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Nikkie Parra Dowding
Professor: Nick Sinigalia
Philosophy 10
November 17, 2016
Injustice in Democracy
Democracy is a form of government generally considered to be good, providing the
citizens of said government with a sense of choice and free will. This is something that held in
high regard, especially in the United States. Compared to other nations, American democracy—
at least in the eyes of Americans—is vastly superior and should be considered the standard to
which other countries should follow suit. It is this arrogance that has caused dismissiveness
toward other forms of government practiced in other countries even though—by philosophical
standards and for the purpose of this essay, Platonian standards—those forms of government are
superior in their application of justice. For instance, the government of the People’s Republic of
China is under the authoritarian leadership of the Communist Party of China—which is
negatively seen by some in the western world—but would probably be considered by Plato as
more just than American liberal democracy. In this essay, I will briefly compare American and
Chinese forms of government, using concepts from Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and theory of
social justice in an effort to explain why Plato’s hostility toward democracy is merited.
In Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” a picture is painted that helps to understand reality and
how perception of reality can be influenced, manipulated and be generally accepted as truth. To
best illustrate this, one merely needs to look to recent events. The results of the Presidential
election left many angry and questioning elements of American democracy—specifically the
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electoral college—in terms of actually being democratic. There is evidence that would suggest
that the founding fathers had other things in mind when laying out the framework for the
electoral college. “The American Federalists made it clear they were establishing a republic, not
a democracy, and designed myriad means to constrain the popular will” (Li, 2012). However,
challenging this idea causes hostility among people who cannot conceive that what they have
always known to be true is a lie. In America, citizens are presented with an illusion of
democracy. People are made to believe that it is an inherent right and the only just execution of
government. Democracy is promoted with interchangeably with freedom and justice, even
though careful examination of the foundations of American liberal democracy and true
democracies would prove American democracy to be a deviation or diluted variation. China’s
government which is authoritarian, can also be critiqued using principles of the Allegory. While
