[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This Reader is about the downturn in the fortunes of liberal and social democracy and the rise of illiberal democracy. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. Liberal democracy exists today primarily to create and legitimize dictatorships. Yes, there is resistance, but it will only be effective if those who resist have the clarity to recognize the gravity of what is happening and the importance of what is at stake for human rights (HR). This Reader does.
2. The fundamental contradiction between democracy and Capitalism is that, while democracy is based on the ideas of popular sovereignty, national citizenship and HR,Capitalism aims at infinite accumulation made possible by the ceaseless expansion of the market. Liberal democracy will be doomed to suicide the day economic freedom demands a total sacrifice of equality and HR. The original idea is to keep two worlds strictly separate: the world of economic values (that have a price and are, therefore, bought and sold), and the world of ethical and political values/convictions/and beliefs (that have no price and, therefore, cannot be bought or sold). This separation (never complete) forms the basis of social democracy.
3. Now, social democracy stands for the coexistence of Capitalism and liberal democracy, in which the capitalist class (generally the bourgeoisie) is forced by the workers’ struggle to make certain concessions to the value of equality in order to preserve the continuity of capitalist accumulation and of the globalization of markets.
4. Historically, these concessions have been the workers’ right to unionize and to strike, as well as the social policies that frame social rights –ranging from labor rights and the public pension system to public education and healthcare and the concept of public goods (which cannot be commodified) and public services as an operating ethos. In short, a market economy coexisting with a non-mercantile society– that is, a society defined by social relations devoid of a logic of commercial exchange.
The collapse of the liberal democracy/Capitalism constellation
5. Collapse is always the culmination of a crisis that unfolds over time. The crisis of social democracy became evident following the so-called Washington Consensus in the mid-1980s that declared the unsustainability of the social-democratic capitalist model and proclaimed Capitalism as the sole global model to follow –a version that had until then been a minority within economic theory and had only been fully implemented under dictatorial conditions (e.g., the Pinochet dictatorship that followed the 1973 coup d’état against Chilean President Salvador Allende, orchestrated by the CIA and Henry Kissinger).
6. This version became known as Neoliberalism. In general terms, the latter consists of: economic deregulation, trade liberalization, privatization of all state activities capable of generating profits and replacement of progressive taxation (where the wealthier pay proportionally more taxes than the poorer). Ergo, an anti-social-democratic-democracy became a conditionality imposed worldwide by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for financing developing nations. (Ponder here the infamous ‘structural adjustment’ on the periphery of the world system and the no less infamous ‘austerity’ in the more developed countries).
7. From this point-on, Capitalism began to regulate democracy, and democracy was permitted only to the extent that it served the free operation of Capitalism. The floodgates were opened for the realm of economic values to eventually absorb the realm of ethical and political values —wither HR. In other words, from then on, it became possible for everything in politics to be bought and sold, just as it happens in the economy (and in elections). Grand corruption disappeared, because it was legalized. Petty corruption became systemic because, in the meantime, the ethos of public service and concern for the common good had vanished from the memory and practice of the vast majority of state officials.
8. Today, against all the circus about it, there is no democracy in the US; there is an oligarchy with regular elections to decide which oligarchic group governs. It should come as no surprise that the US today fundamentally supports far-right governments and politicians everywhere. These are the governments and politicians that best serve the interests of the American oligarchy and most closely identify with its ideology –not forgetting corporate interests.
9. Regrettably, Neoliberalism erased from the memory of the working classes the effectiveness of true democracy in defending workers’ interests and improving their living conditions.
The final crisis of the liberal democracy/Capitalism constellation is opening the space for the growth of the anti-system drive we now see
10. We can conclude that, due to the severe erosion imposed on this constellation in recent decades, the anti-system drive is now legitimate and can be directed toward two opposing political orientations: the Far Right and the Far Left. The problem is that, at this moment of interregnum, the prevailing orientation is that of the far right –and the possibility of this drive turning toward the far left is today the unspoken nightmare of those in power.
11. Voters are left with no choice but to choose between the Left and the Far Right. The Traditional Right was left with only one option: to unite with the far right in the hope of saving the system that has served its interests for decades. This explains why, when it comes to power, the far right knows only how to destroy, seldom to build, so that it does not engage in dialogue with the enemy; it posits one must simply destroy the Left. For the far right, there is no right or center except to absorb them, and above all, there is no Left. The entire Left is considered the far left! “It is communist”. This is the false polarization with which current politics deceives us (and millions of dollars are being spent on this). But the people are not polarized; it is their cell phones that are. In other words, we are facing a massive fabrication of polarization.
12. Today, the fabrication of the picture of the enemy takes two forms: one secularist and the other religious. Being a leftist (and a HR activist) has become an insult, a stigmatization that provokes revulsion, while being a fascist, for now, remains a term swept under the carpet.
13. Moreover, the political use of religion is an increasingly effective tool for instilling extremism. While for secularist extremism the Left is communism, for religious extremism the Left is the incarnation of the devil.
14. The other characteristic of the days we are living-in is the intense, violent and flagrantly unlawful interference by the hegemonic powers in the domestic politics of countries within their spheres of influence. (Do you really need I give some examples…?) The real objective of all of them is to bring about the removal or deposition of democratically elected presidents who are considered hostile. These interventions have two fundamental pillars: the military pillar and the financial pillar.
15. The military pillar lies, for example, in the omnipresence of warships off the coasts of the countries targeted for intervention; the jamming of satellite communications necessary to activate anti-aircraft defenses; and the reinforcement of existing military bases on the respective continent. The term ‘narco-terrorist state’ was invented to legitimize these violent interventions.
16. The financial pillar includes embargoes, the freezing of assets and reserves abroad, tariffs, punishment of companies in the target country and in other countries that do business with them. (Cuba is the country that, since the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, has been the target of the most military and financial coups for the longest period of time).
17. The most important other characteristic of the era in which we live is the Far-Right’s use of the most sophisticated technologies for manipulating consciousness, now with the massive use of artificial intelligence and the way algorithms can address millions of people as if they were addressing each one individually and personally with tailored messages. The effectiveness of high-tech extremism cannot be underestimated in any way.
Bottom line
18. The Far Right uses democracy to come to power, but once in power, it has no intention of exercising it democratically. Populism is its best disguise today.
19. It then remains important to ask: How can we build a conception of democracy that does not commit political suicide by repeatedly electing fascists? In light of this, voting for the Left today means, above all, saving what remains of democracy so that we can later try to strengthen it in order to resist the false democrats with greater conviction.
20. In the immediate future, other issues must also be addressed, e.g., What is the future of the Left if the traditional Right disappears entirely? How can we build a conception of democracy that does not commit suicide by repeatedly electing fascists? What will the Left of the future look like? (excerpted and adapted from B. de Sousa Santos)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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