We The People

People survive. People survive surmounting all obstacles, and people survive foiling all conspiracies hatched against them, and people survive defeating all aggressive powers.

It’s people who define their route of struggle, chart their road to victory, delimit their sovereign sphere, proclaim their sovereign rights, and restore their rights in sovereign space around life. People’s sovereign space and practice is a part of democracy, heart of politics.

But what happens when people find their “friends” are not their friends, their “leaders” are not their leaders, their “organizations” are not their organizations? What happens when people find their organizations are being sabotaged as part of a plan to defeat them, their organizations fail to foil sabotages activated against their organizations, their leaders fail to foresee, their organizations tail behind and fail to take initiative? What happens when people are demobilized and depoliticized?

These are crucial questions in the life of people. And, people’s life provides the answers to the questions.

Roman slaves found the answer: Spartacus. The Palestinian people found the answer: Arafat. The people of apartheid ruled South Africa had their answer: Mandela. The Venezuelan people organized the answer in their Bolivarian way: Chavez. The Cuban people created the answer: Fidel.

It’s not the persons, the individual leaders that created sovereign space of people. Its people that create sovereign space, and standing on this sovereign space people give legitimacy. A historic-socio-economic perspective produced and developed the leaders, the collective leadership, the movement the leadership developed and guided.

All these perspectives, the Roman society, the state of Palestinian people’s struggle prior to the emergence of Arafat, the Venezuelan society controlled by thuggish upper echelon drunk with oil money that overwhelmed the entire society with clientele culture, are completely different from one another. And, Spartacus comes from another historical era.

However, in all the cases, it was contradictions that developed the leadership and organizations casting off chattering, old style, etc. Mandela and his friends had to make an arduous effort to shape ANC, African National Congress. Arafat had to face series of bloody fights in Jordan and Syria, conspiracy, subversion and adventurism. Fidel’s charting of course was a lone effort having no help from traditional leadership.

In all the cases, the new leadership was farsighted, not less competent than their adversaries. Otherwise, they could not have organized their struggles.

In all the cases, moral standing was higher than their adversaries. These made them credible and acceptable to their constituencies. In reverse term, their adversaries lost credibility and acceptability. This gain-loss process is slow and long.

In all the cases, the emerging leadership stood for honor and dignity, and for love for life. Hatred was not guiding them. Serving, not dictating people was their motto.

With this leadership, people gained primary space – resurrecting sense of honor and dignity, visualizing goal, questioning around, getting organized in effective way, shedding practice and culture decadent social forces imposed and overwhelmed with, getting rid of clichés, initiating with realistic approach.

These facilitated claiming people’s sovereign space – struggle to shape a dignified, peaceful, prosperous life. Their passive attitude to their sovereign space moved to the stage of actively making claims to their sovereign space.

Despite intermissions of adventurism and missteps the entire approach of these peoples was constructive, positive. There was no place for hatred. Love for humanity, all life and nature led the initiatives.

These shook off clacking, promises without the tinniest grain of sincerity, proclamations entirely hollow, observations without scientific investigation, sweeping remarks, indiscipline, isolation from constituency, showmanship, theatrical heroism. Imagine an undisciplined slave army confronting a Roman army! Slave army defeated “valiant” Roman army in a number of battles. That slave army was disciplined, and all its members meant participation, meaningful participation.

Brutalized space

People lose ground in an opposite situation, where mainstream politics shamelessly throws away all its glittering clothes and denudes its heart: politics-commercialized, politics-terrorized. People’s inalienable rights and sovereign space get lost. Even their political opportunities, in most cases only tiny fragments, gradually begin to wither away. Their democratic rights to life, honor and prospects for prosperity are snatched away, which is manifested in indignity, engineered disunity, craftily promoted and fed illogic, dominance of hoodlum controlled organizations, ascendancy of backward ideas, and lost land, wage, security and peace. A decadent culture facilitating and strengthening dominance of backward concepts and practices occupies people’s cultural space.

In a brutalized situation, people feel betrayed and turn apathetic, and political participation gradually takes a diminishing downturn, a dangerous turn of time that provides dominating forces tighten its grip on people’s entire life, which includes their organizations also. It’s, the imposed condition, like treating people as animal, like considering them as sub-human, and the imposition is made by dominating forces, the consideration is made by forces monopolizing power.

To people, only sounds and no work by those claiming leadership then turns synonymous to betrayal as violence, in its many forms and manifestations, by all or part of forces of status quo ransack people’s life and peace. People then withdraw trust from the high-sounding leadership.

In such a situation, a situation brutalized and overwhelmed with inactivity, a blabbering leadership finds organizing people difficult, sometimes impossible, but it finds no time to search its soul and method. It’s shallow and incomplete if there is any soul searching.

Should it be capitalocracy?

Democracy isn’t universal. It’s either, in the present world system, capital’s democracy or people’s democracy.
Capital’s democracy, irrespective of, fashionably coined, liberal or illiberal, upholds interests of dominating capital. Its arbitrary character, its, where and when necessary, secretive working, its power to hide its workings out of citizens’ sight and supervision, its manipulation with the political system make it nothing but capitalocracy.

Recent developments in the advanced capitalist democracies provide evidences. The reality is crude and coarse if a serious search is made about capitalist democracies in the periphery of the world system. It’s an uncouth reign of capital. Contemporary examples are abundant there in the entire system, where elected government exercises its power trampling primary requirements of democracy, and doesn’t even hesitate to throw away bare minimum flimsy cover of civility, and mainstream politics takes away all of the sovereign space people possess.

Democracies are now considered by mainstream on a yardstick of illiberal and liberal despite all the facts that emerge from contemporary democratic reality in advanced capitalist economies.

