What is Democracy?

Democracy isn’t what it used to be. Our contemporary nations are considered ‘democratic’ pretty much by changing the meaning of the word. For most of human history, those who thought about such things identified a democracy as a state in which the majority of the people ruled, in all the political institutions of that state. The common example, which persisted from the ancient world until the last decades of the eighteenth century, is the Athens of ancient Greece. The contemporary definition of democracy is very different.  For example, some so-called democracies are content with deviations from democracy (like hereditary monarchy, as in Great Britain), acceptable as long as the undemocratic elements (like the British queen) are kept in the background.  And never mind the social conditions that make democratic institutions a sham (like various social inequalities). The shift in meaning of democracy occurred sometime in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. In the United States and Great Britain at least, the term ‘democracy’ was appropriated by populist and liberal reformers as the right to vote slowly expanded to include all white men and abolished the requirement of owning a certain amount of property to qualify for voting. However, institutions designed for oligarchy, or rule by the few, in the United States and Europe, remained; for example, the Senate of the United States.  Political mechanisms once recognized as oligarchic became democratic merely through wordplay.

The historical idea of democracy is one in which the people rule – directly, as we say today. Aristotle claimed that “[t]he fundamental principle of the democratic constitution is freedom…. [D]emocratic justice is based on numerical equality, not on merit” (in Politics (Book VI, Chapter 2)). This isn’t too far from what we claim about our own political values. However, Aristotle continues: “[That] majority opinion is in authority… is one mark of freedom which all democrats take as a goal of their constitution. Another is to live as one likes” (my emphasis). Typically, modern liberalism construes freedom in the sense of ‘living as one likes.’  The ancient democrats had more freedom than that in mind. The direct exercise of power by the majority is itself an exercise of their freedom. The personal liberty of living as one likes – is a complement of that. Pericles» said of Athens, “we are not… angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes.” But also the ancient citizen exercised power directly through collective institutions of the city. Citizens met in vast assemblies, they filled the highest offices by lottery (and for short terms, so that as many of the citizens as possible would perform public functions), courts were composed of enormous juries, and defense was the responsibility of the entire citizenry.

The modern idea of democracy began, not by trying to remake America or Europe into a new Athens, but by trying to evade democracy. Renaissance republicans and Enlightenment liberals looked not to Athens but to ancient Rome and medieval Venice for their inspiration, mainly accepting Aristotle’s contention that democracy is a threat to the property of the wealthy. Such republics evolved to balance the power of social classes, by building class divisions right into the state. In Great Britain, the church and the aristocracy have expressed their power in the House of Lords (until the 21st century), while the common people have been represented in the House of Commons. The Constitution of the United States derives and takes inspiration from these republics, but without explicitly naming class divisions as class divisions. James Madison, a Founder of the US Constitution, famously argued that opposing groups in government need to be balanced by the structure of that government.  Previous advocates of oligarchy would argue the same way about the balancing of social classes (the wealthy and the poor). So, Madison’s arguments are simply the arguments of oligarchy drained of their class content.  In the United States, the Senate was originally designed as a counterpart to the British House of Lords, while the House of Representatives would function as the popular branch of government. The United States subsequently became a “democracy” despite having a Senate full of millionaires.

The liberalism coming out of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century thus provided a new view of democracy alien and hostile to that of classical democracy, and its twentieth-century elaboration is even more so. The state must be alienated – or separated – from the people, with the dual purpose of promoting “wise” political leadership and protecting liberties (usually code for property rights). Election is the method by which the people select their ‘wise’ leaders to represent their interests.  An impartial bureaucracy is supposed to be the means by which good administration is achieved. The state becomes the means by which opposing groups of the people elevate their leaders to power.  The leaders then use this power to distribute some benefits to their supporters.  All of these elements however precisely meet the classical definition of oligarchy – a state which rises above the people and in which a wealthy few are elected to power – in contrast to democracy. The assumptions of oligarchy are all also obviously false: elected leaders are idiots or even psychopaths who don’t represent the people who elect them, bureaucracy is not impartial but its own social class with its own interests, and liberties are increasingly trampled upon by a political-economic class distinct from the rest of us.  More than merely undemocratic, liberal oligarchy fails to meet its own standards.

Liberal “democracy” also conflicts at its core with the Principle of Autonomy, which is itself the supposed basis of liberalism.  The Principle of Autonomy is the thesis that all individuals are entitled to rule themselves.  The alienated state to which only an elite can effectively hold office is a violation of the exercise of human autonomy. If we take the Principle seriously, then at the least, the people ought to be capable of directly passing or annulling the laws of their nation, so that they might live under laws of which they are the author. One might claim that the act of voting for a representative is the surrender of one’s powers, but this would be a contradiction in the concept of autnonomy. Each person must be involved in making the law for themselves, entailing that this is not a power that can be taken from any individual. Law-making by representatives is at best a supplementary mechanism to popular power. And that’s at the least. If we want to follow the Principle, we extend democracy to all powers of the state. When we have gone as far as possible, we will have reached the ultimate demand of full freedom, as Aristotle disapprovingly puts it, “not to be ruled by anyone.” But, “failing that,” we can accept the penultimate demand, “to rule and be ruled in turn.”

The political mechanisms of Athens and other historical democracies cannot be simply transplanted from then to now, from there to here. Populations now bound together are spread across continents, but still can’t all talk at once in a great assembly. Nevertheless, that shouldn’t dissuade us from seeking to maximize genuine democracy to modern nations and, indeed, world governance. Since the revolutions of the 1960’s, people have been seeking to take democracy back from the elitist and technocratic conceptions of twentieth-century “democracy,” still dominant in 2010. Successful and failed experiments litter history and call to be put together in a complete whole for a free future. The principles of democracy are sound; realizing it for modern humanity is merely a matter of engineering. Mechanisms existing in liberal states may be useful for the endeavor, but by themselves are wholly insufficient. Let us no longer let the ruling class of today’s oligarchies tell us that we live in freedom and democracy.