He made a distinction between two groups—aristocrats and
democrats. Aristocrats “fear and distrust the people, and wish to
draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.”
This view is held by respectable intellectuals in many different
societies today, and is quite similar to the Leninist doctrine that the
vanguard party of radical intellectuals should take power and lead the
stupid masses to a bright future. Most liberals are aristocrats in
Jefferson’s sense. [Former Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger is
an extreme example of an aristocrat.
Democrats, Jefferson wrote, “identify with the people, have
confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest
and safe, although not the most wise, depository of the public
interest.” In other words, democrats believe the people should be in
control, whether or not they’re going to make the right decisions.
Democrats do exist today, but they’re becoming increasingly
marginal.
Jefferson specifically warned against “banking institutions and
monied incorporations” (what we would now call “corporations”)
and said that if they grow, the aristocrats will have won and the
American Revolution will have been lost. Jefferson’s worst fears
were realized (although not entirely in the ways he predicted).
Later on, [the Russian anarchist Mikhail] Bakunin predicted that
the contemporary intellectual classes would separate into two
groups (both of which are examples of what Jefferson meant by
aristocrats). One group, the “red bureaucracy,” would take power
into their own hands and create one of the most malevolent and
vicious tyrannies in human history.
The other group would conclude that power lies in the private
sector, and would serve the state and private power in what we now
call state capitalist societies. They’d “beat the people with the
people’s stick,” by which he meant that they’d profess democracy
while actually keeping the people in line.
You also cite [the American philosopher and educator] John Dewey.
What did he have to say about this?
Dewey was one of the last spokespersons for the Jeffersonian
view of democracy. In the early part of this century, he wrote that
democracy isn’t an end in itself, but a means by which people