The sovereignty of the ignorant: How complex democracies foster plutocratic rule

“ If we look at facts, we shall find that all institutions, all conditions of the representative system, flow from and return to this point. Election, publicity, and responsibility, are so many tests applied to individual reasons, which in the search for, or the exercise of, power, assume to be interpreters of the reason of the community; so many means of bringing to light the elements of legitimate power, and preventing usurpation. ”

“ Thus does a representative government impel the whole body of society,—those who exercise power, and those who possess rights,—to enter upon a common search after reason and justice; it invites the multitude to reduce itself to unity, and it brings forth unity from the midst of plurality. The public powers,—royalty, the deliberative houses, the electors,—are bound and incessantly made to return to this work, by the essential nature of their relations, and by the laws of their action. ”

“ Voting at a single election does it. Upon a poll of the districts or of the “quotas” it is determined whether one set of legislators or another shall control the executive and legislative power centered in a single chamber. No government can be unpopular or an executive council remain in office against the will of the electorate under such a scheme of government. No government can remain in office and avoid the consequences of failure and inefficiency when so organized. ”

“ But little by little, as population has increased and social and governmental organization has become more complex and the political duties of the voter have grown heavier, the political ignorance of the voter has extended to a constantly increasing number of candidates for office, until the sum total of the governmental [Pg 45] power of all the offices for which the voter casts his ballot in political ignorance constitutes the principal part of the entire local and state governmental power. ”

“ Political processes are so complex that the industrial model of successful stewardship no longer makes sense. Political life in society does not depend on political competence, people's generosity, or self-motivation that escapes institutional, religious, or ideological coercion. The degree of efficiency, along with the right ascribed to people to partake in affluence, speaks in favor of political experiences driven by pragmatic forces. Such forces are at work locally and make sense only within a context of direct effectiveness. ”

“ The traditional method of political reasoning has inevitably shared the defects of its subject-matter. In thinking about politics we seldom penetrate behind those simple entities which form themselves so easily in our minds, or approach in earnest the infinite complexity of the actual world. ”

“ When, therefore, we find an extra-legal unpopular government by politocrats established by reason of the long-continued and increasing political ignorance of the voters, who are on the whole an educated and intelligent class of [Pg 94] citizens, the necessary inference is that the political duties of the voter and the requirements of self-obtained political education have been placed far beyond his willingness to perform, or perhaps even beyond the possibility of fulfilment by him. ”

“ In the mass the voter is distracted and fails to a considerable extent to distinguish the important from the unimportant. The extraordinary amount of investigating to be done overwhelms and discourages him, and he goes to the polls too frequently utterly ignorant of the qualifications of candidates for members of Congress and the state legislature. ”

“ Obviously then, in order to obtain the highest percentage of intelligent voting on an average it is necessary that the political duties of the electorate be adjusted to the amount of self-taught and self-acquired [Pg 93] political education that the electorate will generally and in the long run secure. If the political duties and education required are out of all proportion to what the electorate will obtain for itself, then political ignorance and neglect of political duties follows as a matter of course and is a fixed and continuing condition. ”

“ Why, of course, the same organization that directs the voter regularly how to cast his ballot for candidates for office. The power of the extra-legal government to advise and direct the politically ignorant voter how to vote will be just as effective in the normal election to carry or defeat an act on an initiative or [Pg 121] referendum as it is to place men loyal to it in the offices of the legal government. ”

“ The decentralized character of the legal governmental power, the fact that only part of the offices are filled at any time, and the enormous advantage which comes from [Pg 24] having a standing army of advisers and directors to guide the mass of politically ignorant voters, make it difficult to replace at the polls with real representatives of the electorate the appointees of this extra-legal government. We have, therefore, come finally to a well-defined extra-legal but none the less real government of the few, by the few, and for the few, at the expense and against the wish of the many. ”

