-------------- IF many people have defined democracy as liberty and equal rights, others have defined it as “the ascendancy of numbers,” as “majority rule.” Both these definitions are particularistic. Democracy means the will of the whole, but the will of the whole is not necessarily represented by the majority, nor by a two-thirds or three-quarters vote, nor even by a unanimous vote; majority rule is democratic when it is approaching not a unanimous but an integrated will. We have seen that the adding of similarities does not produce the social consciousness; in the same way the adding of similar votes does not give us the political will. We have seen that society is not an aggregation of units, of men considered one by one; therefore we understand that the will of the state is not discovered by counting.[65] This means a new conception of politics: it means that the organization of men in small, local groups must be the next form which democracy takes. Here the need and will of every man and woman can appear and mingle with the needs and wills of all to produce an all-will. Thus will be abolished the reign of numbers. A crude view of democracy says that when the working-people realize their power they can have what they want, since, their numbers being so great, they can out-vote other classes. But the reason the working-people have not already learned something so very obvious is because it is not true—_we are never to be ruled by numbers alone_. Moreover, a fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees—Committee of Fifty, Fifteen, Three—which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one, and behold—the full-fledged era of bosses is at hand, with the “consent of the governed” simply because the governed are physically helpless to govern themselves. Many men want majority rule so that they can be this committee of one; some of our most worthy citizens are incipient Greek tyrants longing to give us of their best—tyranny. Many working-men are clamoring for majority rule in industry, yet we know how often in their own organizations the rule of the many becomes the rule of the few. If “industrial democracy” is to mean majority rule, let us be warned by our experience of it in politics—it will rend whoever dallies with it.