ABSTRACT
Democracy was unrealistic in that it refused to recognize that society arose not from a contract of wills but from a fact of nature. Georges Sorel attacked the ideological premises on which democracy rested, including its rationalism, its abstract nature, its pacific nature, its optimism and belief in progress, its hedonism—and also the results of the system. Democratic theorists have been slow to admit the existence of an elite, but both historical insight and empirical research have made it acceptable. A democratic system includes in its underlying assumptions the views that no man is indispensable, that political positions are occupied on the basis of competence or aptitude, that careers are open to talents, and that talents are widespread. An electoral regime, moreover, produced a powerful group of politicians, a plebs, half-bourgeois, half-proletarian, that controlled elections. The case Charles Maurras made against the electoral system is the case always made against Jacobinism, that the electorate was usurping the place of government.
