In every democracy, discontent is born, which inspires groups with strong views, whether right-wing, left-wing, or self-centered, who would like to replace such a state of perpetual inefficiency with a strong government that sometimes, but not always, has the approval of the majority, but never the cultural elite of the country.
As Lobaczewski mentions in the preface, his early readers couldn’t get over his criticism of democracy, the subject of this chapter. Since there are so many juicy bits, instead of a summary, I will just include excerpts.
Since the introduction of universal political rights, American democracy, like everywhere else, has become a façade system, behind which other forces are already hiding to exercise real power.
This has been true for a long time. Today we call it the “deep state.” Back in 1987 Bill Moyers called it the secret government.
Modern democracy actually hinders the self-organization of a healthy social structure (i.e. one that makes full use of its population’s pool of talents and creates healthy social bonds).
Modern democracy, by giving equal voting rights to all citizens, ignores the now familiar law of nature that makes us different in a wide range and in essential properties of our minds. … Democracy impedes the formation of a healthy and active sociopsychological structure of societies. Instead, it encourages the organization of elites that have an internal oligarchic structure and are led by individuals with less than ideal talents and character traits.
One criticism I have of Political Ponerology is its implied rosy picture of the “governments of normal man.” In context, that referred to Western democracies in contrast to communist pathocracies. Specifically, Lobaczewski didn’t elaborate on the role of political psychopaths in democracies. He makes up for it here.
In every country, there are individuals who wish to pursue their aspirations for importance and prosperity through their awareness the existence of those less critical people, whom they despise in spirit. What societies and sociologists do not realize is that these leaders often possess the specific psychological knowledge that we find in psychopathic individuals.
On the side of the voters, they may have common sense, but there are areas where that isn’t good enough. They are concerned mostly with the issues that affect them personally, and in the short term.
The majority of voters are not able to foresee further, unintended consequences, as well as to appreciate the issues of foreign and defense policy, complex economic issues, and even less the covert activities of transnational elites.
As a result, democratic politicians must campaign to the lowest common denominator, to the detriment of sound policy. (Thomas Sowell discusses these phenomena in several of his works.)
It is difficult for persons of high values of mind and character to do this, and they lose to candidates with an inferior sense of responsibility, or they withdraw discouraged by such demands. A man of high maturity of mind becomes incomprehensible to the masses of voters, … That is why democracy has a constant tendency to put into legislative and chief executive positions persons who are not well qualified but eloquent and peculiar. … This is contrary to natural law and proves to be the greatest weakness of democracy.
This also allows lobbies and special interest groups to game the system.
In every democracy there are organized minorities that take advantage of its described weaknesses to try to secure power for themselves. … The moral quality of these motives and the degree to which they are made public will determine whether democracy can survive and thrive or whether it is in danger of collapse.
And on the efforts of some groups to “spread democracy” around the word, he writes the following.
Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that behind this there are intentions to exploit the weakness of democracy and nations in order to impose on them the power of dependent organized minority elites and to derive economic, personal, or nationalistic benefits from this.
It’s not all bad, though. Democracy works well in countries that had already developed a strong social structure, traditions, and moral values though a long (undemocratic) history of trial and error. (In contrast, democracy will not work well in countries where those are not true.) In other words, democracy didn’t create those things; rather, they created the conditions so that allowed democracy to work relatively well, despite its inherent weaknesses. As soon as those conditions deteriorate, so will democracy.
Lobaczewski also likes the division between executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government; federalism; and the Swiss and British legal traditions. He thinks democracy will provide a good foundation on which to build a logocracy.
Democracy
Reviewing the history of political doctrines, we must conclude with some embarrassment that no system finds more precarious justification in the deliberations of thinkers than modern democracy. From its Athenian beginnings, democracy was conceived as an elite system of free and usually educated citizens of the polis. Such a system of city states could therefore function quite efficiently. In modern times, the idea of religious and social tolerance was developed and justified by Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). However, he explicitly stipulated that a people allowed full rights would abuse them to the detriment of the whole. He thus became a theorist of bourgeois democracy and as such influenced later thinkers and the development of social systems. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) seems to justify the theory of democracy. But if we try to understand the work of this inherently restless man against the background of the epoch, then we must admit that he also had in mind a kind of elite democracy, to some extent similar to the Polish noble democracy, in which he saw advantages. So none of these theories was democratic in the modern sense of the word.
A similar elitism involving free settlers of Anglo-Saxon and European descent characterized the thinking of the founders of the American system. Such a democracy worked well and ensured the social growth of the United States as long as it was limited to taxpayers only, and later still as long as the examination system was in force. To be eligible to vote one had to be literate and have the necessary knowledge of history and law. Since the introduction of universal political rights, American democracy, like everywhere else, has become a façade system, behind which other forces are already hiding to exercise real power.
The concept of democracy has historically evolved or degenerated. Today it is a system whose theoretical assumptions and diverse realities remain difficult to grasp scientifically. It is also a system that, against obvious psychological premises, places intellectual demands on too many citizens that they cannot meet.
