Dictatorship and Democracy

What is a dictatorship? It is a government in which the power of the government is unlimited.

And what is a democracy? A democracy is the contrary of a dictatorship. And the more the power of a government is limited the more real becomes a democracy.

A perfect democracy would be that country in which the individuals would have such a profound understanding and realization of their duties and rights, along with a perfect appreciation of the rights of others — unlimited possibilities to care for, personally, their own affairs privately or in association with others — thạt such a country would in effect pass beyond any necessity for a government.

Obviously such a state of affairs and such conditions are not attainable. There will always be need for a guardian of justice and order. However, the more that effective power can be handed over to individuals, to families, to local administration, and the more that the power of and the necessity for intervention by higher forms of government can be limited, the further along the path to democracy will we advance.

On the other hand, the more that we hand power over to the higher forms of government and the further it gets from individuals and families, the closer we get to an absolute dictatorship.

Such is the case today especially in countries which vaunt their democratic form of government and the election of governments by the votes of the people. Furthermore, these very elections which are supposed to be of the essence of democracy, are, in effect, nothing but games rigged by powerful election machines belonging to parties; these very elections, so contrived by political electoral machines, have made of our elections, "universal lies" to use
the expression of the Pontiff, Pope Leo XIII.

In addition, our economic regime, which is completely controlled by a financial regime highly centralized and completely autocratic, obliges individuals, families and the lower more local forms of government to have constant recourse to the higher more centralized governments for aid. In effect, financial dictatorship leads to political dictatorship.

It is impossible to have at one and the same time, political democracy and financial dictatorship. So-called political democracy without economic democracy is nothing more than a sham whose purpose is nothing more than to lull the people into a false sense of security and prevent them from rising up against and abolishing that dictatorial form of government under which they, in fact, live — the government by the controllers and creators of money and credit.

The word democracy, in its meaning, signifies the power of the people.

Now the people is not just a mere abstraction. Nor is the people just a herd of beings which can be pushed and herded hither and thither from this pasture to that until they are ready to be driven into the abattoir. Nor is the people a group of individuals governing, making plans, assessing taxes. Not at all. The people is you and me, a group of individuals living together in society in a country whose natural resources, coupled with the knowledge and skills and mechanical aids which have been passed on to us from previous generations as a heritage to be shared in by each and everyone to an equal degree, make it possible for everyone to have all that they need to live decently and comfortably and that means — for each and every single individual.

The power of the people, democracy, is the power given to each citizen to ask for and receive from the production machine of his country all the goods he needs to fill his wants; thus he is left with enough time to organize his own life, to develop his own personality, to realize his own aspirations, in other words to make his own life as he deems fit, always having in mind the rights of others.

In a democracy, the government has only one reason for existing — to protect the rights of the individual against those who would take them away.

Since it is financial tyranny which more than anything else, violates and takes away the rights of individuals, families and public institutions, it should be the first duty of the goyernment to subdue and direct finance so that it is in accord with realities — the reality of man's needs and the physical realities of the possibilities to satisfy these wants. A government which does not do this, which acts in a contrary manner by taxing the individual and thus strengthening the position of financial dictatorship, is supremely anti-democratic, regardless of what terms or names it may use for itself.