And, the reality is:

“An illiberal democracy is a democracy by procedure only; the people elect the government, but they have little influence on government policy. The lack of influence means the government does not accord the full human rights necessary to achieve substantive democracy.” (Hallie Ludsin, “Returning Sovereignty to the People”, Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 46:97 2013)

“Liberal democracies”, Hallie Ludsin writes, “are associated with free and fair elections, protection for and promotion of the rule of law, protection for basic human rights, and neutrality toward the determination of the common good.” (ibid.)

Don’t contemporary developments, not only the Wikileaks, the Snowden syndrome and the Guardian experience in and Evo Morales hackling by the so-called liberal democracies show a face of liberal democracy? The engagement of spies to infiltrate organizations active in the area of environment in advanced capitalist democracies, the “role” they played, and the way their misdeed are being “treated” expose the no-space people “enjoy”. Now, there are near-innumerable press reports from advanced capitalist democracies that expose their inner-working, their non-accountability, their all encompassing surveillance, their way of misinforming people, their way of invading other societies.

Manipulation with study results, opinion polls, human rights, and organizations floated for these purposes expose the face of liberal democracies. In so-called liberal democracy, corporations are now treated as person that strengthens role of big money in politics. This puts money on a higher ground than citizens. The entire business of capitalist democracy is opaque, a “mysterious” business as capital strives to deny any limit.

These practices are now “trickling down” to backward societies, where dominating interests are trying to construct a façade of democracy. The donor-democracy designed for underdeveloped economies is now much exposed.

Sovereignty encroached

The question comes: Whether sovereignty of people or of capital?

“Sovereignty lies with the people, as proclaimed by most state constitutions and as protected by international law, including possibly customary international law. Sovereignty in the people means that the people are entitled to receive the benefits of sovereign rights, not the government.” (ibid.)

But, with an army of unemployed, with vandalized unions, with decline in share of wages, with people in debt bondage and having no mechanism to listen to their voice, with financial instability, with control over information and media, with control over culture and leisure time and entertainment, with legislature serving dominating economic interests, with an essentially inaccessible judiciary, with political power and politics shaped to serve dominating economic interests, people find their sovereignty is effectively lost. With capital encroaching people’s life and rights all of people’s sovereign space is encroached.

A reality of spiraling disparity finds millions of people both in matured capitalist and backward economies confronting destitution while the rich protect and expand their wealth. The reality doesn’t allow people to act as source of sovereignty of reigning power, and reigning power thus de-legitimizes itself.

To the people of today’s world, one of the fundamental questions is inequality, an old curse spread over the globe. Now, the issue is being recognized by a part of mainstream as a human rights issue. Doesn’t inequality take away people’s sovereign space?
This fact, the reigning system of creating and perpetuating poverty and equality, tells the state of people’s sovereignty: it’s decapitated.

The rich stash money in suitable bank accounts to avoid tax, The MNCs “innovate” ways and “discover” places, actually the ways were made and the places were created for them, where it is required to pay less or no tax. Corruption, theft of public money and banditry with natural resources go unquestioned in politics and the thieves and bandits go scot-free.

What do people find in this reality? People find their sovereignty lives in utopia.

Referring to the British and Dutch East India Companies, Adam Smith wrote: “Such exclusive companies, therefore, are nuisances in every respect; always more or less inconvenient to the countries in which they are established, and destructive to those which have the misfortune to fall under their government”. (The Wealth of Nations)

Today, don’t MNCs dwarf the “famous” East India Companies in terms of all the “good work” that Adam Smith referred? The task of dwarfing is not only in terms money power. It’s in terms of political power that is germinated by money power.

What about power of and dulcet deals by financial elites, joined together in companies organized with their democratic laws and rules, done with their transparency and accountability? Don’t findings from studies carried out by mainstream research organizations, reports of commissions/committees in a number of advanced capitalist democracies constituted after the Great Financial Crisis, and revelations in even bourgeois press confirm this? Where do they put people’s sovereignty? Does financialization allow people a sovereign space?

What happened with the, now known to public, Iraq lie – “Saddam’s WMD”? Has not been an entire society devastated? Did the Iraq lie upheld peoples’, of Iraq, and other countries including the countries involved, democratic rights, a sovereign space? What happens even in tiny and underdeveloped economies reigned by Lilliputian black maharajas?

Facts tell: People’s sovereignty takes a travel to oblivion. Developments in these societies retain no sovereign space of people. Even, space for organizing democratic struggle gets lost there.

With militarization and/or terrorization of society scope for claiming people’s sovereign space gets lost. No space for people’s sovereignty is left in a society when only war, devastation, death dominate the society. An invaded society turns its first victim while the invader’s society turns the next victim.

People’s sovereignty appears a blue moon as capital’s diabolic power impacts, disintegrates and distorts everything around, all aspects of people’s life, as arbitrary authority, in all forms, formal and informal, rules people’s lives.

This reality takes away people’s sovereign space, effectively a democratic space.

People are put in the eyes of all storms during political and economical crises. During periods of turbulence, political or economic, people are the first victim. They are made scapegoats whenever any crisis makes a “landfall”.

“Stupid, dolt”

The question comes: Who are the people?

“People” is one of the concepts most denigrated by mainstream, the privileged classes. The privileged persons consider people as stupid, dolt, onager, and all the sub-human characters the “sophisticated” taste and “deep” knowledge of the privileged provoke.

