Jonathan Vincent’s Reviews > The Road to Serfdom > Status Update

This is the point of departure of Carl Schmitt's critique towards parliamentary democracy. And it's interesting to see that both come from an idea of the people as something homogenous capable of A mandate.

Yeah, Hayek doesn't use that term, but he uses the basic concept. For him it's just "something the vast majority of the people want to do." Nothing will ever please 100 percent, but in his opinion if you limit your government only to those things where there's broad agreement, it's fine. But the more government power grows, inevitably it starts affecting more and more things where there's not broad agreement.

This also felt like a very fitting summation of the issues in Europe now... It feels like every wants something to be done, but there's no agreement on what that something should be, which causes a loss of faith in democracy

Yeah that's what I mean, that this conceptions of democracy lead to a sort of "dictatorship of the majority" thus parliamentarism will always be a problem for democracy. And in this understanding when this majority trembles a crisis rises. Not being an agreement is because democracy has been always used as a form of serving capital through the absolute imposition of what the middle class wanted (and what they wanted was never against capitalistic development) but now that the welfare state is collapsing and the middle class begins to be confronted with the misery and pain their normal life created, the majority disappears and new ways of dealing with the world order rise.
It could be said that, the most democratic period is the one that takes democracy to its final stage. The contemporary crisis has an undertone that we've already seen: democracy (diversity) or majority (capital).
The idea of the majority will never lead to a democracy but to Schmitt. How ironic, the fella lived criticising liberalism and yet... They would have all agreed

Tbh I'm not really sure what definition of "democracy" you're using then. I (and Hayek) are using it in the sense of a system that determines actions and leadership via majority rule, which is the usual definition I think.

(Also never read Schmitt, so no idea there.)

Also I'm not so sure the present issues are class-based...a lot of it seems to be cultural, especially around immigration and assimilation. The "something" a good percentage of Europeans want the government to do is get rid of the foreigners.

Oh hey, he just name dropped Schmitt. He is not a fan.

Yes of course majority rule is the main problem always of democracy. Majorities don't exist so a majority rule means a construction through force or propaganda. And of course he disagrees with Schmitt, the same way Schmitt disagrees with him because they have different ways of constructing majorities but they both begin from the presupposition that a majority can exist. Which is why if democracy turns to diversity it'll always end up in a crisis

Nobody would say that USA is a democracy or (even UK( they have systems that always lead to semi stable governments of the majority, but that isn't a democracy

The thing is if democracy is the system lead by the majority a dictatorship accepted by 51% of the population is a democracy (which is what Schmitt defends)