Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho
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claims scientific neutrality, its value judgment is clear enough: whatever<br />
works, is right – that is, whatever enables the existing class-stratified<br />
society to operate without intolerable friction is best [Macpherson,<br />
1973, p. 78–79].<br />
At the same time, striving for representing democracy as a process<br />
of achieving the ideal without any limitations and reservations is<br />
not necessarily an unreal enterprise criticized by theoreticians of élite<br />
democracy for its utopist inclinations. In fact, American champion of<br />
participatory democracy Benjamin Barber argues that there are already<br />
two types of democracy present in today’s society: official democracy<br />
with its ‘Big politics’, party intrigues, corruption and bureaucracy, – and<br />
real ‘neighborhood democracy’ with its practice of local self-government<br />
and grassroots voluntary activities. That’s why, according to Barber, we<br />
have to expand our understanding of what counts as democratic, rather<br />
than expanding democracy itself [Barber, 1984, p.XIV]. However we<br />
think that the philosophical approach to democracy is aimed at limiting<br />
that understanding rather than expanding it – for every philosophical<br />
definition sets strict limitations to a term in order to differentiate the<br />
entity it designates out from things unfit for the notion in question. In<br />
other words, democracy is to be distinguished from other phenomena<br />
that exist in our society and title themselves as democracy while being<br />
indeed something very different.<br />
So, how should philosophy understand the term ‘democracy’?<br />
The most simple and usual one is the understanding of democracy<br />
as just ‘power of the people’, as the people’s sovereignty, where the<br />
people are the source, the bearers, and the conductors of power. Such<br />
a formulation presented an adequate guideline and served as a roadmap<br />
for social and political structure during the age of Absolutism,<br />
for then the usual reality was the <strong>do</strong>minance of a sole monarch or a<br />
narrow circle of persons possessing power either by force or by the<br />
right of birth. Then the ideal of the power for all the people – and<br />
not one single person or single exclusive estate – was progressive<br />
and revolutionary.<br />
But today such an approach to understanding and defining<br />
democracy turns out to be very abstract – that is, not clear enough<br />
in order to serve as a lodestar in the semidarkness of the political life<br />
225<br />
DEVELOPMENT OF TODAY’S<br />
DEMOCRACY:<br />
PEOPLE, POWER, AND<br />
HUMAN PERSONALITY<br />
Iurii Mielkov e Anatoliy<br />
Tolstoukhov