Prince Albert once said “the masses on which popular government rests only feel and do not think”. The prince followed James Harrington. About 300 years ago, Harrington perceived people as cannot see, but can feel. There were more or less similar other observers including Carlyle, Mill, Montesquieu, Burke. Disraeli once said: As a political expression, the people are ‘sheer nonsense’. To him people belonged to the realm of natural history than to that of politics. (Cecil S Emden, The People and the Constitution)

On the contrary, to Mao, people are the workers, peasantry, the poor, and all who oppose imperialism. “[M]asses”, Mao writes, “are the real heroes …” (“Preface and postscript to Rural Surveys”) He adds: “The people, and the people alone, are the motive force of world history.” (“On coalition government”)

Private persons turn people as they join together in collective acts and thoughts, in gaining experience and summarizing those, and in claiming and gaining spaces – sovereign space, democratic space.

And, as Alain Badiou, philosopher from France, tells: “An event is political if its material is collective, or if the event can only be attributed to a collective multiplicity.”

Thus people, in their collective interest, think politically, dream politically, and act politically.

People’s silence, seeming inactivity, tolerance, seeming apathy, temporary listless condition changes as quantity changes to quality; missteps are rectified as people gain experience; passive approach is replaced by active approach as reality pulls in burning questions of life; and passive sovereignty takes the shape of active sovereignty.

New leadership and initiatives emerge and hope is renewed. Societies, and times carry evidence of this qualitative change as contradictions can’t be resolved mechanically and through conspiracies, as false assertions can’t replace facts, as lie can’t subdue moral standing, as deceptions ultimately wear out, as “Man does not exist for the law, but the law exists for man”, and as people don’t die. History comes at juncture as people echo Cromwell: “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you.” 

This article first appeared in New Age, Dhaka in its Victory Day issue on December 16, 2013. 

The Way People Democratize

People democratize their spheres with own momentum, velocity and force manifested in its leadership, organization and politics. Trajectory of people’s democratization process that gets generated from contradictions in the realm of production relation ultimately frees itself from influence and control of dominant interests.

Dominant interest, because of its prevailing paramount position in economy and politics, influences, manipulates, distorts and deactivates people’s democratization process. The attempts persist temporarily, depending on reality; but the power equation changes as people turn matured in term of experience, theory, leadership, organization and ways of initiatives/struggles, and a seemingly frustrating, sometimes hopeless, situation gives way to a new dawn of hope.

An example, in brief, elaborates the way.

In retrospect

On March 9, 1944, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Muslim League leader in the British colony of India, said: “At present you should just stand by Pakistan. It means that first of all you have to take possession of a territory. …When you have once taken possession of your homeland the question will then arise as to what form of government you are going to establish.” (Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr. Jinnah, collected and edited by Jamil-Ud-Din Ahmad, lecturer, Muslim University, Aligarh, and member, All-India Muslim League council, 1947, Lahore) He was delivering speech at the Aligarh Muslim University Union. Jinnah was unwilling to enter into detail of type of government at that moment as that would have raised questions among a portion of his followers.

But Jinnah’s statement was an irrational one coated with emotion and apparent rationality. His audience, the Muslims of this subcontinent, accepted the statement. Their allegiance to and trust on him encouraged Jinnah to say arrogantly: “Fortunately, I came to the rescue of the Musalmans and prevented them from committing suicide.” (ibid.) Jinnah was addressing the All-India Railway Muslim Employees’ Association in Delhi on February 27, 1944. The Muslim League leader successfully hoodwinked analytical capacity of his audience that allowed him to make the boastful claim. It tells his level of influence at that time.

On August 14, 1947, the day Pakistan emerged as a dominion of the British Empire, the sentiment among the Muslim residents in Dhaka (at that time spelled as Dacca) was of jubilation. Jinnah was then unchallenged leader of the Muslims’ in both wings – East and West – of Pakistan.

But, within months, there was a voice of opposition. Courageous Baangaalee students steadfastly opposed Jinnah’s stand on language question. The voice of protest was unimaginable to many Jinnah-disciples. The defiant students, inexperienced in comparison to Jinnah, were standing against Pakistan establishment- leadership heavily loaded with Nazimuddin, Akram Khaa, and similar others in a bundle. Even, in 1948, a portion of Dhaka residents was opposed to the students standing for Baanglaa language.

In terms of political resistance, those were desolate days for Bangladesh, at that time it was East Bengal/E. Pak. The rebel Maulaanaa, Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani, was passing hard days in Dhaka. Even, it took courage to visit him as there were always the blood-red eyes of Muslim League as the arch rightist party in the seat of governance knew the fire brand Maulaanaa, a leader with rebellious peasant background. Communists in East Bengal were compelled to close down the book store, a single one, they initiated in Dhaka. At day time, Baareen Datta, a communist leader in East Bengal, as he conveyed in his memoirs Sangraammookhar Deengoolee, had to float in boats in guise of a floating hawker in Haor, vast seasonal water body in the north-central part of Bangladesh, as it was difficult for him to have a safe shelter in Sunamganj. His sister Hena Das and their comrades had the same “fate” in varying forms as their memoirs/autobiographies describe. Hired hoodlums, as Tajuddin Ahmad, the first prime minister of the Provisional Government of Bangladesh, narrated in his youth days-diary (now available in book form), assaulted students belonging to non-Muslim League camp. The hirelings used a government vehicle, the number of which Tajuddin noted in the diary. The lumpens went scot-free as Muslim League leaders were their political fathers. Ila Mitra, the Raanee Maa as the rebel East Bengal Shaotaals (mostly spelled as Shantal) used to address her with love and respect, had to face torture in untold term. The Shaotaals had their narration of facing barbarity and brutality unleashed by the Muslim League/Pakistan leadership. The fishers of Sunamganj, the sharecroppers of north-western part of East Bengal waging Tebhaagaa Andolon or Tebhaagaar Laraai, movement for a fair share of produce, the port and railways workers, the beeree (also spelled bidi), hand-made cigarette, workers and many others from the East Bengal working classes had to face police assault, detention, torture, jail and bullets. Killing of political prisoners in Khaapraa ward, a cell in Rajshahi jail, and death of hunger striking prisoners are only two of many such incidents.

