Synopsis: "The best form of government except for all the others" ... really? This second Critique of Democracy actually explores that question so rarely asked by comparing democracy to two governmental alternatives, autocracy and aristocracy, in an educational thought experiment. Includes sober discussion of elitism.

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

— Sir Winston Churchill, Hansard [transcripts of parliament], November 11, 1947

A famous supposed saying of Churchill’s circulates in many discussions of democracy, really a pithy modification of the actual recorded quotation above, a remark less pithy and less famous. His endorsement of democracy, as reserved as any we should expect from a politician in a democratic government, ably expresses perhaps the best and surely one of the most common of the practical arguments for democracy. Surely enough, any basic critical evaluation of democracy might seem to become almost pointless except as pessimistic curiosity, unless preferable alternatives might replace democracy. But how could it satisfy any intellectual honesty to accept this mere dismissal of pointed debate? And for my part how could it satisfy the conscience of my own philosophical aims — always higher, towards expressing potential?

The Problem of Change

I would first object that the view in question has a tendency to ignore the necessity of change to address the basic problem of change. That is, as G.K. Chesterton noted in Orthodoxy,

“If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before.”

Chesterton knows the conservation of conservatism fails to preserve the tangible virtues which once inspired it, such as freedom of action, or for that matter the depth of culture feted by conservatives. I have often observed the sad habit of 'conservatives' tending to continue their work for some time after the fact, having failed to realize their justification for “fighting the good fight” is long gone and in effect they now fight for something else. The certain circumstances allowing past progress in such and such a form remain in the past, and further accumulation, much less eternity of that old progress on those same old terms is impossible. In particular, the cultural-historical human moment which made some relative progress in human freedom possible to achieve within a political system, should never be confused with the timeless, abstract, inhuman theoretical system itself.

Concerning democracy and America, a harsh truth is the founding fathers of America are long dead and their whole circumstantial world, with its ideological opportunity to seize some freedom and defend it for a while in a democracy [1], is quite dead with them. Their achievement might need to be redoubled in a different way, in another system entirely, if it is not to be lost in the same system. Unless sincerely reconsidered, rebuilt, and replaced if need be, democracy itself is no more immune to the problem of change than anything else.

The brash teleology advertised by democratic political scientists such as Fukuyama, who proclaimed in 1989 "the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government," would not be so confused if compared with a longer historical perspective that considered other models and had to take account of the continual problem of change. Democracies become tyrannical, left alone, and effectively if not overtly become other forms of government, as Aristotelian observation had considered since the end of the age of the ancient Greek polities (city-states), including among them the first Western democracies such as Athens. As early as 1377, Ibn Khaldûn convincingly argued that not only does every particular dynasty or state experience a terminal lifespan, but all political civilization endures a cyclical pattern of birth, corruption, decay, and collapse. [2] Of course Fukuyama might be correct in an unintended sense, if indeed the last dominant form of governmental society happens to be democracy, and a preferable alternative paradigm ascends instead. Regardless, the denial of change as an inevitability, especially concerning either ideology or inherently unstable political societies, seems ungrounded and certainly presentist.

The Problem of Acclimation to Faults

I would secondly object to Churchill that acceptance of a thoroughly problematic thing as a necessary thing tends toward a rather unsettling pattern. Very many people accustom themselves to its problems, and in time ignore the problems, and finally regard the original premise they knew to be flawed, to be just as worthy as anything else thought noble. Standards fall and real evidence comes and goes ignored when theorists have built such a box inside which to think, a given which should not be a given. First democracy is an undesirable but necessary expedient, then it is no longer deserving of close attention because a priori there can be no greater innovation, then democracy itself is a positive good and receives a great deal of congratulatory attention but little scrutiny, and even less skepticism. In debate about democracy in America for example, tracing a broad sweep from James Madison, through the last skepticism with de Tocqueville, through Francis Fukuyama today, that general pattern of acceptance defines the mainstream appreciation of democracy over the centuries, although it is also, I think, indicative of a universal problem in societies: today’s accepted ‘evil’ becoming tomorrow’s ‘good’ as a moralist might like to put it, although morality itself must be considered part of the problem. For if democracy must be accepted it cannot be bad, it must be good, or so any pragmatic binary moral thought process will inevitably conclude. We know quite a bit about the English parallel which overlaps the American paradigm: tough questioning over the philosophical essentials maybe peaked before the struggles between royalists and roundheads (parliamentarians), and effectively end long before Bentham, or Mill, who really concerns himself with details of implementation (representation). (The later Churchill is unusually frank for his time, if anything.) Doubtless, democratic principles followed similar paths in the discourse of "realistic" Greeks and then Romans as well.

Such evolutions of attitude coincide with the gradual transition from managing and controlling democracy to actively seeking out the fullest expression of democracy, and therefore fully discovering its defects. Thus in the histories of Athens, Rome, England, and America, and every other example one cares to trace, who can convincingly argue that we do not see evidence of an increasing problem of mob rule — the conjunct tyranny, spoiled apathy, or casual whim of the majority as manipulated by information control and the demagogue’s old tricks?

