Democracy in Crisis
(From Just Peace Vol 15#1)
With the lamentable spectacle of elections still fresh in our
minds, it is appropriate to reflect on the question, is democracy
in a state of crisis today? The answer depends partly upon what
one means by 'democracy'. In some ways, 'democracy' appears in
better shape today than ever. For several presidential elections
in a row we've had three, not merely two, major political parties'
candidates to choose from. Recently the 'motor-voter' law was
passed. And we may be close to some significant further reforms
in our political campaign financing laws. But while the character
of the electoral process is crucial for a well-functioning democracy,
much more is involved than that.
Essential to the concept of democracy is that individuals have
equal input and influence in social decisions that affect them:
democracy designates a kind of equality among people. Of course,
particular kinds of social structures are necessary for 'democracy'
to exist. Universal suffrage in elections of accountable and recallable
representatives, along with free speech and access to public discourse,
seem essential. So too do public guarantees of rights to adequate
education, economic well-being, access to public spaces and recreation,
and so forth. Yet one may ask, as many Native Americans do: even
with all these structures supposedly instrumental to 'democracy',
do we have anything remotely like real democracy? In fact, aren't
many of these structures actually antithetical to real democracy?
For example, rather than being conducive to equality among people,
doesn't the entire apparatus of political representation instead
work to undermine processes of organic democracy such as grassroots
local initiative and face-to-face, consensus local decision-making?
Perhaps we've never had real democracy -- how then could 'democracy'
be in a 'state of crisis'?
But democracy also designates the movement toward social equality,
a movement that began with the French Revolution barely two-hundred
years ago. It is this movement that is responsible for what democratization
of the political sphere has occurred in modern times. The fruits
of that process leave much yet to be accomplished, of course.
For example, democracy in politics will certainly be incomplete
until the mass media too are democratized. And real democracy
requires that people's workplaces also be transformed: why shouldn't
people run their own workplaces democratically? But these things
are part of the agenda of the democratic/egalitarian movement,
and that same movement has also been responsible for significant
progress in recent decades toward the democratization of racial,
sexual and gender relationships, and arguably even the relationship
between humans and the natural world in modern society.
Is this democratic movement in danger today? Yes, it is, most
importantly on account of some fundamental conflicts between the
capitalist economy and modern democratic social structures. Some
of these frictions arise from the most basic, long-standing tendencies
of capitalism itself, others arise from recent developments of
the capitalist economy. The capitalist corporation, a hierarchical
structure of command over working people, is in its very essence
an anti-democratic institution whose hegemonic influence in modern
culture spreads with the market system. And the 'concentration
of capital' -- the basic tendency for bigger corporations to supplant
smaller ones in market competition, buying them out or forcing
them out of business, and thereby accumulating ever greater political
and social power in the process -- continues unabated from the
dawn of capitalism into its foreseeable future. On top of these
basic tendencies of capitalism, however, more recent developments
have begun to seriously jeopardize what limited accomplishments
the democratic/egalitarian movement has made to date.
First, the concentration of capital has in recent years especially
affected the media industries -- TV and radio broadcasting, news,
magazine and book publishing, film, video and music entertainment.
Increasingly lacking competition, the media now more than ever
promote a culture that is commoditized and homogenized around
private consumerism, in which the discussion and resolution of
public issues are increasingly excluded from the public eye and
left solely to power elites.
Second, in conjunction with the globalization of production and
markets that has occurred recently -- itself an expected outcome
of the compulsive expansionism at the heart of capitalism -- the
concentration of capital has also recently brought forth multinational
corporations of such power that they can play off against each
other the working populations of entire nations. National democracies
the world over are consequently increasingly timid, increasingly
unable to resist multinationals' insistence on a whole variety
of concessions. This is what underlies the trend these days for
nations' governments to concede lower taxes to pay for public
goods; weaker safety, health, consumer and environmental regulations;
less commitment to working people's labor unions; and less spending
on public 'amenities', especially those for working people. All
such things adversely affect corporate profit and corporate owners'
personal incomes. Welfare, anti-poverty spending, and the 'social
safety-net', for example, strengthen labor's 'fall-back position'
in bargaining with employers over wages and benefits, hence, in
the corporate agenda, must be cut. Public enterprise, as another
example, competes with and supercedes private enterprise, and
also keeps from the public eye matters that corporations consider
better left to their own discretion, hence must be privatized.
This is what underlies also the recent consolidation of the ongoing
right-wing political reaction to the gains made by the democratic
movement from the Great Depression through the 1960's. Those gains
should not be minimized. They effectively include not only such
obvious accomplishments as the ending of the Viet Nam war, and
progress in women's rights and environmental clean-up, that occurred
during and after the sixties, but also the Social Security system
providing for working people's retirement, and government anti-poverty
programs and employment and job-training commitments. Many of
these accomplishments, and the impetus of the democratic movement
generally, are in danger now. There is even a prospect, if things
continue long in this direction, of a kind of technocratic-corporate
feudalism for our childrens' future.
But while there is danger, there is also opportunity in the crisis
of democracy. Particularly at this moment, the need for and feasibility
of major changes in electoral processes are increasingly clear
to a broad constituency, and increasingly acknowledged even by
mainstream commentators, considering the disturbingly low participation
of voters in elections these days. Obviously such changes must
be but a small part of the long-run agenda of the democratic movement,
but only such changes can provide the basis for public decisions
to reinstate, strengthen and extend the past accomplishments of
that movement. Here in Florida and elsewhere, many of us on the
left have found ourselves recently in uneasy but welcome alliance
with our Libertarian Party opposites on the right, in fighting
for improvements in election ballot access. A great variety of
political viewpoints critical of the two-party corporate oligarchy
that has ruled to date would be served by joining together in
such causes as those of public financing of political campaigns,
improved access to the media, and proportional representation
in legislative bodies such as exists in many other nations' parliaments.
People in the democratic/egalitarian movement may find it difficult
to form alliances with others of divergent views -- and rightly
so, generally -- but on these issues, certainly as critical as
any on our agenda today, we should welcome the occasion and commit
to a broad outreach toward common cause with all who are disaffected
by the present system.