In addition to basic principles, democracy has certain conditions without which it cannot be even minimally nourished or sustained. Democracy does not require absolute social and economic equality, but it cannot withstand large and fixed extremes of wealth and poverty, because these undermine the work of legislating in common. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau insisted, when such extremes prevail, shared values vanish, and class powers and resentments become decisive, making the act of combining to rule together impossible."
Undoing the Demos (2015, p.170)
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«democracy requires that the people authorise their own laws and major political decisions, whether directly or through elected representatives, and also that they share modestly in other, nonlegal powers governing their lives. Anything less means the people do not rule.»
Oh wow so much liberal wykehamism in so few lines.
«shared values vanish, and class powers and resentments become decisive, making the act of combining to rule together impossible.»
Here we go well beyond wykehamism into delusional kumbaya "communitarianism".
The traditional Liberal understanding of "liberal democracy" IIRC is different:
* Politics is about irreconcilable conflicts of interest: winners win, losers lose.
* *Representative* democracy is practical at some scale, "democracy" perhaps only at Appenzell scale.
* Representative democracy has the primary advantage of turning physical fights over conflicts of interests among ruling elite factions (e.g. kipper thatcherites vs. whig thatcherites) and their trusties into propaganda fights, words instead of swords.
* The secondary advantage is that it gives the ruled a chance to reject the ruling elite faction they object to most (smarmy thatcherite Sunak vs. managerial thatcherite Starmer), and this reduces the occurrences of physical riots and rebellions.
Both advantages depend on two vital "details"
* That there be at least representation for all main interest groups.
* That there be a real change of change in the governing ruling elite faction, winners and losers must at least occasionally change.
The problem with inequality etc. is that it makes those two "details" very weak, because the interest groups that have the most power and money end up the only ones with effective representation and winning every time, realizing Thatcher's command "There Is No Alternative".
Many years ago Gore-Vidal of the ancient Gore political dynasty, and thus an insider even if not a practising politician, wrote realistically as to the USA:
«There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party [...] and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently [...] and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.»
Thanks to Mandelson and his followers (Blair, Starmer) that describes the UK too. It is transparent that the factions of the thatcherite ruling elite in the UK think that representative democracy in UK does not need to include all interest groups or offer real alternation in government, just change as to which thatcherite personality fronts the political system, as non-thatcherite interest groups are so weak that they don't deserve representation, never mind a chance at winning, and they are too weak to switch to physical fight except for "letting off steam" riots that the thatcherites consider just a cost of doing business.
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