Prepared by: Safi Allah Ibrahim
Classical Doctrine of Democracy [1]
an introduction
This article attempts to explain what the public good is in a democracy, meaning is there something or a topic under the heading of the public good? Is there an agreement on the part of the people about the public good, or not? And how do the people go to political issues, and if there is no interest in political issues and there is no agreement on the public interest, what are the reasons for the survival and development of democracy?
- Public interest and the will of the people The Common Good And The Will Of The People
We can define the philosophy of democracy in the eighteenth century as follows: Democracy is the institutional arrangement for reaching political decisions that realize the common good by making the people themselves decide the issues by electing the individuals who will meet in order to implement their will. We must develop the aforementioned:
It is said that there is a common good and it is a clear beacon of politics, and it is always simple to define which can make every ordinary person see through a rational argument. Thus there is no excuse for not seeing it and in fact there is no explanation for the existence of people who only see ignorance – which can be removed – stupidity and antisocial interest. Moreover, this public good includes specific answers to all questions so that every social fact and every measure taken or to be taken can be unequivocally classified as “good” or “bad”. Therefore all people have agreed in principle at least to a common will of the people (= the will of all reasonable individuals) fully consistent with common interest, interest, welfare, or happiness. The only thing, which prevents stupidity and sinister interests that can bring discord and account for the existence of opposition, is a difference of opinion as to the speed with which the approach to the goal which is common in almost everything should be done.
It is true that managing some of these matters requires special capabilities and techniques, and therefore must be entrusted to their specialists. This does not affect the principle but because these specialists simply work in order to implement the will of the people just as the doctor works in order to implement the will of the patient to get well. It is also true that in a society of any size and especially if it shows the phenomenon of division of labor then it would be extremely unfavorable for every individual citizen to be in contact with every issue in order to do the ruling. It would be more convenient to reserve only the most important decisions for individual citizens to say by referendum – and to deal with the rest through a committee that appoints them which is an assembly or parliament whose members are elected by popular vote. This committee or delegate body, as we have seen, will not represent the people in the sense of the law, but it will do so in a less technical way – it will express, reflect, or represent the will of the electorate. Once again this committee as large can dissolve itself to become smaller in relation to the various departments of public affairs. Finally, among these small committees, there will be a special general purpose committee to deal with the current administration called the government, perhaps with a secretary general at its head, which is called the Prime Minister.
Once we accept all the assumptions that this theory makes in the political system or that democracy is implied, it actually acquires a meaning that is completely unambiguous, and there is no problem regarding it except how to achieve it. Moreover, we only need to forget some logical qualities in order to be able to add that in this case the democratic arrangement would not only be the best imaginable, but a few people fostering the consideration of any other country. However, it is not evident to a lesser extent that these assumptions are so many statements of fact that each has to be proven if that conclusion is to be reached. And it is much easier to refute them.
First, there is no such thing as a common, just, unique good that all people can agree upon or that the strength of a rational argument be agreed upon. This is not primarily due to the fact that some people may desire things other than the public good, but rather to the more fundamental fact that the common good must mean different things to different individuals and groups. This fact, which was hidden from utilitarianism due to his narrow view of the realm of human assessments, will find principled questions that cannot be reconciled with a rational argument because the ultimate values - our concepts of life and what society should be – are outside the realm of abstract reasoning. It may be filled by settlement in some cases but not in others. Americans who say:
Second, even if a sufficiently assured public good – such as maximizing economic satisfaction with utilitarianism – was acceptable to all, that would not involve equally specific answers to individual questions. Opinions on these may differ significantly enough to produce most traces of “fundamental” disunity about the ends themselves. The problems centered on assessing present satisfaction versus the future, even the case of socialism versus capitalism, will remain open, for example, after the transformation of each individual citizen to utilitarianism. “Health” may be desired by everyone, but people still disagree about vaccination and vasectomy. The utilitarian fathers of democratic doctrine failed to see the full significance of this simply because none of them had seriously considered any fundamental change in the economic framework and customs of bourgeois society. They saw little to no scholar in the eighteenth century.
