ABSTRACT
HAVING defined the nature of democracy, we have seenthat the concept and practice of it may be of a kind tochange that nature seriously for the worse. In essence, it is a system where the State, whilst remaining distinct from the mass of the nation, is closely in communication with it and where its activity therefore reaches some degree of mobility. Now, we have seen that in some cases, this close communication may go so far as to be an almost complete fusion. Instead of being a well-defined organ, the centre of an original life of its own, the State then becomes merely an offprint of the life underlying it. It does no more than translate what individuals think and feel, in a different notation. Its role is no longer that of elaborating new ideas and new points of view-a task for which its framework fits it. No, its main functions consist of reckoning what the ideas and sentiments are that have the widest circulation, those of ‘the majority’, as they say. The State is the result of this very reckoning. The election of deputies simply means counting the supporters of certain opinions in the country. Such a concept is, however, contrary to the idea of a democratic State, since it eliminates almost entirely the very idea of the State. I say ‘almost entirely’, for the fusion is of course never complete. The very force of circumstances makes it impossible for the mandate given to a deputy to be framed in such definite terms as to bind him completely. Some slight leeway of initiative must always remain. But at any rate there is the tendency to reduce that lee-way. It is in this sense that any such political system approximates to what we observe in primitive societies, for in both cases the governmental power is weak. But there is this vast difference, all the same, that in the one case the State does not yet exist, or exists only in embryo, whilst in this
variant of democracy it is, on the contrary, quite often very far developed, with an extensive and complex structure. And it is just this twofold, contradictory aspect that best shows the abnormal character of the phenomenon. On the one hand we have a mechanism that is complex and ingenious, the multiple cogwheels of a vast administration; on the other, a concept of the part played by the State that represents a return to the most primitive of political forms. Hence, a strange mixture of inertia and activity. The State does not move of its own power, it has to follow in the wake of the obscure sentiments of the multitude. At the same time, however, the powerful means of action it possesses makes it capable of a heavy hand on the same individuals whose servant, otherwise, it still remains.
