It is interesting to me that the Schumpter was a lesser fan of popular democracy than socialism. It got me thinking, what is in the name? Socialism, the word has a pure fear based mentality with the concept that has been brought on by the stereotypes for socialism. When we think of Democracy, our notion is relatively positive. Altogether not knowing the full content of a nations political internal workings, if we asked what political association is your country and they answer “Democracy” we are generally happy with the answer and ask for no further details…in theory. However, if you strip away the meaning of the word, like Schumpter one can see that democracy, and socialism if set up improperly can have the same negative effects, but if you call socialism, democracy  people will see it as acceptable. So the question that Schumpter appears to be asking is if we do not live in fictional “popular” democracy- that we just live in the allusion of a democratic state then would’nt it be the same as calling it socialism?

“He says there is usually no will of the people nor common
good, and when there is then autocracy often better realizes both.” (129) He says that we cannot have the true origin of democracy, because he no longer believes to be a common good, or a popular good of the people to properly elect representatives to enable democracy.

this may have worked once upon an ancient Greece, but now, he argues that democracy reformed itself to look like:

“modern doctrine of democracy, that democracy is only about the competition of leaders for votes. Democracy is just a  method, neither valuable in itself nor tending to right action or good ends.The will of the people, usually, is not genuine, but is manufactured by the
leader.” (129) Now arguably, this is a lot like calling capitalism democracy. Now is Schumpter really a minimalist like Mackie hints him to be? or is he a realist stripping down the old political concepts and showing them for their hybrid-modern self? Or maybe democracy has just changed from “popular democracy” to “representative democracy” like Mackie describes.