IN SEARCH OF A DEFINITION

We have a starting point from which to proceed with our investigation. But a definition that is to serve us in an attempt to analyze the relations between democracy and socialism is not yet in sight. A few preliminary difficulties still bar the outlook.

It would not help us much to look up Aristotle who used the term in order to designate one of the deviations from his ideal of a well-ordered commonwealth. But some light may be shed on our difficulties by recalling the meaning we have attached to the term Political Method. It means the method a nation uses for arriving at decisions. Such a method we ought to be able to characterize by indicating by whom and how these decisions are made. Equating “making decisions” to “ruling,” we might then define democracy as Rule by the People. Why is that not sufficiently precise? It is not because it covers as many meanings as there are combinations between all the possible definitions of the concept “people” (demos, the Roman populus) and all the possible definitions of the concept “to rule” (kratein), and because these definitions are not independent of the argument about democracy.

As regards the first concept, the populus in the constitutional sense may exclude slaves completely and other inhabitants partially; the law may recognize any number of status between slavery and full or even privileged citizenship. And irrespective of legal discrimination, different groups considered themselves as the People at different times. 11 Of course we might say that a democratic society is one that does not thus differentiate, at least in matters concerning public affairs, such as the franchise. But, first, there have been nations that practiced discrimination of the kind alluded to and nevertheless displayed most of those characteristics which are usually associated with democracy. Second, discrimination can never be entirely absent. For instance, in no country, however democratic, is the right to vote extended below a specified age. If, however, we ask for the rationale of this restriction we find that it also applies to an indefinite number of inhabitants above the age limit. If persons below the age limit are not allowed to vote, we cannot call a nation undemocratic that for the same or analogous reasons excludes other people as well. Observe: it is not relevant whether we, the observers, admit the validity of those reasons or of the practical rules by which they are made to exclude portions of the population; all that matters is that the society in question admits it.

Nor should it be objected that, while this may apply to exclusions on grounds of personal unfitness (e.g., “age of discretion”), it does not apply to wholesale exclusion on grounds that have nothing to do with the ability to make an intelligent use of the right to vote. For fitness is a matter of opinion and of degree. Its presence must be established by some set of rules. Without absurdity or insincerity it is possible to hold that fitness is measured by one’s ability to support oneself. In a commonwealth of strong religious conviction it may be held—again without any absurdity or insincerity—that dissent disqualifies or, in an anti-feminist commonwealth, sex.

A race-conscious nation may associate fitness with racial considerations. 12 And so on. The salient point, to repeat, is not what we think about any or all of these possible disabilities. The salient point is that, given appropriate views on those and similar subjects, disqualifications on grounds of economic status, religion and 11 See, e.g., the definition given by Voltaire in his Letters Concerning the English Nation (published in English, 1733; reprint of the first edition published by Peter Davies, 1926, p. 49): “the most numerous, the most useful, even the most virtuous, and consequently the most venerable part of mankind, consisting of those who study the laws and the sciences; of traders, of artificers, in a word, of all who were not tyrants; that is, those who are call’d the people.” At present “people” is likely to mean the “masses,” but Voltaire’s concept comes nearer to identifying that people for which the Constitution of this country was written.

sex will enter into the same class with disqualifications which we all of us consider compatible with democracy. We may disapprove of them to be sure. But if we do so we should in good logic disapprove of the theories about the importance of property, religion, sex, race and so on, rather than call such societies undemocratic.

Religious fervor for instance is certainly compatible with democracy however we define the latter. There is a type of religious attitude to which a heretic seems worse than a madman. Does it not follow that the heretic should be barred from participation in political decisions as is the lunatic. 13 Must we not leave it to every populus to define himself? This inescapable conclusion is usually evaded by introducing additional assumptions into the theory of the democratic process, some of which will be discussed in the next two chapters. Meanwhile we will merely note that it clears much mist from the road. Among other things it reveals the fact that the relation between democracy and liberty must be considerably more complex than we are in the habit of believing.

