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Commentary :: Labor

Another Democracy is Necessary

"What we have is a capitalist dictatorship in democratic form.. What we need is another democracy as a part of another world. A participatory democracy based on social and economic democracy is our yearning.."
Another Democracy is Necessary

Economic and Social Separation of Powers, not only Political Separation of Powers

By Michael Brie

[This article originally published in: Freitag 04, January 16, 2004 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, www.freitag.de/2004/04/04042102.php.]

Nothing is as striking in the international left as the “search for the lost democracy”. That there is nearly an oversupply in democracy seems entirely forgotten – as on the junk table of the Final Winter Sale. Never were there as many democratic states on the earth as after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Never were so many elected. Never have so many democrats governed the world quite democratically with so many democratic entrepreneurs and even more democratic NGOs.

There are democrats wherever one looks. The few without democracies, the Iraqis and Afghanis, will be compelled to democracy with force. Woe to the one who isn’t a democrat. He lives dangerously! He is already on the international search list. Does the left seek democracy so desperately so it doesn’t have to go to Guantanamo? However this democracy existing in surplus seems to be like counterfeit money that no one really wants. In fact, it is a kind of anti-Robin Hood. It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. It takes the public property of the people and gives it to multinational corporations. It transforms knowledge, genetic resources, education and health care into private property.

Wherever resistance stirs, “democracy” becomes a tyranny with the police and the army. If one asks timidly after every new democratic election whether something was decided more socially and justly than in the past, one is referred to the real sovereign: the economy, the financial markets, that mercilessly punish this aspiration. In the long run, political rights are ineffective without basic social rights.

Poverty and democracy are not compatible as the ancient Greeks knew. Therefore the first great working class movement, the Chartists in England, demanded both the right to vote and the eight-hour day. Great revolutions and mass movements to implement the elementary political rights of the people together with the development of a social state were needed.

Today the rulers are so firmly in the saddle that they are not afraid of a new great wave of expropriation. They take away our social rights, the public property, the ability to form democratic counter-forces and – through their control of the media – the democratic public. Because the rulers can say to themselves and us “There is no alternative!”, they have become very cheap democrats. Where there is no alternative to their rule, people can vote for them very freely. Our times are similar to the times of ancient Rome in the transition from republic to empire. The state institutions remain but the real hierarchies of power have radically changed.

What we have more and more is a capitalist dictatorship in democratic form. What we seek is a social democracy. A rule of the people is only conceivable when the citizens are free from the coercion of having to sell themselves. Only one who is socially free can freely decide politically. Therefore the struggle for the democratization of democracy is a struggle for basic social rights. Only when people control the elementary goods of a free life, work, education, health care, pensions and the environment can they be free citizens. Just as political democracy is not possible without social democracy, lasting social democracy is not possible without economic democracy. The step to an economic democracy was never taken or was militarily suppressed with the help of the US as in Chile in 1973.

Economic democracy would mean that citizens decide over the basic directions of economic development. Democracy needs economic and social separation of powers, not only political separation of powers. Social and ecological interests are powerless when they are not based on their own economic power. Social democracy is impossible without strong state and communal property where the most important public goods must be supplied. Existential provisions must remain in public hands and be financed by solid budgets. How can this happen when the social obligation of mammoth assets is annulled again and again?

The rich are presently in flight. They flee from taxes and from their democratic duties and obligations. For a long time the public budgets have been hostages of capital interests. But a poor state is a powerless state. The impoverishment of public budgets is a conscious destruction of democracy. Democracy can be extorted without capital controls, without redistribution from top to the bottom and without assurance of its fiscal foundations. Even leftist governments remain accessories of capital against their will.

The democracy that we seek needs the direct participation of citizens in budget decisions, the constitution and the enforcement of basic rights. Democratic regulation of the economy and a shorter workday are necessary so we finally have time to worry about our own affairs. Democracy is so cheap today because it has become a façade. What we need is another democracy as a part of another world. A participatory democracy based on social and economic democratic democracy is our yearning.
 
 

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