Democracy: A Brief Overview

Dilip Hota

[Dilip Hota (79) passed away on August 12, 2025. Meanwhile, his friends and political co-workers organised two memorial meetings to remember his political activities. He wrote this article for Nayee Umeed (New Hope) journal, its first issue is only published in April 2025. Dilip was keenly associated with the efforts of OP Sinha and Naresh Kumar and others from Lucknow.]

In Homeric times, a great number of City-States had emerged in Asia Minor and Mediterranean region. One such [region?] was Attica in Greece, with Athens as its capital. Athens was not large, but it contained a growing population of artisans and skilled craftsmen who desired to dispose of their produce abroad. Also, gradually it was found more profitable to cultivate vines and olive, rather than grain and import grain. This form of cultivation required more capital and small farmers got into debt. Like other Greek states, Attica had been a monarchy but the Government fell into the hands of Aristocracy which oppressed both the county farmers and urban artisans. A compromise in this direction of democracy was effected by Solon, himself an aristocrat, in order to contain the rising popular discontent.

Almost contemporaneously in the Buddhist Sangh (monastery), one finds a parallel example of self- rule/ management, albeit of a limited and less political kind. These institutions were meticulous in their demands for their members to gather together in order to reach unanimous decisions of matters of general concern resorting to majority vote, only when consensus broke down. Such a radical practice was perhaps possible because of Buddha himself earlier belonging to a tribal confederation of chieftains which used to elect their kings (the head of the oligarchy) through such process.

Democracy comes from the Greek term—Demokratia. Demos—people; kratos—rule. In Athens, women (of all class) and slaves were not counted as Demos (people), and only 6% of the Athenians constituted as people eligible to rule. In other words, the Athenian democracy omitted most Athenians.

It is evident that everything depends on the senses given to people and to rule. The ascribed meaning in democracy, ranging from “obeying no master, but the law” (Solon) to “of the people, by the people, for the people,” including “a democracy is a state where the freemen and the poor, being in the majority are invested with the power of the state.”(Aristotle).

“Rule” was no less ambiguous whether democracy was a state in which all had the right to and actually did rule, or a state in which there is rule by the representatives, including elected representatives. It was in the former sense that the first political constitution that of Rhode Island in 1641 (America) had understood “popular government” (democracy) –”it is in the power of body of freemen orders”, assembled or a major parts of them, “to make or constitute just laws, by which they will be regulated and the deputies from among themselves, such ministers as such ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between man and man.”

As has been mentioned, interaction of the ‘people’ is as equally vital as in defining democracy. There is some significant history in various attempts to ‘limit the people’, to certain quantified groups: freemen, owners of properties, the wise, white men and so on. Where democracy was defined by a process of election, such limited constituency is claimed to be fully ‘democratic’: the mode of choosing representatives is taken [to be] more important than the ‘proportion of the people’, who have any part in this. The development of democracy is traced through institution using this mode, rather than through the relation between all people and form of government. This is the orthodox interpretation of account for the development of British democracy—where the democracy is said to have ‘been extended stage by stage.’ What is clearly meant by this is the right to vote for the representatives, rather than the sense of popular power. This distinction became critical in the period of French revolution. Burke was expressing an orthodox view when he wrote that ‘a perfect democracy’ was the ‘most shameless thing in the world’, for democracy was ‘taken to be uncontrolled’ popular power under which, among other things, substantial paupers would be suppressed or oppressed. From this point, two other more modern meanings of democracy can be seen to diverge.

In the socialist tradition, democracy continues to mean popular power, a state in which the interest of the majority people were paramount and in which these interests were practically exercised and controlled by the majority. In the liberal tradition (bourgeois) democracy, meant open election and political argument and certain conditions (such as democratic rights, free speech and free press) which maintained the openness of the election and political arguments and debates. These two conceptions, in their extreme forms, now confront each other as enemies.

If the predominant criterion is popular power in the popular interest, other criteria as often taken as secondary (as in the people’s democracies) as their emphasis were specialised to ‘capitalist democracy’ or ‘bourgeois democracy’. If the predominant criteria are election and free speech, other criteria are seen as secondary or are rejected as attempt to exercise popular power in the popular interests, for example, a General Strike is described as anti-democratic, since the democracy has already been assured by other means; to claim economic EQUALITY as the essence of democracy is seen as ‘leading to chaos’ or ‘totalitarian democracy’, or government by ‘trade union’.

There are two further senses to ‘democracy’ as an adjective. This is the use of ‘democratic’ to describe the conditions of open arguments, without necessary reference to elections or power. In one, freedom of speech and the assembly are the democratic rights, sufficient in themselves, without reference to the institutions or character of political power. This sense is derived for the liberal bourgeoisie which often opposes sustained democratic activities. There is also a derived sense of class reference; to be democratic, to have democratic feelings is to be unconscious of class distinctions or concerns, to disregard or overcome them in everyday behaviour; acting as if all people are equal and deserved equal respect, whether it is really so or not.

Thus a man might be in ‘natural’ terms with everyone he met and simply further believe in free speech and free assembly, yet only following only in these senses could for example, oppose universal suffrage.

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Vol 58, No. 18, Oct 26 - Nov 1, 2025