A Thought Experiment in Governmental Alternatives

But both the above objections become minor points worthy only of sober reflection to the democratic (lower case) pundit, merely things to keep in mind, unless preferable alternatives do exist, have existed, or more relevantly can exist in practice, even if they never have before. So, before asking any further tough questions of democracy I will consider governmental alternatives. In the end I do choose and argue for another option entirely, an option more optimistic about individual human potential and more optimistic about societal desirability (at least in the long run) than any possibility Churchill with his cynical talk of “sin and woe” would have accepted. [3] Yet supposing, for the moment, only options in government as Churchill did, let us take up the implicit challenge and ask ourselves the mostly unexamined question: are there governmental alternatives preferable to democracy? and either way, let us try to learn something about democracy.

What alternative might critics of democracy suggest? Despite the self-amusement of many with idle criticism of this or that facet of democracy, today there remain so few concerted critics of democracy itself we certainly must strain our ears for any alternatives we actually hear anyone propose and advocate. We might more profitably look for alternatives among the dirty names democrats (as in 'advocates of democracy') call mostly-hypothetical detractors, or perhaps the dirty names democrats call one another to illustrate how undemocratic, and therefore how reprehensible their targets are.

Autocracy

Democracy's scarce critics can expect to be labeled advocates of various horrendous forms of autocracy, dictatorship, despotism, totalitarianism, etc. — sometimes even with justification. For our purposes here these systems following the rulership of one, or occasionally the junta of a few men, can be summed up under the name autocracy. [4] Advocates of democracy know they are bound to win arguments against the unilateral government of autocracy and so they willfully engage in it. One finds seemingly endless numbers of tracts contrasting the virtues of democracy with the vices of communism for example, portraying democracy and autocracy as the only choices. But one can find far fewer arguments exhorting democracy over something else entirely. Certainly, there are many modern examples of autocratic systems which have reared their heads up in front of democracy or as results of democracy, such as communist states most obviously, or other sorts of secular dictatorships; on that basis we might surmise that the fear of a robust autocratic challenge to democracy is not misplaced. [5]

From all this one might think that autocracy was in some real competition with democracy, either for popularity as the world’s dominant form of government, or as the best, most desirable choice among governments. But the goals of an autocratic regime are usually direct enough in the first place, or apparent enough at least, and despite the origination of some autocracies in democratic institutions and elections, their aims are entirely different from the avowed goals of democracy. Autocracy is by definition far more blatantly authoritarian; it exists to establish a stranglehold of control for the sake of both stability and long-term exploitation (or occasionally control for the sake of short-term exploitation, as most often occurs when a regime is sponsored by a foreign power rather than internally generated; see footnote 5 which includes some modern examples). Where enough people desire this stability or accept it for one reason or another, autocracy may arise as the result of dispositions. Or more likely, it may be imposed on people as a result of foreign invasion or interference. [6] But it never offers substantive competition with democracy overall.

Democracy is established where people desire freedom, for it is the political system which promises freedom and choice. Autocracy does not even promise freedom, at least not seriously, and certainly does not deliver it. There is no reason why, then, we should consider autocracy any potential challenge to democracy’s title as the best choice among governments. Most of all this is because we may by now take it as a Promethean given that individual freedom to think and act has a great deal to do with what ‘best’ means, among societies.

We can observe that autocracies of any form generally adopt at least some of the trappings and procedures associated with democratic republics in a bid for second-hand legitimacy, even if their elections are fully predetermined, their legislatures one-party, or their presidents dictators. This shows how extraordinarily far democracy has come as the world’s predominant form of government: almost without exception, even the officers of democracy’s more entrenched apparent alternatives pretend service and representation of “the people” too.

And as far as popularity, in fact autocratic governments could only challenge democracy’s worldwide preeminence if very many more people openly preferred unilateral control at the discretion of the ruler to individual freedom of some degree and kind. Democracy seems best especially because it represents freedom, thus only if democracy appeared more tyrannical than dictatorships would autocracy likely seem preferable in the eyes of the very many who desire freedom. Probably it is no coincidence that democracy has usually been deposed by people convinced that political choice is less important than something immediate such as survival, sustenance, or security, and they have been convinced democracy cannot provide it, as occurred in Russia early in the 20th century, or have seen democracy fail to provide freedom, as has occurred in countries on the receiving end of foreign policies inflicted against their freedom by democracies. Essentially, people must be disappointed by democracy by example or participation. Otherwise democracy represents freedom in modern times, so generally its advocates can bring down the few real critics of democracy on the implication that they are advocates of autocracy, by one name or another, and therefore critics of freedom.

Yet there remains another means for dismissal of critics too, which should be of more interest to the honest analyst of democracy.

The Displaced Alternative

All across the world today, hopes for freedom hallow democracy. The last system to compete with democracy for this place was aristocratic or royal rule, in other words official hierarchic rule by political elite. [7]

When democracy was a new experiment, the rule of royalty and nobles was accepted around the world and in its most desirable forms, still signified freedom to many more subjects than the citizens to whom democracy meant freedom. That concept of rule has since been defeated soundly in “public opinion” because for their various personal reasons, most people prefer the enticing idea of "self-rule," whether this means in practical terms that they enjoy the idea of controlling their own affairs, or crave control over others’ affairs. But the debate, while effectively concluded, is yet rehashed as propaganda. As far as openly elitist government is still discussed, democratic rule is frequently presented as the one decent alternative to indecent elitist rule, aristocracy and monarchy having been recast wholly as oppressive autocracy and primitive feudalism. Through the idle musings of pundit democrats, democracy now stays in the fight with aristocracy, shadowboxing, as if rule by birth rather than election could still get up and fight again. Perhaps it is relevant at this point to remind ourselves that such a non-opponent can occasionally be useful as scapegoat or straw man. [8] The many proponents of democracy have been eager to mark democracy's few critics advocates of aristocracy, monarchy, or the dreaded “elitism,” and therefore either antiquated or authoritarian. This maneuver offers a means of easy dismissal, for aristocracy belongs to the past.

