Does the very concept of democracy entail that democracy cannot honour the values which democrats want
The terms ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, and ‘equality’ are often used together, sometimes even as though they were interchangeable, often in political rhetoric, and without any real thought about what each one actually mean. It is often just assumed that they are compatible, and that democracy naturally leads to freedom and equality. ... No form of democracy can lead to absolute freedom and equality, although certain forms claim that they can lead to varying amounts of each. The first problem with analysing whether the concept of democracy can bring about freedom and equality, is trying to decide upon the meaning of freedom and equality. Like democracy, both of these concepts can be broken down into sub-categories, such as positive and negative freedom, as well as equality of rights, and equality of opportunity, each of which has hugely different implications, and therefore must be considered separately. ... What most forms of democracy therefore try to achieve, is the maximum possible amount of one or both, as is deemed to be important. The classical conception of liberty, what might be called negative liberty, is the main aim of liberal democracy, which promotes individual rights above everything else, these include the rights to freedom of assembly, religion, forming political parties, and pretty much anything that is regarded as a private act. This comes from the recognition, that direct democracy and liberty are not compatible due to what Mill describes as the ‘tyranny of the majority’, the idea of this is that in a democracy, the majority acts basically as a dictator, dictating its will upon the minority, therefore the minority is never free, but oppressed. ... Mill proposes that liberty should stretch as far as any act that does not harm other people, only when act causes harm to others does the state have the right to intrude. ... Most forms of liberal democracy also seek to bring about a certain amount of equality, with the ideas of ‘one man one vote’, and that everyone has equal rights, although there is no concept of equality of opportunity, as this is seen as infringing on peoples rights and hence on their liberty. ... In these ways, liberal democracy does seem, in theory, to provide a certain amount of freedom and equality, however the concepts of freedom and equality contained within it are very limited. The liberty of liberal democracy is extremely negative: if people are free to do whatever they want short of harming people, then surely they are free to oppress people in certain ways, especially in business, and also in home life. ... Also, the classical feminist critique of liberal democracy, is that it allows men to oppress women, by saying that what they do in their private life is of no concern to the state. ... This also brings us to another problem: that of how to reconcile democracy and a seemingly dictatorial constitution. ... What if the people want to vote for a government that will give them welfare by taxing the rich? If there is a liberty-ensuring constitution in place, then it cannot be democratic, because it is severely limiting the power of people to decide upon their own government. The Marxist critique of liberal democracy centres on a different concept of freedom, Marxists argue that the main mistake made by liberal democrats is that of assuming that people are ontologically individual. Instead, it is argued, that people are, at least partially, a result of their society; from the moment they are born they live in society, they are educated by there parents, and perhaps by the state, and everything they learn, they learn in the context of a liberal democracy. So even if everyone has the right to vote for they want, they still are not free, because they are choosing with a false consciousness, conditioned by society, they do not know what they really want beneath the things that society has told them they want.