“Actually Existing Democracy,” as we might describe the bourgeois representative governments pervasive throughout the Global North, justifies its flaws on the basis that it is the best of a series of bad options, a lack of enthusiasm in its defense which barely conceals that there must obviously be some superior method of governance. We have seen, in the past few years, an uptick in reactionary arguments for the dissolution of democracy in favor of aristocratic rule. These arguments vary in their quality, so for our purposes we shall draw upon those which are both the strongest and most widely palatable, the critique of democracy rooted in classical philosophy made by Plato in The Republic and Aristotle in Politics. Where necessary, to supplement these classical critiques of democracy and to expand further on them, we shall supplement with the arguments articulated by the less acclaimed Hans-Hermann Hoppe in Democracy: The God That Failed. While Hoppe lacks the ideological prestige which the Socratic philosophers possess, he is the primary influence on the anti-democratic stance of most contemporary reactionaries and his views shall be addressed accordingly.
The central argument for aristocracy in favor of what we would call democracy from Plato and Aristotle can be summarized into two points. The first point for aristocracy in favor of a democracy is that those who come into power under democracy are those who seek power out. A democratic leader does not need to be the best possible leader in order to achieve their position of authority, and rarely are in relation to the whole polity. Instead a politician in a democracy obtains power by their ability to manipulate their image and popularity. As Plato describes it, the supposed freedom of democracy is nothing more than a breeding ground for tyrants - power is granted to those who actively and most ruthlessly seek it. The populace, ignorant and easily manipulated by shallow promises of short term material gains, are rallied by demagogues to bring them into office, and in turn these demagogues use these positions to entrench themselves and purge all that is virtuous from the state in order to retain their power. Therefore not only was democracy as a system of government imbued with inherent flaws, but it was incapable of maintaining even its supposed virtues of exercising popular control over decision-making, instead ceding this authority to charismatic manipulators who make convenient promises to secure their own position - it leads to a kakistocracy, a government by those who are least suited to rule and anathema to the common good.
Aristotle is in agreement in this view of democracy as a degraded form of governance, the degeneration of constitutional government. Specifically, the representative democracy of our time is a mix of two degenerated forms of government, classical democracy and oligarchy. For Aristotle and the Hellenic world, the term democracy was specifically a government where all citizens draw lots to determine who composes the government, and this representative body serves as the highest body of authority. By contrast, an oligarchy is more similar to how modern republics work where representatives are selected rather than determined by sortition, though in order to vote these citizens would have to possess sufficient property in order to meet electoral qualifications. In both cases, when there is not a sovereign source of authority above them, the electorate becomes a malleable instrument through which charismatic figures can take power. Aristotle makes the analogy of how in a degenerated monarchy, where the ruler has not been properly molded as a righteous prince and has instead become a tyrant, he is easily swayed by flatterers who can obtain any favor from him. This is the relationship of the demagogue to the populace in a democracy or the electorate in an oligarchy, an interloper who can take advantage of the weak character of the would-be sovereign to usurp their authority and turn it towards self-serving ends contrary to the common good.
The second point of contention contrasts this flaw of democracy with the central virtue of aristocracy: an aristocrat is prepared for leadership from birth, trained and educated with all the skills which are necessary to take on a position of authority. As articulated in The Republic, to be entrusted with authority, one must be able to distinguish that which benefits the polity from that which would harm it and administer accordingly. In order for one to reliably possess and seek out such knowledge, to find the truth rather than what is comforting or desired, they must necessarily be a lover of learning, that is to say a lover of wisdom or a philosopher, hence the concept of the “Philosopher King” as Plato’s ideal ruler. Such prospective rulers must be those who will only do what is best for their polity and never put their personal interests above that of the republic. These selected guardians would be educated from a young age to serve as leaders and each of them monitored to discern whether they possess the necessary virtues to take on this position. Those found qualified and righteous would then be raised and prepared as rulers who would strive for the common good of the polity. Similarly, for Aristotle this kind of structure where political authority was conferred only to those trained to be virtuous rulers is found in both monarchy, the rule by a single virtuous prince who is educated and prepared from youth to serve in his role as monarch, and aristocracy, the rule by a select class of the virtuous who are appointed to their office from among a class of the virtuously educated, provided in each case that these systems of government are safeguarded from degradation into their corrupted counterparts, tyranny and oligarchy.
To supplement these arguments from classical sources, let us consider the problem of short-sightedness. While not inherent to democracy, term limits are a common attribute of representative democratic republics, in contrast to the lifetime rule entailed by traditional aristocracy. Our classical sources are more divided on the subject of term limits: no such limitation is mentioned for Plato’s proposed ruling class, while Aristotle favored their usage to restrain a polity’s leadership from corruption and abuse of office. Nonetheless, let us take into consideration Hoppe’s arguments as to the destructive present-mindedness of democratic republics, which he contrasts with the long-termist perspectives on properly managed ancien regimes. Hoppe discusses how since under feudalism the prince was bound to his domain for life, this compelled prudent and temperate administration oriented towards future interests beyond mere immediate gain. By contrast, the elected politician is only a temporary caretaker of the polity and as such their thought is naturally oriented towards the present and the short term. Immediate appeasement and gratification are valued over what will ensure lasting prosperity.
