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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

> Basically there are two solutions,” Polanyi wrote in 1935. “The extension of the democratic principle from politics to economics, or the abolition of the democratic ‘political sphere’ altogether.” In other words, socialism or fascism.

This article is predicated on using democracy as a synonym for constitutional representation, which it isn't.

Democracy literally means rule by the people: majority rule. If you can't get married because you're gay, that is democracy at work: the majority doesn't like some aspect of your life, and that's that.

Democracy can be de facto a form of fascism.

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Indeed, which is why modern democracies, or at least Western ones, don't describe themselves as democracies (except only as shorthand), but republican liberal* democracies.

* liberal here meaning political liberal (JS Mill liberalism), and not what is understood by "liberal" in US politics.

The UK is a western democracy and does not describe itselg as a republican anything, though opponents to certain elements of the current constitution describe themselves that way.

There is an overlap between democratic republics (or, to use the less common phrasing, “republican democracies”) and limited representative democracies, but they aren't the same.

The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic* as it retains the Roman Republic's setup: - Sovereign / House of Lords (Senate) / Lower house.

The US Founding Fathers copied England, and Rome's model but replaced the sovereign with a President.

Representative democracies are necessarily republics - although some, like my country, skip the upper house. Rome introduced consuls / republican model because the population was too large, unlike the Greek polis, to be politically manageable. Rome of course was not a democracy.

*or monarchic. I am away from my books so cannot confirm exactly the term. Sorry.

> The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic* as it retains the Roman Republic's setup: - Sovereign / House of Lords (Senate) / Lower house.

Republican Rome was distinguished from both preceding and succeeding Roman governments by not having a sovereign head.

Yep, Augustus didn't like sharing power :D He must have felt guilty about it though because the Empire post-republic tried to keep up the appearance of Rome as Republic, if not in substance.

> The UK is what is called an aristocratic republic*

It's a constitutional monarchy based on a parliamentary system.

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