenced by the writings of
Auguste Comte, he looked for a reform of
government
that would bring the “most virtuous and best-
instructed” to the top in
a position to give the lead
to others. Increasingly, the theme of expert
leadership
insinuated itself into Mill's writings. After the passage
of the Reform Act of 1832, Mill went out of his way
to remind his readers
that popular government meant
not so much that the people govern as that
they are
in a position to choose their governors. The business
of
government had to be “by the few for the many.”
The
science of politics was an exact one; not every
elector could aspire to
master it.
Mill's attitudes during this period were substantially
influenced by the
publication of Alexis de Tocqueville's
Democracy in America. That two-volume study, pub-
lished in 1835 and 1840, was the first
large-scale em-
pirical investigation of a
modern democracy. It was
also a prophetic work, seeking to indicate what
Europe
might itself soon be experiencing. Tocqueville, per-
suaded that the passion for equality would
not be
stilled, asked Europeans to reflect on whether liberty
would in
fact survive the move towards equality. While
admiring certain attributes
of America—its restless
energy, industry, and traditions of
self-governance—
there was a good deal that Tocqueville found
disquiet-
ing. If the democratic
movement was indeed irre-
sistible, if it
originated in America principally because
of the absence there of an
hereditary aristocracy, would
it end in the creation of a state with vastly
increased
authority, a new kind of tyranny, with the majority
exercising its power over every minority?
The tyranny of public opinion, Tocqueville argued,
could prove more
burdensome than the tyranny of any
monarch. New values would predominate in
a demo-
cratic society; the desire for riches
would take the
place of the desire for glory; there would be few
totally
uninstructed men but few learned ones. The prejudices,
passions, and interests of the multitude would always
have great weight,
and this would generally militate
against the type of political careers
possible in more
“aristocratic” societies. Government
would not attract
great talent, precisely because the interest in
equality
would make any kind of superiority irksome. Men of
wealth
would be preoccupied with their own affairs
and not with those of the
state. Democracy does not
guarantee efficient government; it does provide
free-
dom for the pursuit of one's own
interest, subject
always to the tyranny that comes from the majority
insisting that its values and ideas should be safeguarded.
Democratic
societies have a taste for easy success and
present enjoyment; this is
their strength and their
weakness.
Equality, Tocqueville insisted, tends to isolate men,
to cause them to
concentrate on themselves only; it
gives them an inordinate desire for
material goods and
comfort. For him, the liberal French aristocrat,
the
important question for the future was how to avoid
the new kind of
despotism that might be based on
popular opinion, with the state's power
being “abso-
lute, minute, regular,
provident, and mild.” Tocqueville
saw the new state power as
rather like that of the
parent, except that the parent prepared the child
for
manhood; the democratic state was interested in per-
petuating childhood in man. It would
provide for his
necessities, facilitate his pleasures, and direct his in-
dustry. What remains, Tocqueville asked,
“but to spare
them all the care of thinking and all the trouble
of
living?” Tocqueville saw in religion, an independent
restraining elements on state power. However, these
guarantees were not sufficient to bring him to conclude
his work with a verdict clearly favorable to democracy.
If a prevailing opinion existed in Europe in the
1850's and 1860's, it was
certainly not that of Karl
Marx, but probably of those who called
themselves
liberals. John Stuart Mill may be taken as a repre-
sentative liberal. In his classic
work, On Liberty (1859),
he spoke out against the
tyranny of public opinion;
the common opinion ought not to be permitted
to
interfere with individual opinion. The individual is not
accountable to society for actions that concern himself
only; for those
actions affecting others he may be
judged. Mill's concern was always for
the gifted indi-
vidual whom the multitude
might find objectionable.
Persuaded that political responsibility was the
greatest
good that could come to a man, and that to be active
and
serve the public weal ought to be the objective
of all in a position to do
so, he saw that while not
everyone could participate directly in public
life, all
could do so through representative institutions. This
was
Mill's ultimate reason for preferring representative
government. Not all
communities, however, were
ready for it. The duty of a colonizing power was
to
prepare its dependencies for self-government. Britain
clearly had
such an obligation in India.