Third, and as a result of both previous proposals, the private notion of the will of the people (or volonté générale) that the utilitarians made their own disappear into thin air. So this concept assumes the existence of a uniquely defined common good for all. Unlike the Romantics, the utilitarians had no idea of this semi-mystical entity endowed with a will of its own – that the “people’s spirit” that made the historical school of jurisprudence so much. They honestly derived their will for the people from the will of individuals. And unless there is a center of the common good in which in the long run at least all individual will is attractive and we will not get this particular kind of “volonté générale” (natural). The utilitarian center of gravity, on the one hand uniting the individual will, tends to weld it by means of a rational debate in the will of the people, and on the other hand, endows the latter with the exclusive moral dignity claimed by the classical democrat dogma. This doctrine does not consist simply in worshiping the will of the people in this way but rather depends on certain assumptions about the “natural” being who objects is to punish the cause of utilitarianism. Both the existence and dignity of this kind of (volonté générale) are gone as soon as the idea of the common good fails us. Each of the pillars of the classic doctrine inevitably collapses to dust.
- The will of the people and individual inclination. The Will Of The People And Individual Volition
Of course, whatever these arguments say against this particular notion of the will of the people, they do not compel us from trying to construct another, more realistic one. I do not intend to question the reality or the importance of the socio-psychological facts that we think about when talking about the will of the nation. Certainly, its analysis is the precondition for progress on the problems of democracy. However it would be better not to retain this term because this tends to mask the fact that once we sever the will of the people from its utilitarian connotations we are constructing not just a different theory of the same thing, but a theory of something completely different.
There must be a practical argument for attributing the individual’s will to independence and a rational quality that is completely unrealistic. If we want to say that the will of the citizens in and of itself is a political factor entitled to respect, it must exist first. This means that it has to be something more than an indefinite bundle of vague impulses expressing certain slogans and false impressions. Everyone should definitely know what he wants to stand for. This determination will have to be implemented with the ability to correctly observe and interpret facts that are directly accessible to all and critically scrutinize information about facts that are not. Finally, from that specific will and from these confirmed facts, a clear and fast conclusion must be reached because the articulated issues must be derived according to the rules of logical inference – with a very high degree of general competence. Moreover, the opinion of the man can be held without flagrant absurdity to be perfectly good. Like every other man. And all of this normative citizen must lead himself, independently of lobbyists and propaganda, to the demands and conclusions imposed on the electorate that are clearly not eligible to obtain the final data from the democratic process. The question of whether these conditions are met to the extent required to make democracy work should not be answered by an equally reckless assertion or reckless denial. It can only be answered through an arduous assessment of the maze of the conflicting evidence.
But before proceeding with this, I would like to fully emphasize that the reader fully appreciates another point that has already been made. So I will repeat that even if the opinions and desires of individual citizens are completely specific and independent statements of the democratic process to work with, and if everyone acts on them with perfect rationality and rationality, they will not It follows wisely that the political decisions produced through that process from the raw materials to those individual volumes represent anything that can be called in any convincing sense the will of the people. It is just inconceivable, but the more highly individual will is divided, the more likely it is that the productive political decisions will not agree with “what people really want”. Nor can it be answered that, if not exactly what they want, you will get a “fair compromise”.
