3. The Democracy of the “Intellectuals” and
Popular Democracy.
All ideas that have hitherto caused an upheaval of the world
of men have been subject to two laws: they evolve slowly, and
they completely change their sense according to the mentalities
in which they find reception.
A doctrine may be compared to a living being. It subsists
only by process of transformation. The books are necessarily
silent upon these variations, so that the phase of things which
they establish belongs only to the past. They do not reflect the
image of the living, but of the dead. The written statement of a
doctrine often represents the most negligible side of that
doctrine.
I have shown in another work how institutions, arts, and
languages are modified in passing from one people to another, and
how the laws of these transformations differ from the truth as
stated in books. I allude to this matter now merely to show why,
in examining the subject of democratic ideas, we occupy ourselves
so little with the text of doctrines, and seek only for the
psychological elements of which they constitute the vestment, and
the reactions which they provoke in the various categories of men
who have accepted them.
Modified rapidly by men of different mentalities, the
original theory is soon no more than a label which denotes
something quite unlike itself.
Applicable to religious beliefs, these principles are
equally so to political beliefs. When a man speaks of democracy,
for example, must we inquire what this word means to various
peoples, and also whether in the same people there is not a great
difference between the democracy of the “intellectuals”
and popular democracy.
In confining ourselves now to the consideration of this
latter point we shall readily perceive that the democratic ideas
to be found in books and journals are purely the theories of
literary people, of which the people know nothing, and by the
application of which they would have nothing to gain. Although
the working-man possesses the theoretical right of passing the
barriers which separate him from the upper classes by a whole
series of competitions and examinations, his chance of reaching
them is in reality extremely slight.
The democracy of the lettered classes has no other
object than to set up a selection which shall recruit the
directing classes exclusively from themselves. I should have
nothing to say against this if the selection were real. It would
then constitute the application of the maxim of Napoleon:
“The true method of government is to employ the aristocracy,
but under the forms of democracy.”
Unhappily the democracy of the “intellectuals”
would simply lead to the substitution of the Divine right of
kings by the Divine right of a petty oligarchy, which is too
often narrow and tyrannical. Liberty cannot be created by
replacing a tyranny.
Popular democracy by no means aims at manufacturing
rulers. Dominated entirely by the spirit of equality and the
desire to ameliorate the lot of the workers, it rejects the idea
of fraternity, and exhibits no anxiety in respect of liberty. No
government is conceivable to popular democracy except in the form
of an autocracy. We see this, not only in history, which shows
us that since the Revolution all despotic Governments have been
vigorously acclaimed, but also in the autocratic fashion in which
the workers' trades unions are conducted.
This profound distinction between the democracy of the
lettered classes and popular democracy is far more obvious to the
workers than to the intellectuals. In their mentalities there is
nothing in common; the two classes do not speak the same
language. The syndicalists emphatically assert to-day that no
alliance could possibly exist between them and the politicians of
the bourgeoisie. This assertion is strictly true.
It was always so, and this, no doubt, is why popular
democracy, from Plato's to our own times, has never been defended
by the great thinkers.
This fact has greatly struck Emile Faguet. “Almost
all the thinkers of the nineteenth century,” he says,
“were not democrats. When I was writing my Politiques et
moralistes du XIXe siècle this was my
despair. I could not find one who had been a democrat; yet I was
extremely anxious to find one so that I could give the democratic
doctrine as formulated by him.”
The eminent writer might certainly have found plenty of
professional politicians, but these latter rarely belong to the
category of thinkers.
