"Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less"
About this Quote
Herbert Croly draws a line that both welcomes institutional complexity and defends popular sovereignty as the nonnegotiable core. Democracy, he argues, can aspire to richer purposes than a bare tally of votes; it can cultivate educated opinion, protect minority rights, and build social conditions that enable equal citizenship. But whatever refinements a society adds, they cannot come at the price of diminishing the people’s ultimate authority. Popular government is the floor, not the ceiling.
The phrasing reflects Progressive Era battles over how an industrial republic should govern itself. Croly, a founder of The New Republic and author of The Promise of American Life, sought a synthesis he famously described as Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends: strong national administration and expert knowledge used to secure genuinely democratic outcomes. He watched courts in the Lochner era strike down labor and social legislation, and he saw corporate power and party machines warp representation. Against both laissez-faire constitutionalism and plutocratic influence, he insisted that democratic legitimacy could not be outsourced to judges, tycoons, or technicians who claimed to know better than the electorate.
At the same time, he was wary of reducing democracy to a plebiscite. A mature democracy requires organized intelligence, civic education, and institutions capable of translating diffuse public will into coherent policy. Direct election of senators, primaries, regulatory bodies, and social reforms could deepen self-government, provided they enhanced rather than neutralized popular control. The key test was whether institutions channeled and enlarged democratic power or insulated decision makers from it.
The statement remains a pointed caution. Appeals to expertise, efficiency, constitutional abstraction, or market inevitability may add something to democratic practice, but they cannot justify a system where the people’s capacity to decide and revise public policy is curtailed. Democratic government may grow more complex, more protective, more deliberative. It cannot become less popular and still deserve the name.
The phrasing reflects Progressive Era battles over how an industrial republic should govern itself. Croly, a founder of The New Republic and author of The Promise of American Life, sought a synthesis he famously described as Hamiltonian means to Jeffersonian ends: strong national administration and expert knowledge used to secure genuinely democratic outcomes. He watched courts in the Lochner era strike down labor and social legislation, and he saw corporate power and party machines warp representation. Against both laissez-faire constitutionalism and plutocratic influence, he insisted that democratic legitimacy could not be outsourced to judges, tycoons, or technicians who claimed to know better than the electorate.
At the same time, he was wary of reducing democracy to a plebiscite. A mature democracy requires organized intelligence, civic education, and institutions capable of translating diffuse public will into coherent policy. Direct election of senators, primaries, regulatory bodies, and social reforms could deepen self-government, provided they enhanced rather than neutralized popular control. The key test was whether institutions channeled and enlarged democratic power or insulated decision makers from it.
The statement remains a pointed caution. Appeals to expertise, efficiency, constitutional abstraction, or market inevitability may add something to democratic practice, but they cannot justify a system where the people’s capacity to decide and revise public policy is curtailed. Democratic government may grow more complex, more protective, more deliberative. It cannot become less popular and still deserve the name.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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