- Human nature towards political issues HUMAN NATURE IN POLITICS
The answer to our question about determining the accuracy, independence, and will of the voter, his powers of observation and interpretation of facts, and his ability to draw rational conclusions, are clear and immediate alike. During the second half of the last century, the idea of the human personality being a homogeneous unit and the idea of a specific will being the main driver of action was steadily fading away, even before the times of Théodule Ribot and Sigmund Freud. These ideas have been increasingly reduced in the social sciences, where the importance of the irrational and irrational component of our behavior is receiving more and more attention, and this topic is evidenced in Pareto’s Mind and Society. Of the many sources of evidence that have accumulated against the rationality hypothesis I shall cite only two. One though more cautious later work may still be associated with the name Gustave Le Bon, founder and active psychology of the crowd (psychologie des foules). By showing the reality of human behavior when under the influence of agglomeration, in particular the sudden disappearance in a state of excitement, moral constraints, civilized ways of thinking and feeling, and the sudden burst of primal impulses, infants have made us face gruesome truths that everyone knew but no one wanted to see, and thus dealt a blow Dangerous to human nature that underlies the classic doctrine of democracy and democratic folklore about revolutions. There is no doubt that there is much to be said about the narrow factual basis of Le Bon’s conclusions, for example: they do not fit perfectly with the natural behavior of the English or Anglo-American crowd. And critics, especially those for whom the effects of this branch of social psychology were disproportionate, did not fail to make the most of their weaknesses. But on the other hand it should not be forgotten that the phenomena of mass psychology are by no means confined to the mob of people in the narrow streets of a Latin town. Every parliament, committee, and war council made up of twelve generals in the 1960s moderately displays some of the features that are most evident in the case of the mob, the low level of intellectual energy and the increased sensitivity to irrational influences. Moreover, these phenomena are not confined to the crowd in the sense of physical agglomeration of many people. Newspaper readers, radio audiences and party members even if not physically gathered together is terribly easy to act even in a psychological crowd and into a state of frenzy that attempting a rational argument only stimulates animal spirits.
The other source of evidence of disappointment that I will cite is one humility – blood not flowing from it, only nonsense. Economists who are learning to observe their facts more closely are discovering that even in the most ordinary currents of daily life their consumers do not quite live up to the idea used by the economic book. On the one hand they want nothing like specific and their actions on those who want something like rational and immediate. On the other hand, it is susceptible to influencing the advertising and other methods of persuasion that the producers seem to dictate mostly rather than direct them to. The technique of successful advertising is especially helpful. There is actually almost some appeal to the mind. But the mere affirmation, often repeated, over the rational argument, and so does the direct attack on the unconscious that takes the form of attempts to evoke and crystallize pleasant associations from completely outside the rational, often sexual nature.
The conclusion, if clear, should be carefully guided. In the normal range of frequent decisions the individual is subject to rational influence and rationalization from a favorable and unfavorable experience. He is also under the influence of relatively simple and undoubted motives and interests, but which sometimes overlap with the excitement. Historically, consumers ’desire for footwear has been at least partly shaped by and campaigning for producers who make attractive But at any given time it is a real desire, which goes beyond “shoes in general” and whose prolonged experimentation clears out much of the irrationality that had originally surrounded. Moreover, under the spur of those simple motives consumers learn to act on unbiased expert advice about some things (homes, cars) and themselves become experts in others. It is simply not true that housewives are easily fooled in the issue of familiar foods, household items and dressing.
This is of course true still more evident on the producers side of the image. Undoubtedly, the manufacturer may be faltering, a bad judge of opportunities, or at all incompetent; But there is an effective mechanism that can fix or eliminate it. Once again Taylorism relies on the fact that man has performed simple handicraft operations for thousands of years, but performs them ineffectively. But one cannot seriously question the intention to act with the utmost rationality or steady pressure towards rationality at whatever level of industrial or commercial activity we choose to look at.
Thus, most of the daily life decisions that fall within the small sphere that the individual’s mind includes in his full understanding of his reality and consists of things that directly concern himself, his family, his commercial trade, hobbies, friends and enemies, his town, his wing, class, churches, guild or any other social group of which he is an active member – The things under his personal observation and the things that are familiar to him independently of what the newspaper tells him, and which can affect directly or the administration develops a kind of responsibility that he causes and is directly related to the positive or unfavorable effects of the course of work.
Once again: Determination and rationality in thought and action are not guaranteed by knowledge with men and things or this sense of reality or responsibility. A few other often unfulfilled conditions will be necessary. For example, generation after generation may experience irrational behavior in matters of hygiene, but do not link their suffering with their harmful habits. So long as this is not done, objective consequences, however regular they may be, do not of course produce subjective experience. Thus it has proven incredibly difficult for humanity to perceive the relationship between infection and epidemics: the facts refer to them with what appears to us clearly and clearly; But until the end of the 18th century, doctors did nothing to keep people with infectious diseases, such as measles or smallpox, from mixing with other people. Things must be expected to be worse when not only there is a deficit, but also a reluctance to acknowledge causal relationships or when some interests fight against recognition.
