Can democracy be justified by appeal to the value of equality?

The question of how important for democracy is the equal distribution of political power has two dimensions. One is theoretical and the other practical. In this essay, I will discuss both situations and prove that democracy is not a constitutive part of equality. Moreover, I will expand the question and bring a new understanding of the practical ramifications of the current system to find out whether it is possible to talk about democracy and the value of equality in an inherently unequal society.

The main concepts I’ll be using in this essay are:

Equality – the act of treating every human being equally with fairness.

Political Equality – equal distribution of political power.

Political Impact – the political power that an individual has within the political establishment.

Political Influence – the power that one has to influence the way others exercise their political impact.

In theory, when a democratic society tries to reach an agreement about a certain policy the state uses a so-called democratic procedure of voting where everyone is able to exercise his/her political impact. Unfortunately, this leads to non-egalitarian result where a majority decides on behalf of all people. The procedure is democratic but the result restricts and diminishes the value of equality. Instead of a fair decision, people end up with the dictatorship of the majority. A way to avoid this would be the establishment of a set of rights to protect the minority from being exploited by the majority. This is also a problem for equality as it puts a constraint on the majority and their power to make decisions. Either way, the goal of creating an egalitarian society is unattainable using a democratic procedure, which inevitably creates unequal results.

To illustrate this I will use an example of a persistent majority, which occurred since the creation of the United States. Over 200 years the dominant majority elected only white presidents, the white electorate was making decisions on behalf of everyone, suppressing the rights of Afro-Americans, rightful citizens of the same country which happened to be treated unequally by supposedly the most democratic regime in the world.

This has to do with the difference between equality of procedure and equality of outcome. In society, a democratic procedure promotes the value of having even rights and equal political power but then the result of that procedure turns to be rather unfair.

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
Thomas Jefferson

Attaining equality in society is a difficult task especially if people don’t think they should have the same rights and equal political power. This is the disadvantage of the concept of equality. Not everyone believes that people should be treated in the same way and have the same opportunities. This is something conditioned by the environment and in my opinion education, media and state institutions should promote this as a value and a necessary factor for a successful society. Democracy seems to me, promotes equality only, in theory, scratch the surface and you find corruption in almost every state institution and corporation. People are different but they should be treated equally by the system, and that should be encouraged not only in theory but also in real life.

In present times one of the most crucial aspects of political life is a political influence. The power to influence the individual through the mass media is something that has developed on such a scale that one wonders whether this isn’t something that has the potential to destroy the ability of critical thinking in people and take away their political power. It is exactly the monopoly of political influence that I find particularly dangerous for preserving the freedom of choice.

Also, the inequality that we are witnessing, a product of the current monetary system, has created a type of imbalances that are impossible to fight with a democratic procedure. In practice, the problem seems to be not in the notion of democracy or the value of equality and whether the first is promoting the second but in the system itself.

In regards to the main question, my essay clearly shows that democracy is incompatible with equality. It appears that equality is not only unattainable by applying democratic procedures but also not something that democracy promotes in general. I think this appears to be a disadvantage because I personally believe in equality and regard it a crucial social value. If democracy is not able to deliver results such as equal rights, justice, independent political influence and equal opportunities both in theory and in practice I don’t really find this idea and its application efficient and useful for society. It is unthinkable to get the equation “democracy leads to equality” right while living in a monetary system that promotes competition, self-interest and achieving profit. Society is pre-conditioned and stimulated to be unequal by the establishment and democracy cannot be justified by appeal to the value of equality.

“Democratic forms have little substance when “the life of the country”- production, commerce, media is ruled by private tyrannies in a system called “industrial feudalism” in which working people are subordinated to managerial control, and politics becomes “the shadow cast by big business over society”.
Noam Chomsky

The original post was published on July 6th 2009.