If there is a nearly uncontested basis for legitimate government in the contemporary world, it is goes by the name "democracy." That's a remarkable word we've chosen because for the longest time it was a pejorative and originally it was the name for a form of government that has little resemblance to any today. This book is an historical explanation of how this weird situation came about.

The story begins with the original democracy in Ancient Athens. Unlike their neighbors, Athen's security depended on a citizen navy that drew disproportionately from the poor. The leverage that gave them may be the explanation for how their constitution got the anti-aristocratic reforms that made it democratic. The 10% of the populace who were citizens could win offices by lottery; but practically speaking only the rich could afford a role in this hyper-participatory kind of self-rule.

We are not the inheritors of any part of their institutions. It was all wiped out in political defeat 175 years after it started. What we know about it is mostly from Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides. Commentators called it the rule of betters by their inferiors, a scheme to transfer wealth downward. Democracy becomes mostly a slur.

You see a few dissenters speak out in favor of democracy-like arrangements starting in the 1600s: Spinoza, then later Toland and Milton. Then especially the Levellers with slogans like "No human being comes into the world with a saddle on their back, or any other booted and spurred to ride them." America establishes a form of government that would retrospectively be called democratic, but that shift in interpretation is part of the puzzle here: Madison thought part of the point of republican form of government was "the total exclusion of the people in their collective capacity from any share." Electing people to rule over you was not seen a democracy! Likewise with monarchists in France: the aristocrat D'Argenson wrote in favor of some limited democracy to help the king understand the common good.

Things really change with the French Revolution. France has some war debt that needs to be dealt with, and the ministers of the church and nobility (first and second estates, respectively) are uncooperative. The king tries to break through the log jam by summoning the Estates General. No one really knew how that worked, so parliament had to vote on the arrangements. They decided it would need to involve equal representation for the three estates -- the third estate being commoners. Then things start popping off.

Robespierre is the key figure in the story: more than anyone else he responsible for bringing democracy to life as a possible political allegiance. He was an egalitarian who favored universal franchise, rejecting the distinction between "active citizens" (tax payers, landholders, etc) and "passive citizens" (everyone else). Even so, Robespierre equated democracy with republican form of government. He needed to bring the mayhem of the revolution to a close, and so he explicitly denied the desirability of Athenian-style direct participation of citizens in government.

One way to see the special significance of Robespierre is to contrast him with Babeuf, one of the conspirators who unsuccessfully tried to bring about a second, greater revolution in France. Babeuf deplored the "order of egoism" exemplified by America: equality reduced to recognition, lack of overt political condescension, permitting of economic inequality, emphasis on private interests, Adam Smith. Instead he extolled the "order of equality," which entailed uncompromisingly egalitarian economy. Babeuf's conspiracy came to nothing.

Democratic republics with universal suffrage surprised everyone (other than Babeuf) by showing themselves compatible with the "order of egoism," even helping to keep capitalism on the rails. They granted cheap equality of recognition without redistribution, and somehow that proved enough to prevent popular revolt in many places. The banner of democracy was flown partly due to happenstance during WWII: capitalism was too impersonal to attract allegiance, and democracy (in weaker contemporary sense of popular representation) offered nice contrast with Japan, Germany. When the Soviet Union collapsed, US-style "democracy" was simply all that was left.

Dunn's story strikes an ambivalent note at the end. He takes seriously leftist critiques of contemporary so-called democracy as basically serving capital, permitting just so much economic redistribution as needed to forestall revolt. Representative democracy is not self-rule, really; not in the Athenian sense of popular participation, and not in the Babeufian sense of egalitarianism. The best that can be said for it is that it provides a modicum of political accountability, allowing us to throw the more egregious rascals out of office.

I'm not entirely sure how to evaluate this book. Certainly the first three chapters are interesting history, even if the telling is a little ornate for my taste. The fourth chapter, bringing us up to the present, is insightful on wartime propaganda; but it delves into more evaluative and speculative matters like the (in his view) poor prospects for deliberative democracy and leftist attempts to democratize the family. I don't mind a bracing splash of cold water and would be interested to read Dunn's criticisms at greater length elsewhere; they just didn't belong at the end of this book.
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