题目内容

The word democracy may stand for a natural social equality in the body politic or for a constitutional form of government in which power lies more or less directly in the people`s hand. The former may be called social democracy and the later democratic government. The two differ widely, both in origin and in moral principle. Genetically considered, social democracy is something primitive, unintended, proper to communities where there is general competence and no marked personal eminence. There be no will aristocracy, no prestige, but instead an intelligent readiness to lend a hand and to do in unison whatever is done. In other words, there will be that most democratic of governments-no government at all. But when pressure of circumstances, danger, or inward strife makes recognized and prolonged guidance necessary to a social democracy, the form its government takes is that of a rudimentary monarchy established by election or general consent. A natural leader emerges and is instinctively obeyed. That leader may indeed be freely criticized and will not be screened by any pomp or traditional mystery; he or she will be easy to replace and every citizen will feel essentially his or her equal. Yet such a state is at the beginnings of monarchy and aristocracy.

Political democracy, on the other hand, is a late and artificial product. It arises by a gradual extension of aristocratic privileges, through rebellion against abuses, and in answer to restlessness on the people`s part. Its principle is not the absence of eminence, but the discovery that existing eminence is no longer genuine and representative. It may retain many vestiges of older and less democratic institutions. For under democratic governments the people have not created the state; they merely control it. Their suspicions and jealousies are quieted by assigning to them a voice, perhaps only a veto, in the administration. The people`s liberty consists not in their original responsibility for what exists, but merely in the faculty they have acquired of abolishing any detail that may distress or wound them, and of imposing any new measure, which, seen against the background of existing laws, may commend itself from time to time to their instinct and mind.

If we turn from origins to ideals, the contrast between social and political democracy is no less marked. Social democracy is a general ethical ideal, looking to human equality and brotherhood, and inconsistent, in its radical form, with such institutions as the family and hereditary property. Democratic government, on the contrary, is merely a means to an end, an expedient for the better and smoother government of certain states at certain junctures. It involves no special ideals of life; it is a question of policy, namely, whether the general interest will be better served by granting all people an equal voice in elections. For political democracy must necessarily be a government by deputy, and the questions actually submitted to the people can be only very large rough matters of general policy or of confidence in party leaders.