But the days of the torturers were going to their dusk. Shamsul Haque, a young man from an ordinary peasant family, awarded an election-defeat to a Muslim League leader. That was unimaginable to the League leaders, aristocrat, in terms of East Bengal society, and powerful. In the election held in 1954, the Baangaalee people made a verdict: the mighty League was wiped out from the face of East Bengal. Only through conspiracy, riot, buy- in, horse trading, and other dirty machinations the rulers prevailed, up to the people’s upsurge in 1969, politically. Only a few months before the upsurge, in 1968, Ayub, the ruler at that time, jubilantly celebrated his decade of tyranny termed as “Decade of Development”.

Long before the 1969-upsurge, there were initiatives, in commoners’ ghettoes, to organize struggle for democracy. A booklet, part of those initiatives, said: “None has the power to push back time. History doesn’t cease moving forward. History is the witness: The flag of freedom shall fly high forever over this land of rivers, the land where swords of Harsavardhana and Man Singh broke down into pieces.” The Banglaa booklet was published in 1949.

How many persons imagined that the statement made in the booklet will turn true within only 22 years?

Jinnah’s Pakistan was rejected by the majority of its population. At least Muslim League leadership of all shades including Ayub, leading a faction of Muslim League, his E. Pakistani quisling Monaem, their bureaucrat advisors and industrialist supporters that included Adamjee, Bawani and co., Ayub’s vagabond-appearing local government wagon riders declined to listen to the murmurs the movement of the Baangaalee people made throughout the period. But their denial was not all powerful. Rather, the denial was standing on a hollow ground. People rose up in rebellion, and threw away the tyranny, and then, the glorious Bangladesh War of Liberation followed.

This dynamic – a population’s rejection of an ideology upheld by a group of elites, and the population tearing down the elites’ state to half – is difficult, sometimes impossible, to perceive by elite-brain.

Similar – people’s rejection of elite-ideology or -politics or -rule while ruling elites fail to gauge people’s discontent – difficulties/failures on the part of the elites were found in other lands also. It was found in Tehran during the last days of Shah. The failure was also present in Manila since assassinating Benigno Aquino.

Shah, his dreaded, elaborate intelligence network, his political allies, scores of journalists from important Shah-ally countries, Marcos, his politically active wife Imelda and their cronies failed to hear “mutter” below the surface under their heavy feet that encroached all spaces for dissent and democracy. Even Marcos and his cronies failed to “smell” changing position – tact in the name “democracy” – of their closest ally. King Farook in Egypt, King Idris in Libya, Samoza in Nicaragua and “Baby Doc”, Duvalier, in Haiti, Mubarak in Egypt, and their ruling machines and external master also failed to perceive the dynamic. Erdogan, the backward looking neo-Sultan in Turkey upholding repressive ideas, failed to perceive the Taksim protest threatening his dream for further dictatorial power.

It’s a dynamic people initiate to democratize their life – economy, society, politics and culture. Set backs and defeats that follow very often only reinvigorate people’s initiative to achieve victory, a long, arduous process.

Move to democratize

People keep on their move to claim democracy despite failures and set backs as democracy is the only space for organizing their life in a decent, dignified way. It’s the only space to get mobilized for resisting encroachers of the space required for organizing a peaceful, prosperous life.

Organizing political movement is their most important and effective way to claim democracy, people’s democracy. But it takes time, etc. to organize such a movement. Instead of spending time in frustration people initiate/can initiate other motions that facilitate their mobilization and forward movement.

A major part of these motions include producing literature. Pre-’69 Bangladesh-years experienced scores of literature mostly produced by students and political activists. Journalists with their political columns played a major role. That was a part of politicization of the masses of people in Bangladesh. In 1815, John Adams wrote to Jefferson: “What do we mean by Revolution? The War? That was no part of the Revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The Revolution was in the minds of the people, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen years before a drop of blood was shed at Lexington. The records of thirteen legislatures, the pamphlets, newspapers in all the colonies, ought to be consulted during that period to ascertain the steps by which the public opinion was enlightened and informed concerning the authority of Parliament over the colonies.” Other lands dreaming for democracy are not exceptions.

People’s initiatives/moves for democratizing their spheres are entirely and fundamentally different from “democratization” “initiatives” driven by external actors: other states and their organizations, funds, non-governmental organizations in appearance, banks, etc.

Aim of the external actors’ “initiatives” is to secure existing world order – the world market system – based on inequality while people’s initiatives aim to have a political system corresponding to economic interests of people – an equitable distribution, restoring people’s ownership on the commons, securing environment and ecology in the interest of people, a fair international trade regime, etc. As the two stand opposed to each other external actors’ “initiatives” aim to secure market, sources of raw materials and labor while the other one can secure its interest only by breaking the chain of market.

Market stands as one of the yardsticks for determining type of democracy: for the people or for the market, or in other words, people’s democracy or market’s democracy. Market and democracy cannot move together.

Jacques Attali, economist, philosopher and former president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development was special adviser to the president of France for 10 years. He finds “inherent conflict between the market economy and democracy” and says the “two concepts are contradictory” (“The Crash of Western Civilization: The Limits of the Market and Democracy”, Foreign Policy, Number 107, Summer 1997) He also finds “the marriage of democracy and the market economy suffers from three fundamental shortcomings”, and says “these two sets of principles [democracy and market economy] often contradict one another and are more likely to go head-to-head than hand in hand”. (ibid.)

