Abraham Lincoln famously described democracy as; "government of the people, by the people, for the people." How this translates into the modern industrialised world is the subject of great political philosophical debate. Lincoln's definition implies an idea of equality of all the people and the idea that those people are a homogenous group. This is clearly something which sits ill with the complex industrial society in which we live, a society as implied by the title, which undisputably has "pronounced social and economic inequality". In the United Kingdom for example: according to the Central Statistical Office, in 1987, the most wealthy 1% of adults owned 18% of the wealth, while the bottom 50% owned only 7% between them. So there can be no dispute that there is social and economic inequality. The question is however whether this is important to democracy. There are many other ways of measuring equality and inequality, such as the liberal idea of political and legal equality, and divisions along the lines of: gender, race, language, sexuality, age, culture and religion. This essay will, in answering this, discuss: firstly, what democracy is; secondly what an equal citizen is; thirdly, whether and for what reasons social and economic inequality matters to democracy; and finally; what qualifies as satisfactory working order for democracy.
Firstly then, it is necessary to look at some definitions of the disputed term democracy. The title question suggests that "democracy is a decision making procedure for equal citizens." This is not by any means the only definition and does not even mention "government", which is central to Lincoln's definition. Holden defines democracy thus:
a democracy is a political system in which the whole people, positively or negatively, make, and are entitled to make, the basic determining decisions on important matters of public policy.
This is a well considered definition, because, with his later qualifications that: a positive policy decision originates with the people while a negative policy decision is selected from a number of professionally prepared alternatives, he neatly includes the two main types of democracy. These types are: participatory (also called classical or direct) and representative (also called liberal-democracy). As Phillips says though there is ". . . little of interest between the classical democracy of the Greek city-states and the birth of liberalism in seventeenth-century Europe." The participatory form is the direct decision taking by all the constituency, while the representative form requires periodic competitions between candidates, who then rule for a limited period of time. As can be seen in the quote above the participatory form was first recorded in Ancient Greece, and certainly required equality of those counted as within the constituency. Plato called democracy at the time:
. . .an agreeable, anarchic form of society, with plenty of variety, which treats all men as equal, whether they are equal or not.
His reference to "all men" of course excluded not only women from the adult population but also slaves and aliens. This left a minority of the people to be involved in "a decision making procedure for equal citizens". This concept of direct decision making was revived in the 18th Century by Rousseau, who saw this as the only path to freedom for all. He was opposed to the British form of representative democracy as it meant that the people were ". . .free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing." Marxist and Anarchist thought took these ideas on board as a "critique of bourgeois democracy" in the 19th Century. As Plamenatz says, "Only in the society of equals with no state in it will the general interest no longer be sacrificed to some partial interest." This criticism of bourgeois democracy as a sham, it can be argued led to the soviet style of democratic centralism which could also be described as "a decision making procedure for equal citizens." That is the decisions were taken by a small elite but for the "good of the people."
The liberal-democracy criticised above is the form most prevalent today. Many would see it as the only form either desirable or possible in a complex industrial society. Types of representative democracy can vary as widely as suggested in the text above for direct democracy. Weber and Schumpeter both writing in the 20th Century saw its main task as putting checks upon the bureaucratic administration, which is necessary in a heterogeneous society. The role of the citizen is seen as "limited to merely dismissing the defective from office". In other words the ". . . critical test of liberal democracy,[is] the peaceful passage of power from one party to another." Or a way of changing government without bloodshed. Clearly this is not a sufficient definition of a desirable democracy (similarly to those which include Ancient Athens and the Soviet Union) as it would include rule by the minority so long as they define themselves as constituting "the people". Such a definition would have included South Africa during Apartheid! Holden deals with this problem by adding a further rider to his definition quoted above:
. . . as large a proportion as possible of the members of a society should take part in the making of basic political decisions.
