GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

792 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THB MODERNS
THAT UNINSTRUCTEDNESS is NO BAR TO SELF-
GOVERNMENT. The acceptance of this principle
carries with it an answer to some of the criticisms of
democracy summarized in the preceding chapter* (a) 'The
electorate is stupid, ignorant, and uninterested/ say the
critics,
*
therefore, it is not fit to govern
itself. What it
needs is not self-government, but leadership.' But the
man in the street is interested, and interested of necessity
by virtue of the effects upon him of legislative enactments.
He may not belong to a political party, read the political
news, listen to political speeches, or trouble to cast his
vote; but because what the Government decides may,
and probably will, affect him profoundly, determining
whether anything, and if so how much, will stand between
him and starvation if he loses his employment, whether
and when his body may be dismembered by a shell or
disembowelled by a bullet and by whose shell and by
whose bullet if it decides to go to war, it is right that
he should be given a chance to form the State's policy
by his vote and to express his view of it when formed.
He may not avail himself of the chance that is a matter
which concerns himself; but that he should be given it,
however apparently "uninterested" he may appear, is
a plain deduction from the principle.
THAT EXPERTS ARE NOT ENTITLED BY VIRTUE
OF THEIR EXPERTNESS TO GOVERN. (A) It IS
often said that government, being complex, should be
entrusted to experts. Experts may be of two kinds: men
who, in comparison with ordinary men are ponciied of
(i) superior knowledge; (it) a general unspecified superiority.
(i) In support government by experts the critic of
democracy points out that the man who possesses superior
knowledge knows what ought to be done and how to do
it on occasions when the man in the street and the Member
of Parliament whom the man in the street elects do not.
The implication is that, since the expert knows what ought
to be done, the expert should have power of decision. The