Democracy's Last Gasp

Democracy is dying. I think we all know it. We've all seen how politics and politicians have become toothless when it comes to defending the rights of the people, while obeying each and every command of the mighty lobbies of big industry and big banks.

_{Image by AFGE - source: Flickr}

We've almost lost her; democracy is almost dead and she will die if we don't act soon. While I'm saying this, I do realize there's a possibility that it would be better for all of us if democracy would die for real, but I'm not ready to believe that yet... You see, the way I look at it, democracy still is our best chance for achieving the maximum amount of individual freedoms. The worse chance we have to maintain or gain freedoms is to leave it all to free markets; history proves that beyond any doubt. We could say that capitalism derives its moral legitimacy from being governed by democracy, because when left alone, free markets will cause ever greater income inequality between owners and workers and will divide them into their own distinct classes. The mechanism of competition and profit-seeking will inevitably lead to winners and losers, and the culmination of wealth and power in an ever decreasing number of hands. Historically these natural and harmful tendencies have been reined in by the democratic forces of organized people, reformers who fought for the rights of the lower class.

It's so important to understand that democracy and capitalism are opposing forces, but tragically we've been made to believe, for decades now, that the two go hand in hand, that they're a match made in heaven and that both are representative of the same kind of individual freedoms. "Free market democracy" is the dominant model used for governing countries in the western hemisphere. We effortlessly use the two in one sentence to describe the most free peoples in the world. And that is correct, but only with the understanding that they are opposing forces, they're not amplifying each other. Democracy, when it works, prevents the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few to the extent that this concentrated power takes over democracy itself.

This is why democracy fails, why she is almost dead: we've let neoliberalism re-invent everything in society in the image of the marketplace. It was not enough to just let the markets do their thing, no, everything had to become a marketplace, and this includes every aspect of society; education, telephone, water, electricity, health care, even the army is being replaced increasingly by private mercenaries. And yes, that includes democracy itself. Everything of which we once thought as "commons", everything we judged to be for the benefit of us all, that which should be governed by the people, for the people, has now been given into the hands of the market. And since we see the politicians sell out our commons, we blame them, and rightly so. But this is just half the story, and our disappointment in the politicians that keep failing us has led to what I call political apathy in the voters. So much so that we've given up, and have given our votes to authoritarian, anti-free speech, right wing populists everywhere.

_{Naomi Klein on Global Neoliberalism}

The other half of the story is that these politicians are not alone; it's the ones to who they sell, the ones that buy their favors, they are the real rulers, they are the ones who have completely bought our democracies. Especially in America they have re-invented democracy in the image of a marketplace; "the best democracy money can buy." The battle between the opposing forces has been decided, and capitalism has won, democracy has lost. The fight was never between left and right, it's always been between the classes inherent in the free market economy. And after 4 or 5 decades of global neoliberalism, the ideology that basically says that free markets are the solution to anything and everything, including the rule over the people, we tragically see that many common folks really believe that market forces are the best thing to govern society. After the politicians have failed us so long and so blatantly, the surrender seems complete; many among us vote for authoritarian, anti democratic, right wing, nationalist, market loving populist demagogues, AND many of us prefer the market or winners in the market to govern our nations. This is a double defeat, and has all the hallmarks of fascism in its early stages I might add.

Since America is still the largest economy and largest world power, and since there are elections coming up there, I'd like to mention something: I believe there's one candidate among the democrats that scores on all points I've mentioned in this post. We see, in the entire west, the results of decades long neoliberal policy aimed at pleasing the rich at the expense of the middle- and working class. Many studies have shown that politicians do the bidding of the owner class, and not the working class, for example Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America and Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, both from Princeton University. Almost all political decisions and measures over the last 5 decades have been for the benefit of the plutocrats. And there's one politician who genuinely seems willing to take on the powers that be. Who wants to increase taxes on the rich, punish big corporations for moving their business outside, or evade paying taxes, who will make government contracts conditional so that industries can only score a contract if they meet certain worker-rights related standards. In other words, there's one person who wants to make serious work of correcting the huge gap between the haves and have nots, and that's Bernie Sanders.

During the last two weeks or so, there were two news items that gave me hope that maybe America can start to fight back and win back some of the people's power that has dwindled so dramatically these past decades. Bernie Sanders is unique among the 2020 candidates in that he only gets financial support and donations from everyday individuals; he has no big donors at all, with the average donor size being 20 Dollars. Recently news broke that he has broken the all-time record for having individual donors; Bernie Sanders hits 1 million donors. And then it was made public that Bernie Sanders hauled in an absolute record of 25.3 million Dollar in Q3, as displayed in Which 2020 Democrats Raised the Most Money This Summer? from the New York Times. Not having to take even one Dollar from the powers that be gives this man great freedom to not become the latest string-puppet controlled by the plutocracy. Also, this man has said the same things for 40 years now, so he's honest for a change. All other candidates in both parties have billionaire donors. Given everything I said before, this should be an easy choice, as far as I can judge from afar. I wish him, democracy, and America well.

_{How Neoliberalism Threatens Democracy}

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