50 Years Ago: What is Democracy

Many people, when faced with this question, conjure up pictures of the American eagle, and think that democracy is all that that amiable bird symbolises. They imagine that a State run on the lines of the American Republic is a democratic State, that the institutions of such a State are democratic institutions, that the spirit of such a State is the democratic spirit, and that the philosophy of such a State—the “Rights of Man” (printed, of course, on the reverse side of a “green-back”)—is the democratic philosophy.

All of which ideas are wrong.

The common, meaning of the term “democracy,”—a form of society in which supreme power is lodged in the hands of the people—is correct enough as far as it goes, and is sufficient in all that it implies. But it implies something very different from the American Republic, and American institutions, and the “Rights of Man.” For supreme power to be lodged in the hands of the people does not mean merely that they arc to have the widest possible franchise and equal voting power. It implies that the people are to have complete control of all social institutions, the ordering of all social activities, the domination of the whole social life. Such a condition of affairs presupposes at the very outset the ownership by the people of all the means of life, all the social products, even all the social intelligence and skill and energy.

There can be no other foundation for democracy than this common ownership of all the means of life, for where these fall into private possession social distinctions at once spring up, the owners become dominators, and it becomes impossible for the people to control the social activities—because, forsooth, they have not control of the means and instruments through which the most important of those activities—those directed to the production of the social wealth—are applied.

Notwithstanding, then, the popular conviction to the contrary, existing republics no more enfold democracy than do monarchies. Nor are they nearer to it since they are no nearer to the property condition upon which democracy must be founded.

From the SOCIALIST STANDARD October 1913.