For at least the last century, democracy has been the undisputed winner. Not just as a political system, but as a moral creed. And remarkably, almost everyone claims it. From Western liberals to Chinese Communist Party officials, from the United Nations to the governments of North Korea and Iran, leaders present their systems as democratic, stage elections, and claim to invoke the people’s will. To question democracy is considered naïve or morally suspect. But today, a growing number reject the democratic ideal as a moral good altogether. We don’t consult the will of the people on technical problems in physics. Voting doesn’t guarantee the right outcome — the Nazis, after all, were democratically elected. And philosophers from Plato to Mill and Nietzsche have long considered rule by the majority no better than mob rule.

Should we abandon the idea that democracy is itself a moral good? Was Plato right that democracy is fundamentally flawed and always tends toward mob rule and demagoguery? Or is democracy an essential moral good which we abandon at our peril?

Libertarian thought leader Yaron Brook, Orwell Prize-winning journalist David Aaronovitch, pioneer of feminist social theory Sally Haslanger, and leading Chinese intellectual Wang Hui debate democracy.