Leftism

Democracy is a political form, a system of government. It has no social content, although it is frequently misused in that sense. It is wrong to say, “Mr. Green is very democratic; on his trips he sits down for lunch with his chauffeur.” He is, rather, a friend of simple people, and so is appropriately called demophile, not democratic.

“Democracy” is a Greek word composed of demos (the people) and krátos (power in a strong, almost brutal sense). The milder form would be arché which implies leadership rather than rule. Hence “monarchy” is the fatherlike rule of a man in the interest of the common good, whereas “monocracy” is a one-man tyranny. Aristotle and the early and the late Scholastics divided the forms of government according to the table on page 28.

Here it must be remembered that, later on, aristocracy also came to mean not a form of government but the highest social layer. The term republic came to mean every (external) form of government that is non-monarchical and “public.” Rzeczpospolita was a term used for the Polish State prior to 1795 and after 1918, while American and British scholars speak about the “Polish Commonwealth” for the elective kingdom after 1572. Yet the term republic covers indeed a multitude of forms of government if we think not only of the Polish Kingdom prior to 1795, but also of the highly aristocratic Republic of Venice (the Christanissima Res Publica), the Soviet Republic (USSR), the present (presidential) French Republic, and the presidentless Republic of San Marino with five capitani reggenti. The United States is de facto a republic, but is not called one in the Constitution. Only the states of the Union are required to have a “Republican Form of Government” (Article IV.4).

Given these semantics in an historical perspective, the question arises how to define in modern terms a democracy (once a pejorative label). Democracy’s answer to the question, “Who should rule?” is: “The majority of the politically equal citizens, either in person or through their representatives.” This latter qualification refers to direct and indirect democracy. Still, this formulation raises a number of subsidiary questions.

Even more arbitrary are the age limits which are set in order to get “mature voters.” But one man (or woman) can achieve maturity early, another one at the “voting age,” a third one late and a fourth, never. There is maturity without knowledge, and knowledge without wisdom, but these analyses could lead us too far away from our subject. For those who insist that all human beings are not only animalia socialia, but also zoa politika, the arbitrarily set voting ages are a serious and also insoluble matter: If we accept the reasoning of these theories, then some people are being deprived of their “God-given right” (inherent in their God-given nature). In many a country the voting age was lowered to the age of military service, clearly the result of using the Swiss argument concerning rights and duties. It was this argument also, which led—applied in reverse—to the conscription and to the levée en masse in the First French Republic.

When we spoke about tolerance as the essence of liberalism which might or might not enter the democratic scene, we meant thereby the readiness to “carry” (tolerare), to “put up with” the presence, the propagation, the presentation of views, ideas, and notions we reject or oppose. We suppress our explosive indignation, we marshal our charity, we give our fellowmen the opportunity for open dissent although our feelings are contrary. There is a real virtue in tolerance because it entails self-control and an “ascetic” attitude.

Yet, whether out of tolerance or indifference, the readiness to yield and to compromise is the quintessence of parliamentary life in a democracy. It does not belong per se to democracy. (No stump orator will promise to be a compromiser par excellence once he is elected, but rather the contrary!) Yet it is the lubricant and the conditio sine qua non of democracy. Let us also agree at this point that the majority of people inspired by liberal principles in the Western World when talking about democracy usually refer to a liberal democracy. Thus such errors arise as when the confiscation of a newspaper is called “undemocratic.” If the majority of the people approve of it, such an act is highly democratic, but surely it is not liberal.

Freedom, as we see, is the only postulate of liberalism—of all the four phases of genuine liberalism. If, therefore, democracy is liberal, the life, the whims, the interests of the minority will be just as much respected as those of the majority. Yet it is obvious that not only a democracy but even a monarchy (absolute or otherwise) or an aristocratic (elitarian) regime can be liberal. As a matter of fact, the affinity between democracy and liberalism is not at all greater than between, let us say, monarchy and liberalism or a mixed government and liberalism. (People under the Greek monarchy, which was an effective and not only symbolic mixed government, were not less free than in Costa Rica, to name only one example.)

The monarchs, in a way, always stood on thin ice. They desperately tried to bequeath their countries to their heirs. If they failed utterly, they sometimes had their heads chopped off. They could not conveniently retire to a quiet law office like deputies or presidents failing to get reelected. There are certain totalitarian and monolithic tendencies inherent in democracy that are not even present in the “absolute” monarchy, and even less so in mixed government which, without exaggeration, can be called the great Western political tradition.