Still more serious difficulties arise with respect to the second element that enters into the concept of democracy, the kratein. The nature and the modus operandi of any “rule” are always difficult to explain. Legal powers never guarantee the ability to use them yet are important pegs as well as fetters; traditional prestige always counts for something but never for everything; personal success and, partly independent of success, personal weight act and are reacted upon by both the legal and the traditional components of the institutional pattern. No monarch or dictator or group of oligarchs is ever absolute. They rule not only subject to the data of the national situation but also subject to the necessity of acting with some people, of getting along with others, of neutralizing still others and of subduing the rest. And this may be done in an almost infinite variety of ways each of which will determine what a given formal arrangement really means either for the nation in which it obtains or for the scientific observer; to speak of monarchy as if it meant a definite thing spells dilettantism. But if it is the people, however defined, who are to do the kratein, still another problem emerges. How is it technically possible for “people” to rule?

There is a class of cases in which this problem does not arise, at least not in an acute form. In small and primitive communities with a simple social structure 14 in which there is not much to disagree on, it is conceivable that 13 To the bolshevik any non-bolshevik is in the same category. Hence the rule of the Bolshevik party would not per se entitle us to call the Soviet Republic undemocratic. We are entitled to call it so only if the Bolshevik party itself is managed in an undemocratic manner—as obviously it is.

all the individuals who form the people as defined by the constitution actually participate in all the duties of legislation and administration. Certain difficulties may still remain even in such cases and the psychologist of collective behavior would still have something to say about leadership, advertising and other sources of deviation from the popular ideal of a democracy. Nevertheless there would be obvious sense in speaking of the will or the action of the community or the people as such—of government by the people—particularly if the people arrive at political decisions by means of debates carried out in the physical presence of all, as they did, for instance, in the Greek polis or in the New England town meeting. The latter case, sometimes referred to as the case of “direct democracy,” has in fact served as a starting point for many a political theorist.

In all other cases our problem does arise but we might dispose of it with comparative ease provided we are prepared to drop government by the people and to substitute for it government approved by the people. There is much to be said for doing this. Many of the propositions we usually aver about democracy will hold true for all governments that command the general allegiance of a large majority of their people or, better still, of a large majority of every class of their people. This applies in particular to the virtues usually associated with the democratic method: human dignity, the contentment that comes from the feeling that by and large things political do conform to one’s ideas of how they should be, the coordination of politics with public opinion, the citizen’s attitude of confidence in and cooperation with government, the reliance of the latter on the respect and support of the man in the street—all this and much besides which to many of us will seem the very esssence of democracy is quite satisfactorily covered by the idea of government approved by the people. And since it is obvious that excepting the case of “direct democracy” the people as such can never actually rule or govern, the case for this definition seems to be complete.

All the same we cannot accept it. Instances abound—perhaps they are the majority of historical cases—of autocracies, both dei gratia and dictatorial, of the various monarchies of non-autocratic type, of aristocratic and plutocratic oligarchies, which normally commanded the unquestioned, often fervent, allegiance of an overwhelming majority of all classes of their people and which, considering their environmental conditions, did very well in securing what most of us believe the democratic method should secure. There is point in emphasizing this and in recognizing the large element of democracy—in this sense—that entered into those cases. Such an antidote to the cult of mere forms, of mere phraseologies even, would indeed be highly desirable. But this does not alter the fact that by accepting this solution we should lose the phenomenon we wish to identify: democracies would be merged in a much wider class of political arrangement which contains individuals of clearly non-democratic complexion.

Our failure teaches us one thing however. Beyond “direct” democracy lies an infinite wealth of possible forms in which the “people” may partake in the business of ruling or influence or control those who actually do the ruling. None of these forms, particularly none of the workable ones, has any obvious or exclusive title to being described as Government by the People if these words are to be taken in their natural sense. If any of them is to acquire such a title it can do so only by virtue of an arbitrary convention defining the meaning to be attached to the term “to rule.” Such a convention is always possible of course: the people never actually rule but they can always be made to do so by definition.

The legal “theories” of democracy that evolved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were precisely intended to provide such definitions as would link certain actual or ideal forms of government to the ideology of the Rule by the People. Why this ideology should have imposed itself is not difficult to understand. At that time, with the nations of western Europe at least, the trappings of God-ordained authority were rapidly falling from the shoulders of royalty 15 —the process set in much earlier of course—and, as a matter of both ethical and explanatory principle, the Will of the People or the Sovereign Power of the People stood out as the substitute most acceptable to a mentality which, while prepared to drop that particular charisma of ultimate authority, was not prepared to do without any.

