A Law Suit Will Probably Trail Obama: State Of A Bourgeois Democracy
By Farooque Chowdhury
07 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org
A matured bourgeois democracy’s crisis-condition comes to light with the announcement of a plan for a law suit against the president of the democracy, Barack Obama. The law suit being planned probably will trail the president of the US.
Announcement of the plan for law suit, whether the plan goes to the court or not, exposes a part of the state of the union along with the democracy the union practices.
John Boehner, the US House speaker has announced plan to file a lawsuit alleging that president Obama has abused his executive authority by implementing policies without congressional approval. Boehner said Obama was ignoring the laws that Congress passes.
However, the House speaker in his late-June announcement did not identify the executive actions the House would challenge. At the same time, he assured the action’s aim is not impeachment proceedings against the president: “This is not about impeachment.”
Boehner considers the law suit’s aim is to protect the rights of Congress under the constitution. “The constitution makes it clear that the President's job is to faithfully execute the law. In my view, the President has not faithfully executed the law,” said Boehner.
The speaker is planning to ask the taxpayer-funded Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) to file a lawsuit to counter the president’s executive actions. The advisory group’s responsibilities include instructing the House General Counsel to take legal action.
The speaker mentioned the “golden rule” of separation of power between the executive, legislative and judicial branches: “Congress has its job to do and so does the president and when there’s conflict like this between the legislative branch and the administrative branch, it’s in my view our responsibility to stand up for this institution in which we serve.”
A Newsweek report said: “Executive monarchy”, “imperial precedents” and “aggressive unilateralism”— these are just a few of the terms being bandied about since House Speaker John Boehner announced two days ago a grand plan to sue President Barack Obama. (Leah McGrath Goodman, “An Embarrassing Hole in Boehner’s Plan to Sue ‘King’ Obama”, June 29, 2014)
Boehner urged House members to join him in challenging the president in a memo: “If the current president can selectively enforce, change or create laws as he chooses with impunity, without the involvement of the legislative branch, his successors will be able to do the same,” Boehner said. “This shifts the balance of power decisively and dangerously in favor of the presidency, giving the president king-like authority at the expense of the American people and their elected legislators.” (ibid.)
A spokesman to the speaker said that Boehner only hoped to compel Obama to enforce a number of laws, which are expected to be disclosed in the coming days.
The White House criticized congressional Republicans for considering the legal measure against the president. Josh Earnest, the White House spokesperson, said such a move, funded by taxpayers, would not be supported by most Americans.
The White House considers Obama uses executive actions this year to move his agenda forward.
Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader (D-California), has termed the planned Republican move as “subterfuge” with the hope to distract voters from a legislative lull at the Capitol. She said: “They’re doing nothing here, and so they have to give some aura of activity.”
She tried to make a comparison: Obama’s use of executive actions “hasn’t come anywhere near what Republican presidents have done”.
There are measures by Obama with which Republicans are not happy. These include halting a number of immigrants’ deportations, raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers and extending the family and medical leave benefits to gay couples.
The “disagreements” are not limited within border. It’s an empire, not a small state. So, problems are spread over the globe. And, the area of competition among factions of the Empire’s dominating elites is worldwide.
Boehner perceives Obama has ignored the rapidly deteriorating Iraq situation: “And what’s the president doing? Taking a nap!” The House speaker’s preference in Iraq is: “Get engaged before it’s too late.”
Failures are now overwhelming the Empire. Many of the Empire’s politicians are annoyed with the failures as interests are at stake.
The Empire, a part of its politicians perceive, has failed to make Baghdad regime agree to a status of forces agreement although the regime was the Empire’s creation. The failure bears “serious consequences for … American interests in the region.” Boehner finds: “The president has celebrated our exit from Iraq as a hallmark of his foreign policy agenda …” But the speaker feels instead of celebration the “focus should be … on completing our mission successfully.” However, the speaker, it seems, is undecided on a vital issue: whether the Empire should launch air strikes against the jihadists or not.
On the opposite, Pelosi feels: The US should not be dragged back into conflict there. “I don’t think there’s any appetite in our country for us to become engaged in any more military activity in Iraq,” said Pelosi. “The American people have been exhausted with wars.”
