Table Of ContentTHE SPECTRE OF DEMOCRACY
Also by Michael Levin and published by Macmillan
MARX, ENGELS AND LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
The Spectre of
Democracy
The Rise of Modern Democracy as seen by
its Critics
Michael Levin
Senior Lecturer in Politics
Goldsmiths' College, University of London
M
MACMILLAN
©Michael Levin 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992
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First published 1992
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ISBN 978-1-349-12549-4 ISBN 978-1-349-12547-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-12547-0
For Patricia
Contents
Preface lX
Acknowledgements xii
Part I: FACTS AND THEORIES
1 The Legislative Background 3
2 The Case Against Democracy 34
PART II: THINKERS
3 John Adams 71
4 G.W.F. Hegel 91
5 Alexis de Tocqueville 111
6 Thomas Carlyle 134
PART III: DEMOCRACY AND DISCRIMINATION
7 'Beings of an Inferior Order': The Ideology of Black
Subordination in the USA 157
8 'Exalted by their Inferiority': On the Subjection of Women 175
PART IV
9 Conclusion 201
Notes 218
Bibliography 236
Index 244
vii
viii
A Spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism. All the
Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise
this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals
and German police-spies.
Marx and Engels
Today's chaos hides behind one word, 'democracy'. This word is
sovereign, universal. All parties seek to appropriate it ... It is the
revolutionary and despotic idea par excellence. It is this idea that
must be extirpated.
Guizot
Whence comes it, this universal, big, black Democracy; whither
tends it; what is the meaning of it?
Carlyle
Preface
'A Spectre is haunting Europe.' On that point Marx and Engels were
certainly correct. However, that spectre was not so much of com
munism as of democracy. Today these phenomena are regarded as
mutually exclusive. A century-and-a-half ago they could be taken as
identical. Communism was merely the most extreme form of the
wider democratic tendency. Before the 1848--9 revolutions the main
radical currents, whether liberal, socialist or anarchist, saw them
selves as on the same side and engaged in the same struggle against
the forces of restoration. At the time the Communist Manifesto was
written, the Communist League, from whom it was commissioned,
represented no more than a minor clique. It was a form of self
important special pleading to imagine that the established powers of
Europe feared this as-yet fringe group of mainly German artisans and
intellectuals. Thus Marx and Engels drew on to themselves an anti
pathy that really applied to the much broader radical movement of
which they were but a small part.
It is the fear of this wider movement which is the theme of this
book. My interest in the subject developed out of my study on Marx,
Engels and Liberal Democracy (Macmillan, 1989). A number of
themes mentioned briefly in Chapter 1 of that work are given more
extended treatment here. In a sense the two books are complemen
tary. The first considered a left-wing analysis of emerging liberal
democracy while the second looks at the same phenomenon from the
viewpoints of certain right-wing thinkers.
The first chapter of the present book provides a history of franchise
extensions in the United States of America, France, Germany and
the United Kingdom. It is, admittedly, too brief for students primarily
interested in that process but is intended just to present in outline the
milestones along the road of political democratisation. It should,
additionally, provide some background and context for the four
thinkers from those four countries who will be considered in Part II
(Chapters 3 to 6).
The second chapter provides an overview of the main themes used
by opponents of franchise extension. They tended to regard the status
quo as satisfactory and hence judged proposals for change as un
necessary. They also emphasised that stability should be given pri
ority, that experience and expertise were basic necessities and that
ix
X Preface
the soundest judgements were most likely to come from those
possessed of property and rationality.
We now turn from the general to the particular and look at four
key thinkers in the debate on democratic government. Chapter 3
considers John Adams, the first Vice-President and second President
of the United States of America. Adams had supported the Ameri
can Revolution of 1776 but the consequences of the French Revolu
tion and fears for the stability of his own country made him suspicious
of the democratic movement.
In Chapter 4 we turn to Hegel, who accepted the liberatory ideas
of the French Revolution, but regarded the attempts at implementa
tion as incapable of creating the cohesion that modern societies
required.
Alexis de Tocqueville, who is the subject of Chapter 5, visited the
United States of America to see democracy in action. He viewed the
victory of democracy as inevitable but feared for the survival of
liberty alongside it.
In Chapter 6 we consider Thomas Carlyle, a right-wing radical
critic of aristocratic regimes both in pre-revolutionary France and in
nineteenth-century England. In his view democracy dealt negligent
aristocracies their just deserts, but was in itself incapable of produc
ing the true and worthy aristocracy that society required.
Two groups were relatively late in achieving citizenship rights.
Their disqualifications were genetically based. In Chapter 7 we
examine the ideology of black subordination as found in the United
States of America. The southern states' pro-slavery literature drew
on the Bible, the ancient Greeks and the hardships of the modern
'free' worker in the attempt to justify continuing black slavery. The
ideology of black subordination survived emancipation from slavery
and helped delay the political enfranchisement of American blacks
until the 1960s.
Women, whose political integration is the subject of Chapter 8,
were the last major grouping to achieve political rights. In addition to
particular alleged disqualifications, such as being suited by nature for
domestic life, they shared the deficiencies attributed to other subor
dinate groups. Thus they were seen by men as being irrational,
relatively uneducated and, for most of the nineteenth century, unpro
pertied.
In the Conclusion we shall take an overview of the anti-democratic
arguments and consider which of them appear most prescient and