However, despite all the qualifications that impose themselves, there is for everyone, on a much broader horizon, a narrower field that varies widely in scope between different groups and individuals and is bounded by a wide area rather than a sharp line, which is characterized by a sense of reality, knowledge, or responsibility. This field carries relatively specific individual energies. These may strike us often unintelligent, narrow and conceited and may not be evident to everyone, when it comes to political decisions, we should worship at their shrine, still less Why should we feel obligated to limit each of them to one and not none of them For more than one. If, however, we do not choose to worship we will at least not find the shrine empty.
Now this relative subtlety of voluntary and rational behavior does not disappear suddenly, even when we move away from those fears of everyday life at home and in businesses that educate and educate. In the field of public affairs, there are more sectors within the reach of a citizen’s mind than others. This is true, first, of domestic affairs. Even there we find a reduced strength of discerning facts, a low willingness to act on them, and a low sense of responsibility. We all know the man – and a very good sample that he often says – that the local administration is not his business and turns a blind eye to his shoulders in practices that he would have preferred to die rather than suffer in his office. High-minded citizens of preparatory mood who always preach the responsibility of the voter or taxpayers discover the fact that this voter does not feel responsible for what local politicians are doing…. Yet especially in societies that are not so great for personal connections, local patriotism may be a very important factor in “making democracy work.” Also, the city’s problems are in many ways closer to problems than a manufacturing concern. The man who understands the latter somewhat understands the former. A manufacturer, grocer, or worker does not need to go out of their world to have a rational, defensible view (which may be right or wrong) on cleaning the streets or town halls.
Secondly, there are many national issues of concern to individuals and groups directly and unequivocally in order to evoke real and sufficiently specific discourse. The most important example is the cases involving immediate and personal financial gains for individual voters and constituencies, such as direct payments, protective duties, silver policies etc. Experience going back to ancient times shows that overwhelmingly voters react quickly and rationally to any such opportunity. But the classicist doctrine of democracy apparently earns few displays of rationality of this kind. Thus voters prove themselves really bad and corrupt to judges in such cases, and often prove themselves bad judges of their long-term interests, because it is nothing but a short-term promise that says politically rationality and only in the short term that asserts itself effectively.
However, when we move away from the private concerns of the family and business offices in those areas of national and international affairs that lack an unambiguous direct connection with those special concerns, individual expression, truth-driving and method of inference soon cease to fulfill the requirements of classical dogma. What excites me most of all and seems to me to be the crux of the problem is the fact that the sense of reality is completely lost. Usually the great political issues take their place in the psychological economy of the typical citizen with those interests in spare time that did not reach the level of hobbies, and with irresponsible topics of conversation. It seems that these things are very far away as it is not at all the same as a business proposal. Dangers may never materialize and if they should not prove that they are very dangerous one feels that one is moving himself in an imaginary world.
This low sense of reality is not limited to a decreased sense of responsibility, but also to the lack of an effective will. One has naturally single phrases, desires and dreams, especially one who has love and compulsion. But it usually does not reach what we call will – the psychological counterpart of responsible, purposeful action. Indeed, for a private citizen who practices national affairs, there is no room for such a will nor a mission with which he can develop. He is a member of the unenforceable committee of the whole nation which is why he spends less disciplined effort on perfecting a political problem than he spends on the bridge game.