Towards the end of the century, liberalism moved
increasingly in a
collectivist direction and lost its ear-
lier
hostility to socialist experimentation. There was
still some of the
old-fashioned Benthamite individ-
ualism,
but it was tempered by a willingness to support
health and unemployment
insurance, a widening of the
franchise, a steady improvement in wages, and
the
granting of specific legal rights to trade unions. The
working-class misery of the early industrial era seemed
to be greatly
attenuated. It was almost possible to
believe that representative
institutions had indeed re-
solved the
political and social problems of industrial
society. Many believed they
had. Some, like Eduard
Bernstein, felt compelled to
“revise” Marxist doctrine,
to take account of the new
economic and political facts
(not foreseen by Marx). Whether in the
tradition of
the “revisionists,” or in its pure,
unadulterated form,
Marxism seemed to gain a new repute.
Marx, in accepting the industrial system—in refusing
to posit an
ideal society based on older agrarian
models—in insisting that
social inequities could be
overcome through a rational organization of
society,
laid the basis for a doctrine that gained new adherents
late
in the century. On the Continent, though not in
England or the United
States, Marxist parties grew in
prestige and power. France and Germany,
whatever
their mutual political antipathies, resembled each other
in spawning large Marxist parties. They were hostile
to the
anarchist and syndicalist spirit that remained
prominent in certain
segments of the working class.
Eduard Bernstein, for all his acceptance of
the benefits
secured by the worker as the consequence of the new
social legislation, had no doubt that Germany's political
system was
essentially undemocratic, and that a prin-
cipal purpose of his political effort ought to be to
achieve
democracy. Socialism, he believed, could only
come about through democracy;
in his words, “democ-
racy is a
condition of socialism to a much greater
degree than is usually assumed,
i.e. it is not only the
means but also the substance.” Bernstein
came very
close to expressing what certain English social reform-
ers had argued in the nineteenth
century, and what
Fabianism announced explicitly: socialism was a con-
tinuation and a fulfillment of
industrialism and of
democracy.
This was not a view that all working-class advocates
would accept. The
syndicalist spirit, going back to
Proudhon and Blanqui, had deep appeal for
many.
Georges Sorel may be taken as typical of those who
spoke
glowingly of the possibilities of the “general
strike” in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Rejecting
the democratic bias of Marxists like Bern-
stein, and detesting democracy generally as the crea-
tion of the bourgeoisie, Sorel feared what democracy
was doing in weakening the revolutionary ardor of the
working class. The
camaraderie of workers ought not
to be lost; the
attack on the state had to continue; it
could only lead, he insisted, to
the collapse of the state.
Sorel, a syndicalist at the time, passed through
other
ideological schools in time, but in every one he per-
sisted in his diatribe against bourgeois
democracy.
Others writing at the same time—Vilfredo Pareto,
Robert Michels,
Gaetano Mosca—inquired into the
oligarchical tendencies of
democracy. Where the nine-
teenth century
prided itself on the suffrage—on the
importance of extending the
vote—these men ex-
pressed
misgivings about the habits and tendencies of
men selected by democratic
ballot-box procedures.
Could such men be entrusted with power? Would
they
not be self-serving or the servants of special interest
groups?
These questions had not been much asked in
the nineteenth century.
So long as democracy was a political movement
making its way, so long as
there were classes to be
enfranchised, constitutions to be
written—so long, in
short, as democracy was an uncommon
thing—
partisans of popular rule were disposed to be fairly
uncritical of democracy. When, however, as in the
early twentieth century,
manhood suffrage was largely
achieved, female suffrage was making progress,
trade
union rights were recognized, freedom of assembly,
of questioning began. Perhaps elections were not as
significant as nineteenth-century liberals imagined
them to be. Perhaps political movements that insisted
on instituting complex democratic mechanisms—
“recall,” “referendum,” “proportional representation,”
and the like—dwelled on quite secondary matters.
Mosca, Michels, Pareto—and others of their persuasion
—argued that democracy was itself a fraud, a delu-
sion by which men lived. Many, they said, could not
bear to admit that self-government was impossible,
that men lived under modern (bureaucratic) oligarchies
and that there was no escape from that power. Gov-
ernment, for those who held such views, became a form
of monopoly; the politician was the new monopolist,
though he pretended to identify with the subjects over
whom he exercised his authority. The ballot box, the
glory of the nineteenth-century democrat, was made
little of; so, also, were the political parties, with their
pretensions to being checks on oligarchic power.
