Democracy: Yearning of People

The great divide, the Wall Street and the Main Street, is becoming stark everyday. This affects democracy, which is not class-neutral.

There is now not a gulf, but ocean of difference between the CEOs’ bonuses and the farm workers’ wages: “Even CEOs think CEOs are overpaid” (Reuters, Dec. 19, 2008), and: “Fatal Sunshine: The Plight of California's Farm Workers” (Time, early- August, 2009). Geyer and Rihani observe: “Western democratic systems have not reached a state of perfection …the danger signs are steadily mounting.” (“Complexity Theory and the Fundamental Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century”, April 10-13, 2000)

Democracy of the dominant classes is in crisis both in the centre and in the periphery giving rise to the fear of being toppled down. This reality has pushed the centre to embark on campaign for democracy in the peripheral societies and in the newly won turf in east and central Europe and in central Asia. “A democracy campaign should become an increasingly important and highly cost-effective component of … the defense effort of the United States” (Raymond D Gastil, “Aspects of a U.S. Campaign for Democracy”, in Ralph M Goldman and William A Douglas (eds.), Promoting Democracy: Issues and Opportunities, Praeger, 1988). So, “[t]he cold warriors gave way to the political operatives of the ‘democracy network’, who launched their global ‘democracy offensive’” (William I Robinson, A Faustian Bargain, Westview Press, 1992).

But the seeds of contradiction refuse to die down in the societies divided along class interests that carry the seeds of crisis. The seeds of contradiction are embedded in the economic interests, in the appropriation of entire society by the dominant few. Exposed cases of manipulating state machine by interest groups confirm Lenin: “[F]inance capital, in its drive to expand, can ‘freely’ buy or bribe the freest democratic or republican government and the elective officials of any, even an ‘independent country’” (vol. 22, p.144). Other crises, especially the financial crisis, when, in the words of Franklin D Roosevelt, “Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion” (First Inaugural Address, 1933), have worsened the situation and have sharpened the line of conflict.

Despite the manipulations with the slogan of democracy, with the slogan of a political system which is accountable and transparent, and despite efforts to hide the interest of the globalizing capital under the cloak of democracy the efforts provide breathing space, at times and in relative terms, for people under absolute autocratic rule and create scope for maneuver for people’s movement, depending on maturity of the movement. A wide environment allows space, through legislation of democratic, human, labor, ethnic, gender rights, etc., and/or possibilities for creating space by the dominated for broader, open and conscious debates, initiatives and struggles. This is the importance of the political arrangement for facilitating “democracy”.

Practices with democratic norms and rules including accountability and transparency engenders democratic aspirations among the masses, create institutions conducive to democracy; but at certain point of development the striving for democracy by the masses and the denial of it by the dominant interests will intensify conflict along economic interest line.

Whatever the geostrategic game and its needs for satellites under the umbrella of imposed democracy the yearnings of people around the world for a democratic system do not get lost. The onslaught of capital, yesterday wearing the mask of neo-liberalism, today of the public-private partnership, and tomorrow, most possibly, going back to the neo-cons, to the private sector, is consistently increasing as its crises are compelling it to intensify the offensive in search of a recourse to its problems. Thirst for accumulation is driving capital to reckless game and thus bringing imperil in the lives of the people. Thus, it tries to distort peoples’ efforts for a democratic life by manipulating and misguiding peoples’ aspirations, with its vast resources. This creates the biggest crisis in the arena of democracy for the people. The spirit of democracy gets lost by capital’s grip over the entire globe. Other crises created by the dominant capital have made people’s struggle for democracy difficult, have created threat to people’s initiatives to organize democratic system.

Capital cannot tolerate people’s democratic life as it is opposed to the interests of capital. The overwhelming power of capital spread over the globe in collaboration with its compradors is the biggest obstacle to people’s initiatives, to their striving for democracy.

People at the same time are facing other crises. In many places the physical existence of people are facing threat either due to climate change, the extreme weather, loss of habitat and crop land, forests, washing away of infrastructure built up with people’s money, or due to ethnic, and other clashes fanned by capital in its quest for strategic resources. This situation obscures the fundamental question of democracy: “of the people, by the people, for the people”, the hope Lincoln expressed in his Gettysburg address, the rule of the majority, not the aggrandizing absolute minority. The near-complete globalization by capital has thus created the crisis of democracy. But, Whitman’s Song resonates:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good as
belongs to you.

(Song of Myself)

[This is the concluding part, slightly modified, of a chapter from The Age of Crisis, 2009.]