Page 167 - Media&Information Literacy - Good Practices

the massification of culture and moral, the average lifestyle – as the domination
of taste and the standards of majority

The tyranny of the majority
As to the public good; ‘general will’ differing from the particular wills of
individuals, or in a vain hope, such as that of the utilitarian
‘What is a majority,’ Tocqueville writes, ‘if not an individual with opinions,
and usually with interests, contrary to another individual, called the minority?’
In the most fully realized form of democracy (America for him), this
majority is possessed of unbridled power, which occasions the worry that ‘if
you admit that a man vested with omnipotence can abuse it against his
adversaries, why not admit the same concerning a majority?’

Massification of culture and morals
The emergence of snobbish, social circles – is that both regarding what a

majority will vote to fund in the way of cultural facilities and as a result of the
fact that a dominant political class will tend to set cultural and moral standards,
these standards will become debased in a democracy.

Ineffective government
In 1975 a nongovernmental, international think tank, ‘The Trilateral
Commission,’ published a report called The Crisis of Democracy in which it
claimed that democracy in North America, Japan, and Western Europe had
lost the ability to pursue common goals due to several ‘dysfunctions’ caused
by democracy itself (Crozier et al. 1975). A government is ineffective when
it does not or cannot take appropriate measures to achieve the goals of the
society it governs.

Demagogy and the empty space of democracy
It will be recalled that for Aristotle democracy was tolerable as long as it
abides by the rule of law (and is dominated by a middle class). In its unbridled
form, however, rule by the many is similar to a tyrannical monarchy.
In both, rule is by decree, not law, and disproportionate power is in the
hands of those who can sway either the monarch or ordinary people, in each
case masking their political privilege as monarchal or democratic rule

Democracy as irrational
Many antidemocrats in ancient times and aristocrats at the time of the
French and American Revolutions (not, however, including Aristotle or
Tocqueville) considered democracy irrational in the sense of being rule
by ignorant masses of people, incapable of knowing their interests or
constraining