Just as democracy has had a cultural aspect besides its political aspect [9], in part intrinsic to the political, and in part incidental to it, so has aristocracy. Since aristocracy is all but gone as a political system (and I for one have no intention of arguing for its return) the most salient point of discussing aristocracy now is to illuminate the cultural value or lack thereof associated with democracy. In particular, what might aristocracy have had to offer culturally — in terms of philosophical basis and corresponding shared valuation of ideas — that democracy does not offer? [10] And secondarily, politically speaking, the practicalities of the way aristocracy and — after the eventual evolution of aristocracy into monarchy, the increasing dominance of sovereigns over fellow noblemen [11] — the way monarchy functioned might both allow us to better reflect on democracy’s political functions today.

So let us look closer at political elitism and aristocracy.

Elitism

The key thing to recognize about "elitism" is what it means practically: how it functions and how it does not, how it makes sense and how it does not. Elitism is not at all simple or self-evident to modern people, to judge from the confusion surrounding it. To understand it, a retrospection is instrumental.

In history, when certain people seize opportunity in an opportune occasion such as a power vacuum, and establish themselves as political elites, classes or more often castes which by right of supposed overall superiority hold permanent political power over others, those people have first generally possessed some very real and practical superiority of a particular variety. [12] The importance of that specific superiority in a place and time becomes confused with overall superiority, a sort of philosophical overreach from a limited precedent. In most instances, the specific superiority has involved either warrior prowess, strategy, tactics or some other martial skill, or else charisma, leadership, or some other organizational skill, or some combination of martial or organizational skills [13] — obvious enough advantages for power-seekers, as historically these abilities provide opportunities for both seizing power through domination, and for being granted power for the sake of protection. Both these patterns, domination and concession, certainly figured into the selection of proto-aristocrats in the early Middle Ages of Europe's history. Economic prowess must also have been another such 'ennobling factor' of elites. Some able farmers, hunters, herders, or other sort of profitable landowners (or nomadic land-stewards) might understandably accrue a proto-retinue from among loyal workers, and develop social standing from a prospering reputation; we know the local lords of medieval Scandinavia would begin as successful, important landowners long before some of their descendants made themselves famous going a-viking. Finally persuasion or eloquence or other linguistic talents, artistic brilliance, or any unusual creative talents might conceivably play a part as an ennobling factor. Even a single ennobling factor might in the fullness of time raise up whole classes as rulers above others.

In other instances, especially the elevation of a small group or one person to levels above others, the source may instead have been a wider array of appreciated or necessary talents (the difficulty of forcing subjugation, or peacefully proving superiority, being that much greater for smaller numbers). In particular, few founders of whole dynasties could have capitalized on narrowly martial skills to establish themselves above all competitors within their native land. [14] Even though military talent may represent an array of different abilities, and certainly requires more than one isolatable capacity such as muscular strength or spatial reckoning, the typical span of those abilities would still not suffice for every need of social power consolidation; they would rarely be diverse enough. A more impressive, well-rounded sort of person would tend to be needed for that. We can therefore see that the more impressive the accomplishment of uniting greater numbers and wider areas in a social group, the more the potential for a psychological leap from seeing elite capabilities, to acknowledging overall superiority of person — the leap forming political elitism — would also tend to increase. Finally one might understand how an ancient man who could gather and direct a tribe or settlement in a locality, much less all the people in a sizable land to form a country in his name, might really seem larger than life and higher than human. Eventually people in such a society might without thinking call its government “aristocracy,” meaning rule of the best.

From Overestimated Elitism to the Errors of Aristocracy

In aristocracy’s derivation we can trace the evolution of compounded theoretical error originating in a sensible appraisal.

Apparently, the development of political elitism is largely the story of one or a few real aptitudes taken too far. Warrior prowess for example does not necessarily suggest anything about charismatic leadership, temperance, wisdom, creative thinking, a balance between practicality and vision, persuasion, diplomacy, financial management, respect for others, or any of the host of other things that the members of political elites could easily be required to possess by virtue of their place. In such a system of political elitism, one or a small number of skills or talents is substituted for the wider set of what is demanded or needed, a practice often inefficient, unwieldy, or dangerous, and sometimes really disastrous, for others and often for the elites as well. Very rare is the instance in which such a proto-aristocrat satisfies virtually all of what is demanded and needed of his character in his position. Yet this problem comes just within the life of the first generation among such a class, and it is a comparatively minor problem, since at least these proto-aristocrats do possess what is probably, at the time, an important ability or set of them.