What the effects of such theories might have been
had World War I not
intervened, it is impossible to
know. The war was important for democracy,
not least
because it catapulted into international prominence
Woodrow
Wilson and Nikolai Lenin, who, whatever
their other gifts, knew the value
of rhetoric. Each
contributed to making new slogans for their age.
Wilson, in bringing the United States into the war in
April 1917, claimed
that he was enrolling the country
in a war to make the world safe for
democracy. The
fact that the Tsarist regime had been toppled some
weeks earlier made it possible for Wilson to argue that
the Entente powers
were “democracies,” while Ger-
many remained victim of its authoritarian regime. He
pledged a
League of Nations—of peace-loving states—
the
institution of a permanent organization to which
only democratic states
would be admitted.
All this was predicated on the notion that self-
government would be the prevailing political form of
the future,
and that the war was being waged to guar-
antee that possibility. Wilson thought that one of his
purposes
ought to be the encouraging of those elements
in Germany that displayed
“democratic” tendencies.
They might prove useful in
rendering assistance to the
Allies in the democratic objective of
overthrowing the
Junker power. Such arguments were highly propa-
gandistic; democracy became a word
of common usage
in a way that it had never been previously. An exami-
nation of the press, not only in the
United States, but
in other Allied states as well, shows a tendency to
use
the word democracy in ways that Wilson made re-
spectable and possible.
Meanwhile, another new voice was heard, though
not with anything like the
same amplification. Lenin,
disgusted by the defection of Western Social Demo-
crats from a pacifism they had long preached, per-
suaded that these men had abandoned their
interna-
tionalist class-war
ideology in favor of conventional
patriotic nationalism, saw the war as
advantageous only
if it could be transformed from an
“imperialist war”
into an international
“civil war,” to hasten the inevita-
ble revolution. Lenin's object was to bring into a
com-
mon rebellion workers who were the
subjects of mod-
ern capitalism and colonial
peoples who were the
subjects of capitalist imperialism. After March
1917,
his only objective was to bring about revolution in
Russia;
this, he accomplished in November. His instru-
ment was the Communist Party, for which he had
labored since the
early years of the century. A central-
ized
party, of professional revolutionaries, it accom-
plished what social democracy had never been able
to achieve in
the West—absolute control, through
party instrumentalities and a
highly centralized bu-
reaucracy, of the
whole of a state's power. Lenin
achieved this in the name of democracy; not
the bour-
geois democracy of parliaments, but
the proletarian
democracy of Soviets. Lenin, like his successor,
Stalin,
never doubted the legitimacy and superiority of the
people's
democracy established in the Soviet Union.
Its institutions and
values—so different from those of
bourgeois
democracy—were flaunted in a whole suc-
cession of written constitutions.
To the Communist disparagement of bourgeois de-
mocracy, democratic theorists have generally felt some
obligation to give an answer. To the Fascist and Nazi
critics of liberal
democracy, increasingly vocal in the
1930's, there was less response; it
was as if criticism
from that quarter—with its simplistic racial
and na-
tional myths, glorification of a
“leader,” and dispar-
agement of representative institutions—scarcely mer-
ited a serious retort. In the 1930's, there
was some
disposition to argue; the defeat of Nazi Germany and
Fascist
Italy closed off the discussion.
The mood of the war years and of the immediate
postwar period cannot be
represented by any single
work. Yet, that of Joseph Schumpeter, as
expressed in
Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, merits
attention.
Schumpeter argued that the classical theory of democ-
racy did not describe the political
situation as we know
it; there is no possibility of pretending, as the
eight-
eenth century did, that
“the democratic method is that
institutional arrangement for
arriving at political deci-
sions which
realizes the common good by making the
people itself decide issues through
the election of indi-
viduals who are to
assemble in order to carry out its
will” (p. 250). Schumpeter
saw such description as an
elaborate fiction; he preferred a new
definition: “the
democratic method is that institutional arrangement
acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive
struggle for the people's vote” (p. 269). This, Schum-
peter said, implied nothing less than that “democracy
is the rule of the politician.” Modern democracy was
the product of capitalism. If capitalism were to disap-
pear and be replaced by socialism, he said, this would
not necessarily mean that democracy's institutions
would go. Parties, elections, parliaments—all these
might prove convenient political instruments even for
a socialist society. Central to the survival of democracy,
for Schumpeter, was the agreement of the “vast major-
ity of the people in all classes... to abide by the rules
of the democratic game.” This, in turn, “implies that
they are substantially agreed on the fundamentals of
their institutional structure” (p. 301).
