When we the people have constituted a democracy, then we the people will be free to
solve whatever problem a democracy might encounter or engender.  I am satisfied with
this; those who oppose democracy are not satisfied with this.  It is up to anti-democrats 
to explain why this does not satisfy them.  And, it is also up to anti-democrats to explain
how past facts in evidence can have any decisive determination on what will happen in
some future democratic experiment. It is up to them to explain why they believe that human
beings, working together and thinking together, cannot solve whatever problems they
meet with along the way.





There are problems that a future democracy must encounter or engender.  But, those who,
today, advocate democracy cannot possibly solve the expected future problems that will
emerge from within social-democratic contextual relationships.  We democrats who live
within the present context cannot possibly solve the expected future problems which may
or will appear from within another context of relationships -- i.e., from within a context that
is, or that will be, very different from our own existing context.

If those who advocate democracy address any problem-solving practice, the ideological
anti-democrats can answer with a glib reply -- e.g., that a majority can vote against the
suggested practice. If a democrat addresses why he or she believes that an enlightened
and self-interested democratic majority might not vote to victimize a dissident minority,
for example, then a pat answer from an anti-democrat could be that a majority of the
population will not act like responsible and civilized citizens ought to act in a credible and
virtuous republic. What anti-democrats are unwilling to agree with is the pro-democratic
assertion that enough bad citizens in a democracy is just as destructive of democracy as
are bad people in any other possible form of society.  Enough bad people in a capitalist
régime will destroy a capitalist régime; and so, yes, enough bad people in a democratic
arrangement will destoy a democratic arrangement.  However, in capitalist régimes, as
in most social systems, the immense majority of the population are good and decent
human beings.  There is no reason to assume that in a democratic arrangement, a very
large majority of the population will have become bad people.

Bad people will not be free for very long.





"Marxism is to be understood as an historical phenomenon, as against the now standard
analysis of Marxian theory in terms of its compatibility with modern thought. Not that such
investigations are without value -- few scholarly endeavours are wholly useless, and a
sustained indictment of 'historicism', however unconvincing to non-empiricists, may at
any rate help to clarify the issue."
-- George Lichtheim