Obama’s Taliban deal – five top Taliban fighters for US sergeant Bergdahl – is now being questioned: Risk to the US military and civilian personnel serving around the globe has increased. “Those who would argue the opposite, I think, are incredibly naive,” said Boehner.
His further statement is devastating: “One of our citizens’ greatest protections was knowing that the United States does not negotiate with terrorists, and that issue now – that principle has been compromised. America is willing to make deals with terrorists. That’s the new Obama doctrine.”
The Empire has renounced its “principled” stand, and has negotiated and made deal with the elements it considers terrorists.
Boehner also brings to notice the Empire’s “failed policies” in Syria, Libya and Egypt. “He [Obama] continues to endanger our troops and citizens with his failed foreign policies,” said the House speaker.
A stunt
Obama, on the other hand, blasted Boehner’s plans to sue him calling the legal action “a stunt”.
In an ABC News interview Obama told: “You notice that he didn’t specifically say what exactly he was objecting to.” Obama later said he wouldn’t apologize for “trying to do something while [lawmakers] are doing nothing.”
A part of the politicians of the Empire, as Obama said, is engaged with making stunt.
For whom the stunt is made? It’s for the electorate.
And, using the US president’s term, the stunt is made with serious issues: abuse of power, ignore laws, failure in going by the constitution, etc.
The fact gets exposed: constitution, law, power, etc. are part of bourgeois political game, an old bourgeois style. Ab uno disce omnes, from one learn all. (Virgil, Aeneid. II) Nothing is sacrosanct to the bourgeois though it never poses reckless while propagating rule of law, check and balance in distribution of power, upholding constitution.
An exercise with arithmetic
Despite the House speaker’s claim executive power-arithmetic presents a different reality.
Gerhard Peters and John Woolley, co-founders of the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, are among the leading authorities in the US on the use of presidential executive power, going back to George Washington. Citing Peters the above cited Newsweek report said:
“Obama has issued fewer executive orders than any other president since Franklin Roosevelt. In the modern era that most presidential scholars believe began with Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, Obama has issued the least number of executive orders per year”.
The report added:
“Obama’s yearly average of 33.58 executive orders is lower than any president in 130 years, going back to Chester Arthur, who averaged 27.7 executive orders a year. (Peters prefers using an average-per-year metric, as the length of presidential terms can greatly vary.)
“By comparison, George W. Bush clocked in at 36.38 and Clinton at 45.5. Reagan topped 47 and Carter hit 80, but no president has broken above 100 since Truman, who surpassed 116 and flexed his authoritative muscles to desegregate the Armed Forces with an executive order in 1948, notes Peters, ‘a much more controversial use of executive orders than anything Obama has so far done.’
“As of June 20, Obama had issued 182 executive orders, covering everything from financial sanctions on Ukraine and Russia to equal pay for men and women.”
Reason behind the law suit plan should be searched if the number of executive orders issued by Obama is fewer and least per year than his predecessors. It’s, the factional feud in the guise of upholding the constitution, “something” else: deeper and graver issues and interests. Its origin is somewhere else: factional interests. The law suit plan is on the surface that hides some fundamental issues: competition in other spheres.
A ruling
A recent Supreme Court ruling has also questioned presidential power: Obama exceeded his authority when he made temporary appointments to the National Labor Relations Board during a brief Senate break in 2012. Republicans cheered with the ruling.
The ruling further exposes tricks practiced by the factions, intensified competition among the factions, and, more basically, a reality that tells of a decline.
A serious problem
The Newsweek report mentioned above cites a number of experts, and a serious problem is identified.
“Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University, believes a shift toward greater executive power began before Obama and represents a concerning trend. ‘Even though I voted for President Obama and agree with many of his policies, in my view there is a serious problem here,’ he told Newsweek. ‘We’ve been seeing a shift in our system that certainly didn’t start with the president, but the rise of this new type of über-president is destabilizing to our system.’