The low sense of responsibility and the lack of effective will in turn explain the ignorance of the average citizen and the lack of judgment in matters of domestic and foreign policy, and the most traumatic thing in the case of the educated and people who are successfully active in non-aspects of political life than it is with uneducated people in modest stations. Information is abundant and readily available. But that didn’t seem to make any difference. Nor should we ask that. We just need to compare the attorney’s position on his summary and that of the lawyer himself to the political truth statements presented in his newspaper in order to find out what the matter is. In the first case, the lawyer was qualified to appreciate the significance of his facts over the years of purposeful work within the framework of the specific incentive to pay attention to his professional competence; Under stimulation that is no less strong, he then bends his acquisition, his thought and his desire for the contents of the brief. In the other case, he was not late to qualify; He is not interested in absorbing the information or applying the canons of criticism to him and he knows very well how to deal with it; It is a tight-fisted argument for a long or complex argument. All this indicates that without the initiative that comes from direct responsibility, ignorance will continue to confront the masses of information, no matter how complete and correct. It continues even in the face of the worthwhile effort being made to go beyond providing information and teaching its use through lectures, classes and discussion groups. The results are not zero but small. You cannot get people on a ladder.
Thus the average citizen falls to a lower level of mental performance once he enters the political sphere. He argues and analyzes in such a way that it can easily be recognized as a childhood in his real field of interests. It becomes primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and emotional. This has consequences other than ominous significance.
First, even if there are no political groups trying to influence him, the average citizen in political matters tends to lead to prejudice or an arbitrary or irrational impulse. The weakness of the rational processes that he applies to politics and the absence of effective rational control over the results he arrives at will suffice in itself to take this into account. Moreover, just because it is not “everything is there”, he will dilute his usual moral standards as well, and sometimes give in a dark urging that the private life circumstances help him suppress. But as far as the wisdom or rationality of his conclusions is concerned, it may be as bad as it is giving us a wave of generous indignation. This will make it more difficult for him to see things in their correct proportions or even to see more than one side of one thing at a time. Hence, if he does not emerge from his usual ambiguity, and expose what the classical doctrine of democracy would assume, he is likely not to become more intelligent and irresponsible than he usually is.
Secondly, the weaker the logical component in the operations of the public mind and the more complete the absence of rational criticism and rational influence of personal experience and responsibility, the more opportunities for groups with an ax to grind (with an ax to grind). These groups may consist of professional politicians, advocates of economic interest, idealists of one kind or another, or simply people interested in organizing and administering political programs. The sociology of these groups is intrinsic due to this argument. The only point that interests us here is that what is human nature in politics, it is capable of fashion and within very broad limits, even to create the will of the people. What we encounter in the analysis of political processes is not so much a real will but an artificial will. Many times these artifacts are all that in fact corresponds to the (générale volonté) of classical dogma. Insofar as this is the case, the will of the people is the product and not the driving force of the political process.
The ways in which cause and popular will are fabricated in any issue are quite similar to methods of commercial advertising. We find the same attempts to connect to the subconscious. We find the same approach of creating favorable and unfavorable associations that are more effective the less rational they are. We find the same explanations, frictions, and the same deception in opinion production by reaffirming its success precisely to the point where it avoids logical arguments and the risk of awakening the critical faculties of the people. Only all of these arts have an infinitely greater scope in the realm of public affairs than they do in the realms of private and professional life. The photo of the most beautiful girl who ever lived in the long term proves helpless to keep up with bad cigarette sales. There are no guarantees that are equally effective in the case of political decisions. Many decisions of crucial importance are of such a nature that it is impossible for the public to experiment with them at leisure and at moderate cost. However, even if it is possible, the judgment as a rule is not as easy to come to terms as in the case of cigarettes, since the effects are less easily interpreted. But these arts also fulfill, to some extent completely unknown in the field of commercial advertising, those forms of political propaganda that are taught to treat themselves for a cause and for the observer, the irrational appeal, or in all cases, the irrational appeal and the helplessness of the victim emerge more and not less. Pronounced when it is reflected in facts and arguments. We have seen above why it is so difficult to convey unbiased public information about political problems and logically correct inferences from them and why is that information and arguments in political matters will be “scored” only if they are linked with the citizen’s prior ideas. However, these ideas, as a general rule, are not specific enough to define specific conclusions.