“ The growth and security of extra-legal unpopular government rests upon the increase of the political burdens upon the voter. Every political theory, every governmental bogey, and every practical innovation which tends toward the multiplication of elective offices, the frequency of elections and the consequent decentralization of the power of government, whether state or local, must be advocated and encouraged by the politocrat. ”

“ Most frequently, however, these are obscure individuals who try for a nomination on the theory that they are no more unknown than the slate [Pg 114] candidates. The voter’s burden has been doubled. Consequently his political ignorance, both at the primary election for candidates and at the election itself, is probably greater than it was at the election for office alone. At all events, the voter comes to the primaries (if he comes at all) just as ignorant of the personality and qualifications of candidates for nomination as he formerly did of the candidates for office. ”

“ On the contrary, the politocrat rules because the electorate regularly goes to the polls too ignorant politically to make a choice of judges. That ignorance is due to the fact that the office of judge is inconspicuous and the determination of who are qualified for the office is unusually difficult, even when an expert in possession of all the facts makes the choice. ”

“ The answer is, that the most popular forms of government engender the worst forms of politics, and favor and foster states of mind that exclude all considerations of a scientific nature. This may be an unpalatable conclusion, but unpalatable conclusions are often true. We have to face the disagreeable fact that it is under the most liberal and perfected political institutions, so called, that the incalculable element of personal caprice in political affairs comes into greatest ascendency. ”

“ It is the case of more poison for one already overcome. Have the past thirty years not yet taught us that to increase the burden upon the voter is to reduce the [Pg 259] most intelligent member of the electorate to the darkest political ignorance and thus to enable the professional adviser and director to the politically ignorant voter to cast his ballot for him? Every additional appeal to the electorate is a step toward that scheme of government which is most favorable to the growth and development of extra-legal government by politocrats. ”

“ The fact that most voters cannot make a show of voting intelligently without someone to help them provides the opportunity which calls him into being. The power of the successful adviser and director to the voter is in direct ratio to the political ignorance of the electorate. It makes no difference whether that ignorance be the result of general lack of intelligence or be artificially produced by placing a special educational qualification upon the voter which he cannot or will not fulfil. ”

“ It is important to notice that the necessities of candidates quickly reveal the extent of the political ignorance of the voter and the opportunity which this affords for someone to direct him how to vote. The candidate, of whom the vast majority of voters are politically ignorant because his office is obscure and inconspicuous, finds that his election is not a matter of his policies and efficiency, but of the efforts of workers at the polls and the canvassing of voters before election. Such a candidate needs the support of successful advisers to the politically ignorant voter. ”

“ And, finally, the makers of America had no knowledge of the complexities of vote manipulation. The whole science of elections was beyond their ken, they knew nothing of the need of the transferable vote to prevent the “working” of elections by specialized organizations, and the crude and rigid methods they adopted left their political system the certain prey of the great party machines that have robbed American democracy of half its freedom and most of its political soul. Politics became a trade, and a very base trade ”

“ In a rough way it has long been perceived that the party circle and party column on ballots are a vital part of the machinery necessary to direct the politically ignorant voter how to vote. If the voter is not only politically ignorant but also illiterate, the party circle is about all he can use, and only by directing his attention to that can he be told what to do. If the politically ignorant voter is an intelligent man he needs the party column at least so that he may take its suggestion when he attempts to vote for candidates about whom he knows nothing. ”

“ Under such circumstances a vote-directing machine, instead of slipping over, in the darkness and obscurity which comes from a multiplicity of elections and offices to be filled, those whom it can control, for ends of which the electorate does not really approve, must begin to appeal to the voter’s intelligence with candidates of character, arguments, platforms, and pledges of legislation which those elected have the power to keep. ”

“ In form the politically ignorant voter is aided by the altruistic advice of those who know who should be elected. In form the voter can take the advice or not as he pleases. In reality, however, and in actual practice, the power of the electorate to fill the state and municipal offices has been confided by the politically ignorant majority to the leaders in the successful hierarchy of professional advisers and directors to the politically ignorant voter. ”

