Human rights: Food for a vanishing thought ‘HR and the dying of democracy’
HRR 726
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about what neither the Left nor the Right are even close to solve when it comes to democracy. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—Times of war are the supreme test of democracy. When civilians and soldiers are killed and others are made captive, when millions of people live in terror and dread, when emotions run high and the blood boils —it is precisely at these times that democracy is tested. (Haaretz)
–As my occasionally quoted reader Alberto Portugheis facetiously said: “Democracy has never existed. Religions made sure of that”.
Only by reinterpreting the past can the present be explained
–Let us start here with Voltaire (1694-1778): “A well-organized country is one in which the minority makes the majority work, is fed by it, and governs it”.
—The political Right in Europe and in Latin America (and elsewhere) share a common historical background: their contempt for democracy. (Marcos Roitman)
1. The common thread between what was-the-Left and what continues-to-be-the-Right is that both bow to the infallibility of the market; undoubtedly, this only increases the apathy of citizens to participate in elections. It should not be a surprise to you that, ultimately, elections select members of the pre-existing (market-beneficiary) elites. Is, then, the slogan of ‘participatory democracy’ a pleonasm (use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning, either as a fault of style or for misguided emphasis), or an oxymoron (contradictio in terminis)? May well be the case. On the other end, there are those who, therefore, push the rationale for the practice of ‘direct democracy’.* These two versions of democracy leave us with the question: Is electoral abstention becoming the predominant form of expression of the majorities? It seems clear that, for many, the question is not who to vote-for, but why to vote.
*: Many, in France, in Chile, in Tunisia, in Egypt, and in numerous other countries, advocated for the call of a bottom-up Constituent Assembly as the only way to (re)install the people, the citizens, at the center of power and of the decisions which concern them. (Louis Casado) This highlights the fact that, for an active democracy to work, claim holders must be the ones to formulate social strategies that are acceptable to them, as well as put forward strengthened policies that will effectively protect human rights (HR). These policies will further mandate defending ecological limits, as well as securing fairness and well-being for all –most critically giving a stronger role for women, minorities and trade unions.
Let us not confuse ‘politics’ with ‘the political’; they are notions whose graphological proximity hides an enormous conceptual difference (Roberto Bruna Henríquez)
2. Sovereignty, as an element of true democracy, no longer rests with the people but, as said, with the markets. It is the market that dictates political decisions and has managed to impose itself as a decision-maker over governments, parliaments and magistrates, all elected by supposedly popular vote. The technicalities of elections have been perfected over the centuries to ensure that the results of ‘free elections’ always correspond to the interests of those who organized them. […the first duty of the prince is to remain a prince, Machiavelli said five hundred years ago. In other words: the first duty of power is to remain in power]. When it happens that, by an oversight or an unfortunate involuntary mistake, the results do not coincide with what was predisposed… there remains what Alejo Carpentier (Cuban novelist, 1904-1980) called ‘the recourse to the method: the coup d’état, the dictatorship, the military intervention…**
**: Already in 1549, Étienne de la Boétie (French magistrate 1530-1563) wrote: “There are three kinds of tyrants. Some rule by election of the people, others by force of arms, the last by hereditary succession”. Three centuries later Karl Marx decreed that bourgeois democracy is but a form of dictatorship. (L. Casado)
“The importance of electoral democracy is better appreciated when you have suffered a dictatorship…” OK, but:
- Who said that voting was an expression of democracy?
- What interest can be aroused by participation in elections whose objectives are so limited and so far removed from the issues of concern to the majority?
- If the right to vote was extended little by little over decades, was it not mainly because those who hold the handle of power realized that the miserable are easily influenced and their votes bought?
3. Even if democracy is far more attractive than authoritarian/dictatorial regimes***, if the rules of the economy and of geopolitical power relations do not change, countries and peoples will continue to be oppressed and kept poor. No wonder that in many cases, people will try and seek refuge in right-wing populist parties that now promise order, stability and some sort of welfare. (Francine Mestrum)
***: Beware: Many ‘bourgeois democracies’ of the North today consider a series of criminal regimes in the South as valid and legitimate. (Juan Pablo Cardenas)
Bottom line: Democracies are dying
4. For democracy to work, let organized difference of opinion be expressed! But for that, one needs common points of references. It seems as if now, we are slowly entering a period in which words are totally dissociated from true intentions and that means, our democracies are dying. This reflects the fact that we have no common references anymore on which to have differences of opinion. However difficult to define, ‘truth’ and ‘facts’ in the-information-we-are-fed, are at the heart of democracy and our possibility of having different opinions, discussing them, and living together in peace has been too often shattered. Obviously, opinions are closely linked to power relations… (F. Mestrum)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–Talking about the information we are being fed, it would probably be good to take another look at the failed idea of the 1970s and check what was said in 1980 about a New International Information Order, one that treats information as a key resource for building truths and trying to reach a new equilibrium with, as the Sean McBride (1904-1988) Report talked about “Many Voices, One World” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBride_report. Because of the controversy that surrounded the Report –and the withdrawal of support to it by the UNESCO leadership in the 1980s for the ideas it ventilated– the Report went out of print and was difficult to obtain. A book on the history of the United States and UNESCO was even threatened with legal action and forced to include a disclaimer that UNESCO was in no way involved with it. The MacBride report was eventually reprinted in the US, and is now also freely available online. The report had strong international support. However, it was condemned by the US and the UK as an attack on the freedom of the press. (Federico Mayor Zaragoza)