Outspoken Essays | Page 6

course be a necessary task) is over. Democracy dissolves communities
into individuals and collects them again into mobs. It pulls up by the
roots the social order which civilisation has gradually evolved, and
leaves men déracinés, as Bourget says in one of his best novels,
homeless and friendless, with no place ready for them to fill. It is the
opposite extreme to the caste system of India, which, with all its faults,
does not seem to breed the European type of enragé, the enemy of
society as such.
6. The corruption of democracies proceeds directly from the fact that
one class imposes the taxes and another class pays them. The
constitutional principle, 'No taxation without representation,' is utterly
set at nought under a system which leaves certain classes without any
effective representation at all. At the present time it is said that
one-tenth of the population pays five-sixths of the taxes. The class
which imposes the taxes has refused to touch the burden of the war
with one of its fingers; and every month new doles at the public
expense are distributed under the camouflage of 'social reform.' At
every election the worldly goods of the minority are put up to auction.
This is far more immoral than the old-fashioned election bribery, which
was a comparatively honest deal between two persons; and in its effects
it is far more ruinous. Democracy is likely to perish, like the monarchy
of Louis XVI, through national bankruptcy.

Besides these defects, the democracy has ethical standards of its own,
which differ widely from those of the educated classes. Among the
poor, 'generosity ranks far before justice, sympathy before truth, love
before chastity, a pliant and obliging disposition before a rigidly honest
one. In brief, the less admixture of intellect required for the practice of
any virtue, the higher it stands in popular estimation.[3] In this country,
at any rate, democracy means a victory of sentiment over reason. Some
may prefer the softer type of character, and may hope that it will make
civilisation more humane and compassionate than it has been in the
past. Unfortunately, experience shows that none is so cruel as the
disillusioned sentimentalist. He thinks that he can break or ignore
nature's laws with impunity; and then, when he finds that nature has no
sentiment, he rages like a mad dog, and combines with his theoretical
objection to capital punishment a lust to murder all who disagree with
him. This is the genesis of Jacobinism and Bolshevism.
But whether we think that the bad in democracy predominates over the
good, or the good over the bad, a question which I shall not attempt to
decide, the popular balderdash about it corresponds to no real
conviction. The upper class has never believed in it; the middle class
has the strongest reasons to hate and fear it. But how about the lower
class, in whose interests the whole machine is supposed to have been
set going? The working man has no respect for either democracy or
liberty. His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority
to his own pocket. There was a time when he thought that universal
suffrage would get for him what he desires; but he has lost all faith in
constitutional methods. To levy blackmail on the community, under
threats of civil war, seems to him a more expeditious way of gaining
his object. Monopolies are to be established by pitiless coercion of
those who wish to keep their freedom. The trade unions are large
capitalists; they are well able to start factories for themselves and work
them for their own exclusive profit. But they find it more profitable to
hold the nation to ransom by blockading the supply of the necessaries
of life. The new labourer despises productivity for the same reason that
the old robber barons did: it is less trouble to take money than to make
it. The most outspoken popular leaders no longer conceal their
contempt for and rejection of democracy. The socialists perceive the

irreconcilable contradiction between the two ideas,[4] and they are
right. Democracy postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism.
When these are absent it cannot long exist. Syndicalism, which seems
to be growing, is the antipodes of socialism, but, like socialism, it can
make no terms with democracy. 'If syndicalism triumphs,' says its chief
prophet Sorel, 'the parliamentary régime, so dear to the intellectuals,
will be at an end.' 'The syndicalist has a contempt for the vulgar idea of
democracy; the vast unconscious mass is not to be taken into account
when the minority wishes to act so as to benefit it.'[5] 'The effect of
political majorities,' says Mr. Levine, 'is to hinder advance,'
Accordingly, political methods are rejected with contempt. The
anarchists go one step further. Bakunin proclaims that 'we