This is probably not true of their descendents. When political elitism is preserved in the second generation, it becomes a hereditary aristocracy, the most common type. Aristocrats owe their position to a very unscientific view of inheritance, also one unsupported by careful observation. The children of a great swordsman may be taught the sword by virtue of their place, but training or education in itself will not combine with their upbringing to necessarily make them the equal of their father. The children of a master tactician might well be incapable of visualizing elevation and distance, leading his brave soldiers to their slaughter by sheer inability. Nor will the offspring of a honey-tongued ambassador necessarily be any better than tongue-tied. Nor will a kind, benevolent and trustworthy king's young princeling necessarily acquire these traits and spare the tax collector's hot irons, simply because his father would have (and provided a paternal example of that behavior, as well). While genetics might mean that such complex traits (possibly the product of many genes), are more likely to manifest in the offspring of parents who exhibit them phenotypically, this is not enough to make heredity an effective system, and largely ignores both variations in individual personality disposition leading to different proficiencies, and the high potential for a conducive environment to encourage excellence among any group. All too soon in its dynasty, a hereditary aristocratic government relies on the mythos of a superior nobility rather more than the nobility is really anything special, as Ibn Khaldûn observed in his day, and many other honest critics would come to agree; thus finally the Hapsburgs would perpetuate their rule even as they fielded an inbred moron for coronation. In order to function, an aristocracy comes to depend on greater wealth, better education, and other unequal opportunities to mask the real personal mediocrity of most within the noble class, and rests on whatever real potential exists within the nobility for advancement on merit.

Nonetheless, aristocracy both assumed and affirmed the basic principle and possibility of greatness. Just as democracy has both political and cultural aspects, there was a cultural import of aristocracy as well as a political organization by that name, and part of its cultural emphasis could accept excellence without counterreactions such as presumed immodesty, guilt, or shame, or the inversion of value sensibility to the point of endorsing mediocrity over excellence. Regardless of the distorting process of heredity, people who accept aristocracy tend to accept merit, even if they overestimate particular merits for encompassing, overwhelming greatness. In short, aristocracy at least acknowledges elitism in principle.

There is much that is necessary, and nothing problematic about elitism as long as the perception of an elite is based on something substantive and particular, on an accomplishment, ability, or other significant merit rather than on arbitrary qualification, as became the case with the hereditary procession of aristocratic title in Europe under High Middle Ages feudalism and afterward. That is, an elite must be justified specifically on the basis of a particular kind of superiority in order to be well-described as "elite" instead of arrogantly and inaccurately. For example Michael Jordan, and for that matter every professional basketball player is a member of an elite — in basketball, and athleticism. Einstein and Feynman were likewise members of an elite — in physics, theoretical mathematics, and science. (These subdivisions could likewise be subdivided many times, at least as far down as looking at muscular strength or calculative abilities.) Real elitism amounts to realistically describing natural hierarchies according to particular standards, nothing more. Without this willingness for honesty and accuracy, the false implication may follow that people are equal and the same, and further, that excellence goes against this supposed natural order of equality. [15] But of course this is a dangerous and retarding precedent, because the real natural order involves difference and a corresponding diversity of strengths and weaknesses, forming a natural elite for any and every standard we could measure.

Democracy and Masked Elitism

Democracy and aristocracy are ostensibly at loggerheads because democracy demotes elitism and promotes egalitarianism. In this respect alone, democracy does not compare well. According to a revised, reconsidered understanding of both, we can see that in fact a realistic elitism is necessary and natural in a way that the fictional equality of egalitarianism could never be. Aristocracy was closer to an accurate philosophical appraisal in that it recognized fundamental inequality, however inaccurately.

And in practice, democracy and aristocracy are not in the state of opposition their historical competition and theoretical differences might at first suggest. We might note that democracies as currently realized are often critiqued as too elitist in their structure, and seriously problematic only because their purer democracy is subverted by elites. Commonly, the arrogance of a powerful, wealthy, privileged, and supposedly select few in the democratic world of today is branded by the label “elite.” Yet this does a considerable injustice of simplification to elitism according to its more general meaning, and today’s ‘elites’ have little of the refined senses or sense of nobility traditionally possessed by elites in those cultures consciously and conscientiously founded on elitism.

Let us consider what sorts of political elites would seem possible in a modern 'egalitarian' democracy. We would laugh at the idea, today, that fencing champions and their descendents should rule over nations now and in the far future. This is because the past seems quaint; swords are not that important in modern day. But what if we imagined that accurate marksmen, brilliant tacticians, and indomitable soldiers might be formed into such a ruling class? This, the modern equivalent of the old aristocratic systems in the great many places where warrior elites served as aristocracy, is immediately less absurd. We can most easily imagine its advent through a coup or invasion, and quite possibly this is exactly how the aristocracies of the past usually began. Now, what about other, even more plausible candidates for a modern political elite? Let us ask ourselves: who could manipulate the circumstances of a democracy to take and hold power? The most forceful, dominant personalities? The most persuasive or charismatic? The most unscrupulous? Those willing to manipulate, lie, browbeat, or inflict cruelty if they feel a need? Our list becomes: "the most forceful, dominant, persuasive, charismatic, unscrupulous, manipulative, lying, and cruel" — does this sound familiar? Is it not the stereotype of politicians and bureaucrats, a stereotype which exists because it is so often true?