Now that we have established the case against democracy and for aristocracy, let us turn this argument on its head. The critiques articulated by Plato and Aristotle are worth confronting, and even Hoppe’s points about democratic short-sightedness should be addressed. There is no need to sacrifice the merits of democracy to obtain the virtues of an aristocracy when both can be synthesized together to produce a Universal Aristocratic Republic. The foundation for such a society is found with its education system. As it currently exists, education both public and private is directed towards preparing children to serve, obey, and follow rather than to lead and administer. The proposal we make is that every child should receive an aristocrat’s education. After all, in The Republic, Plato emphasizes that it is not possible to cultivate the ideal philosopher kings of their ideal city-states without them having undergone education for exactly such a purpose and demonstrating the required virtue in the process, and that these children can come from any place in society. As such, it is the obligation of a polity to educate every child on the assumption that they may serve as leader one day, a universalized process without regard to their parentage. As to this point, Aristotle makes the point we’re gesturing at quite explicit in Politics:
“The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state. Clearly then in the same manner, and by the same means through which a man becomes truly good… the same education and the same habits will be found to make a good man and a man fit to be a statesman or a king.”
An educational system which sets out from the beginning to prepare each child as an aristocrat as if they were the great princes of ancien regimes will serve as the basis for our republic, transforming the old privilege into a universal good to ensure they are prepared to administer the state in adulthood. Of course, in the transitional period required to establish such a republic, it will be necessary to provide such an education to adults as well so as to integrate them into the polity, a task which is easier in some respects and more difficult in others, and even when generations pass and the aristocratic education system has fully taken root in the republic, it will be necessary to continue providing such adult educations to outsiders seeking a place in the polity. Like all skills, virtue as a citizen and statesman can be obtained through training and practice. Obviously this education system cannot be the one that exists but with its content modified, and the radical transformations of pedagogy that this would have to entail would require its own essay to explore, but suffice it to say for now that such a system, beyond merely instructing its students what to think, would have to take on the task of demonstrating how to think, as an aristocratic citizen and statesman.
So, if everyone in this republic is educated and prepared as an aristocrat, who then should be chosen to lead? Even if every citizen is trained to be a potential philosopher-king in their own right, we still need to address the problems of demagoguery and blind ambition. The solution to these issues, which circumvents the matter of power-seeking, is that from among those qualified through the completion of their aristocratic education the republic’s representatives will be chosen by sortition - a practice by which officials are selected by lottery. The system of aristocratic education should ensure that any of those selected at random should be prepared, and while this is not a bar to the ambitious taking power, neither is the structure of hereditary monarchy or aristocracy, but either way it prevents the most power-seeking and self-serving from being those who exclusively come to power by detaching the allotment of authority from striving for such positions. In the interest of avoiding the shortsightedness found in bourgeois democratic representatives, these aristocratic representatives shall serve without any term limit: though they may step down because of a loss of competent faculties or they have reached a retirement age, it should be expected that they serve for a minimum period of time to ensure that they think in the long term. The governing body then shall be an aristocratic council whose members are chosen by chance alone and who shall serve for as long as they are competent.
However, since we are dealing with a body chosen through lot, there should be mechanisms through which we can account for members of the council who, despite their training, conduct themselves less than virtuously. In this regard we have a second, larger governing body which can exercise power over the council: the aristocratic masses, prepared by education for rule as philosopher kings, shall have two instruments of political discipline. The first, imparted by their instruction in how to recognize proper and improper governance, shall be the right of recall at-will for any council member who fails to live up to the standards of a true aristocrat, with annual opportunities for review. A republic cannot truly be aristocratic if it allows continued governance by those who fall short in virtue, so in order to preserve its aristocratic nature, this means of purging those administrators who fall short of their lofty expectations becomes necessary. The second, imparted by their instruction in recognizing the common good, shall be the right to impose mandates for the enactment of desired policies on the council. The members of the council are well instructed, but they are not omniscient and their knowledge of specific matters may be limited. By contrast, the aristocratic masses span every part of the polity and as such can serve as a massive network of information to bring the most pressing issues to the attention of the council and compel them to take action, even as the administrative specifics of the policy are left for the council to determine. With these two instruments, the powers of the council are constrained from abuse and their direction towards the common good is secured.
This is by no means an exhaustive outline of the structure of the ideal republic. However, what this is intended to demonstrate is that the contradiction between democracy, the pole of mass rule and popular authority, and aristocracy, the pole of virtuous rule and the educated authority, is not an irreconcilable one. The flaws and failures of bourgeois democracy are readily apparent, but addressing them does not mean that we should revert to the form of governance which gave rise to bourgeois democracy because of its own flaws. We must aim to transcend the old models instead, drawing the lessons of ancient traditions of the past in order to create a future-minded new republic of virtue: we will overturn democracy as we know it not by the ascension of an aristocracy over the masses, but by making the masses into aristocrats.