Secondly, some meanings of equality will be discussed. Both of the democracy types discussed above rest upon the idea of the equality of the citizens who make up the constituency. The requirement for equality with democracy may be universal but the meaning of equality is not universally accepted. To the liberal-democrat it means equality under the law for the opportunity to vote and to stand for office. To the Marxist it means equality of influence as well as of economic and social position. Many feminists would say that in the patrirchic society we inhabit, special conditions have to be provided to encourage and enable women to be involved in the democratic process at an equal level to men. This goes beyond the hard won but insufficient concession of universal suffrage. There is also good argument for including other excluded groups into this process of equalisation of participation. The liberal argument that there is no legal barrier does not hold much water in a democratic system which privileges certain groups (white, middle-class, middle-aged males) to a similar statistical extent to the economic and social system it reflects.
As well as what equality is, another debatable point around the term 'the equal citizen' is how equal is equal enough? In other words once the type or types of equality required are isolated, at what degree of inequality does democracy cease to function? Citizenship can also mean different things, dependent on whether dealing with liberal or direct democracy. It can mean simply able to vote or within the franchise to make direct decisions. A point often made by radical republican organisations such as "Movement Against the Monarchy" is that the British are technically subjects of the Queen and not citizens.
Thirdly, having looked at the meanings of democracy and equality above, it is clear that, whether and for what reasons social and economic inequality matters to democracy, is going to depend upon the type of democracy and the political position of the observer although some of these concerns overlap from one to the other. This was commented upon by Aristotle. His concern was that ". . . justice will be decided by the numerical majority and will be unjust towards minorities such as the rich." This same concern was held by liberals such as Locke. The simple answer to this was to restrict the franchise to property owners, thus sustaining social and economic equality amongst those given the franchise. Even later liberals such as John Stuart Mill, who supported universal suffrage felt the need to deal with the "problem" of the envisioned "dominance of the working classes" through education and suggested a plural vote for the educated (a privilege Oxford University students enjoyed until the 1950s!).
Socialists have effectively had the opposite concern that is:
[w]here there are great inequalities of wealth, then whatever the form of government, power and influence always belong mostly to the wealthy, if only because they alone can afford to provide their children with the expensive schooling needed to fit them for positions carrying power and influence.
The solution from this perspective is either to reduce the social and economic inequality to an acceptable level or to remove the capitalist system from which this form of inequality grows and build an equal and democratic system from scratch.
De Tocqueville felt that democracy itself was an engine of equalisation. As an aristocrat he was quite concerned about this God driven force, and said:
Is it credible that the democracy which annihilated the feudal system and vanquished kings will respect the citizen and the capitalist?
Contemporary liberals in the security of knowledge that a near to universal adult franchise has not led to the expropriation of property seem keen enough to maintain the status quo and point to the bloodless transfer of government from one to the next as justification in itself.
Which leads onto the final point of; what constitutes democracy working? Is perfection necessary or is a minimisation of the need for armed struggle good enough? Different definitions bring different answers for example Keating would be happy with peaceful transition whereas on Rousseau's model only personal involvement for all men (sic) is enough.
It is necessary to decide what democracy is for. Is it merely the legitimisation of the modern technocratic/administrative state or an essential ingredient in improved universal quality of life?
In conclusion, Anarchists and Marxists would say that the statement within the heading question is correct and that capitalism and its protector the state needs replacing with a form of direct participatory self rule of equals. Schumpeter would say we must make do with representative democracy as good enough.
The main problem with the Schumpeter argument is however that it uses the idea of democracy as a cover for what he feels is inevitable. That is liberal-democracy is put in place as an illusion of control for all when in fact it is nothing more than a rule by elites.
Vic George and Irvine Howards, Poverty Amidst Affluence; Britain and the United States, Aldershot, Edward Elgar, 1991
Barbara Goodwin, Using Political Ideas, Chichester, John Whiley and Sons, 1987
David Held, Models of Democracy, Oxford, Polity, 1987
Barry Holden, Understanding Liberal Democracy, Oxford, Philip Allen Publishers, 1988
Michael Keating, The Politics of Modern Europe, Aldershot, Edward Elgar, 1993
Movement Against the Monarchy, (MA'M), Enemies of the State, (one page leaflet no publisher given)1998
Anne Phillips, Engendering Democracy, Oxford, Polity, 1991
John Plamenatz, Democracy and Illusion, An Explanation of certain Aspects of Modern democratic theory, London, Longman,1973