In practice, a certain sort of elite does form in a democracy as well, and not a realistic (specific) elite but the overestimated kind which evolves from actual advantages, as occurred in aristocracies. The "egalitarianism," "brotherhood" and "equality" proclaimed under democracy mask natural hierarchies, but people seem to desire hierarchies and make false ones — adopting fame, money, or political success as rough measurements of overall importance. The desire to induct people into mental hierarchies even when and where the cultural valuation of egalitarianism demands otherwise, further suggests that elites are natural occurrences that humans are inherently prepared to recognize. But in this case they have gone horribly awry so that some of the most despicable traits are rewarding, and perhaps even necessary in order to get ahead — an unnatural selection of government and social popularity. Of course, aside from this 'corrupted' masked elitism, other, potentially realistic and laudable elites may arise in a democracy and almost surely will (in accordance with the fact that natural tendencies continue to express themselves covertly instead of overtly once denounced or ignored) despite a deliberate foundation on egalitarian philosophy and social equality. [16]

Nothing in the above discussion implies an advocation of meritocracy, as far as the word means political rule according to some measure of merit. This can be no better than a first-generation aristocracy, with all of the problems of confusing any specific measure of merit with overall superiority of person, including a potential lack of other important qualities — and the inherent problems with political power itself, including corruption and abuse. Instead, it implies that no kind of recognizable superiority should be either denied or overestimated, especially not to the point of condoning the overall political power invested in rulers in every governmental society, including democracies. [17]

Monarchy and Selfish Realism

Socially speaking, that is in terms of the import of basic philosophical tenets to social organization, we can accurately understand monarchy as a form of political elitism like aristocracy. Monarchy is also the predictable historical result of aristocracy; in fact it is a singular form of aristocracy, merely one in which the competition of various nobles of similar power among subdivided territories culminates in victories and consolidations, until finally, however many fits and starts historians can trace, and whatever human tragedies mar the transition — ultimately, a single dominant seat of power is established by one noble line.

Traditionally, nobles were charged with responsibility for maintaining the welfare of their subjects and their lands, insofar as they were expected to profit from them through taxation, and ownership of land essentially ‘public’ by today’s standards. Or else, if they failed in their stewardship, they would gain no such benefit and would suffer loss along with the poverty of their land and people, or most egregiously (for the noble personage) suffer a declining reputation to accompany a decline of the public interest. Such incentives for wise management would persist not only over the lifetime reign of the noble, but generally extend beyond his life into the reigns of his posthumous lineage, to whom he would hope to bequeath a wealthy and proud endowment.

The same is true of monarchs, which aspect of monarchy economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe has contrasted with the shortsighted incentives of democratic politicians, who have merely their term in office in which to profit. In a monarchy, characteristically the king hunted the king’s deer in the king’s forest, and all the roads were the king’s roads. He collected taxes according to traditional and limited means, which almost without comparison amounted to a lesser proportion than the taxes collected in today’s democracies. He accrued honors with the victories of his soldiers, and more lands from the territory they gained. In short he and his progeny prospered in economic and honorific terms by the sweat and blood of his subjects — but only so long as they prospered overall, and roughly speaking, he prospered over time according to the same proportion as his subjects on average, over time (although obviously, he would gain a greater amount by any individual comparison). Thus monarchy (and aristocracy) could provide a persistent incentive for the king (or other noble) to rule in a way that maximized economic prosperity, military prowess and social order. Any failure of this incentive to consistently produce relatively prosperous subjects and successful political dominance can be traced to shortsighted miscalculations on the part of foolish or disgraceful rulers, or to the politically competitive world stage on which kings enacted their drama, in which only certain rulers (and thus subjects) can triumph at the expense of others. Nevertheless it must be granted that some considerable incentive did exist for ensuring the welfare of not only the state, but the subjects (whether commoner or noble, poor, middle-class or rich) under such elitist forms of government — and not just the bare minimum so that subjects would not become angry enough to revolt. The secret of (relative) success for these systems was harnessing the power of self-interest, both the subjects' and the ruler’s. However, modification of any monarchy by incorporating elective, legislative bodies with any considerable power into the government would seal the inevitable ruin of such a system, in that responsibility for success or failure would no longer belong exclusively to the monarch, but to "the public," and thus it would directly belong to no one.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe on the invasiveness of government in democratic republics compared to monarchies [18]: “There is no doubt that the amount of taxes imposed on civil society increased during the monarchical age. However, throughout the entire period, the share of government revenue remained remarkably stable and low.” It rarely exceeded “more than 5 to 8 percent of national income” according to Hoppe’s citation, “until the second half of the nineteenth century.” From its feudal origins a sovereign’s budget had been limited to the sovereign’s estate until a certain point, which “’is somewhat as if a government of our own times were expected to cover its ordinary expenditures from the proceeds of state-owned industries.’” Furthermore, “up until the mid-nineteenth century of all Western European countries only the United Kingdom, for instance, had an income tax (from 1843 on).” Other European countries and America followed suit gradually, but "even at the time of the outbreak of World War I, total government expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) typically had not risen above 10 percent and only rarely, as in the case of Germany, exceeded 15 percent. In striking contrast, with the onset of the democratic republican age, total government expenditures as a percentage of GDP typically increased to 20 to 30 percent in the course of the 1920s and 1930s, and by the mid-1970s had generally reached 50 percent." Hoppe traces similar patterns according to other economic measurements, to the effect that, monarchical centralization having presaged radical democratic centralization, centralization was very gradual in monarchies, and would be completely overshadowed by the new invasiveness of the public regimes.