Hence, the information and arguments that push her home are likely to serve as political intentions. And since the first thing a man does for his ideals or concerns is lying, we expect, and as a matter of fact, that effective information is always adulterated or selective, and that the effective logic in politics is mainly to try to glorify some propositions in the intuitions and put others out of court. It thus reduces to the psychology and techniques mentioned before. The reader who thinks about me in a needless pessimistic need only asks himself whether he has ever heard – or said himself – that this truth or embarrassment should not be public, or that a certain line of logic, even if it is correct, is not desirable. If men who according to any current standard are completely honorable or even high-minded reconcile themselves to the implications of this, then do they show what they think of the merits or even the existence of the will of the people?
There are, of course, limits to all of this. And there is a truth in Jefferson’s view that ultimately people are wiser than any single individual could be, or in Lincoln, about the impossibility of “fooling all people all the time.” But both of the decks emphasize the long-term aspect in a very important way. Undoubtedly, it can be said that group time will develop opinions that do not often increase to us as being extremely reasonable and even shrewd. However, history consists of a series of short-term situations that may change the course of events for the good.
- The reasons for the survival of the classical doctrine Reasons For The Survival Of The Classical Doctrine
But how can there be an ideology that naturally contradicts reality to this day and continues to hold its place in the hearts of people and in the official language of governments? Known facts are known to all. Everyone often recognizes their perfection with sarcasm and candor. The theoretical basis of utilitarian rationality Matt; Nobody accepts this as a valid theory of the body politic. However, this question is not difficult to answer.
First of all, although the classic doctrine of group action may not be supported by the results of empirical analysis, it is strongly supported by this association with the religious belief that I have already proclaimed. This may not be apparent at first glance. Utilitarian leaders were nothing but religious in the ordinary sense of the term. In fact they believed they were anti-religious and considered that almost universal. They took pride in what they believed was precisely a non-metaphysical position, and were out of sympathy with the religious institutions and religious movements of their time. But we only need to take another look at the picture they drew from the social process in order to discover that it embodies the basic features of the faith of Protestant Christianity and was in fact derived from that belief. For the intellectual who took out his religion, utilitarian belief offered an alternative. For many of those who retained their religious belief, classical orthodoxy became a political complement. Thus, this doctrine, which is transferred to the categories of religion, and then the type of democratic persuasion on which it is based, changes its nature. There is no longer any need for overflowing logic about shared values and ultimate values. All this is settled for us by the plan of the Creator who determines his purpose and punishes everything. What seemed indeterminate or unenthusiastic before is suddenly quite compelling. The voice of the people who is the voice of God, for example. Or equal. Its meaning can be doubted, and there is hardly any sense in converting it into a hypothesis, as long as we move in the field of experimental analysis. But Christianity retains a strong egalitarian element. Redeemer died for all: he did not differentiate between individuals of different social status. In doing so he testified to the intrinsic value of the individual soul, a value that recognizes any hierarchy. Is this not a penalty – and, it seems to me, the only possible punishment – “everyone relies on one, no one relies on more than one”, a punishment that pours an ultra-mundane meaning into articles of democratic doctrine that is not easy to find in any other country? To ensure that this interpretation does not cover the whole territory. However, as far as it goes, it seems to explain so many things that otherwise would be unexplainable and, in fact, meaningless. In particular, it explains the believer’s position on criticism: again, as in socialism, the fundamental opposition is viewed not simply as a mistake but as a sin. It not only provokes a logical counterpoint but also moral indignation. We might put our problem differently and say that democracy, when motivated in this way, is not just a rational, arguable method like a steam engine or a disinfectant. In reality it becomes what from another point of view you have made it incapable of becoming, i.e. the ideal or rather part of an idealistic scheme of things. The word itself may become a symbol for every man who carries my dear from everything he loves about his nation, whether rationality conditional on it or not. On the one hand the question is how the various propositions implicit in the democratic belief relate to the realities of politics then become irrelevant to him as it is to the Catholic believer, and the question how Alexander VI acts with the supernatural aura surrounding the papal office. On the other hand, Democrats of this nature, while accepting assumptions that have significant implications for equality and brotherhood, would also be in a position to sincerely allow them any amount of deviations from that his behavior or position might be involved, and this is not even illogical. Mere distance from reality is not an argument against moral extremism or esoteric hope. On the one hand the question is how the various propositions implicit in the democratic belief relate to the realities of politics then become irrelevant to him as it is to the Catholic believer, and the question how Alexander VI acts with the supernatural aura surrounding the papal office. On the other hand, Democrats of this nature, while accepting assumptions that have significant implications for equality and brotherhood, would also be in a position to sincerely allow them any amount of deviations from that his behavior or position might be involved, and this is not even illogical. Mere distance from reality is not an argument against moral extremism or esoteric hope. On the one hand the question is how the various propositions implicit in the democratic belief relate to the realities of politics then become irrelevant to him as it is to the Catholic believer, and the question how Alexander VI acts with the supernatural aura surrounding the papal office. On the one hand, Democrats of this kind, while accepting assumptions that have significant implications for equality and brotherhood, would also be in a position to sincerely allow them any amount of deviations from that his behavior or position might involve, and this is not even illogical. Mere distance from reality is not an argument against moral extremism or esoteric hope.
