Accusing a democracy of a tendency to prefer mediocrity in its elected rulers, and admitting its exposure to gusts of passion and its openness to folly, he pointed out in effect that popular government is educative as other modes of…
John Dewey
The Public Record
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the first half of the twentieth century.
gutenberg.org
The strongest point to be made in behalf of even such rudimentary political forms as democracy has already attained, popular voting, majority rule and so on, is that to some extent they involve a consultation and discussion which uncover…
In the degree in which they become a specialized class, they are shut off from knowledge of the needs which they are supposed to serve.
It is impossible for high-brows to secure a monopoly of such knowledge as must be used for the regulation of common affairs.
The final obstacle in the way of any aristocratic rule is that in the absence of an articulate voice on the part of the masses, the best do not and cannot remain the best, the wise cease to be wise.
It is assumed that the policies of the experts are in the main both wise and benevolent, that is, framed to conserve the genuine interests of society.
Otherwise they would have to ally themselves with the masses, and that implies, once more, a share in government by the latter.
Rule by an economic class may be disguised from the masses; rule by experts could not be covered up.
The very ignorance, bias, frivolity, jealousy, instability, which are alleged to incapacitate them from share in political affairs, unfit them still more for passive submission to rule by intellectuals.
If the masses are as intellectually irredeemable as its premise implies, they at all events have both too many desires and too much power to permit rule by experts to obtain.
One approaches the truth more nearly when one says that the argument proves too much for its own cause.
The essential fallacy of the democratic creed, it is urged, is the notion that a historic movement which effected an important and desirable release from restrictions is either a source or a proof of capacity in those thus emancipated to…