As Aristotle wrote in his uneven but seminal Politics, both aristocracy and democracy have increasingly exploitive corrupt forms, which coincide with abuse of power and curtailed freedom. [III. vii, § 5] Corruption may lead to revolution, in which democracies become autocracies of some sort, Aristotle correctly noted, most often oligarchies. [V. v, § 1-11] Actually he calls "democracy," as such, a perversion according to the definition that a "polity" exists when the masses govern according to the common good, and its corrupted form "democracy" pursues just the interests of the poorer. [19] An aristocracy, involving the rule of the best of men and the best of social aims, corrupts to an "oligarchy" which serves the richer. (This selective understanding of oligarchy, rule of few, we would recognize as plutocracy.) Similarly in his taxonomy a monarchy decays from a noble "kingship" to a "tyranny" that serves the interests of the ruler only. The most noticeable thing about these terms is undoubtedly that the term "polity" never caught on, quite possibly because — just as it probably seemed to the ancient Greeks of Aristotle's time — it still reads like an unreal, ideal civics lesson more than it suggests any real, or even historically plausible state. To avoid corruption and ruination, the openly elitist forms, "aristocracy" and "kingship," depend on a disposition to generosity and noble attitudes as part of the self-interest of the nobles or king — unrealistically perhaps, but at least these forms do not require a fundamental adoption of phantom common interests by real people, as does Aristotle's "polity." With this in mind we should consider, in addition to other issues of comparison, the threat of deliberate deception and cloaked aims by rulers, as well as simply common delusion and tendency toward a foggy understanding of how one's society actually works. Since corrupted democracies tend to become oligarchies (if not — even worse — dictatorships) ‘behind the curtain’ of the performance of the expected democratic political play if not in obvious revolution, we might actually consider an aristocracy, as an open oligarchy of sorts modified by custom and honor and the spirit of elitism, to be inherently more “open and accountable” than democracy.

The tendency for democracies to become centralized, authoritarian oligarchies or dictatorships — as well as the previously noted willingness, when opportunity tempts, for pursuing imperial foreign policies which promote undemocratic government abroad and at home (despite lip service to the contrary) — both suggest a close relationship of some kind between democracy and autocracy. We might surmise that in fact, democracy does not so much abhor autocracy as prepare the way for it and beckon it, perhaps intrinsically, from a historical standpoint — making real democracy more a theoretical government than an actual one, or at most more like an inherently transitory government than an enduring species of government, much as an unstable chemical compound wants to decay, and rapidly. Aristotle observed that the revolutionary collapse of democracy into either "tyranny" (dictatorship) or more typically "oligarchy" (recognizable today as "plutocracy") follows the incitement of the poor against the rich by demagogues, including of course those demagogues who are wealthy themselves. [V. v, § 1-11] Thousands of years later, the predictive validity of this pattern has been bourn out repetitively among every sort of people, in either violent or silent alteration of the status quo, according to how gradual the demagogues perceive the zeitgeist to be. Consider that to avoid an effective corruption to abusive plutocracy, somewhat-satiated aristocrats or kings must simply retain important qualities in addition to already having riches and pursuing further riches, and already having power and pursuing further power. But democrats, the power-sharing many including the poorest ones, must avoid the pursuit of riches through power almost entirely, and for that matter the pursuit of much power. The inevitable occasion of wealth-seeking or power-seeking oligarchs using the tricks of demagoguery to manipulate these masses should be no surprise at all, even granting to Aristotle his idealistic possibility of "the common good" as an identifiable thing among disparate human beings. Aristocracy, then, provides at its inevitable worst an honest autocracy; democracy seems to provide at most a dishonest or temporary respite from autocracy, and then a most dangerous form of control: the domination of autocracy clothed in the auspiciousness of freedom.

Conclusion

Our comparison has suggested that concerning freedom, democracy promises freedom, yet it not only compares unfavorably to monarchy, but also has its own peculiar, remarkable deficiencies in that realm. Similarly we saw that democratic culture promulgates an unnatural idealism as compared to the more honest aristocratic elitist culture, but really follows something far less ideal. We also observed that democracy compares poorly as a source of promise, and that democracy must fail as a bulwark against undesirable change, and more so than the alternatives it displaced.

We must be prepared to see the benefits and drawbacks of any and every system, even if in many circles today this is something like forbidden knowledge. Only then can we proceed, not regressively toward duplication of either the present or the past, but toward a progress that understands the past and present, and thereby fulfills the promise of a future that demands change.

Once thought the best alternative to increasingly arrogant aristocracies and monarchies, democracy has since acquired an air of legitimacy unparalleled as a justification for political power. In retrospect, we must recognize it is no longer the best known alternative, with government or without.

We have seen hints that democracy has unique problems, especially concerning the difference between avowed ideal image, and unadvertised, realistic practicality. The above investigation implied a particular concern over the supposedly intrinsic relationship between democracy and freedom so taken for granted, and might well lead us to wonder about the intrinsic qualities of democracy in general — which if our socio-cultural and political comparisons with aristocracy and monarchy are any indication, will presumably differ from "the party line." Confronting this puzzle will be the subject of the next, and further Critiques.

