The façade of equality in liberal democratic theory

Liberal democratic theory is the ideological expression of capitalism. Its paramount function is to justify the distribution of property and power which permits a minority of men to exploit and dominate the lives of the majority. A crucial device for carrying out this task is the elaboration of a theory of political equality which maintains the economic foundation of capitalism. But as capitalism is itself an evolving system, so the theory which protects its interests passes through important stages. A fundamental change occurs in the transition from classical liberal theory to its contemporary articulation as political science. For Locke and Mill an egalitarian directive is first abstractly posited and then, through specific modification, withdrawn. For Schumpeter, however, what the classical doctrine would have regarded as the perversion of democracy, is itself made integral to the redefinition of the democratic process. The result of the behavioral restatement is the destruction of the tension which separates ideal imperatives from distorted reality and obfuscates the need and possibility of radical political change.