Democracy is, by nature, a work in progress, and Western history has had very few occurrences when the “demos” became a politically self-conscious actor. What do these moments teach us?
| This post is part of a reading series on Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon S. Wolin. To quickly access all chapters, please click here. Disclaimer: This chapter summary is personal work and an invitation to read the book itself for a detailed view of all the author’s ideas. |
According to Sheldon Wolin, democracy could be represented as a practical division of labor regarding how to get from A to B. The population decides where B is, while the elites supply the expert “know-how” to reach it. He adds that nothing, unfortunately, can guarantee that a reality check will help stay on track, even though the people need it on the elite’s ambitions and the elite on the irrationality of the people. As the late John Robert Lewis used to say, “Democracy is not a state, it is an act,” meaning that there is nothing mechanical or achieved once and for all about it. In other words, everyone has the formal political responsibility of actively committing to the common good in a democracy. This is the price each citizen must pay for a government of, by, and for the people.
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Though exclusively exercise by male citizens, democracy did exist for a short while in ancient Greece under the governance of Pericles (c. 495 BC-c. 429 BC). Depicting Pericles as a model of rationality, the historian Thucydides (c. 460 BC-c. 400 BC) said that after the death of this great leader, the citizens “allowed private ambitions and private interests” to prevail. Where Pericles had “led the multitude instead of being led by them,” the new leaders “catered to the whims of the multitude,” each outbidding the other in vying for popular approval. The result was a “host of blunders” culminating in a disastrous defeat in Sicily.1 That signed the beginning of the end for Athens’s prestige and influence, as well as the disappearance of the democratic ideal for a long time to come in the Western world.
Over the next two millennia, a politically entrenched cast succeeded in keeping society’s middle and lower classes out of politics. The power structure functioned on principles of exclusion, and the few who ruled were supposedly entitled to their position of power in virtue of the Creator’s transcendent will. But with the modernization of society at the end of the Middle Ages, a secularized elite of bankers, scientists, engineers, skilled administrators, military leaders, and political advisers boasted their strategic talents. What these new auxiliaries of power lacked in authority, they more than compensated with their command of new forms of knowledge. For its part, the vast majority of the population gradually realized that if ordinary folks were to regain entry in politics, it would be as a “people” and on the ground of their raw numbers. The inner struggle of the multitude to convert itself into a politically self-conscious actor was starting to take place.