A Mental Experiment

Suppose that a community, in a way which satisfies the reader’s criteria of democracy, reached the decision to persecute religious dissent. The instance is not fanciful. Communities which most of us would readily recognize as democracies have burned heretics at the stake—the republic of Geneva did in Calvin’s time—or otherwise persecuted them in a manner 6 In plain English, this saying of one of the more prominent leaders meant that they fully realized the risk involved in staging bolshevism in a country entirely dependent on capitalist powers for its food and with French and Italian troops practically at its door, but that, if pressure from Russia via Hungary should become too great, they would not split the party but would try to lead the whole flock into the bolshevik camp.

repulsive to our moral standards—colonial Massachusetts may serve as an example. Cases of this type do not cease to be relevant if they occur in non-democratic states. For it is naïve to believe that the democratic process completely ceases to work in an autocracy or that an autocrat never wishes to act according to the will of the people or to give in to it. Whenever he does, we may conclude that similar action would have been taken also if the political pattern had been a democratic one. For instance, at least the earlier persecutions of the Christians were certainly approved by Roman public opinion and presumably would have been no milder if Rome had been a pure democracy. 7

Witch hunting affords another example. It grew out of the very soul of the masses and was anything but a diabolical invention of priests and princes who, on the contrary, suppressed it as soon as they felt able to do so. The Catholic Church, it is true, punished witchcraft. But if we compare the measures actually taken with those taken against heresy, where Rome meant business, we immediately have the impression that in the matter of witchcraft the Holy See gave in to public opinion rather than instigated it. The Jesuits fought witch hunting, at first unsuccessfully. Toward the end of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth centuries—that is to say, when monarchic absolutism was fully established on the continent— governmental prohibitions eventually prevailed. The curiously cautious way in which so strong a ruler as the Empress Maria Theresa went about prohibiting the practice clearly shows that she knew she was fighting the will of her people.

Finally, to choose an example that has some bearing on modern issues, anti-Semitism has been one of the most deep-seated of all popular attitudes in most nations in which there was, relative to total population, any considerable number of Jews. In modern times this attitude has in part given way under the rationalizing influence of capitalist evolution, but enough has remained of it to assure popular success to any politician who cared to appeal to it. Most of the anti-capitalist movements of our time other than straight socialism have in fact learned the lesson. In the Middle Ages however, it is not too much to say that the Jews owed their survival to the protection of

7 An example will illustrate the kind of evidence there is for this statement. Suetonius in his biography of Nero (De vita Caesarum, liber VI) first relates those acts of the latter’s reign which he, Suetonius, considered to be partly blameless and partly even commendable (partim nulla reprehensione, partim etiam non mediocri laude digna) and then his misdeed (probra ac scelera). The Neronian persecution of the Christians he noted not under the second but under the first heading in the midst of a list of rather meritorious administrative measures (afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novæ ac maleficæ). There is no reason to suppose that Suetonius expressed anything but the opinion (and, by inference, the will) of the people. In fact it is not far-fetched to suspect that Nero’s motive was to please the people.

the church and of the princes who sheltered them in the face of popular opposition and in the end emancipated them. 8

Now for our experiment. Let us transport ourselves into a hypothetical country that, in a democratic way, practices the persecution of Christians, the burning of witches, and the slaughtering of Jews. We should certainly not approve of these practices on the ground that they have been decided on according to the rules of democratic procedure. But the crucial question is: would we approve of the democratic constitution itself that produced such results in preference to a non-democratic one that would avoid them? If we do not, we are behaving exactly as fervent socialists behave to whom capitalism is worse than witch hunting and who are therefore prepared to accept non-democratic methods for the purpose of suppressing it. As far as that goes we and they are in the same boat. There are ultimate ideals and interests which the most ardent democrat will put above democracy, and all he means if he professes uncompromising allegiance to it is that he feels convinced that democracy will guarantee those ideals and interests such as freedom of conscience and speech, justice, decent government and so on. The reason why this is so is not far to seek. Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political—legislative and administrative—decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself, irrespective of what decisions it will produce under given historical conditions. And this must be the starting point of any attempt at defining it.

Whatever the distinctive trait of the democratic method may be, the historical examples we have just glanced at teach us a few things about it that are important enough to warrant explicit restatement.

First, these examples suffice to preclude any attempt at challenging the proposition just stated, viz., that, being a political method, democracy cannot, any more than can any other method, be an end in itself. It might be objected that as a matter of logic a method as such can be an absolute ideal or ultimate value. It can. No doubt one might conceivably hold that, however criminal or stupid the thing that democratic procedure may strive to accomplish in a given historical pattern, the will of the people must prevail, or at all events that it must not be opposed except in the way sanctioned by democratic principles. But it seems much more natural in such cases to speak of the rabble instead of the people and to fight its criminality or stupidity by all the means at one’s command. Second, if we agree that unconditional allegiance to democracy can be

8 The protective attitude of the popes may be instanced by the bull Etsi Judæis (1120) the repeated confirmation of which by the successors of Calixtus II proves both the continuity of that policy and the resistance it met. The protective attitude of the princes will be readily understood if it be pointed out that expulsions or massacres of Jews meant loss of much-needed revenue to them.

due only to unconditional allegiance to certain interests or ideals which democracy is expected to serve, our examples also preclude the objection that though democracy may not be an absolute ideal in its own right, it is yet a vicarious one by virtue of the fact that it will necessarily, always and everywhere, serve certain interests or ideals for which we do mean to fight and die unconditionally. Obviously that cannot be true, 9 No more than any other political method does democracy always produce the same results or promote the same interests or ideals. Rational allegiance to it thus presupposes not only a schema of hyper-rational values but also certain states of society in which democracy can be expected to work in ways we approve. Propositions about the working of democracy are meaningless without reference to given times, places and situations10 and so, of course, are anti- democratic arguments.

This after all is only obvious. It should not surprise, still less shock, anyone. For it has nothing to do with the fervor or dignity of democratic conviction in any given situation. To realize the relative validity of one’s convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.