“‘It’s very weird for the speaker of the House to suggest something like this,’ says John Hudak, a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. ‘That said, if the speaker feels the president has violated the constitutional order of powers in a way that has harmed the House, he may feel he needs to sue.’
“Hudak is skeptical. ‘While the use of executive power is always an important and healthy discussion to have over any president, my feeling is, this is not being born of a true concern over constitutionality but being born over party politics.’”
The “shift toward greater executive power” signifies certain compulsions and limitations arising out of a situation developing in the realm of governing of interests. The move, on the other hand, turns serious if simply it’s “being born over party politics” as serious issues like “abuse of power”, etc. are being pulled out of Pandora’s Box of bourgeois politics; and it’s being pulled out not by an opponent class, but by members of the same ruling class.
An exposure
Statements and counter-statements by responsible members of the state machine, and opinions/observations by experts cited above, bring to surface the following facts:
(1) Legislative branch of the advanced democracy finds no power to check abuse of power by executive branch, and is failing to protect its rights under constitution.
(2) Executive branch is implementing policies without approval of legislative branch, is ignoring the laws, and is not faithfully executing law.
(3) Taxpayers’ money will be used to carry out a political fight between factions of dominating interests; and the factional fight at the expense of taxpayers is considered as a stunt.
(4) An elected president finds no other way but to resort to issuing executive orders, which means legislative branch stands opposed to steps executive branch feels needed for the economy.
(5) Legislative branch is in a legislative lull – doing nothing – and the branch subterfuges to distract voters by creating an aura of activity, and probably, the tact will be carried out, if the plan materializes, with taxpayers’ money.
(6) Executive actions are taken by two dominating factions – Democrats and Republicans. None is saint.
(7) Executive actions, if not appropriate, are considered justified as Republicans also resorted to that; a fallacy indeed. But some other logic, like “urgency”, “failure of legislative branch to respond to the call of the hour”, “reneging by legislative branch”, would have been better to justify the actions.
(8) There are “a shift toward greater executive power”, “a concerning trend”, “a serious problem”, “a shift in [the] system”, “the rise of [a] new type” that “is destabilizing [the] system” as the speaker of the House “feels the president has violated the constitutional order of powers in a way that has harmed the House”. And, this is “being born over party politics.”
(9) Stunt is part of bourgeois politics. Its ethical stand and morality is defined. And, its ethical and moral standard is nullified.
(10) These – lull, stunt, subterfuge, carrying out factional fight by using taxpayers’ money – are happening/being done at a time, when the democracy near-reaches to debt limit, government of the democracy remains shut down for days, infrastructure, an immediate requirement for trade and industry, finds scarcity of funds for its repair and maintenance, and people, as Pelosi said, are exhausted with war.
(11) State of rule in peripheral states can be easily assumed if state of a matured bourgeois democracy, the largest Empire in the world system, engages with the above mentioned practice. This, the state of rule in peripheral states, is a serious question as the population in these states is much, much higher than the population in all the matured bourgeois democracies. The state of rule in the peripheral states is a distorted, lumpenized version of democracy having no role of the demos, the popular classes, in governance that only increases suffering of the population. In general, the peripheral states are part of the world system that the Empire presides over. Type and character of democracy in these states can be assumed easily as these are the states, where the Empire exports/trying to export democracy of its own version.
Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address in 1801 mentioned “sovereign functions of legislation”, “all will … arrange themselves under the will of the law”, “preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor”, “arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason”.
Concerned interests at that time required these in the way they interpreted: “sovereign functions of legislation”, “will of the law”, “constitutional vigor”, etc. as mentioned by Jefferson representing the group of farmers, small entrepreneurs and artisans.
More than two hundred years later, the bourgeois democracy, which has matured long ago, and is being run by the matured bourgeoisie, is facing elementary, but fundamental questions, and is failing to resolve the questions without infringing, as a branch of the state perceives, power of a branch. The questions of power and its limits, separation of power, check and balance between branches of state were discussed, debated, and considered settled down more than two hundred years ago.
