Democracy and Scientific Technique
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When people think of democracy, they generally couple with it a considerable measure of liberty for individuals and groups.
The word ‘democracy’ has become ambiguous. East of the Elbe it means ‘military dictatorship of a minority enforced by arbitrary police power’. West of the Elbe its meaning is less definite, but broadly speaking it means ‘even distribution of ultimate political power among all adults except lunatics, criminals, and peers’. This is not a precise definition, because of the world ‘ultimate’. Suppose the British Constitution were to be changed in only one respect: that General Elections should occur once in thirty years instead of once in five. This would so much diminish the dependence of parliament on public opinion that the resulting system could hardly be called a democracy. Many Socialists would add economic to political power, as what demands even distribution in a essence of the matter is approach to equality of power, and it is obvious that democracy is a matter of degree.
When people think of democracy, they generally couple with it a considerable measure of liberty for individuals and groups. Religious persecution, for instance, would be excluded in imagination, although it is entirely compatible with democracy as defined a moment ago. I incline to think that ‘liberty’, as the word was understood in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is no longer quite the right concepts; I should prefer to substitute ‘opportunity for initiative’. And my reason for suggesting this change is the character of a scientific society.
It cannot be denied that democracy no longer inspires the same enthusiasm as it inspired in Rousseau and the men of the French Revolution. This is, of course, mainly because it has been achieved. Advocates of a reform always overstate their case, so that their converts expect the reform to bring the millennium. When it fails to do so there is disappointment, even if very solid advantages are secured.
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