The eminent English thinker and sincere friend of the Polish nation, Edmund Burke (1729-92), was a tradition-respecting but psychologizing critic of democratic concepts. He understood the nation as a kind of organism, composed of diverse individuals, and thus in a more conservative way, but similar to that presented in Chapter 3. He therefore defended the traditional social organization, but saw the need for its evolutionary improvement and the loosening of state rigors. He condemned both the ideology of the French Revolution and its atrocities. Against the king and parliament, he spoke out in favor of granting autonomy to the American colonies.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), valued the changes brought about by the French Revolution and its influence on the American Revolution. He followed with enthusiasm the formation of democracy in the United States and anticipated its influence on the formation of regimes in European and other countries. Nevertheless, he accurately saw the dangers to democracy of granting equal rights to primitive and uneducated people. He feared that this might cause such a system to degenerate in the future. Today, unfortunately, his predictions have taken on real form.
Modern democracy, by giving equal voting rights to all citizens, ignores the now familiar law of nature that makes us different in a wide range and in essential properties of our minds. Although the operation of this law cannot be eliminated from social life, the doctrine of democracy reduces many of the benefits that societies could achieve by making optimal use of this diversity. Democracy impedes the formation of a healthy and active sociopsychological structure of societies. Instead, it encourages the organization of elites that have an internal oligarchic structure and are led by individuals with less than ideal talents and character traits. This fosters a retardation of the psychological worldview of citizens, which results in the already known negative moral consequences in individual and social life.
Democracy is based on the beliefs and aspirations of citizens who, in their majority, see issues that affect them directly and in the near term. The majority of voters are not able to foresee further, unintended consequences, as well as to appreciate the issues of foreign and defense policy, complex economic issues, and even less the covert activities of transnational elites. Especially in Poland, after half a century of the influence of a pathological system and effective restriction of the development of human worldviews, these societal capabilities are in deep deficit.
In every country there is the already mentioned fairly large minority of people in whom weaknesses of mind and character of various kinds impair their ability to form their own judgment on important social matters. It consists of normal people of the lowest aptitude, civilizationally neglected individuals, and those of profoundly defective social adaptation, and of people with various mental deviations, previously mentioned or not. These people reflexively seek out leaders who can suggest to them certain beliefs or lead them to supposedly lofty or selfish goals.
In every country, there are individuals who wish to pursue their aspirations for importance and prosperity through their awareness the existence of those less critical people, whom they despise in spirit. What societies and sociologists do not realize is that these leaders often possess the specific psychological knowledge that we find in psychopathic individuals. Democracy too easily allows activities that pose a permanent threat to itself and to the future of the country.
Every candidate for election in a democratic country must reckon with these defects in public opinion and must be able to satisfy them with appropriate promises. It is difficult for persons of high values of mind and character to do this, and they lose to candidates with an inferior sense of responsibility, or they withdraw discouraged by such demands. A man of high maturity of mind becomes incomprehensible to the masses of voters, sometimes appearing to them too petulant or conceited. That is why democracy has a constant tendency to put into legislative and chief executive positions persons who are not well qualified but eloquent and peculiar. This is the case in the state as a whole and similarly within individual parties, where their leaders are sometimes less qualified than some lower-level activists. This is contrary to natural law and proves to be the greatest weakness of democracy.
These difficulties are eventually overcome by the reasonableness of the majority. However, this happens without a sufficient understanding of their causes, because phenomena that are inaccessible to those who think in terms of a common psychological worldview are also involved. The result is that the right decisions are made too difficult and too late. This state of affairs affects the entire social climate, teaching people a contemptuous attitude toward wisdom.
In every democracy there are organized minorities that take advantage of its described weaknesses to try to secure power for themselves. Their activities are in fact semi-secret, because they are shielded by official programs and propaganda, and it is very difficult for citizens to find out what their motives really are. Different interpretations of these important motives cause disputes and contribute to public irritation. The moral quality of these motives and the degree to which they are made public will determine whether democracy can survive and thrive or whether it is in danger of collapse.
It is not surprising, therefore, that three well-known sociologists active at the beginning of the 20th century, Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923), Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941), and Robert Michels (1876-1936), men of different natures and attitudes, came to a similar conclusion that the doctrine of democracy is only a façade behind which lie the real social mechanisms in the form of elites acting semi-covertly and fighting each other.1 The analysis of their content allows only to see the social reality that differs from country to country. As a consequence of such considerations, Pareto came to be completely skeptical of democracy, eventually becoming the acknowledged ideologist of Italian fascism.2 Mosca, rejecting extreme doctrines and criticizing both Marxism and fascism, turned to descriptive analysis of actual social relations in various countries and their essential characteristics. Michels, a moderate Marxist, accepted in part the methods of fascism, but with his work he wanted to “demolish the easy and superficial illusions that impede scientific knowledge and lead the masses astray.”
In every democracy, therefore, there is a seed and a danger of its destruction, which the social organism and honest government must fight permanently. This costs a lot of effort and social energy, creates frustrations and delays decisions, often causing economic losses. In every democracy, discontent is born, which inspires groups with strong views, whether right-wing, left-wing, or self-centered, who would like to replace such a state of perpetual inefficiency with a strong government that sometimes, but not always, has the approval of the majority, but never the cultural elite of the country. The threat of subversion thus lies in the very nature of modern democracy.
