The prospects for democracy at the close of the 20th century are
perilous. In an increasingly unified world system, it is no longer possible
to write about the prospects for democracy except on a world scale. It
cannot be a precious entity reserved for the rich First World ghetto of
Western Europe and North American. Nor is it useful to write about
“Eurocentric” or “Eurospecific” forms of democracy. It is reasonably clear by now that those who have required those qualifiers, or others such
“socialist” democracy, “Islamic” democracy, or democracy suited for
the Third World South, usually mean no democracy whatsoever.
Those who insist on differentiating between “their” democracy and
“Eurocentric” democracy are paying homage to the term, which is a part
of the political vocabulary of our era inherited from a Western Europe
interacting with the political struggles of the Spanish Creole and British
colonists in the Americas for self-rule and political liberty. To be sure,
these early struggles were for the benefit of relatively privileged strata in
these societies, but they were nevertheless coached in a universalistic
language that transcended geographic, cultural, and status boundaries.
From these struggles developed, more or less simultaneously, three
universalists ideas: democracy, nationalism, and socialism.
In their 19th century editions, all three universalists ideas were
interrelated as different facets of a struggle to include ever wider parts of
a polity’s subjects in its governance. Each was grossly distorted one
could say betrayed – in our century, taking the forms of populism, national
chauvinism, and state socialism or Stalinism. Yet the three represent the
great unfinished political and social project of our era, Democracy, or rule
of the demos, raised the question of who is in the demos. The early
Mazzinian democratic nationalists inspired by the French Revolution
responded that the demos is the entire nation, not merely the traditional
political classes. Yet the nation or the people, early socialists added, is so
grossly unequal, with the great majority forced to labor on behalf of the
few to assure their very existence, that they cannot participate in
governing the polity. They cannot be free equal citizens.
Thus the three concepts, democracy, nationalism, and socialism, were
about self-government. This remains the central problem of modern
democracy: How can grossly unequal people, grossly unequal in wealth,
cultural training, and power participate in administering public affairs?
Ancients Athenians called those inhabitants of a polis who could, but
did not, participate in public affairs idiots. One can argue that really
existing contemporary democracy, that is to say, capitalists democracy,
turns an ever greater proportion of the population into political idiots. It
does so through an increased emphasis on mass media, which has
commodified politics, and through systematically dismantling or
Corrupting mass participatory institutions, like political parties and labore unions, that make popular participation in decision making in mass
even theoretically possible.
It can be objected that these features of capitalist democracy are
merely distortions of a political model that, through its separation and
autonomy of economic and political power, alone make democracy
statism in which the two power pyramids are joined. However, this is not
possible. In this it is contrasted with feudalism, state socialism, and simple
really a useful point since similar arguments were made to these criticizing
the absence of human rights and democracy in the existing, one-party.
ruled state socialist or Stalinist states. We were told that what we were
criticizing were distortions of a human and democratic political model and
that these were only “really existing socialisms” and should not be used to
criticize the democratic and liberating idea of socialism itself. Very well,
so let me stipulate: I am not discussing the model of pluralist capitalist
democracy, but only really existing capitalism in its relation to the
prospects for democracy, East and West, North and South.
Capitalism, really existing capitalism that is, has its own specific
institutions and legal systems. These can, but need not, coincide with
parliamentary democracy of a more or less advanced and pluralist type. It
has armed bodies of men to protect it, a dominant ideology, and certain
kinds of political relations on a world scale. It is, a world system. More
precisely, today it is the world system.
Despite the anti-statist Social Darwinian utopias of the Chicago school
of economics and its many less-explicit imitators, really existing capitalism
uses the state without compunction in both implicit and explicit ways that
make democracy very problematic in most of the world. This willingness
and ability to use the state to defend specific national capitalist interests
have been modified and limited to varying extents internally by masslabor
and social democratic movements and externally by transnational financial
institutions and the world market. Sometimes the limits are imposed more
narrowly by the policies of the dominant world power, the United States
of America. The state has also been, under conservative, liberal, and even
social democratic governments, an instrument for the defense of the
general capitalist system against the narrow and short-sighted policies of
major sector of the economy.
Capitalism is thus not simply the absence of socialism and feudalism.
Under certain circumstances it may retain certain feudal institutions and
committed to the maintenance of capitalisin (whatever their state ideology)
its exists in real life is necessary. This is the case whether the dominate
is nominally pro-capitalist or pro-labor, conservative or social
democratic. Really existing capitalism implies a whole raft of political.
economic, and social relations, including the not so minor question of
which groups are dominant or, more crudely put, the ruling class. Really
existing capitalism is in very serious trouble. However, since capitalism is
the world system today and, all verbiage aside, represents the realy New
World Order, the fact that it is in trouble is not necessarily good news for
the prospects for democracy, or for that matter, for any prospects of a
democratic socialism. There are other less pleasant alternatives. The
capitalist “New World Order” is in substantial trouble in at least three
places: the Third World South. Western Europe, and Eastern Europe.
a system in which the political rule of parties
That has an effect on the global prospects for democracy since the
capitalism of the Southeast Asian Tigers and Japan, not to mention the one
emerging in China, is not particularly congruent with democracy. The
United States has a democratic system flawed by three peculiarities: a very
weak and old-fashioned labor movement, the gross domination of the
political processes by extremely expensive mass media, and an absence of
anything resembling a responsible party system. It is a system almost
impervious to change, particularly to change driven by popular
mobilization. Therefore, the problem of democracy is worldwide today. I
will first take up the three specified problem areas in reverse order.