Attali writes:

“In a democratic society, the promotion of the individual is the ultimate goal, while in a market economy the individual is treated as a commodity — one that can be excluded or cast aside for want of the right education, skills, physical characteristics, or upbringing.

“The market economy accepts and fosters strong inequalities between economic agents, whereas democracy is based on the equal rights of all citizens. By depriving some people of the ability to meet their basic economic needs, the market economy also leaves them less able to exercise their full political rights. Witness the swelling ranks of unemployed workers in much of the West who can vote but are otherwise increasingly disenfranchised and alienated.

“The market economy resists the localization of power, discourages coalitions between participants, and encourages selfishness, while democracy depends upon a clear identification of political responsibility, the coalition of citizens in political parties, and a general appreciation of our common fate. Democracies need political parties that are capable of molding platforms based on compromises between individual points of view, while market economies rely on competing individual centers.

“The market economy creates a world of nomads, whereas democracy can apply only to sedentary people.

“The market economy assumes that the aggregation of selfish behavior by all economic agents is best for the group, whereas democracy makes the assumption that the best outcome for any given group will result from the acceptance by a minority of the decision of a majority.” (ibid.)

As example he mentions:

“[O]ur companies and bureaucracies are organized on the basis of fixed plans and strict hierarchies. Can we imagine a real market relationship between divisions of the same company or between a boss and her assistant? Can we imagine an internal referendum on each decision made by a minister or cabinet secretary?” (ibid.)

Attali beefs up the argument:

“[F]ew Western nations including the United States would appreciate an international community where true democracy prevailed. (Imagine, for example, a United Nations where the most important decisions were made not by the Security Council's oligarchy of five nuclear powers but by the entire General Assembly on the principle of ‘one citizen, one vote’ or ‘one state, one vote’.) If international financial institutions had followed such a democratic system during the so-called Global Negotiations of the 1980s, there would likely have been a drastic shift in the global distribution of wealth that would have jeopardized the interests of the West in general, and of the United States in particular.” (ibid.)

By further dissection he adds:

“[A]pplying the principles of the market economy both within and among nations is problematic and undesirable. I know of no Western nation that seeks a free market in justice, law enforcement, national defense, education, or even telecommunications ... Few if any Westerners would want to live in a country where court rulings were for sale, citizenship and passports could be purchased at airline ticket counters, and air waves were auctioned off to the highest bidder without regard to content. And among nations, a free market for nuclear weapons, illegal narcotics, high technology, potable water, and pollution would promote the rapid growth of supranational political bodies and powerful nonstate entities capable of challenging national governments.” (ibid.)

People’s democracy, thus, stands opposite to market as principles and practices of market are opposed to principles and practices of democracy, rule of majority of society. So, people’s democratizing initiative opposes market. Otherwise, people cannot establish and consolidate their democracy, and market gets a freehand in dominating, distorting and encroaching democracy.

To tomorrow

Democracy ultimately stands on force, the force of majority. People in their struggle for democracy develop force of their own. The force initially, at a stage and as intermediate phase, gets manifested sometimes in Bangladesh (erstwhile E. Pak.) 1969-people’s upsurge, sometimes in Bangladesh 1990-urban upsurge, sometimes with yellow color in Manila, sometimes at Tahrir Square and sometimes at Taksim Square. In short, it’s the Tahrir-way, the Taksim-way or the Turkish summer-way, now at Taksim.

People’s democratizing initiative can begin as a demand to have bread or an effort to save a commons, a few trees on a small piece of land, and can act as a spark igniting people’s aspiration and yearning against authoritarian archaic ruler/ruling elites, and can shatter the ruler’s/ruling elites’ seeming invincibility, and can spread like wildfire. The outcome depends on other factors and conditions.

Despite similarities to many extents Tahrir is not Taksim, and Taksim can’t be copied elsewhere as conditions that generated Tahrir and Taksim are different. No imagination should be entertained to copy either of the two. However, the two, and similar others provide lessons, which are, broadly: educate, mobilize, avoid adventurism, find out areas for democratic initiatives by the masses of people.

At initial stage, people develop it through awareness, exchange of experiences. In the process, the democracy of minority social classes propagated as democracy-universal, a myth, gets exposed. Gradually, the development rises to the stage of effective organization. People, in their process to democratize, gradually exercise authority – people’s sovereignty – spanning spheres of culture, society, politics and economy.

In a journey towards a democratized tomorrow, initiating motions for democratizing spheres around include: (1) producing literature; (2) expanding publicity; (3) organizing exchange of experiences; (4) making demand for fair price shop; (5) organizing cooperatives; (6) planning and implementing environmental programs; (7) organizing programs for mitigating effects of climate crisis; (8) formulating demands to democratize credit giving societies/groups, re-/construction work groups, bodies managing educational institutions, storage facilities, health facilities, local government and projects; (9) claiming other commons.

Taksim revolt shows: Simple trees can mobilize people in a mass-based way shunning irresponsible comments hurting people’s sentiment, adventurous slogans and childish incoherent acts. In places and at times, it may be a river, a water body, a flood plain, an encroacher’s acts and connections.

These and similar other activities, people identify as they proceed, facilitate forward movement for democratizing spheres around people, enrich people’s experience, build up leadership, and space for further move. It’s a continuous process with more and more democratizing demands of people.

Unrequited Questions In Manufactured “Democracy”

Grand goal of manufactured “democracy” does not attend to one fundamental aspect of democracy: the economic question. It efficiently deceives people by silver-tongued slogans while ignores the essential part of democracy-equation: people’s interest and role in economy.