George Washington in his farewell address in 1796 said: “The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. … for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad, of your safety, of your prosperity, of that very liberty which you so highly prize.” In the same address, Washington mentioned: “overgrown military establishment”…“under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty …”
More than two hundred years ago, concerned interests in the bourgeois democracy considered “unity of government” “main pillar” for its “independence”, “tranquility”, “safety”, “prosperity” and “liberty” in the way it interpreted. Disunity in the government appears as a threat to the interests. Today’s allegations and stunts don’t cement the unity Washington desired. But today’s concerned interests find no other way.
A trajectory of decay
It’s, the present claims or allegations by legislative and executive branches, not a stray case. It’s a tendency of decay, a capite ad calcem, from head to heel.
The decay is tightening its grip on the political arrangement – the democracy – as the political arrangement is facing limits in catering to its master – the social classes that own it – and the arrangement is facing a reality that the political arrangement can’t tackle.
The facts of claimed abuse of power, failure of legislative branch to protect its rights, ignoring laws, etc. that have been cited above are a show of further “problem” within the democracy. The roots to these are in deeper “soil” of the dominating classes that own and operate the political machine arrayed in the so-called style of separation of power. These classes cooperate and compete among themselves for control of the resources.
The tendency, the practice, and the need have not suddenly sprouted. It is significant if the claim is real. It is a significant question if the claim is fraudulent, without base: Why a responsible member of the state machine is making such a claim? Is there no other way to wage political fight, to win over voters, to further political and economic interests other than resorting to putting significant allegation against presidency? Answer of any sort to each of these questions will tell a single fact: A significant crisis.
Similarly, the alleged fact of legislative lull, subterfuges to distract voters, etc., carries the same questions, the same sort of answers, and the same symptom.
The trend of steamrolling by executive branch in bourgeois democracies is not a new phenomenon. It’s happening for long, and that’s the fact of bourgeois statecraft, although underlying cause of the trend is not exposed by bourgeois political scientists.
Nixon and Reagan are burning examples of brushing aside the limit defined by the US constitution: the former mobilized the Empire’s Seventh Fleet in the Bay of Bengal to thwart the Liberation of Bangladesh while the latter invaded Grenada and began a proxy war against Afghanistan as the Afghan people were trying to restructure their society by dislodging drug lords and feudal relations.
In Korea and Vietnam, the Empire waged wars. In no case, Congressional approval was sought prior to mounting war machine.
Reagan’s proxy war against the legitimate government in Nicaragua by employing Lt. Colonel Oliver North in his “Tehran-tour”, popularly termed as Iran-Contra scandal or Irangate, is another example. The scandal found secretly selling of lethal weapons to Iran in 1985 and secretly transferring the sale proceeds to buy arms for the Contras, the Nicaraguan proxy warriors organized by the US Central Intelligence Agency, although the Boland Amendment banned military aid to the Contras.
In 1987, the Congressional Committees in their 690-page Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair said: “The common ingredients of Iran and Contra policies were secrecy, deception and disdain for the law. The lies, omissions, shredding, attempts to rewrite history, all continued even after the President authorized the Attorney-General to find out the facts.” The report said: “The concept of an off-the-shelf company to conduct operations with the funds not appropriated by Congress is contradictory to the Constitution. … The Committee finds that the scheme violated cardinal principles of the Constitution.”
It found: “A small group of senior officials believed that they alone knew what was right. They viewed knowledge of their actions by others in the government as a threat to their objectives. ... When exposure was threatened, they destroyed official documents and lied to Cabinet officials, to the public, and to elected representatives in Congress. They testified that they even withheld key facts from the President.” “The Iran-contra affair was characterized by pervasive dishonesty and inordinate secrecy”, said the report.
Citing the Congressional report a Christian Science Monitor report by its staff writer Gary Thatcher said on the activity: The overall picture that emerges is of a flawed policy, ineptly executed, yet cloaked in obsessive secrecy. The activity promoted the concept of an extra-legal covert organization’ capable of conducting secret operations outside the normal channels of government. The Iran-contra affair is ‘a perfect example of how to destroy that trust’ that must exist between the branches of the American government”. (“Icy report on Iran-contra. Congressional panels hold Reagan responsible for fostering a climate that was conducive to ‘secrecy, deception, and disdain for law’”, November 19, 1987) About the Congressional investigation the CSM said: “[I]t is one of the most critical congressional assessments of a sitting US President in American history.” And, “[T]he report faulted the President’s performance in unvarnished terms.”
