[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how democracy depends on who is in the driver’s seat and the implications this has for human rights. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
1. A good part of this difficulty to govern has to do with the concentration of wealth and increasing inequality, as well as the proliferation of controlled social media.* (Fernando Ayala)
*: Add to this the overdone scare of terrorism and how it should be sternly dealt-with and you get the picture of how brain washing works –think FOX…or CNN…
At its best, liberal democracy in so-called open societies has made it possible to tone down the brutality of raw power brokers
-“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism –ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power”. (Franklin D. Roosevelt’s definition of Fascism, not mine…).
2. The current prevalence of raw power brings with it a bad omen and a herculean challenge for liberal democracies. At the root of this contemporary raw power are neoliberalism and the rising extreme right –a toxic mix that is now imbedded in liberal democracies. One thing is certain (you can agree or not): liberal democracy is not real democracy, but is necessary (but not sufficient) to achieve real democracy. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
3. Take one of the bad omens: Precisely because US schools do not teach the truth about the world, they have no other alternative but to bombard children with constant propaganda about liberal democracy. If schools were truly democratic, it would not be necessary to pound on students with topics about democracy. Simply, actions and behavior would be naturally democratic; but we know this is not the case. In principle, the more it is necessary to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system…
4. This is well known by those who are in politics, and sometimes, they do not even care to hide it. From very early on, education in school socializes children so that they understand the need to back the prevailing structures of power –backing big corporations and businessmen…? So, do schools provide the service expected from them? To survive, they have to serve the interests of the system. Teachers have to keep quiet and teach the students the most useful beliefs and dogmas of the system.** (Noam Chomsky)
**: Schools are not the only systems of indoctrination though; there are other institutions that contribute to reinforce the process. Think, for instance, about all those programs on TV that work towards making us good and obedient consumers. (N. Chomsky)
The power of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes
5. The power of authoritarian/totalitarian regimes makes societies passively subordinate by controlling and surveilling everything that goes on. Conversely, true democracy is defined by its breaking with the idea of such passivity. Instead, it insists that power non-negotiably rests with the people. A democratic society thus arises when human rights (HR) are guaranteed and fulfilled –this being the condition for a regime to be truly democratic. Democracy thus challenges authoritarianism with the idea that it is the people who can and will express their sovereignty actively so that power rests with them and not the entrenched leaders who often receive a spurious electoral mandate to govern.*** Despite all the forms of tyranny, that often rely on scare tactics and superstition, power has to shift to the people who must take away power from those who abuse it.**** (Marilena Chaui)
***: They sell us the president the same way
They sell us our clothes and our cars
They sell us everything from youth to religion
The same time they sell us our wars
(Jackson Browne)
****: The guilt of those abusers has been banalized in so called democracies –and this has consequences– among them the political recycling of those that were co-responsible for crimes against humanity. (Louis Casado)
Political life with its limited options has become a pantomime
6. It is the market that is the very brain of all the decisions that affect us. This being the case, democracy gradually loses its raison d’etre: all is resolved by the market logic (–wither HR). The growing indifference of voters has no other origin or explanation. Decisions are made by the market that makes our society a sort of comedy of the absurd. Wining an election following the rules quasi-dictatorships set is simply more profitable. (L. Casado)
7. Take the following as an example: The most well-known problem with the lesser-evil of a two-final-candidates-situation (i.e., winner-take-all elections), at least in a system of legalized bribery and corporate-state media, is …the absence of any really good candidate to choose from.*****
*****: Take the USA: The top vote-getter in virtually all U.S. elections is …the abstainers. The most popular political party in US popular votes is not the winner either…Yet, we rarely hear about votes having been cast for this schmuck or that schmuck just for lack of anybody better to vote for. (David Swanson) “It is what we have”. We are left with picking the lesser evil. (L. Casado)
Capitalism and democracy are compatible only if democracy is in the driver’s seat (Robert Reich’s view, not mine…see below)
8. Coca-Cola does not hold elections; Bayer does not hold elections; Microsoft, Facebook and Google do not hold elections. The great economic powers of the world do not hold elections. What do we then call democracy if the real power lies elsewhere? The paradox of democracy is that real power is not democratic; it has nothing to do with what I and others as claim holders aim-for. (Jose Saramago)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com