Footnotes:

1. Without analyzing evidence further, I shall not assume prematurely, as so many do, that the association between freedom and democracy in that context was anything but coincidental. [back]

2. Tunisian Abd-ar-Rahman Abû Zayd ibn Muhammed ibn Muhammed ibn Khaldûn, 1332–1406, presented this argument in his Muqaddimah or Introduction to his History as part of an advanced, comprehensive attempt to understand patterns in history. A highly recommended abridged edit by N.J. Dawood of the three volume English translation by Franz Rosenthal is available from Princeton University Press. Interestingly the life span Ibn Khaldûn would predict for the health of states in his time, a maximum of four generations or about 120 years, appears to accurately describe a cycle of psychological and political corruption in modern democracies (including the US, as measured from the founding generation to that 19th century revolutionary age of the Civil War in which the republic of states effectively became a union, or nation-state) — almost as well as the cycles of the royal dynasties familiar to Ibn Khaldûn. [back]

3. I refer of course to a Promethean society. See Anticonstitution for a Promethean Society. [back]

4. Despite the modern notion of the autocratic monarch and the occasional historical example of overlap, simple autocracy should be distinguished from monarchy as generally practiced in history, in that monarchy evolved from and was balanced by historical precedent, formed of religious and other social customs, including aristocratic fealty and relationships, philosophical elitism, and rule by genealogy, the last derived from the inheritance principles of aristocracy, which itself evolved from a philosophical, primarily martial elitism. [back]

5. Yet these authoritarian regimes have often been established or supported, we should note, by the foreign policies of the world’s preeminent democracy. For example, in the past century for various reasons ranging from alliances of temporary convenience, to wars on drug production, to anti-communism, to fascistic economic partnerships and corrupt leverage through Washington, overt and covert US foreign policy relationships have apparently been established helping to create or giving succor to the repressive governments of:

Jorge Rafael Videla’s Argentina, Hugo Banzer’s Bolivia, Humberto Branco’s Brazil, the Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, Fulgencio Batista’s Cuba, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s Dominican Republic, Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez’s El Salvador, Alfredo Cristiani’s El Salvador, Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, Sitiveni Rabuka’s Fiji, George Papadopoulos’ Greece, multiple military dictatorships in Guatemala, Lansana Conte's Guinea, Francois and Jean Claude Duvalier’s Haiti, Suharto’s Indonesia, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi’s Iran, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Samuel Doe’s Liberia, Hassan II’s Morocco, Anastasio Somoza Sr.’s and Anastasio Somoza Jr.’s Nicaragua, Sani Abacha’s Nigeria, Mohammed Zia Ul-Haq’s Pakistan, Manuel Noriega’s Panama, Alfredo Stroessner‘s Paraguay, Ferdinand Marcos’ Philippines, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s Portugal, Joseph Stalin’s Russia, Saudi Arabia, Siad Barre’s Somalia, P.W. Botha’s South Africa, Park Chung Hee’s South Korea, Francisco Bahamonde Franco’s Spain, Chiang Kai-Shek's Taiwan (and previously China), military-ruled Turkey, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Ngo Dinh Diem’s South Vietnam, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu’s Zaire, and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Given such a list, which is still not exhaustive, I do not think any appeal is possible over debatable specifics to the extent that the evidence no longer suggests a trend. Yet it cannot reasonably attribute a uniqueness of anti-democracy to the case of the US (much less only to anti-communist US factions, as their political opponents would have it) except for the US having the circumstantial capacities of a superpower. Other democratic and internationally powerful states such as Britain and France have certainly tended to create their own parallel lists according to the opportunity afforded by power-projection capabilities at a given time, especially when one includes unrepresented colonial possessions. Only lack of imperial opportunity ever seems to prevent democracies from undemocratic foreign policies. Like monarchies before them, democracies lack mechanisms for preventing imperial attitudes and are subject to similar imperial temptations as monarchies, so the historical record shows significant correlation. Indeed most of the apparent autocratic competitors to democratic government by present day should be considered by-products of democracy, not extrinsic, as a universal list for all historical democratic sponsorship of undemocratic regimes would show even more. [back]

6. Of the regimes listed in footnote 5, the majority either would not have existed without coup support from the CIA or military, or could not have continued to exist without US support. Most of those were replacing or superceding democratic governments. (For some additional background on US military and CIA interventions since 1945 see William Blum's Killing Hope.) Once again then, we see the rarity of independently evolving (chosen) autocracies, and that many in the modern era actually came from the activities of factions in democratic governments, in competition with internal factions or other states. [back]

7. If aristocracy, or monarchy are herein discussed with some generalization, a necessity prescribes adopting such an approach of confronting wholes; in order to consider another all-too-whole thing, the universal proscription of "democracy" — whatever that means — for the whole world. As will be justified later, aristocracy and monarchy will be discussed together from now on, especially culturally, as "aristocracy," although I will make more effort to avoid undue conflation of the two as political systems. [back]

8. Readers of course have the option to conclude that I am burning a straw man of my own with my Critiques of Democracy, though such a rhetorical trick is certainly easier to employ concerning something forgotten and unfashionable. [back]