The investigation found: President Reagan was responsible. Daniel K. Inouye (D) of Hawaii, the chairman of the Senate committee, said there was clear evidence of “dereliction of duty” by the president, but he added there was no evidence that could lead to impeachment.
The reality of overstepping constitutional limit by the US president Reagan was not a single case. This practice of overstepping was going for long time that led Thomas O’Neil, the US House Speaker to say in 1984: Congress had “to enact certain legislations to curb overbearing functioning of Presidents. … The Constitution has specifically given Congress the power to declare war”.
These are a few examples of “upholding” of bourgeois constitution, a living political document of compromise, by the bourgeois as the dominating interests twist/violate/reshape the document because of their requirements and compulsions arising out of interests, as competition between factions within the interests intensifies in deepening crises, which is making competition difficult.
It’s the trajectory of decay of bourgeois institutions of rule as the institutions increasingly find them mired in fight for turf, competing claims, and in crises, with gradually diminishing legitimacy and acceptability. Bourgeois state’s fights for legitimacy gradually decreases its legitimacy as its quarreling branches expose each other, expose each other’s inaction for people, expose type of politics and political stunts, hinder measures “for” people, which are actually designed for rejuvenating legitimacy.
Moreover, increasing power of the executive branch is also evident. The bourgeois sell legislative branch as representation and reflection of the “will” of the people, and as sovereign but only to be ignored by the executive branch that, other than the presidency, doesn’t represent the people, that is employed with taxpayers’ money.
A contradiction already is there in the society. “Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital,” Marx writes, “who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with these too grows the revolt of the working class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.” (Capital, vol. I, p. 763) The contradiction sharpens with the gradual decay in bourgeois institutions of rule.
In the Empire, growing misery, decline of the middle class, the social cushion the dominating interests touted as a safety valve, decline in manufacturing, shift in the system’s center of gravity, as Foster and Hollman find, from production to finance, increasing protests, resistance, and initiative for alternative approaches to living space are now boldly visible, widely identified, and much discussed. The reality energizes the already existing contradiction, interacts with the decay, and further aggravates the ruling situation, where increasing highhandedness – violation of fundamental and human rights, increasingly resorting to use of force and dirty tricks, disregarding issues of immediate survival of subjects – turn a daily practice. It, as opposite reaction, takes toll from the ruling system. Thus ruling machines get denuded in front of its subjects, and turn less appealing and less trustworthy to the subjects.
The Great Financial Crisis has exposed not only vulnerable points in the economy, but also a few aspects of the state of politics the economy is shaping. Time, at the onset of the crisis that created a legislative drama, wrote: “The nation’s credit crisis on Monday [the day of voting on bailout in the House] exposed a much deeper and more fundamental problem: a crisis of political credibility that now threatens to harm our nation further.… Years ago, the trust between the people and their politicians was broken. Credibility was lost. The reserve of goodwill went bankrupt.” (Michael Scherer, “The bailout defeat: A political credibility crisis”, September 30, 2008)
Broken trust and lost credibility is not a sudden phenomenon. Robert W. McChesney, the Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, writes: “The degeneration of US politics is a long-term process.” (“This isn’t what democracy looks like”, Monthly Review, vol. 64, no. 6, November 2012) McChesney adds: “[T]he historical high-water mark of the union of property, legitimacy, and stability in the name of ‘democracy’ is now in the past.” (ibid.) He describes a pervading reality: “The major political fights in Congress today are most likely when large corporate lobbies square off against each other for the spoils of government, and a large part of the Congressional workload today, aside from fundraising, is mediating those conflicts so everyone gets a piece of the action.” (ibid.)
Paul Krugman has similar observation: “Wall Street’s ill-gotten gains corrupted and continue to corrupt politics, in a nicely bipartisan way.” (“The Madoff economy”, New York Times, December 19, 2008) The “gains”, Krugman finds, “undermined our sense of reality and degraded our judgment.” (ibid.) Krugman is correct: Sense comes from reality, and politics can’t escape economy, and economy dictates politics, and thus reality produces sense of judgment of the interests preying the reality.