The history of our twentieth century teaches how such authorities, imposed by the will and cunning of active minorities, degenerated. Their creative plans of action were quickly exhausted, and their authoritative rule turned into tyranny. Governments of people who were not outstanding, and as a rule mentally aberrant to some degree, caused the phenomena of counter-selection and the formation of pathological structures of society, which then persevered for a long time and were difficult to repair. Such a lesson of history later became an important factor that sustains democracies despite their known weaknesses, because they became an alternative much better than those memories. But how long will human memory be alive enough to warn against a return to the extreme actions of organized minority elites? Its extinction can already be observed in European countries.
Democracy works satisfactorily in those countries where centuries of history and less democratic governments have produced a good structure of society, traditions, moral criteria, and accumulated experience from their own mistakes and achievements and have not been destroyed by other nations’ violence. So, in fact, democracy in such a country also bears the characteristics of a facade, but behind this there are creative values that many other nations do not obtain. Governments in such countries are made with this structure of society and these experiences. They will continue to function well as long as respect for the values developed by the former layers of leadership and the knowledge of national experience are not forgotten, corroded by characteristics of the system that are contrary to the laws of nature or destroyed by some drama of history.
In countries where such a tradition, structure, and values are lacking, democracy introduced prematurely or artificially quickly reveals its weaknesses. The short-sightedness of insufficiently prepared citizens and the susceptibility of too many of them to domestic or foreign-inspired demagogues quickly reveal the fact that granting full civil rights to all was an act of naive doctrinairism. Then democracy begins to wither and transforms itself into a hidden oligarchic power, or there is a coup d’état, which in Poland in 1926 brought about semi-authoritarian rule, and in other countries had a more extreme, leftist or fascist character.
For all these reasons, we cannot regard democracy as a system sufficiently grounded in the laws of nature and as the realization of natural law in the life of societies. Nor can we regard democracy as the only tried and true form of government which thus acquires the value of a criterion of political morality. On the contrary, it is based on a conventional doctrine which takes too little account of psychological realities and carries many dangers for nations. Nevertheless, there are organized and influential centers in the world, with means of pressure, especially economic and propagandistic, which seek to impose forms of democracy on nations, glorifying it as the only recognized social system. Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that behind this there are intentions to exploit the weakness of democracy and nations in order to impose on them the power of dependent organized minority elites and to derive economic, personal, or nationalistic benefits from this.
The creative question then arises: could such a system be constructed that would not have the well-known defects of democracy, be better justified in the laws of nature, be more transparent and more easily understood by the citizens, be more resilient, and be just and caring; and so could it actually achieve the value of a moral criterion in politics? In the rest of this work, I will try to convince my readers that such a possibility exists and is feasible thanks to the achievements of modern science, which is ripe for such a work. The draft conception of the devices of such a system, given below, is intended to confirm the existence of such a possibility and to indicate some of the solutions necessary for the fulfillment of the mentioned premises of such a system.
Democracy, however, brought an increase in respect for man and citizen, which will remain its lasting achievement. It reduced the old national divisions. An element of the democratic system, which has sufficient justification in the deliberations of the thinker and has proven itself in practice, is the separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial, an idea given to mankind by Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755). Democracy has also developed a number of other legal solutions, which, after due consideration and adaptation, should be built into the whole of a better social and political system. Democracy precedes and prepares this better system, which happens according to the eternal law of history.
The premises useful for building a better system than democracy can be found in those democratic systems that in their structure and law deviate furthest from the models of typical European democracy. These are also those countries that have less Roman legal tradition—Great Britain and especially Switzerland. It is interesting how well the Swiss system works, as it is so different because it is based on its own folk traditions but benefits from the natural wisdom and moderation of its cantonal governments. There is a special value in federalism that serves political reason. Therefore, some study of the working of the Swiss system preceded further consideration of a system better than democracy.
Note: This work is a project of QFG/FOTCM and is planned to be published in book form soon.
HK: Here are their major books: Pareto, The Mind and Society (1916/1935); Mosca, The Ruling Class (1896/1939); Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911/1915). See James Burnham’s 1943 classic, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, for summaries of each of their work.
HK: A common assertion, but probably untrue (he died just the year after Mussolini took power): “Vilfredo Pareto has been labelled a fascist and ‘a precursor of fascism’ largely because he welcomed the advent of fascism in Italy and was honored by the new regime. Some have seen in his sociological works the foundations of fascism. This is not correct. Even fascist writers did not find much merit in these works, and definitely condemned his economic theories. As a political thinker he remained a radical libertarian till the end, and continued to express serious reservations about fascism, and to voice opposition to its basic policies. This is evident from his correspondence with his close friends. There are strong reasons to believe that, had he lived long enough, Pareto would have revolted against fascism.” Renato Cirillo (1983), “Was Vilfredo Pareto Really a ‘Precursor’ of Fascism?” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 42 (2): 235–246.
This was a very good offer.