The argument between the liberals and the liberals-turned-democrats was over
whether the male poor would use their rights to strip the rich of their wealth, or
whether they would leave decision-making to the middle rank – whom James Mill
described as the class in society which gives to science, art and legislation their most
‘distinguished ornaments’ and is the chief source of all that is ‘refined and exalted
in human nature’. Both sides of the argument agreed that the business of government
is the business of the rich (Hoffman, 1988: 167).
The question of exclusion becomes more subtle as liberals become more
enthusiastic about the idea of democracy. T.H. Green (1836–82) and Leonard
Hobhouse (1864–1929), two British social liberals, both supported the idea that
women as well as men should have the vote and, by 1928, women were enfranchised.
But Green could still take it for granted that men were the head of the family, and
Hobhouse argued that women should stay at home and mind the children (Hoffman,
1988: 180). It could be argued that even when women had political and legal
equality with men, social equality eluded them, and therefore their democratic rights
were thereby impaired. This would be vigorously argued by feminists later (see
Chapter 14 on Feminism). Socialists, for their part, continued to contend that even
when workers have the vote, they do not have the resources to exercise their political
rights as effectively as those who have wealth, social connections, the ‘right’
education, etc.
What about international exclusions? Hobhouse argues that ‘a democrat cannot
be a democrat for his country alone’. Does democracy require support for political
rights throughout the world? Hobhouse cannot make up his mind whether to
support home rule for the Irish, and he argues that as far as the Crown colonies
are concerned, a semi-despotic system is the best that can be devised (Hoffman,
1988: 181). The problem is still relevant. Is US support for democracy compromised
by the fact that the government supports regimes like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia that
are not democratic?The ‘tyranny of the majority’ thesis
Both J.S. Mill and Tocqueville raised the problem of democracy as a ‘tyranny of
the majority’. What is there to prevent a government representing the majority from
crushing a minority? Crick endorses what has been called a ‘paradox of freedom’- a situation in which an elected leader acts tyrannically towards particular
individuals or groups. Crick gives the example of the German elections of 1933
that saw Hitler being appointed Chancellor. A somewhat more recent example –
which Barbara Goodwin raises (1997: 289) – is of the Islamic Salvation Front in
Algeria winning an election, but prevented from governing by the army on the
grounds that the intention of the Front was to install a non-democratic Islamic
theocracy (see Chapter 17 on Fundamentalism).
This resurrects the ancient Greek argument that democracy as the rule of the
poor could take the form of a popular despotism. Crick cites the French
revolutionary, Robespierre, who speaks of a democratic defence of terror, and Crick
comments, in a rather startling passage, that the problem with (totalitarian)
104 Part 1 Classical ideas