An impact
The impact of the trend is far-reaching: within the state, the democracy, and in the wider world as it’s happening in an empire that stretches its long tentacles and crushing legs across the globe. It will impact the people in the democracy, and the peoples in countries.
Once, only a few years ago, it was assumed that only the poor peoples in poor south experiences impact of the Empire, and the people in rich north is not that unfortunate to have impact of the Empire although the Empire’s impact-reality was not only south-centric. Despite the reality the peoples in the northern hemisphere took it for granted that the Empire doesn’t poke its “beautiful” nose into their daily life other than having a few military bases and deploying a few missiles to counter Warsaw threat. To them, their northern democratic way of life was a nice, happy, healthy one, and a settled fact. To them, only the “Big brother” watching his “subjects” was under the “totalitarian” Soviet regime. All thanks go to the Orwellian gossip concocted by the bourgeois media having unparallel skill in manipulating people’s mind.
But that imaginary satisfaction has been busted by Edward Snowden.
His disclosure shows: Billions of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the US National Security Agency with the cooperation of states in continents. But citizens were not informed of the “great venture” as the “securing the present order of democracy” needs secrecy. So, it now transpires: The bourgeois “democracy” needs non-transparency, and “democracy” is best secured by a handful of officials paid by taxpayers.
In a statement to the European Parliament in March, Snowden cited Denmark and Germany as examples to describe the way the NSA had established a surveillance network across countries that, like a big brother, watches citizens in countries. It’s a “European surveillance market” as surveillance agencies, actually states, are engaged in a real barter: “I allow you to watch the citizens and you give me surveillance equipment”.
Citizens in European countries including the German, Italian and Danish are tapped although it is widely propagated that Europe is one of the examples for learning “democracy” by the “under-developed” fellows in countries with under-developed “democracy”.
Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place To Hide reveals that the NSA had top-secret spying agreements with 33 countries including Denmark, Germany, and 15 EU member states.
With a network of intelligence agencies the NSA works closely with the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, the Five Eyes surveillance alliance. A number of other countries also play important role by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment in their fiber-optic cables.
There are allegations of NSA tapping cables without the consent or knowledge of some countries with the assistance of American telecommunications companies. Some of the tapping is done at Cold War-era surveillance posts.
It, the surveillance, is only one aspect of democracy that promises to uphold “freedom” and “liberty”. There are other areas and aspects that include finance, banking and multilateral lending agencies, ecology and environment, tax and trade regimes, security treaties and military operations. All these are impacted by arrangement of politics, governance/rule as transparency, accountability, adhering to accepted laws, rules, norms and practices are influenced by politics, and the above mentioned areas and aspects operate with laws, etc. So, decay in matured democracy affects these areas and aspects that, in turn, impact citizens.
A periphery-“story”
In the periphery, the “story” of democratic practice presents, in general, a show of caricature with bourgeois democracy: a peripheral democracy. The peripheral democracy with its variants – compradorocracy, lumpenocracy, lootocracy, muzzleocracy, and many sorts – is basically the same. Same is the origin. The versions are distorted and/or degraded forms of bourgeois democracy implement in neo-colonies, invaded countries, subservient countries.
It manifests in different faces and shapes with minor difference in speed, extent, magnitude, dependence and subservience, allies, tact, compromise, high- or low-handedness, persecution and violation. The “democracy”, essentially free marketocracy, produced by the trans-Atlantic bourgeoisie and exported to countries is no different.
Not only the countries in the south are the market of the free marketocracy; a number of countries in Europe are also the bazaar of this free marketocracy: a ruling regime designed to ensure free market, imperialist interests, etc. In these bazaars, the free marketocracy can also be termed as donorocracy, as the ruling system is designed, conspired, partly financed, implemented, advised and supervised by donors, the external masters, only to safeguard donors’ short- and long-term goals. Financing the rest is done with recipient country-taxpayers’ money, ultimately the surplus value produced in the entire society, and this is the major part.