“ The system lies, in fact, wholly open to the control of political organisations, calls out, indeed, for the control of political organisations, and has in every country produced what is so evidently demanded. The political organisations to-day rule us unchallenged. Save as they speak for us, the people are dumb.
Elections of the prevalent pattern, which were intended and are still supposed by simple-minded people to give every voter participation in government, do as a matter of fact effect nothing of the sort. ”

“ In presenting the arguments in favor of the adoption of the proposition, Professor Talbot demonstrates that the centralization of capital in the hands of a few men is the gravest mistake that a republic can permit to occur. It creates an oligarchy that is more pernicious than one of class distinction, since such a one can be coped with, while an oligarchy of wealth possesses so many ramifications that it is practically unassailable except by direct and physical means. ”

“ On the one hand there is the populace—perhaps more powerful 81here, more capable of putting its idiotic ideas into execution, than anywhere else—and surely more eager to follow platitudinous messiahs. On the other hand there is the ruling plutocracy—ignorant, hostile to inquiry, tyrannical in the exercise of its power, suspicious of ideas of whatever sort. In the middle ground there is little save an indistinct herd of intellectual eunuchs, chiefly professors—often quite as stupid as the plutocracy and always in great fear of it. When it produces a stray rebel he goes over to the mob ”

“ One of the morning papers in Chicago, which takes an impartial stand, and accordingly seeks to publish all of the news, creates a sensation by the publication of a tabulated statement of the contributions paid into the treasury of the Plutocratic party. This table shows a total of forty-seven millions of dollars.
With such a sum to expend, and with the knowledge that the chairman of the finance committee will see that every dollar is properly distributed, it is not unreasonable to suppose that a house to house canvass of the doubtful states has actually been made. ”

“ The Plutocratic convention which had been held in Chicago promulgated a platform that pledges the party to institute every form of legislation calculated to appease the demands of the people.
That the pretences of the platform are insincere is a fact that every one is well acquainted with; yet so potential is the power of the party that it is able to persuade men against their best judgment, and those whom it cannot bring to its support by argument are forced to align themselves on the side of phitocratic government by the force of coercion. ”

“ The dominant universities of America to-day, the treasure houses of intellectual prestige, are almost all of them of plutocratic origin, and even in the State universities, if new resources are wanted to found new chairs, to supply funds for research or publication or what not, it is to the more State-conscious wealthy and not to the State legislature that the appeal is made almost as a matter of course. The common voter, the small individualist has less constructive imagination—is more individualistic, that is, than the big individualist. ”

“ Now, the greatest election ever held in this country is on; the forces have met on three occasions and know each other's methods; they know also that the result of the vote at this election will decide the future of the country—it will continue to be a Republic in fact as in name; or, if the Plutocratic party dominates, the dynasty of the first emperor will be established. ”

“ My conclusion is that public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press as is the case today. This organization I conceive to be in the first instance the task of a political science that has won its proper place as formulator, in advance of real decision, instead of apologist, critic, or reporter after the decision has been made. I try to indicate that the perplexities of government and industry are conspiring to give political science this enormous opportunity to enrich itself and to serve the public. ”

“ While such men represent the views of the masses extra-legal unpopular government will be safe.
Unpopular government in the United States will be secure until our present popular convictions about the science of government are reversed and popular and persistent opinions [Pg 137] prevail that the ability of the electorate to vote intelligently is limited; that the moment the voter is called upon to fill any other than a few offices which wield great power and are therefore conspicuous and important, he becomes politically ignorant, even though he be an unusually intelligent man ”

“ We find the new party approving of the primaries, the initiative, the referendum, and the recall of officers other than judges. These proposals, as we have already analyzed them, hold out no promise of permanently disrupting extra-legal government. It is true the short ballot is advocated, but as yet there seems to be no clear [Pg 131] perception of the connection between the long ballot, the decentralization of governmental power, the political ignorance of the voter even when he is an intelligent man, and the rise and permanent acquisition of governmental power by the extra-legal government. ”