The Elements of Democracy

“As for democracy, why should we discuss acknowledged madness?” Today numerous clever writers and some serious students are asking the same question that Alcibiades asked some twenty-three centures ago. Yet at the very time when democracy is attacked from all sides, and when Mussolini can speak of trampling on the putrid corpse of liberty, Mussolini himself has the temerity to proclaim that Italian Fascism is the realization of “true democracy.” The Nazis, speaking through Herr Goebbels, present the National Socialist state as “the most ennobled form of a modern democratic state.” And, not to be outdone, Stalin announces that the Soviet constitution of 1936 is “the only constitution that is democratic to the limit.” Two points, then, appear very clear at the outset. First, a theoretical defense of democracy is made more complicated by the unscrupulous license with which the enemies and critics of democracy use the term; and second, “democracy” as a vague, meaningless symbol still has a propaganda value for those who repudiate or disdain any real meaning that the symbol may have.It is not my purpose to examine in detail the criticisms of democracy, but rather to indicate which of the numerous criticisms are relevant to a discussion of democracy. What is it that is under attack? Is it the basic assumptions of democratic theory, or the machinery of democratic government, or both? To put such a question means, of course, to reopen the old question: What are the essential elements of democratic theory?Consent is an essential element of democratic theory, but not a distinguishing element. The important test is not whether a major portion of the adult population accepts or approves a government or its policies, but the manner in which this consent is secured. Both Napoleon I and Napoleon III secured the consent of the French people to their imperial dictatorships, and Hitler secured the formal consent of the German people to his puppet parliament and to his own dictatorship. Schuschnigg was about to secure the consent of the Austrian people to the continuance of a non-Nazi, clerical, native dictatorship, but instead Hitler secured the consent of the Austrian people to a Nazi dictatorship.