Political system of any age in any society develops from the economic base the society stands on at that time. Dominating political system is a necessity of dominating classes, even of dominating segments. Political organizations, organs, forms, etc. take shape on the basis of the needs and levels of the classes/ segments. These can not survive if they fail to serve the purposes of the classes/segments they belong to and these cannot outlive once the needs are fulfilled. Democracy thus developed.

Slave owners had full democracy in their society and slaves could not dream of having the rights enshrined in the “democratic charters” of those societies without making revolt against the system and succeeding. It was the political responsibility and duty of slave owners to develop and safeguard the political system that could serve their interests, not of slaves. Slaves’ duty was not the same. Even they were incapable to develop or to take part in developing the system that could serve the interest of slave owners. Those were the historic limitations of both the classes standing opposed to each other and the limitations could not be crossed by none of the classes because of the relations the owners had with property. So, the political system of slave owners failed to accommodate political, economic, etc. aspirations and demands of slaves. Whatever was “given” to slaves was for the sake of ensuring the safety of slave owners’ property, was under pressure from slaves, at some historic moments signifying cracks in the stone walls of the system and contradictions within the slave owning class. It was even not possible for the slave owning class to design a political system that could articulate the interests of the dominating class in a future feudal society or a system that could open door for slaves to become masters of the political system. All other societies and all other classes in all other societies have/had the same limitations imposed by the relations to property. Democracy follows the same flight without turning unfaithful to its masters, the dominating classes. That is because of economy, the economy controlled by dominating classes, as “the economic side … is more fundamental in history than the political” and as “all political power is originally based on an economic and social function…” (Engels, Anti-Duhring).

Then, who, to be specific, which class shall own, control and dictate the democratic mechanism, with its economic and political content, being build under the aegis of the donors and banks? Will it be possible to accommodate and safeguard all the competing, contending, and conflicting interests of the opposing classes in the mechanism? But, “no democracy in the world can eliminate class struggle and the omnipotence of money” (Lenin, collected works, vol.18). How shall the antagonistic contradictions generated by antagonistic classes be resolved in the political machine owned by a class that strives by all means, including political arrangements, deceptive sweet words, and violence to keep its economic interests? In that case, shall not the political edifice the donors are building breakdown? Where shall the political machine, the machine to apply force, stand when workers’ aspirations will stand opposed to the greed of factory owners, debtors’ to creditors, people’s aspiration to control their resources to the attempts by MNC and donors to exploit the resources? Shall the legislative body debate all the secret agreements? Will the judiciary act against the propertied class when the interests of the class will stand against the interest of the people? Whom shall education, the ideological subservient part of the political machine, serve? Should anyone imagine of a democracy void of ideology? And, ideology is not free from class. Then, what ideology shall the democracy designed in the centre of the world system carry? How shall the dialectical relation between oppression of majority by minority and aspiration of majority for liberation from the clutches of profit be resolved in the democracy machine being constructed? With these unanswered questions the democracy building project carries a hopeless future.

The questions, however, are not undecided. Rather, these have been decided long ago: serve the dominant interests, local, within state boundary, and globally. Abstractly posing the question of democracy is the way the ruling interests follow: “An abstract or formal posing of the problem of equality in general and national equality in particular is in the very nature of bourgeois democracy” (Lenin, CW, vol.31).

If Lenin is cast aside as he challenges status quo and asks to demolish it Jefferson can be heard: “Equal and exact justice to all men …” (First Inaugural Address, 1801). Although the “equal and exact justice to all men” ultimately turns equal justice to the dominant section of the democracy donors are trying to impose is not even that bourgeois democracy, the democracy dreamed by Jefferson, by any standard. In essence, it is a democracy of the donors’ and their compradors’ interests; even, in most cases, it turns worse than that as the classes/segments upon whom the job to operate the political arrangement under the guise of democracy is entrusted are, because of historic reasons, and because of the nature of the economic interests they are entangled with, worse than the bourgeois class, and as segment, they are incapable and immature.

Their immaturity sometimes goes to that extent where they fail to identify their own interests, and to act according to their interests, where their infighting endangers their own class/segment, where they cover their hands with blood of their class/segment brothers, where they expose the funny face of their ruling machine and perform a partial job of making the machine void of credibility and acceptability. On this class/segment base “democracy” machine being built up can not withstand the shocks and pulls of the following historical processes.

Manufactured “democracy” thus goes to its sterile possibility and fulfils its farce.

[This is a modified version of a part of a chapter from The Age of Crisis, 2009]

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This article was published at countercurrents.org , on 1^th February, 2011

EGYPT ERUPTION: DILEMMA FOR DEMOCRACY

Limits of US power will be exposed if Mubarak now appears the central character in Egypt, and in the Middle East. People’s quest for democracy in Egypt has torn away the façade of legitimacy Mubarak was covered with, and has thrown him onto the heap of the despised. His, the once-ablest representative of the Egyptian ruling elites, destiny was decided long ago as it turned that the regime was breeding discontent that could endanger the ruling machine and strategic alliance.

Two factors are now defining the character and extent of democracy with opposing goals in Egypt: the people and the external king makers. Both of the factors are maneuvering within respective limits and with respective strengths, and array of political forces are changing fast. The moves by both the factors show respective limits of strength and weakness.

The elated Egyptian people challenged state power, kept it perplexed for days, made cracks in the wall of authority, but offered it opportunity to reassert its power of authority. While a section of the ruling elites appeared appeasing the revolting people the other, stupid thieves, relied on thugs to quell people’s rising. People’s political initiative faced hard days and significant sacrifice: at least three hundred citizens died for democracy. One journalist has virtually been murdered.

