L.A. Liberty

On the Illegitimacy of Democracy

Well, yes, I may have a problem with that (not that I would necessarily interfere, were I an outsider…).

Democracy as a decision-making process can be a legitimate way for group decisions to be made in certain circumstances. For example, a voluntary association - a club, a business, a commune, etc. - may make certain internal organizational decisions based on popular vote or a democratic vote of a chosen few such as a board of directors.

And such uses of the democratic process are valid for the very ways in which they differ from political democracy.

First, agreement is implicit. When one joins a club or invests in a business or moves to a commune, the relinquishing of some of that decision-making power is contractual. No one was forced to join. No one’s membership or participation was required simply for existing, and disassociation/non-participation does not involve having one’s property, liberty, and life violated (fees, taxes, jail, deportation, leaving the country). Unlike living within the arbitrary borders of a government’s declared geography, the individual has a choice as to whether or not to participate and cede such decisions to a majority.

Second, and related to the first, the initial agreement is unanimous. You cannot establish democratic decision-making through a democratic process. In other words, for a group to legitimately use a democratic process to make a decision, all parties must first agree to do so unanimously. So when you say “a country prefers to be a democracy,” such preference must be made by all those who are involved. After all, what is a “country” but a group of individuals (or, less legitimate still, a circumlocution for a government that lords over said individuals)? And, as such, any individual who objects - or, more precisely, does not consent - cannot be bound by the desires of others against his will.

Third, and also related to the first two, only those who agree to participate are bound by the policies of participation: subsequent generations are not automatically beholden to the decisions of whichever ancestor agreed to democratic terms. Everyone who agreed to the creation of the “United States of America” is long dead, yet somehow we are all tied to not only their constructs but the ensuing (and, due to their internal incongruity, even less legitimate) agreements and constructs of later generations. (Which is putting aside the fact that even at the creation of the United States, there were multitudes who not only objected but didn’t even have a say in the matter - women, slaves, natives, among others.)

Fourth, none of the decisions may violate self-ownership in areas that were not specifically surrendered - and even in those cases there must be a just way for consent to be withdrawn. In other words, an individual’s rights and free will may not be violated through a democratic process. Although people may certainly turn over their claims on property or speech or association or whatever if they so wish - they, perhaps through some (again) explicitly agreed-upon penalty or compensation for breach of contract, retain their ability to reclaim use of such rights. As I analyzed in my post on “Alienable Rights”: while one’s ownership is absolute to the point in which any part of one’s self may be sold, traded, gifted, or destroyed so long as such an action does not violate another’s self-ownership, “the nature of the will [is] such that it can only exist in the absolute present and thus no one can voluntarily forsake a future consideration with regards to life and liberty for a past one.”

So, as I stated a few days ago:

Why is “democracy” legitimate? Subset A has more numbers than Subset B or Subset C, ergo all must abide by the wishes of Subset A? That’s tyranny of the majority. That’s a lynch mob. That’s, as the old adage with the unknown originator goes, two wolves and a lamb deciding on what’s for dinner. There is no minority smaller than the individual, and no majority can usurp the individual’s fundamental claims to his self-ownership, his rights to life, liberty, and property.

Political democracy, then, is absolutely illegitimate: how individuals wish to live their lives should not be subject to majority opinion. And it would be majority opinion in the best of cases. Often, voter turnout is such that even Subsets A, B, and C add up to far less than the total affected population. Democracy, as Hoppe explained, “has nothing to do with freedom.”