The government, every one who has ever lived under a modern democratic government knows all too well, \u201cworks\u201d for the citizen.\u00a0 Citizens delegate authority to their elected representatives on the condition that such representatives will do just what \u201cthe people\u201d want.<\/p>\n
This, at any rate, is the ideal <\/em>of democracy.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is an ideal that reached its apex during the eighteenth century, and that hasn\u2019t shown any signs of abating since.<\/p>\n It is also an ideal that the twentieth century conservative theorist Joseph A. Schumpeter decidedly debunked long ago. \u00a0<\/p>\n Schumpeter was born and raised in what is now the Czech Republic in 1883.\u00a0 In 1906, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna, where he studied law. In 1909, Schumpeter acquired a post at the University of Czernowitz where he was a professor of government and economics. Twenty-three years later, he left forAmerica, where he would began his teaching assignment at Harvard University. Throughout his life, Schumpeter would write extensively on politics, economics, and sociology.<\/p>\n Schumpeter explains that the theory of democracy ascribes \u201cto the will of the individual <\/em>an independence and a rational quality that are altogether unrealistic\u201d (emphasis original).\u00a0 In reality, the citizen\u2019s \u201cwill\u201d is nothing more \u201cthan an indeterminate bundle of vague impulses loosely playing about given slogans and mistaken impressions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n If, as is assumed, \u201cthe will of the citizen per se<\/em> is a political factor entitled to respect,\u201d then this would mean that \u201ceveryone would have to know definitely what he wants to stand for.\u201d\u00a0 This, in turn, would mean that each person would have to possess \u201cthe ability to observe and interpret correctly the facts that are directly accessible to everyone and to sift critically the information about the facts that are not.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n If the will of each person is, as the theory of democracy supposes, a determinate thing, then from its union with the facts that it ascertains each person, \u201caccording to the rules of logical inference,\u201d should be able to render \u201ca clear and prompt <\/em>conclusion as to particular issues,\u201d verdicts possessing such \u201ca high degree of general efficiency\u201d that \u201cone man\u2019s opinion could be held\u2026to be roughly as good as every other man\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n Schumpeter adds that all of this would have to occur \u201cindependently of pressure groups and propaganda, for volitions and inferences that are imposed upon the electorate obviously do not qualify for ultimate data of the democratic process.\u201d<\/p>\n However, this idea of the individual voter as a rational machine carefully attending to his wants and needs and acting accordingly is, like so much else that came out of the eighteenth century, a fiction.<\/p>\n Schumpeter notes that \u201ceven in the most ordinary currents of daily life,\u201d our \u201cwants are nothing like as definite\u201d and our \u201cactions upon those wants\u2026nothing like as rational and prompt\u201d as theorists have imagined.\u00a0<\/p>\n Take the consumer-producer relationship.\u00a0 Schumpeter tells us\u2014what we already know\u2014that consumers \u201care so amenable to the influence of advertising and other methods of persuasion that producers often seem to dictate to them instead of being directed by them.\u201d\u00a0 With its commercial advertising, this relationship is particularly informative when considering the relationship between the voter and his elected representative.\u00a0<\/p>\n The best advertising \u201cindeed nearly always involves some appeal to reason.\u201d\u00a0 However, \u201cmere assertion, often repeated, counts more than rational argument [.]\u201d\u00a0 Moreover, \u201cthe direct attack upon the subconscious which takes the form of attempts to evoke and crystallize pleasant associations of an entirely extra-rational<\/em>\u201d character is also far more formidable than any appeal to the sheer intellect could hope to be (emphasis added).<\/p>\n The voter\u2019s will \u201cis largely not a genuine but a manufactured will.\u201d\u00a0 It is a creation<\/em> or product<\/em> of the political process\u2014not<\/em> its impetus.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n Schumpeter remarks:<\/p>\n \u201cThe ways in which issues and the popular will on any issue are being manufactured is exactly analogous to the ways of commercial advertising. We find the same attempts to contact the subconscious.\u00a0 We find the same technique of creating favorable and unfavorable associations which are the more effective the less rational they are. We find the same evasions and reticences and the same trick of producing opinion by reiterated assertion that is successful precisely to the extent to which it avoids rational argument and the danger of awakening the critical faculties of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n Schumpeter never denies that, in some areas of life, <\/em>individuals can and do act rationally.\u00a0 Still, \u201cwhen we move\u2026farther away from the private concerns of the family and the business office\u201d toward the realms of national and international politics, \u201cindividual volition, command of facts and method of inference\u201d begin to fade.\u00a0<\/p>\n To put it more bluntly, \u201cthe typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field.\u201d\u00a0 Schumpeter elaborates:<\/p>\n \u201cHe [the typical citizen] argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again. His thinking becomes associative and affective.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n To anyone who would deny Schumpeter\u2019s critique of the classical doctrine of democracy, Schumpeter poses a challenge:<\/p>\n \u201cThe reader who thinks me unduly pessimistic need only ask himself whether he has never heard\u2014or said himself\u2014that this or that awkward fact must not be told publicly, or that a certain line of reasoning, though valid, is undesirable.\u201d<\/p>\n Schumpeter was no foe of democracy, it is important to grasp. This should be clear when we read the words with which he ends his critical appraisal of \u201cthe classical doctrine,\u201d as he describes the object of his critique:<\/p>\n \u201cMore than anyone else the lover of democracy has ever reason to accept\u201d that the ideal is flawed \u201cand to clear his creed from the aspersion that it rests upon make-believe.\u201d<\/p>\n As we enter into the final days of but another election cycle and find ourselves on the receiving end of a dizzying array of polls informing us of what we want, we should recall the wisdom of Joseph Schumpeter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The government, every one who has ever lived under a modern democratic government knows all too well, \u201cworks\u201d for the citizen.\u00a0 Citizens delegate authority to their elected representatives on the condition that such representatives will do just what \u201cthe people\u201d want. This, at any rate, is the ideal of democracy.\u00a0 It is an ideal that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n