Another critique of the classical theory of democ-
racy, one that attracted great attention on its publica-
tion in 1956, was that of Robert
Dahl. In his published
lectures, A Preface to Democratic
Theory, he showed
an empirical grasp that had not been at all
common
in the prewar period. Contrasting his own theory of
polyarchy,
which focused primarily on the social pre-
requisites for a democratic order, with what he called
Madisonian theory, which emphasized the consti-
tutional prerequisites, Dahl insisted that a theory of
social
checks and balances was very different from one
that dwelled on
constitutional checks and balances.
Dahl argued that “the bent
given to American thought
by the Constitutional Convention and the
subsequent
apotheosis of its product... hindered realistic and
precise
thinking about the requirements of democracy”
(p. 83).
For Dahl, the possibility of majority rule on any
specific policy was
negligible. Where the prerequisites
of polyarchy, as he outlined them,
existed, then the
election itself was “the critical technique
for insuring
that government leaders will be relatively responsive
to
non-leaders.” Of the eight conditions he laid down
for
polyarchy, Dahl saw a small possibility of their
being met. Elections were
“a crucial device for con-
trolling leaders,” but “quite ineffective as
indicators
of majority preference.” Specific policies tended to
be
the products of “minorities rule.” Majority rule,
in the
sense that Madison had used the term, Dahl saw as
largely a
myth. In most societies minorities frustrate
and tyrannize others, but this
is a far cry from dic-
tatorship.
Dahl concluded from all this that constitutional
forms were not a principal
device for protecting one
group in society against another. What, then,
were they
useful for? He thought them significant mostly for
determining “what particular groups are to be given
advantages
or handicaps in the political struggle.” The
reason the American Constitution had survived, in
Dahl's view,
was not that Madison and his colleagues
had constructed such delicate
mechanisms for guaran-
teeing a political
balance, but that the Constitution
was frequently altered to fit a changing
social balance
of power. It was the American penchant for bargaining
that made the whole political process work.
Debates that were once vivid about the relative
advantages of presidential
and parliamentary systems,
about two-party versus multi-party
constitutions, have
lost some of their urgency in recent years.
Increasingly,
there is a tendency to distinguish between consti-
tutional and autocratic regimes in
a way that Eric Weil
does in his Philosophie
politique (1956); constitutional
regimes involve a set of
judicial institutions inde-
pendent of
political authority, and generally provide
for a method whereby political
leadership may be
altered by the citizens' vote. In an autocratic
state,
the citizen has no legal recourse against administrative
or
political decision, and can neither legally challenge
the decisions of
government nor alter the political
leadership. By this standard, democracy
becomes the
best form of government in a healthy society, since
it has
the best chance of bringing good men to major
positions. In a community in
decomposition, violent,
passionate, and dominated by conflicts between
rival
interest groups, the reign of the mediocre and the
wicked will
generally be the rule; this will often lead
to an autocratic government.
This, Weil says, is the
response of men who deem efficiency to be a para-
mount virtue, with all other values being
secondary.
In a healthy community, where rational discussion is
possible, at least among those who participate in the
direction and control
of public affairs, democracy will
bring the best men to power. Reasonable
discussion
must lie at the base of any stable democracy. Parlia-
mentary institutions are no
guarantee against tyranny;
nor can universal suffrage be held to provide
any de-
fense. Even the law does not provide
absolute assur-
ance. Each is necessary to
discussion, and each con-
tributes to
providing circumstances calculated to
encourage the assertion of talent.
The basis of democ-
racy, then, is an
administration capable of acting ra-
tionally, and capable of keeping the confidence of the
electors. The
electors cannot themselves decide; they
cannot hope to master the
complexities of fiscal or
military reform. They must be prepared to accept
the
judgment of those who are qualified to know.