Second, there is the fact that for many countries the forms and expressions of classic democracy are associated with events and developments in their history and which are enthusiastic by the large majority. Any opposition to an established regime is likely to use these forms and expressions, whatever their meaning and social roots. If subsequent developments prevail and prove satisfactory, these forms will take root in the national ideology.
The United States is the prime example and its existence as a sovereign nation is linked to the struggle against royal and aristocratic England. A minority of loyalists were excluded and the Americans at the time of the Grenville administration had probably stopped viewing the English king as theirs and the English aristocracy as their aristocracy. In the War of Independence they fought what in reality as well as in their sentiments became a foreign king and a foreign aristocracy who interfered in their political and economic interests. But from an early stage of the problems they presented their case, which was really a national issue, as a case of “the people” versus “the rulers”, in terms of inalienable human rights, and in light of the general principles of classical democracy. The drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution adopted these principles. A tremendous development came which absorbed and satisfied most of the people and thus seemed to verify the decadent doctrine in the sacred documents of the nation.
The opposition is rarely defeated when the dominant groups are at the forefront of their power and success. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the opposition that declared the classic doctrine of democracy rose and eventually prevailed against governments and some of them – especially in Italy – were clearly in a state of decay and became passwords to inefficiency, brutality and corruption. Of course, although it is not entirely logical, this is brought back to the balance of that dogma which furthermore showed an advantage compared to the emerging myths sponsored by those governments. Under these circumstances, the democratic revolution meant the emergence of freedom and spirit, and the democratic doctrine meant the gospel of reason and improvement. Certainly, this feature will inevitably be lost, and it is necessary to discover the gap between doctrine and the practice of democracy. But the dawn’s brightness was slow to fade.
Third, we must not forget that there are social patterns in which the classical dogma fits the facts with sufficient approximation. As has been pointed out, this is the case with many small and primitive societies that were in fact prototypes for the authors of this principle. This may be the case with societies that are not primitive, provided they are not very differentiated and do not bear any serious problems. Switzerland is the best example. There is very little quarrels in the peasant world, except for hotels and banks. It does not contain a large capitalist industry and the public policy problems are so simple and stable that the overwhelming majority can be expected to understand and agree about them. But if we can conclude that the classical doctrine in these cases approaches reality, we must immediately add that it does so not because it describes an effective mechanism of political decision but only because there are no major decisions to be made. Finally, the case of the United States may be invoked again in order to show that classical doctrine sometimes seems to fit the facts even in a large and disparate society, in which there are large issues for decision-making provided that the sting is taken from it under favorable circumstances. Until the entry of this country into the First World War, the public mind was mainly concerned with actions of exploiting the economic potential of the environment. As long as this act did not seriously interfere with anything fundamentally important to the average citizen who viewed the behavior of politicians with good-natured disdain. The provinces may be enthusiastic about the tariff, the silver, the wrong local government, or the more occasional quarrels with England. People generally did not care much, except in one case of serious disagreements that actually produced a national disaster, the civil war.
[1]. The Classical Doctrine of Democracy, Capitalism, Socialism And Democracy Joseph A.Schumpeter.
