Unrequited Questions In Manufactured “Democracy”
By Farooque Chowdhury
01 February, 2011
Countercurrents.org
Grand goal of manufactured “democracy” does not attend to one fundamental aspect of democracy: the economic question. It efficiently deceives people by silver-tongued slogans while ignores the essential part of democracy-equation: people’s interest and role in economy.
Political system of any age in any society develops from the economic base the society stands on at that time. Dominating political system is a necessity of dominating classes, even of dominating segments. Political organizations, organs, forms, etc. take shape on the basis of the needs and levels of the classes/ segments. These can not survive if they fail to serve the purposes of the classes/segments they belong to and these cannot outlive once the needs are fulfilled. Democracy thus developed.
Slave owners had full democracy in their society and slaves could not dream of having the rights enshrined in the “democratic charters” of those societies without making revolt against the system and succeeding. It was the political responsibility and duty of slave owners to develop and safeguard the political system that could serve their interests, not of slaves. Slaves’ duty was not the same. Even they were incapable to develop or to take part in developing the system that could serve the interest of slave owners. Those were the historic limitations of both the classes standing opposed to each other and the limitations could not be crossed by none of the classes because of the relations the owners had with property. So, the political system of slave owners failed to accommodate political, economic, etc. aspirations and demands of slaves. Whatever was “given” to slaves was for the sake of ensuring the safety of slave owners’ property, was under pressure from slaves, at some historic moments signifying cracks in the stone walls of the system and contradictions within the slave owning class. It was even not possible for the slave owning class to design a political system that could articulate the interests of the dominating class in a future feudal society or a system that could open door for slaves to become masters of the political system. All other societies and all other classes in all other societies have/had the same limitations imposed by the relations to property. Democracy follows the same flight without turning unfaithful to its masters, the dominating classes. That is because of economy, the economy controlled by dominating classes, as “the economic side … is more fundamental in history than the political” and as “all political power is originally based on an economic and social function…” (Engels, Anti-Duhring).
Then, who, to be specific, which class shall own, control and dictate the democratic mechanism, with its economic and political content, being build under the aegis of the donors and banks? Will it be possible to accommodate and safeguard all the competing, contending, and conflicting interests of the opposing classes in the mechanism? But, “no democracy in the world can eliminate class struggle and the omnipotence of money” (Lenin, collected works, vol.18). How shall the antagonistic contradictions generated by antagonistic classes be resolved in the political machine owned by a class that strives by all means, including political arrangements, deceptive sweet words, and violence to keep its economic interests? In that case, shall not the political edifice the donors are building breakdown? Where shall the political machine, the machine to apply force, stand when workers’ aspirations will stand opposed to the greed of factory owners, debtors’ to creditors, people’s aspiration to control their resources to the attempts by MNC and donors to exploit the resources? Shall the legislative body debate all the secret agreements? Will the judiciary act against the propertied class when the interests of the class will stand against the interest of the people? Whom shall education, the ideological subservient part of the political machine, serve? Should anyone imagine of a democracy void of ideology? And, ideology is not free from class. Then, what ideology shall the democracy designed in the centre of the world system carry? How shall the dialectical relation between oppression of majority by minority and aspiration of majority for liberation from the clutches of profit be resolved in the democracy machine being constructed? With these unanswered questions the democracy building project carries a hopeless future.
The questions, however, are not undecided. Rather, these have been decided long ago: serve the dominant interests, local, within state boundary, and globally. Abstractly posing the question of democracy is the way the ruling interests follow: “An abstract or formal posing of the problem of equality in general and national equality in particular is in the very nature of bourgeois democracy” (Lenin, CW, vol.31).
If Lenin is cast aside as he challenges status quo and asks to demolish it Jefferson can be heard: “Equal and exact justice to all men …” (First Inaugural Address, 1801). Although the “equal and exact justice to all men” ultimately turns equal justice to the dominant section of the democracy donors are trying to impose is not even that bourgeois democracy, the democracy dreamed by Jefferson, by any standard. In essence, it is a democracy of the donors’ and their compradors’ interests; even, in most cases, it turns worse than that as the classes/segments upon whom the job to operate the political arrangement under the guise of democracy is entrusted are, because of historic reasons, and because of the nature of the economic interests they are entangled with, worse than the bourgeois class, and as segment, they are incapable and immature.
Their immaturity sometimes goes to that extent where they fail to identify their own interests, and to act according to their interests, where their infighting endangers their own class/segment, where they cover their hands with blood of their class/segment brothers, where they expose the funny face of their ruling machine and perform a partial job of making the machine void of credibility and acceptability. On this class/segment base “democracy” machine being built up can not withstand the shocks and pulls of the following historical processes.
Manufactured “democracy” thus goes to its sterile possibility and fulfils its farce.
[This is a modified version of a part of a chapter from The Age of Crisis, 2009]
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