Today, when there is so much effort to appropriate
the democratic label to
governments that would not
normally qualify as such, it becomes
increasingly im-
portant to distinguish
between the conditions for de-
mocracy and the
criteria of democracy. Seymour
Martin Lipset, in his Political Man (1960), has tried
development, but also to the effectiveness and legiti-
macy of particular governments. For Lipset, effective-
ness has to do with actual performance, the extent to
which the government satisfies powerful groups within
the society, and is able to carry out its functions.
Legitimacy, he defines as “the capacity of the system
to engender and maintain the belief that the existing
political institutions are the most appropriate ones for
the society.”
Increasingly, one returns to the ancient Aristotelian
idea that there is a
relation between a society's prop-
erty
distribution and its form of government. A large
impoverished mass and a
small elite will generally
produce oligarchy or tyranny. Greater
equalization of
wealth favors democratic rule. As the relation between
the educational level of a people and democracy is
increasingly examined,
the question of why certain
developing societies achieve democratic forms
while
others do not becomes a matter of controversy. Indus-
trialization is clearly possible
in both democratic and
nondemocratic societies. Material progress does
not
appear to depend on popular rule. What, then, are
the
incontestable advantages of democracy? The prob-
lem of Herodotus is as much the problem of the latter
part of the
twentieth century as it was of the Greek
city-state where direct citizen
participation was possi-
ble. There is a new
sense today of the fragility of
democratic institutions. Perhaps the
preoccupations of
Athens are not so foreign to the twentieth century
as
they were to the more self-confident nineteenth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman, eds., The
Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, 1960). Aristotle,
Politics, trans. and ed. Ernest Barker (Oxford,
1946). Bernard
Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the
American Revolution
(Cambridge, Mass., 1967). Ernest Barker,
Reflections on
Government (Oxford, 1942).
Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment
on Government, ed. W.
Harrison (Oxford, 1948). Isaiah
Berlin, Four Essays
on Liberty (London, 1969). Crane
Brinton, English Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century
(Cambridge, Mass., 1949). Maurice Cranston, Freedom,
A
New Analysis (London, 1953). Robert A. Dahl, A Preface
to Democratic Theory (Chicago, 1956).
William Y. Elliott,
The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics (New York, 1928).
Elie
Halévy, The Growth of Philosophical
Radicalism (London,
1949). Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power; Its Nature and the
History of its
Growth (New York, 1949). Harold J. Laski,
A Grammar of Politics (New Haven, 1925). Shirley
Robin
Letwin, The Pursuit of Certainty
(Cambridge, 1965). A. D.
Lindsay, The Modern
Democratic State (London, 1943; New
York, 1962). Seymour
Martin Lipset, Political Man: The
Social Base of
Politics (New York, 1960). T. H. Marshall,
Citizenship and Social Class (Cambridge, 1950). Richard
McKeon and Stein Rokkan eds., Democracy in a
World of
Tensions (Chicago, 1951). Barrington Moore, Social Origins
of Dictatorship and Democracy
(Boston, 1966). Thomas
Paine, Complete Writings,
ed. Philip S. Foner, 2 vols. (New
York, 1945). Robert R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic
Revolutions, Vols. 1
and 2 (Princeton, 1959; 1964). Plato,
Collected Dialogues, ed. Edith Hamilton and
Huntington
Cairns (Princeton, 1963). George H. Sabine, A History of
Political Theory, 3rd ed. (New
York, 1961); contains a good
bibliography of secondary works. Giovanni
Sartori, Demo-
cratic
Theory (Detroit, 1962). Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capi-
talism, Socialism, and
Democracy, 3rd ed. (New York, 1950).
Judith N. Shklar, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's
Social
Theory (Cambridge, 1969). E. P. Thompson, The
Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1963).
Alexis
de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed.
Phillips
Bradley, 2 vols. (New York, 1960). Adam Ulam, The Unfin-
ished
Revolution (New York, 1960). Michael Walzer, The
Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of
Radical
Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1965). Eric Weil, Philosophie
politique (Paris, 1956). Gordon S.
Wood, The Creation of
the American Republic,
1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, 1969).
STEPHEN R. GRAUBARD
[See also Constitutionalism; Equality; General Will; Liber-alism; Nation; Social Contract; State.]
Dictionary of the History of Ideas | ||