Why Should We Value Democracy?

 “Suppose the following to be the state of affairs on board a ship or ships.  The captain is larger and stronger than any of the crew, but a bit deaf and short sighted, and similarly limited in seamanship.  The crew are all quarrelling with each other about how to navigate the ship, each thinking he ought to be at the helm; they have never learned the art of navigation and cannot say that anyone ever taught it them, or that they ever spent any time studying it; indeed they say it can’t be taught and are ready to murder anyone who says it can.  They spend all their time milling round the captain and doing all they can to get him to give them the helm.  If one faction is more successful than another, they rivals may kill them and throw them overboard, lay out the honest captain with drugs or drink or in some other way, take control of the ship, help themselves to chat’s on board, and turn the voyage into the sort of drunken pleasure-cruise that you would expect.  Finally they reserve their admiration for the man who knows how to lend a hand in controlling the captain by force or fraud; they praise his seamanship and navigation and knowledge of the sea and condemn everyone else as useless.  They have no idea that the true navigator must study the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds and all the other subjects appropriate to his profession if he is to be really fit to control a ship; and they think it’s quite impossible to acquire the professional skill needed for such control and that there’s no such thing as an art of navigation.  With all this going on aboard aren’t the sailors on any such ship bound to regard the true navigator as a word-spinner and a star gazer, of no use to them at all?”

Plato here shows a so called “craft analogy” which in respect is his main anti democratic argument.  If you were not feeling well then you would need some health advice from an expert and would go to your doctor, some one who was trained specially to do the job, you would not assemble a crowd and ask them to vote on the correct remedy.  We can compare this to the state in such a way as Plato has compared this to a ship, making political decisions requires knowledge, judgement and skill and therefore as Plato urges, it should be left to experts not to the general public as a true democracy would require.  To find these experts is impossible unless the “philosophers become kings or the kings become philosophers.” JS Mill on the other hand would disagree with this, he believed that democracy can help educate and develop individuals.  A government according to him should educate individuals to have more moral education to produce a good society, a large advocate of a “developmental democracy”.  However this would mean that decisions would be made without expert opinion and would not solve that problem, there would be a significant amount of failure before there would be success of a “good society” as Ortega Y Gasset wrote “democracy only appeals to the basest instincts of the masses”.

Either way, democracy will only represent the majority of opinions taken, and here we see a problem with the general will and the will of all.  Rousseau claims that the general will may not be the will of all especially as civilization spreads.  Large polities need a stronger government however and when the general will is taken it generally lets the executive gain at its expense.  The general will is what makes for the common good.  Rousseau’s view is that if citizens were separated and each registered their wills individually then the overlap between all wills would form the general will. The general will must be “general in its object as well as its essence”it must apply to all citizens.  He is clear however that this is different to the will of all as in the real world citizens are very frequently persuaded to act against their common interest. If a country decides to set up a King then it cannot be directly informed on a named individual, First it is necessary for the general will to set up a democratic government and then only this government can decide who will be king.  

Rousseau valued democracy as the most important means through which humans can achieve freedom.  He was a critic of elections however and quotes that “the people of England deceive themselves when they fancy they are free; they are so, in fact, only during the election of members of parliament: for, as soon as a new one is elected, they are again in chains, and are nothing.  And thus, by the use they make of their brief moments of liberty they deserve to lose it”showing that citizens are only free when they participate directly and continuously in shaping the life of their community.  Rousseau also states that the larger the population, the fewer magistrates there should be, large states are best suited to monarchies, small states are best suited to democracies and intermediate states are best suited to aristocracies.  He believes that “there has never been a true democracy and there never will be”.  A successful democracy is only possible in a small state where there are honest citizens with no greed or ambition.  Nevertheless in a democracy, corporative and general will could possibly be confused.

It may also be stated that as each and every person is different then democracy is a fair way of sharing these ideas amongst all citizens to achieve a collective decision.  However Rousseau also makes a point in his view that one person cannot represent another and therefore a representative democracy isn’t a true democracy, a true democracy should be direct and participatory.  “if you could represent me ideally you would need to have to much detailed understanding of me that you would be virtually identical with me.”  It is also very important for Mill that voters should vote in accordance with their ideas of the general interest and should not vote selfishly, they should vote for candidates who they feel would improve the lives of the most citizens, he states “vote is not a thing in which he has an option; it has no more to do with his personal wishes than the verdict of a juryman.  It is strictly a matter of duty; he is bound to give it according to his best and most conscientious opinion of the public good” reemphasising the jury as an education for the voters: highly distilled and concentrated training. But Mill still worries about the vote of the selfish kind, his thoughts on how to solve this problem include temporarily excluding citizens from the franchise which is clearly not fair as who is to decide the right party to vote for, what if your views differ from the next person?  Tom Christiano adds to this saying that in order for people to be treated publicly as equals they must have an equal say in collective decision making.  

To make these citizens treated as equals then they will have to all have keen political participation.  As many would state that political participation is good for the people it is clearly defunct when not all active citizens turn up to participate in the first place and therefore the vote will lose power, hence what happens in the British governments when little people turn out to vote and therefore the winning party is not legitimate and falsely pushes their mandate on the public.  Problems with the Prisoner’s dilemma can also be seen here as if one person votes for the winning party then there is no point another voting as they will win anyway so therefore a person is benefited without having to vote, the same can happen if a person is to lose.

Dworkin states that “democracy requires that officials be elected by the people rather than chosen through inheritance or by a small group of prominent families or electors.” This shows the representative democracy that the Western world is associated with today.  But is this a true democracy?  It is clear that direct democracy would only be possible in an extremely small state but that is surely the only way that all opinions would be heard and voiced equally, however there is still the problem of the minority voters not having their views voiced and then considered.  Here we can answer the question why should we value democracy, it is clear that the only reason we should value democracy is to voice different opinions and enforce different views allowing a country to not conform to an authoritarian ruling where one person is always in power.  It does allow some sort of political participation although it is arguable how much and it certainly doesn’t allow active action.  We can evidently refer back to Rousseau’s quote of “there has never been a true democracy and there never will be” as it shows a remarkable sense of truth, as Winston Churchill also famously quoted “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried” Which also shows an incredible sense of truth, it is in principle a way of achieving the ‘right result’ that is at least as good as or better than the rule by experts.