[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about some of the reasons why democracy seems so unattainable and unable to de-facto incorporate human rights. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. We mourn the take-over of ‘democracies’ by dictators and authoritarian leaders (mostly men), like Trump, Modi, Putin, Orban, Milei … and wish for other leaders who are less despotic to take over. But we forget that we are born with our own power, which can be put to good use if we collectively decide to, as some communities have done, claim real democracy on the ground including the progressive realization of human rights (HR). *
*: Democracies are a human construct –and can thus be disrupted at every level. Hence the importance of empowering communities. (Aimee Ongeso)
2. Today’s ‘democracy’ is like a huge political supermarket. We have on the shelf a range of political parties from Left to Centre to Right. This gives the illusion that we have a real democratic choice. But, as experience over many decades suggests, these are variations of the same theme: a party or a coalition of parties is elected into power and proceeds to concentrate power rather than empower citizens failing most of its election pledges and compromising on ideals and on HR in the quest of simply staying in power.
3. Where ‘the good life’ is possible, such as in Europe and the United States, material prosperity has been built on global loot and devastation, in colonial and current times, only to result in the current visible climate and biodiversity crises. This ought to lead to one of at least two outcomes: people take matters into their own hands to provide for their basic needs and to fight for their rights, or they look for another party to deliver them from their suffering. (A. Kothari)
There is no economic reason for democracies to endure (¿?)
—Good ideas, no matter how strikingly brilliant do not materialize; they somehow always end up aligning with the power of business as usual. (Open Democracy)
4. Capital has always loved dictatorships. It favored them and fed on them. For Capital, democracy is an anomaly of history that should disappear as quickly as it arrived. (Bernard Maris, French economist, 1946-2015, murdered at Charlie Hebdo incident)
5. Anyone familiar with U.S. history knows that the U.S. defense of democracy has always been subordinate to the country’s economic and geopolitical interests, as defined by the ruling class, economic groups or elites-of-the-moment. Actually, the US supports those political forces that guarantee the safeguarding of interests in access to raw materials or geopolitical interests. (Boaventura Sousa Santos) [Trump/Zelenskyi yesterday…].
6. The Cinderella story is the US’s favorite myth –the cornerstone of the film industry if not of democracy as well. As a consequence, so many would not be caught dead or alive at any meeting involving a social conscience. (Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie)
7. Instead of addressing the key global structural problems, the WB and the IMF (practically under US tutelage) keep reaffirming the same failed recipes and democracies keep wasting away.
Let us be straight: Most countries in the world CLAIM to have democratic regimes (B. de Sousa Santos)
8. Today, most national governments consider themselves democratic, but democracy, if it was ever capable of regulating Capitalism in any country, is now strictly regulated by it, and is tolerated only to the extent that it is functional to the infinite capitalist accumulation.
9. For Monopoly Capitalism, the idea of a multipolar world is as threatening as the idea of competition with other politico-economic systems. We are entering an era in which potentially destructive and limitless forms of power are strong enough to neutralize, circumvent or eliminate any democratic process that seeks to limit them.
Bottom line
10. Technological developments, neoliberal globalization and the concentration of wealth further mean that the power to control human and non-human life is no longer subject to democratic scrutiny. The real power that controls their decisions is concentrated in a very small number of plutocrats, some with their faces in plain sight, others, the majority, faceless. This is a new kind of fascist power, a global techno-fascism that knows no national borders. (B. de Sousa Santos)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
—In 79 years (since 1945) it has not been possible to implement the UN Charter, to fulfill the will of “We, the peoples…”, always silenced by the veto, by the plutocratic and supremacist governance. “We, the peoples…” decisions were successively ignored by the veto of the five victorious countries of the Second World War. The current situation of world governance is still disabled by the veto. It is now urgent to recognize without further delay that it is “the peoples”, as stated in the Charter, who must assume their responsibilities, always bearing in mind the generations to come. It is now imperative from an ethical point of view to avoid irreversible situations in many areas. Yes: now, for the first time in history, “We, the peoples ….” can succeed in abolishing the veto in the United Nations … and in the European Union, also disqualified from decision-making by the requirement of ‘unanimity’ –the antithesis of democracy. “Sapere aude!”, dare to know, exclaimed Horace (Roman poet and senator, 65-8 B.C.). Yes: dare to know… and then dare to know how to dare so that knowledge may unfold its immense potential. To know and to unite so that, forming a global network of great proportions, we can, as a first historic step towards a new era, eliminate the veto that disables the proper functioning of the original democratic design of the United Nations. (Federico Mayor Zaragoza, RIP)