Karl Loewenstein, Max Lerner, and militant democracy: an appeal to ‘strong democracy’

ABSTRACT

In the 1930s Loewenstein responded to the ease with which the Nazi Party rose to power within parliamentary democracy. In America Lerner echoed Loewenstein’s call for a ‘militant democracy’, but identified a different ‘enemy within’ – rogue capitalist interests. Loewenstein’s response to populism was an ‘authoritarian democracy’, whereas Lerner wished to embrace the people in a public engagement. This paper seeks a middle path towards a conception of democracy that avoids the vicissitudes of transient majorities without yielding the ground to either transient or entrenched minorities. In its modern guise of ‘neoliberalism’, corporate capitalism has made inroads into the sensibilities of democrats, and needs to be confronted by a notion of ‘strong democracy’ expressed through the engagement of whole populations.

1930年代，罗文斯坦对纳粹党在议会民主体制中的轻松上台进行了思考。美国的楞纳则响应了罗文斯坦对“军事民主”的呼吁，但它指出了另一个“内部的敌人”即资本主义利益。罗文斯坦对民粹主义的回答是“威权民主”，而楞纳则希望将人民包含在公共参与中。本文取一条民主的中间路线，避免多数的变化不定，既不向变易的也不为凝固的少数让步。企业资本主义，当代也叫“新自由主义”，侵蚀了民主主义者的意识，需要用一种全体人民参与的“强民主”观予以阻击。

KEYWORDS:

• Militant democracy
• populism
• authoritarianism
• strong democracy
• Loewenstein
• Lerner

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Graham Maddox is Professor Emeritus of Politics at the University Of New England. His most recent book is Stepping Up to the Plate. America, and Australian Democracy, Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 2016.

Notes

1 K. D. Bracher argued that Weimar itself had lacked a democratic culture, being ‘a democracy without democrats’ in Inglehart and Welzer (2005, 245).

2 Too optimistic, according too his later reflections (Lerner 1989b, 83–86).

3 Some aspects of Wolin’s thesis were long anticipated by Polanyi (1944) and Galbraith (1967).

4 The rise of the Labour Party in Great Britain, largely displacing the old Liberal Party, did not eventually disturb the two-party balance in the system.