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ANTON PELINKA
Taiwan, and the Philippines also became transformed in democracies — and in
South-Africa, the ethno-racist Apartheid-regime was replaced by a democratic
system, based on inclusive free elections.
Today, existing democracies combine the political freedom and legal equality
of democracy with the principles of a market economy, based on private
property. The future debate will circle around the problem if democracy can
only be possible in a capitalist economic environment — or whether democracy
could become possible in combination with another (post-capitalist?) economic
system.
DEMOCRACY IN MODERN TIMES
No future without history. Yet to understand democracy historically, a short
overview of the history of thought about democracy may serve to help us. I
mention a few significant highlights:
¢ The birth of the American Republic (Late 18'* Century) (Founding Fathers
USA)
+ "The United States used the pattern of the separation of power, established
in England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, but replaced the
unelected monarch with a president, elected for a specific number of years
s Inthe 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville analyzed American democracy from
the viewpoint of post-revolutionary Europe (“Democracy in America”)
+ Abraham Lincoln (The Gettysburg Address), the Civil War and the
abolition of slavery ended the legal exclusion of African Americans
3 The Gettysburg Address was — in the midst of the American Civil War - delivered by Ab¬
raham Lincoln on 19 November 1863 at the Soldier’s National Cemetary in Gettysburgh.
Pennsylvania. It is a famous and constitutive part of the American political heritage, and may
be found in publications and textbooks everywhere in the US and around the world. In his
short speech Linclon stated — among other things — that: “four score and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to
the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are
met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a
final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor
long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here, have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
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