I happened to read an article that compared ‘ostensibly democratic regimes’ with openly tyrannical ones. The author presses the point that there are “genuine differences between explicitly repressive regimes and ‘ostensibly’ democratic ones” and that the latter are still better than the former. I have no complaints so far, and I also share the author’s dislike for the left. However, There is one point that the author makes, which I do not fully appreciate, and this is the claim that “any genuine partisan of emancipation would instead acknowledge the vast superiority of parliamentary-democratic systems over every type of political tyranny“. So far as the discussion was on repressive regimes vs democratic ones, I was surely on the side of democracy. But tyranny or absolute power is not the same as repression, and I believe democracy does not always score a point against tyrannical non-repressive regimes. Democracy, being sold by the west as a panacea for all socio-political problems, and being used as a tool to force their views on other nations even while opportunistically supporting repressive states elsewhere is a pointer to the thought that democracy may not be exactly the Good Spirit that it is portrayed to be.
For democracy to work, there are several pre-conditions. The fundamental premise of democracy is the assumption that ordinary people are capable of taking intelligent and informed decisions on matters affecting their destiny. But what if majority of the population is uneducated, and impoverished to the extent that their only concern is daily bread, and they don’t even look beyond (much less see)? It is easy for a few crooked players to influence the masses by giving them their basic needs in exchange for a free ticket to tyrannic power while still giving the impression that these masses are actually in charge. Also, a party that thus comes to power is constrained to take mostly populist decisions that can improve their chances of victory in the next election rather than implement a long term vision for the nation. To rise to the top in such a system requires crookedness to twist the common sense of the masses, and in this way it ensures that only the crooked can rise to the top. Another drawback of such a system when compared to an openly tyrannical regime, is that while there is a more or less straightforward way (at least in theory) to dethrone the latter, it is not clear how the former can be corrected or overthrown.
Now, for the sake of argument, let us assume that the pre-conditions for democracy are all met, and that people are educated and have a clear idea (valid or not) of what is good for them. Even in this case, isn’t democracy also a tyranny of the majority? I don’t think tyranny or absolute power is that bad, either, as long as the tyrant has good intentions and knows what he’s doing. The history of India is studded with benevolent rules who used their absolute power to bring about social welfare that I think is difficult to achieve in a democracy. There have been bad kings too, but in four or five generations, I trust there will be at least one good king who can make up for the rest. I fully understand that having come so far there is no route back to monarchy, nor am I suggesting that we go in that path. I reiterate my preference for democracy over most of the other alternatives we have today including leftist and other repressive regimes, but my point is that a system being not democratic in itself is not bad. There are several different societies in this world and there may not be a single form of governance that suits all of them. So dubbing anything that is not democratic as evil is something that I cannot agree to.
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You sound like a courtier of Raja Ravi Varma Thampuran 😉
He he, you're free to your opinion, my friend. But then, don't you agree that even that would be better than, say, the coterie around Sonia Gandhi?
If you disagree with any point I have brought up in this post, I'd surely like to know 🙂
Agree !
Democracy will work only in mature, developed and educated societies.
If anybody has doubts on how democracy can be subverted and negatively channelized, one need not look beyond India !
Yes, that's the point. Good to see you here!
Doesn't tyrant mean cruel oppressive ruler? At least, Wikipedia thinks so and so do I (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant). They claim it to be derived from the Latin for illegitimate ruler. Perhaps the author was using in that sense as well – not a king or a ruler with absolute power.
Not all dictionary meanings imply so. Of course, it may have come to be interpreted so, but I have the original meaning of the word in mind – an absolute ruler who enforces his views without considering the opinion of others.
(Also refer: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tyrant)
My point was that the validity of your objection depends on what the author meant by the word tyrant.
Yes, I get your point. Only, that when being compared and contrasted with democracy, the meaning that he likely meant is purely an opposite to democracy. I also shared this post with the author of the other post, and he did not raise this point – instead, just said that we can disagree! 🙂
🙂