With the gradual rotting down or decline of bourgeois democracy in matured capitalist or imperialist countries free marketocracy in peripheral states sometimes misses its broader and long-term interests, and bears seals of ineffectiveness, crudeness, uncouthness, brutality, barbarian conspiracy, short-sightedness, and sometimes interests of a single lobby. This creates disastrous affect. The masters pay for these developments. Recent failures are stark example.
It would have been no issue of “headache” to the peoples of the free marketocracy-recipient countries had the payment was limited only in the pockets of the masters, although those pockets are full with only people’s money. It’s the peoples in the recipient countries that make the ultimate payment, pay the most, and at the end, make the full payment in monetary and political terms.
The ways the ultimate payment is made include:
(1) Distortion in people’s way of life, their struggle for democracy, stalling down of advances whatever people achieve during their struggle for democracy. The distortion and stalling down are made by imposition and/or strengthening of a ruling system that serves only the external masters and their local agents and allies.
(2) Subversion of political system that peoples in some countries are trying to build up in their quest for democracy with the purpose of transforming their society, and subversion of efforts in countries/societies that are trying to secure and utilize their resources.
(3) Loss of sense of national dignity. The issue of national dignity turns vital and crucial in people’s struggle for democracy, self-determination and self-sufficiency in all spheres of life. The loss is so pervading that the collective consciousness forgets to question any political and economic move by the dominating world capital and its local lackeys, that it seeks advice, suggestion, opinion and observation on all questions surrounding its economic, social, political and cultural life, even questions related to murder, that it provokes/encourages/invites opinions and suggestions even if external masters don’t opine on its own. The loss of the sense pervades so widely that external masters feel bold enough to suggest/direct on questions of democratic and labor rights. The other side of this coin is, as exact and opposite reaction, questioning of environmental, democratic and labor issues are considered synonymous to sedition. The end result: Crude obstacles to the path turn cruder and stronger.
(4) Financial costs of the interferences/conspiracies/subversions/wars for imposition of the free marketocracy, and the resulting loot after imposition of the free marketocracy.
A question: Why looking at the issue?
A question arises: What is the reason that presses to look at the degeneration of a matured bourgeois democracy?
The answer, in short, is in the need of societies and peoples, although people and society are not the same: Societies and peoples have been entangled by the world capital politically and militarily headed by the Empire. State of the Empire impacts its “provinces”, regions under its control/influence/sway. The PIGS-, Portugal to Spain, stories, and the “story” of Italy, the “story” of imposed austerity measures, actually punishing and robbing the people in these countries, and regime change by bankers are evidence of the global capital’s widening provinces. The Empire-impact reacts in the life of the peoples in the provinces: from Iraq to Poland to Afghanistan to Ukraine to Morocco to Thailand to all other “provinces”.
It will not be possible to define program and slogan, immediate and long-term, for democracy if hindrances on the path of democracy are not identified. Hindrances are related to the global capital; and the Empire is still at the center of the global capitalist system.
Assertions and observations made above are on the basis of developments in a number of countries. Developments in Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Syria, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine bear signs of resemblances in a number of areas while each of the countries differ from the rest with their specific characteristics. However, democratic struggle in all countries face a common obstacle in this age of global crises created by the global capital: imperialist intervention in many forms.
State of imperialism shapes and determines forms and thrust of intervention that doesn’t always take direct and/or military character although military power stands behind indirect and non-military intervention. The seemingly non-military forms are no less serious than military shape, and are no less devastating than military forms.
Democratic struggles have to take into account imperialism’s acts that originate from its character, and now, are turning bare and unrestrained due to its desperate condition. The NSA-operation, as revealed by Snowden, is one of the manifestations of its desperate condition in home and abroad, its isolated condition among its subjects in home and allies abroad. The NSA-operation impacts peoples’ efforts to have a democratic approach.
This desperate, isolated condition, and similar other reasons and factors, and furthering democratic struggle make it an imperative to look at the Empire – its state of economy and politics, and other related aspects and areas.
Farooque Chowdhury is Dhaka-based freelancer.
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