Two Visions (Or Two Assessments) of Democratic Freedom

Plato on democratic man:

He lives out his life from day to day, gratifying the desire of the moment. One day he drinks himself under the table to the sound of the pipes, the next day he is on a diet of plain water. Now he is taking exercise, but at other times he is lazing around and taking no interest in anything. And sometimes he passes the time in what he calls philosophy. Much of his time is spent in politics, where he leaps to his feet and says and does whatever comes into his head. Or if he comes to admire the military, then that is the way he goes. Or if it’s businessmen, then that way. There is no controlling order or necessity in his life. As far as he is concerned, it is pleasant, free, and blessed, and he sticks to it his whole life through. (Republic 561c-d)

Karl Marx on freedom:

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. (From the German Ideology)

Compare and contrast.

A Maryland Farmer on Popular Ignorance

One of the Antifederalists' chief objections to the new constitution was its insufficient guarantee of the right to a local jury trials. The jury was taken as indispensable for the protection of liberty and as a constitutive of democratic self-government. Here's how one Antifederalist (A Maryland Farmer IV) replies to the objection that the people are too ignorant to participate in self-rule through the jury. This objection (and A Maryland Farmer's reply) are relevant for a number of contemporary debates that circle around the alleged ignorance of citizens and voters:

Why shall we rob the Commons of the only remaining power they have been able to preserve, for their personal exercise? Have they ever abused it? I know it has and will be said they have; that they are too ignorant; that they cannot distinguish between right and wrong; that decisions on property are submitted to chance; and that the last word, commonly determines the cause. There is some truth in these allegations, but whence comes it. The Commons are much degraded in the powers of the mind: They were deprived of the use of understanding when they were robbed of the power of employing it. Men no longer cultivate, what is no longer useful, should every opportunity bed taken away, of exercising their reason, you will reduce them to that state of mental baseness, in which they appear in nine-tenths of this globe. ... Give them power and they will find understanding to use it.

Chesterton Against Determinism

A beautiful excerpt from The Outline of Sanity: (emphasis added)

Now no doubt most people even in the logical city of Paris would say that the Eiffel Tower has come to stay. And no doubt most people in the same city rather more than a hundred years before would have said that the Bastille had come to stay. But it did not stay; it left the neighbourhood quite abruptly. In plain words, the Bastille was something that man had made and, therefore, man could unmake. The Eiffel Tower is something that man has made and man could unmake; though perhaps we may think it practically probable that some time will elapse before man will have the good taste or good sense or even the common sanity to unmake it. But this one little phrase about the thing "coming" is alone enough to indicate something profoundly wrong about the very working of men's minds on the subject. Obviously a man ought to be saying, "I have made an electric battery. Shall I smash it, or shall I make another?" Instead of that, he seems to be bewitched by a sort of magic and stand staring at the thing as if it were a seven-headed dragon; and he can only say, "The electric battery has come. Has it come to stay?" 

Before we begin any talk of the practical problem of machinery, it is necessary to leave off thinking like machines. It is necessary to begin at the beginning and consider the end. Now we do not necessarily wish to destroy every sort of machinery. But we do desire to destroy a certain sort of mentality. And that is precisely the sort of mentality that begins by telling us that nobody can destroy machinery. Those who begin by saying that we cannot abolish the machine, that we must use the machine, are themselves refusing to use the mind.

Of course, it must be acknowledged that sometimes the only way to destroy the mentality that tells us the machine cannot be destroyed is by destroying some machines.