The problem being thus set, the legal mind ransacked the lumber room of its constructs in search for tools by which to reconcile that supreme postulate with existing political patterns. Fictitious contracts of subjection to a prince 16 by which the sovereign people was supposed to have bargained away its freedom or power, or no less fictitious contracts by which it delegated that power, or some of it, to chosen representatives, were substantially what the lumber room supplied. However well such devices may have served certain practical purposes, they are utterly valueless for us. They are not even defensible from a legal standpoint. For in order to make sense at all the terms delegation and representation

must refer not to the individual citizens—that would be the doctrine of the medieval estates—but to the people as a whole. The people as such, then, would have to be conceived as delegating its power to, say, a parliament that is to represent it. But only a (physical or moral) person can legally delegate or be represented. Thus the American colonies or states that sent delegates to the continental congresses which met from 1774 on in Philadelphia—the so-called “revolutionary congresses”—were in fact represented by these delegates. But the people of those colonies or states were not, since a people as such has no legal personality: to say that it delegates powers to, or is represented by, a parliament is to say something completely void of legal meaning. 17 What, then, is a parliament? The answer is not far to seek: it is an organ of the state exactly as the government or a court of justice is. If a parliament represents the people at all, it must do so in another sense which we have still to discover.

However, these “theories” about the sovereignty of the people and about delegation and representation reflect something more than an ideological postulate and a few pieces of legal technique. They complement a sociology or social philosophy of the body politic that, partly under the influence of the revival of Greek speculations on the subject, partly under the influence of the events of the time, 18 took shape and reached its apogee toward the end of the eighteenth century and actually tried to solve the problem.

Though such general terms are never adequate or strictly correct, I will risk describing it—in the usual way—as fundamentally rationalist, hedonist and individualist: the happiness, defined in hedonic terms, of individuals endowed with a clear perception—or amenable to education that will impart clear perception—both of this end and of the appropriate means, was conceived as the meaning of life and the grand principle of action in the private as well as in the political sphere. We may just as well designate this sociology or social philosophy, the product of early capitalism, by the term introduced by John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism. According to it, behavior conforming to that principle was not merely the only rational and justifiable but ipso facto also the “natural” one. This proposition is the bridge between the otherwise very different theories of Bentham and Rousseau’s contrat social—names that may serve us for beacons in what for the rest must be left in darkness here.

If such desperate brevity does not prevent readers from following my argument, the bearing of this philosophy on the subject of democracy should be clear. It evidently yielded, among other things, a theory of the nature of the state and the purposes for which the state exists. Moreover, by virtue of its emphasis on the rational and hedonistic individual and his ethical autonomy it seemed to be in a position to teach the only right political methods for running that state and for achieving those purposes—the greatest happiness for the greatest number and that sort of thing. Finally, it provided what looked like a rational foundation for belief in the Will of the People (volonté générale) and in the advice that sums up all that democracy meant to the group of writers who became known as Philosophical Radicals: 19 educate the people and let them vote freely.

Adverse criticism of this construction arose almost immediately as a part of the general reaction against the rationalism of the eighteenth century that set in after the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Whatever we may think about the merits or demerits of the movement usually dubbed Romanticism, it certainly conveyed a deeper understanding of pre-capitalist society and of historical evolution in general and thus revealed some of the fundamental errors of utilitarianism and of the political theory for which utilitarianism served as base. Later historical, sociological, biological, psychological and economic analysis proved destructive to both and today it is difficult to find any student of social processes who has a good word for either. But strange though it may seem, action continued to be taken on that theory all the time it was being blown to pieces. The more untenable it was being proved to be, the more completely it dominated official phraseology and the rhetoric of the politician. This is why in the next chapter we must turn to a discussion of what may be termed the Classical Doctrine of Democracy.

But no institution or practice or belief stands or falls with the theory that is at any time offered in its support. Democracy is no exception. It is in fact possible to frame a theory of the democratic process that takes account of all the realities of group-wise action and of the public mind. This theory will be presented in Chapter XXII and then we shall at last be able to say how democracy may be expected to fare in a socialist order of things.