The king makers from an Empire afar used all diplomatic tact and powers including public diplomacy to manipulate the boiling situation. People gradually retreated to the backyard of uncertainty with their unfulfilled desire for democracy as jockeying for leadership overwhelmed people’s political actions and people were used as weight in emerging balance of political forces. First scene of first act of contemporary Egyptian politics has virtually come to an end.

Two weeks of demonstration by people, and clash, arson, loot by Mubarak hirelings sent the dictator to his disgraced political demise. His days were numbered a few years back by his external master, friend and guide as reports emerged from Washington DC. His friend turned foe was pulling strings to ensure his down fall.

Unemployment, rising food price, poverty, inequality, corruption and autocracy in all its forms in Egypt galvanized the protest. People there along the Bahr al-Nil, the Nile, and near coast had energy and courage to challenge autocracy patronized by Empire. The force people power showed was not astonishing to Egypt observers as it is the normal expression of people deprived, subdued and silenced for decades. Only autocrats, appearing wise but ignorant in essence, fail to fathom depth of hatred and anguish they germinate. They live happily as they feel assured with force and intrigue.

Two powers stood face to face in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez: an old, over-stretched autocracy overburdened with its corruption and non-responsiveness inherent in its body and soul, and a new political action unorganized, uncertain, appearing undefined, almost spontaneous and dependent on other internal and external political actors. Days of protests entered into static action in a city square for days with a broader demand and without specific political course, and with all possibilities of getting steamed out. Initiatives were handed over to parties to autocracy as autocracy was allowed to regroup as well. Swinging days kept door open for status quo. Those were the days of bold, fearless action and of unaware inaction.

People’s courageous days witnessed historic moments: fled away tools of repression, public fraternizing soldiers, unarmed peaceful mass demobilizing tanks. Montgomery’s and Rommel’s tanks had no such experience; Gamal Abdel Nasser’s The Philosophy of Revolution has not mentioned similar mobilization. Equations of powers and ruling factions, stalemates and tensions within ruling camp got mirrored in these fleeing acts, accommodating fraternization and getting demobilized. The Cairo political panorama was of revolt, not of revolution, ready to get cheated influenced by euphoria of a section of scholars.

And, the game was concluded long ago. Only a mass was kept aimlessly active to ensure an “orderly transition”, so that strategic alliance does not face uncertain future. At least two major Egyptian actors were in Washington during the initial days of protest, and they returned home in the midst of Mubarak meltdown. By then, on January 29, demonstrators started celebrating atop tanks in Tahrir Square and sharing food with soldiers sent to restore order. Egypt's defense minister spoke by phone to Robert Gates, the US defense secretary, the US vice-president spoke to the newly appointed Egyptian vice-president, Admiral Mullen, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff talked to the Egyptian army chief. The US secretary of state unswervingly continued pulling levers of public diplomacy. The US president was not negligent to his duty. Mail from EU to Cairo carried the same message: exit of Mubarak was the call of the hour as the old friend has now turned a liability. The World Security Conference in Munich also made the same conclusion. Mubarak’s fate was sealed by his masters. They were utilizing mounting pressure from streets.

The political upheaval that sent shudders through the Middle East and among global investors turned dependent on military for a democracy that will usurp the seat of power riding tank. Financial markets as well as Israel can only depend on the Egyptian army as speculators and Israel have limits. All, the Muslim Brotherhood and ElBaradei, showed the same limit. The Egyptian army with the prowess to ensure stability and continuity of strategic arrangement tolerated the protesters that showed sign of rift within the ruling machine.

The other aspect was also revealed. In absence of people’s democratic leadership the army appeared as the only institution in the society that could make and unmake political deals in Egypt. The ruling elites have efficiently obstructed development of institutions that could have nurtured democratic practices, and have developed institutions that are in alliance with army, a politicized institution that claim to be apolitical. It, in essence, confirmed its position as a tool for manipulation by masters. Limits of strength of the imported section of leadership in protest also got exposed. ElBaradei, a non-leader turned leader to a movement that lacks a leader, appealed to Obama while he was among the protesting people in Tahrir Square, to time on Mubarak: “Obama is the last one to say to President Mubarak, ‘It’s time for you to go”. The Empire’s tribune indeed!

Mubarak meddling is not the dictator’s crisis. It shows inefficiency, corruption, etc., and the dwindling power of the Egyptian ruling elites to keep people subdued. It is a crisis of those ruling elites. Its thievery has devoured its credibility, an almost universal process among ruling elites in the periphery. Its tools of torture have now turned blunt with the only hope of sharpening it with new face. Now, it is inching back with a hope of making a master stroke to reclaim its lost ground. The people of Egypt will experience new pharaohs in unstable political period.

Relying on youth and “wise men” will not ensure victory for the people. A democracy that can spell the end for tyranny is still a far cry. People, however, can win a breathing space, which can also be snatched away if people’s initiative loss thrust. But the political experience they will gather will be valuable: a pseudo victory will visit without people’s organization and leadership, and with static political actions that rely upon external powers to unseat a tyrant.

Taking help of part of the establishment, the military, and of the Empire for dumping away the dictator and establishing democracy is the dilemma the people are facing. The reality of the dilemma is the product of the society, not any individual’s or groups of individuals’ choice. People’s movement failed to conserve, develop and master strength that could have allowed it to take lead and foil deals. It has to partner with forces that stand for status quo, the unloved reality of deprivation and inequality in economy and politics.

Manufacturing “Democracy”

Democracy remains unfulfilled aspiration of people living in most of the peripheral societies as the ruling classes/segments, accomplices/compradors of the dominating capital, are historically incapable of delivering the political form. The ruling classes’/segments’ incapability generates contradictions, between people’s aspiration and rulers’ interests, the rulers fail to resolve. The failure is also historical. But the reaction that comes up threatens ruling system, and turns dangerous to strategic needs of the world masters. So, they step in with their design for “democracy”.

So, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IIDEA), and others “play an instrumental role” (annual report, 2008). Fundamentally the same views the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the wing of the USAID, owns. So, partners are organized.

But does democracy thus instrumented work? Andrew J Enterline and J Michael Greig of the University of North Texas provide a partial answer in their paper “Historical Trends in Imposed Democracy & the Future of Iraq & Afghanistan” (Jan., 2007). They examined 40 “imposed democratic” regimes, from 1800 to 1994.

“[I]mposed democracy,” they said, “is a phenomenon occurring primarily during the twentieth century.” They identified three cases occurring in the nineteenth century (Yugoslavia in 1838, New Zealand in 1857, and Canada in 1867) and the remainder of the sample occurred in the twentieth century. “Lebanon and the Philippines, that are ultimately failures” persist for long durations (50 and 38 years, respectively). These are exceptional cases. Several cases of imposed democratic regimes failed rapidly (Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Nigeria). These bear similar characteristics to the contemporary cases of Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only do nearly 60 percent of the 40 imposed democratic regimes fail during their period of observation, but the mean durability of this group of imposed democratic regimes is approximately 16 years. The principal conclusions they draw are: (1) Half of the imposed democracies fail by their 30th year of persistence. (2) Half of the institutionally weak imposed democracies fail by their 15th year, and 70% of these regimes fail by their 33rd year. Conversely, 37% of the institutionally strong imposed democracies fail by their 15th year, with no failures thereafter. (3) Weak imposed democracies rarely become more democratic, and 53% of the 40 imposed democracies experience a weakening in democratic institutions.(4) The failure of imposed democracies reduces the likelihood that a host state will experience democracy subsequently, as well as reducing the durability of democracy if it does return.

Dr. Robert Geyer and Dr. Samir Rihani in their paper “Complexity Theory and the Fundamental Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century” (presented at the 2000 PSA Conference at the London School of Economics, April 10-13, 2000) said: “As the 20th century came to an end, Western style liberal democracy and free market economics appeared to be completely triumphant. Developing countries, possibly in response to pressure from the IMF/World Bank, international opinion, and international forces, were becoming increasingly … free market oriented. The academic zenith of this position can be found in Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and The Last Man.” They argue that the claims of triumph “are actually troubling indicators of increasingly stultifying rigidities in the democratic and economic processes of advanced industrial countries” and these models when imposed upon the weak and impoverished countries of the Third World, yield highly uncertain results at best and growing economic impoverishment and social and political disintegration at worst.” They continue: “linear systems … thrive on … distinct hierarchical structures” and the systems cannot handle the “problems, solutions, opportunities, and challenges in the social science arena, and hence in democracy … a concept … neither simple nor clear. It is made even more obscure because it has been adopted … as a marketing slogan…” To them a Newtonian foundation is there in the core structure of Western liberal democracy.

Thus, they questioned the Western democratic system, a section of which is trying to impose its democratic design on other countries, especially in the periphery. To Geyer and Rihani the “more serious threats to democracy … include: (1) the continuing belief in and pursuit of an ‘end’ state for democracy based on Western experience, (2) economic globalization and associated inequalities, and (3) the internationalisation and imposition of preconceived models of democracy. Reduction of choices and variety are the biggest dangers in view of the dynamic nature of the process involved in the emergence and development of democracy.” As example they cited the “Third Way, advocated by Bill Clinton and Blair and articulated by Anthony Giddens…” (The Third Way, 1998 and Beyond Left and Right, 1994.) According to them the “Third Way” is “patently attractive and deceptively innocent” that uses “a fundamentally linear logic.” Their next argument is: “The growth of market based economic forces” is a “major challenge” to democracy. They said: “At both the national and global levels, economic developments based on superiority of market forces and free trade across boundaries are themselves powerful challenges to democracy…. [T]heorists of democracy cannot ignore the economic context within which democracy is nestled … It is still unclear … whether the cherished right to criticize a prime minister or a president … without fear of persecution by the state is more or less valuable than other rights relating to jobs, food, health, education, old age, and incomes…. [I]f the political parties offer almost identical policies, elections become irrelevant in practice. They would simply result in rotation between a group of people intent on retaining the status quo…. The unwillingness, and in fact inability, of governments to ‘intervene’ in business and the virtual impossibility of having an effective global trade union movement leaves the field clear for the economy to triumph over all other considerations.”

They identified “the internationalization of linear models of democracy” as another major challenge to democracy. They said: “[T]he dominance of certain leading economic and political powers and their wish to impose precise models of democracy … on other nations is equally alarming. There are suggestions that the leading powers are simply promoting their particular interests.” As examples they cited Nigeria, Algeria, Chile, Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are other countries also.

They concluded: “policies and actions grounded into a top-down command-and-control style of management … are seen as potent threats to democracy….[D]evelopment of lasting democratic beliefs and practices is a complex process that requires time as well as helpful global and local conditions. External influences are immaterial at best and harmful at worst. Such efforts have not succeeded in the past and could not succeed in future because they ignore, intentionally or otherwise, the true nature of the processes involved.” Collier also argued that monopolizing rewards by a small group of persons bring damaging conflicts (The Political Economy of Ethnicity, 1998). He also argued that democracy and personal incomes are important factors in determining the possibility of conflict.

The ruling regimes or regimes installed by world capital cannot take away seeds of conflict and deliver functionally responsive, transparent, accountable, and non-repressive political system. They have been/will be installed to make appeasement, sell out people’s interests and cheap labor, and facilitate loot of natural resources. They have to repress people as people stand for common interests.

[This is a modified version of a part of a chapter from The Age of Crisis, 2009]