Does Democracy Equal Freedom?

In response to this post on mixed economies and mixed constitutions, someone asked me: “What is that feature defining a good constitution, if not the degree to which that government is democratic itself?”

I would say this feature is the value of freedom, not democracy as such.

Pure democracy does not equal freedom. If the free speech of a Socrates starts to get on the nerves of the majority, a democracy can simply decide to bump Socrates off, as in fact happened. In order to ensure as much freedom as possible – in order to ensure that even ugly, potbellied Socrates with his unnerving questions about the definition of words can freely walk around the Agora and talk as much as he wants – one needs to have non-democratic safeguards within a democratic system. As Rosa Luxemburg said, “Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit der Andersdenken” (“Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently.”)

But not only individuals may lose their freedom in a democracy, a democracy may actually take away everyone’s freedom by terminating itself. It can vote in a dictator. This happened in the German democracy prior to Hitler, and for this reason the new German democracy after the war tried to build in safeguards that would make it much harder for the democracy to terminate itself.

Something similar may be said about the United States. Since the Founding Fathers valued freedom, they recognized that a pure democracy would not be the best vehicle for ensuring freedom. Hence such extremely non-democratic institutions as the Supreme Court.

Not maximum efficiency in decision making nor stability as such, but as much long-term freedom for as many people as possible – this is the mark of a good constitution. To believe this, however, one obviously needs to value freedom. Implicit in the question of what makes up a “good” constitution is the question of what we value. Do we value individual freedom? Then a good constitution is that which promotes freedom and equal opportunities (=justice). Do we value unity? Then a good constitution is that which promotes conformity with the polis.

And what constitutes a good economy? Well, what do we value? Material prosperity, freedom, human happiness, the happiness of the many non-human sentient animals on this planet …?