Towards a definition of democracy

pp. 13-24

in: Howard P. Kainz, Democracy East and West, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1984

Abstract

This description by Freud of the "primal scene" and the "primal crime" was not meant to be a metapsychological account for the development of democracy. But it does indicate that in the evolution of civilisation there has been a gradual and seminal but quite constant drift towards the appropriation of power by masses who were formerly subject to arbitrary rule of some sort.