ABSTRACT
The first part of the chapter is about John Stuart Mill, in whose hands the theory of majority tyranny has become centered around the individual as “the smallest minority.” From On Liberty to Considerations On Representative Government, the aim to protect the individual – and especially the extraordinary individual – against the uneducated masses naturally led to an overtly elitist parliamentary reform plan, the system of “plural vote” (giving more than one vote to members of the educated upper class). Although Mill’s liberalism remains undisputable, the second part of the chapter lists a number of less liberal authors (Nietzsche, Mosca, Pareto, Ortega, and Kuehnelt-Leddihn) who voiced similar worries, and established an elitist tradition which was perhaps not a linear continuation of Mill’s, but would remain highly influential until the second half of the twentieth century.
