Democracy
Democracy is a method of selecting a government by vote. Objectivism treats it as a procedure rather than a principle, and holds that the fundamental political question is not who holds power but what power may be held: a majority that may dispose of a minority's life and property is exercising the same authority as a dictator, differing only in how the officeholders were chosen.
“It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience had proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.”
~ Alexander Hamilton, New York ratifying convention, 21 June 1788
Two things the word covers
Ordinary usage runs together two arrangements that Objectivism keeps apart.
- A constitutionally limited republic uses elections to fill offices whose powers are defined and bounded in advance. Certain matters — a man's life, his speech, his earnings, his property — are placed outside the reach of any vote, and the function of the constitution is to say so. See Constitution and Rights.
- Unlimited majority rule places every question on the ballot, so that whatever fifty-one percent decide is by definition legitimate. There is no category of thing a majority may not do, and therefore no rights in any sense that survives contact with an election.
The United States was founded as the first of these, and Objectivism holds that the founders' distrust of the word "democracy" was well placed. The country's distinguishing achievement was not that officials were elected — several ancient states elected officials — but that the government's powers were enumerated and the rest withheld.
Why voting is not the fundamental
The Objectivist argument is that a right cannot be derived from a count.
Rights are identified from the requirements of man's survival as a rational being: he must act on his own judgment, and force is what prevents it. That derivation says nothing about how many people agree. If a right existed only where a majority conceded it, then a man's freedom to speak, to work and to keep what he earns would be a revocable licence — which is to say he would have no rights, only permissions currently in force. See Freedom and Individual rights.
The right to vote is on this account a consequence of a free system rather than its foundation: it is the mechanism by which citizens fill offices in a government already limited to the protection of rights, and its value depends entirely on that limitation. A vote on whether the minority may be looted is not an exercise of freedom by anyone.
Rand also drew the historical conclusion. Unlimited majority rule does not remain unlimited majority rule for long, because a system in which everything is up for grabs rewards whoever can assemble a coalition against everyone else, and the resulting scramble ends in the rule of pull rather than in popular self-government. See Statism and Elections.
"The will of the people"
Objectivism regards the phrase as an instance of the collectivist error of treating a group as an entity with a mind.
There is no such thing as a public will. There are individual people, each with his own judgment, some of whom outnumber the others on a given day. Calling their tally "the will of the people" converts an arithmetic fact into a moral warrant, and it is used precisely where the interests of the counted are being set against the interests of the outvoted. Rand's reply is that the public is a number of individuals, and that a benefit to some at the expense of others is not made legitimate by the beneficiaries being more numerous. See Collectivism and Individualism.
Common misunderstandings
- That Objectivism opposes elections. It does not. A limited government still has to be staffed, and periodic election is the only method that allows officeholders to be replaced without force. What is denied is that the vote determines what those offices may do.
- That a democracy cannot become a dictatorship. Unlimited majority rule places no obstacle in the way. Objectivism does not treat electoral origin as protection, and points to regimes that arrived by ballot and stayed by other means. See Totalitarianism.
- That "democracy" is a synonym for freedom. The two are independent. A limited republic can protect rights well; an unlimited democracy can violate them thoroughly. Treating the words as interchangeable is a package-deal.
- That the objection is elitist. The claim is not that people vote badly but that certain matters are not properly subject to a vote at all, however well anyone votes.
See also
- Government · Politics · Elections · Constitution
- Rights · Individual rights · Freedom · Capitalism
- Collectivism · Individualism · Statism · Totalitarianism
- Anarchism · Free speech · Death penalty
Discussion
- John Locke vs Thomas Jefferson
- The political compass quiz
- Why theft is neither ethical nor practical
References
- Rand, Ayn. "Man's Rights", "Collectivized 'Rights'" and "The Nature of Government", The Virtue of Selfishness. New American Library, 1964.
- Rand, Ayn. "Theory and Practice" and "The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus", Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New American Library, 1966.
- Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 10.