9. See Critiques of Democracy Part One: Democracy, The Equivocal Standard. [back]

10. As cultural phenomena, for these purposes I include monarchy as part of aristocracy. Remaining aware that monarchy is not culturally identical to aristocracy, and remembering that once they were seen as two competitive systems, it is my contention that said competition occurred more in the incidental political sphere (e.g. the multi-century decastellation of France as competition between kings and nobles, or the Magna Carta) than in the cultural realm of ideas and their expression (e.g. persistent class differentiation, estate, religiosity, noble artistry); so far as the spheres can be separated, monarchy was a historical result of aristocracy (a development of disputed inevitability, but probably more a likely and understandable, but chance, outcome) more as a gradual extension than a revolutionary change such as marked democracy. Where the political and cultural overlap inseparably there was generally remarkable continuity between aristocracy and monarchy, for example in the importance of genealogy to determine both political power and social worth. It can be hard to say when and where aristocracy ends and monarchy begins, in that the seesaw was gradual in Europe, sometimes virtually invisible (e.g. Germany, Italy) and sometimes reversed in times and places (e.g. the fragmentation of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire), with far more overlap than punctuation. This is in contrast to the age of democracy’s demarcation, in politics, by revolution and the rise of nationalism and rapidly accelerated centralization, especially punctuated by the French revolutionary period in Europe and by the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles for surviving European monarchies, and by the Meiji Revolution in Japan, and similar benchmarks elsewhere — and a demarcation in culture by radically different social ideals and customs (except as far as Britain and imitators pursued a hybrid compromise, parliamentary monarchy). And so finally, it is my contention that meaningful comparison in cultural terms can now be made between democracy on one hand, and the comparatively related aristocracy and monarchy on the other hand. [back]

11. Monarchy in political-historical terms could be called late-stage aristocracy, in which the field of competitors have given way to one victor. The others will either be effectively eliminated from political competition or will remain powerful but owe fealty, as in the system of feudalism. They will be opportune contenders in the event of a power vacuum created by any sort of crisis of the monarchy, especially if they should plan it, but other possibilities include a lack of heirs. This is the scenario which explains the occasional collapse of the monarchy (or equivalent) in some few places and times into a state of fully competitive aristocracy, such as the feudal civil wars of 16th century Japan. [back]

12. Although physical and historical evidence regarding specific cases may necessarily be lacking for the pre-historical times when many culturally-indigenous elites were founded, we may adopt this reasonable theoretical assumption for those cases as well as those with more evidence, as it seems the only explanation save random occurrence. [back]

13. Additionally, an opportunity for dominance and elite formation may arise from the cultural accumulation of technological or other advantages which were never devised by the new elite themselves and thus suggest no causal excellence. This certainly does happen again and again in all ages and enable domination of other cultures. Examples include the fertile crescent invasions and subsequent dynasties (such as the Hyksos’ invasion of Old Kingdom Egypt) on the basis of the chariot, the British domination of India on the basis of the naval warship as major weapons system, and more spectacularly the Spanish conquest and enslavement of much of the Americas, and the Spanish or Portuguese subjugation or exploitation of much of the rest of the world, on the basis of gunpowder cannon, galleons and muskets. But however common, this scenario does not explain the rise of the far more common indigenous elites. [back]

14. Of course foreign invaders and subsequent dynasties again must be excepted (see footnote 13). [back]

15. The historical links and the self-evident similarities between the philosophical sentiments expressed by, in turn, the egalitarian slogan "all men are created equal," and second the violent socioeconomic revenge of the French Revolution following its slogan of "liberty, equality, brotherhood," and finally the economic equalization of socialism (by force, and in its most communist forms by class genocide), should not escape our notice here. Again we have reason to suspect that democracy and communism were circumstantial opponents historically, not ideological opposites. [back]

16. The limited allowance for economic achievement and inequality in the same age as American democratic idealism represents just such a phenomenon of fortunate inconsistency, one responsible for much of America's relative prosperity and desirability — and unfortunately, one providing the economic power harnessed by American politicians to suggest the apparent superiority of the American hybrid "capitalist" system and build the military superiority of the American nation-state as a "great power" on the world scene. [back]

17. Providing for these considerations and in general aiming toward a natural and open elitism is the very essence of the rule of ideas emphasized in a Promethean society as an overt institution. This involves neither the investment of political power in government, nor the overestimation of the value of the Promethean contribution as leader-teachers among all the other innumerable natural elites we can appreciate in a human population. For we can distinguish Prometheans according to a particular standard suited to a role, much as we can distinguish the talents and sensibilities of a chef, or an artist, or an investor, or an athlete, or a scientist, or a philosopher from other people — although Prometheans comprise a somewhat different kind of cross-section of a population, one marked by an open-minded, inclusive generalism of talents or skills in the form of an interdisciplinary philosophy and practice which is not limited to the capacity for persuasion through ideas — most importantly, a group which is distinguished by a standard judged not only functionally, but motivationally: a life-interest in oneself and others). [back]

18. Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Democracy–The God That Failed: The Economics and Politics of Monarchy, Democracy and Natural Order (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002), p. 54-55 [back]

19. Notice the interesting fact that by this classification, communism is functionally democracy, not antithetical to democracy, and any socialism classifies as a democracy (or "polity," a utopian socialist might argue). I have already noted an ideological similarity between democracy and socialism or communism above, and have introduced the idea in Democracy, The Equivocal Standard that communism is akin to democracy in a philosophical-cultural sense, for examples: equality and egalitarianism in terms of applied philosophy, and socialized art in terms of cultural products. [back]

<< Critiques of Democracy contents
< previous, Part One: Democracy, The Equivocal Standard
> next, Part Three: Democracy Versus Freedom: The Mythos of Mass Liberty