Problems with Democratic Societies, Explained By Joseph Schumpeter
The Austrian economist’s 1943 thought experiment shares parallels with Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance, published in The Open Society in 1945.
In his 1943 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter explains several problems with democratic political systems. Schumpeter questions and criticises previously held assumptions about democracy once popular in political economy and political psychology, notably utilitarianism and rational choice theory.
He argues that contrary to the ideas of these schools of thought, humans are not rational utility maximisers, and that people make volitional and emotional political decisions as often as they make cold, rational ones.
Tribal thinking is often whipped up into frenzy by the spread of public propaganda.
Because people are susceptible to over-emotional, uncritical, affective thinking which is vulnerable to the problems of prejudice and herd psychology, Schumpeter argues that public opinion can be manufactured and manipulated by propaganda machines operated by careerist party politicians and their public relations henchpeople.
Although Schumpeter wrote during the Second World War, these are features of modern…
