The Soviet Union, of course, called themselves a democracy. But they didn't properly understand the notion. They thought they had to maintain the enormous KGB apparatus and the gulag system to keep the people in fear. Their clumsy efforts made it evident to their people that they weren't free. But if you can instead delude people into believing that they may choose their jailors (as de Toqueville said, although you would not want them to think of their jailors as jailors), then they can be controlled much more cheaply. They will be much more productive into the bargain under a system where they have the illusion of free enterprize.
Democracy is the cheapest means of oppression.The Soviet Union, of course, called themselves a democracy. But they didn't properly understand the notion. They thought they had to maintain the enormous KGB apparatus and the gulag system to keep the people in fear. Their clumsy efforts made it evident to their people that they weren't free. But if you can instead delude people into believing that they may choose their jailors (as de Toqueville said, although you would not want them to think of their jailors as jailors), then they can be controlled much more cheaply. They will be much more productive into the bargain under a system where they have the illusion of free enterprize.
There is such a thing as totalitarian democracy, or soft totalitarianism, as some have called it. This became readily apparent to me when as a history student I began reading 19th century and early 20th century literature and political discussions in various popular journals and in more elevated theoretical magazines. The comparison between what was permissable for public discussion then and now is quite astounding.
We really do not have as much freedom of thought now as we like to kid ourselves - if you really want to think "outside the box" in public today, you are going to have to do it in very obscure corners of the internet under an assumed name, in order to avoid the swarms of self-appointed censors who believe it is their democratic duty to hammer-down all elitist upsticking nails until they are level with all the rest of the nails. In other words, there is a set of conformist assumptions we are expected to adhere to, and the penalties for deviating from them in public are getting more severe.
"Soft totalitarianism" means everyone is everyone else's policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, and jailer. We have not yet gotten to the point where simply being accused of being "anti-American" will get one fired from one's job or kicked out of university, but we are getting close. God help you if you are on one of the Fed's lists if you are planning on an airline trip anytime soon, for instance.
The problem is that most people are sheep, and are quite comfortable with sham "democracy" vote-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils. Most people think they are intelligent and free-thinking, without ever really ever challenging themselves or their own beliefs to see what it is they really are and what it is they really believe. It is so much easier to let others tell one what one is and what one believes; today one tends to rely on the TV for such "guidance".
And that points to another problem: since most people gain their sense of reality from TV and other mass media, the real controllers of the state in a "democracy" is not "the people" but rather those who control the media. If I can control what you see on TV, then I really don't need to worry about who wins what election or which party happens to hold a majority in Congress. I can pretty much dictate the agenda to whoever is "elected".
Shortly before the working man got the franchise in Britain, an observer (whose name escapes me) remarked that "the people are now our masters, therefor we must educate the people"....thus leading to the system of mandatory, "free", public education which was already common in America but not yet in Britain. It was understood that if you could mold young minds, you could pretty much regiment them into the "democratic" way of thinking long before they had a chance to "vote".
With public indoctrination aka "education" and a system of mass-entertainment via TV and other media run by people with relatively similar views and interests, you get a "democracy" where any kind of honest public debate is cut off and curtailed, and thus many things are driven underground and dismissed as "extremist" which should be matters for honest public discussion if one is to have anything resembling either a republic or a true democracy.
If one's working definition of a democracy is honest public debate of public policy and informed voting based on same, without the presence of private interests capable of stifling this debate, then clearly we are not living in a real democracy. If democracy, however, is any system of government which derives its legitimacy from "the will of the people", then we are living in a democracy, but so too were the people in Nazi Germany or the USSR.
Mere voting for two or more political parties does not a democracy make.
I suggest there are two very close, overlapping, definitions of democracy, which nevertheless remain seperate: the idealist definition of democracy where people really do debate public policy honestly and openly without being swayed by special interest bribes and without being manipulated by TV imagery...and, on the other, the practical definition of democracy as the mere consent of the governed which gives carte blanche to the state the power to do whatever it desires, provided it can somehow convince enough people that it is acting as the true representative of the "will of the people/nation".
In practice, based on history, we must conclude that one must move quickly from the first, idealist, definition of democracy, to the second, more realistic, more practical definition of democracy. There is perhaps a very large grey area of transition between the two, but we are clearly at the end of the grey spectrum and moving into "definition two" territory.