Opinion Sur
Many democracies have been captured by powerful minorities who concentrate wealth and decision-making power. The discredit of democratic systems grows and the opportunists of the time manipulate segments of the population to trap the control of the States with their resources and regulations. Are there no democracies beyond those captured or crooked?
In the previous issue, we pointed out that the value of democracy is once again being questioned and that many of the arguments used are legitimate. Because low-intensity democracies abound, fraudulent democracies captured by powerful minorities. Democracies that facilitate the concentration of wealth and decision-making power in greedy hands. Democracies that manipulate social will to guarantee impunity for those who plunder and subjugate their peoples. These democracies neither serve humanity nor take care of the planet. We ask if democracy is a façade that reproduces submission and oppression with ornaments.
We also point out that there is a vision of a democracy at the full service of the peoples; the democracy that upholds fundamental human rights; a democracy that defends peace, equity, coexistence, plurality and diversity; the one that protects nationals and long-suffering migrants; the democracy that punishes the corrupt and does not accept poverty and indigence. A democracy of assured justice and representativeness, a healthy electoral democracy in which the citizens choose and not the owners of money. We wonder if it will be possible to establish such democracy since it is a challenge that needs to be worked out at the geopolitical, national, and local levels.
A time of unforeseen outcomes
In all times, harsh antagonisms produced radical outcomes, some were predictable others unexpected. Thus, the subjugation that the nobility imposed on the serfs imploded, or when the colonial powers that capitalized by plundering “their” colonies faced liberation movements that gave way to weakened independent countries. With profound technological, financial, and geopolitical differences, this twenty-first century advances without resolving the tremendous social and environmental death rattles that shake its structures.
These are situations that can erupt due to repressed violence with destructive revanchist consequences. The frustrations, hatred, and punishments of large majorities can overflow all established channels. Will unforeseen social and environmental tsunamis be coming? Are there no paths of peace and coexistence capable of channeling tremendous tensions in growing boiling?
Hopefully, pacifist transformations will prevail and societies can be built focused on the wellbeing of all their members and on environmental care. However, the solutions that emerge reinforce ultra-radicals with proposals loaded with threats. The blindness of those who dominate countries today closes the way to profound democratic transformations. There is no longer room for side steps that conceal the reproduction of the concentrating order. The challenges to achieve new directions and trajectories of coexistence require removing the conditions that sustain social oppression and environmental aggression. We are in one of those times where tensions are growing beyond what the prevailing order is capable of solving.
Removing what oppresses and destroys
Removing what sustains the social and environmental crisis requires facing various challenges. Some of the founders of a new political order are indicated below, several others remain to be completed. The scope of the changes and their nature are enunciated, reserving the specific strategies and policies to the unique circumstances of each situation and moment. It is known that there are no universal recipe books for realities far from homogeneous.
(i) A refoundational transformative axis dismantles the unbridled accumulation of wealth that prevails in almost all countries. The torrent of information, perspectives, and the diversity of conflicts plaguing humanity makes it difficult to preserve this critical focus. If we ignored it, we would risk losing our way
(ii) In this perspective, a critical factor is to close the criminal drain of enormous surpluses appropriated and fled by greedy minorities. It implies stopping tax evasion and elusion committed by corporations and high-income families, ill-gotten capital that escapes to tax havens. Surpluses are assets generated by society as a whole and are appropriated by looters who weaken countries, leaving a trail of poverty and indigence. These drains severely condition the sovereign capacity to adopt better directions.
(iii) Another critical factor closely related to the previous one is to dismantle the oligopolistic exploitation of markets where a few leading companies in value chains impose prices and commercial conditions to appropriate values that should be retained by suppliers, consumers, and the State for taxes that are not paid. The modalities to avoid these abuses within value chains are multiple and diverse.
(iv) It will also be necessary to transform the highly regressive tax structure that has been imposed in most countries. It is outrageous that those who have less pay relatively more taxes than those who have accumulated fortunes. This is not accidental but rather the result of the resistance to losing privileges of those who dominate countries. It is essential to transform the inequitable tax structure.
(v) Public spending will also have to be directed towards two main aspects, financing strategic sectors for national development, including those related to the popular economy, and addressing the social and environmental emergency. Support for the popular economy requires establishing effective systems of productive support by establishing developers of grassroots enterprises and trusts specialized in financing these enterprises.
(vi) It is of strategic importance to encourage and reward scientific and productive creativity in the immense space of processes that favor general wellbeing and environmental care. This implies that the entire chain of participants retains its share of value for what has been achieved with their efforts and knowledge.
(vii) It is necessary to ensure macroeconomic stability by managing public accounts effectively and prudently, without covering possible fiscal deficits by punishing the middle and popular sectors with harsh adjustments, but by ensuring contributions from the wealthiest sectors.
(viii) A full democracy needs to have a judicial system that does not provide impunity to looters and corrupt people. The appointment and removal of judges and prosecutors must be faced with the utmost rigor without validating political or family favoritism.
ix) It is critical to ensure unbiased financing of politics so that those elected electorally are genuinely representatives of the popular will and not servants of big capital.
(x) A full, uncrooked democracy must cover the entire territory of its jurisdiction with equity and strategic vision. There is no room for territorial centralism but rather to strengthen the various regions that make up the country with equity.
(xi) A variety of other critical areas of transformation can be listed that, due to the brevity of this text, remain unaddressed, such as health, education, security, communications, the financial system, social and productive infrastructure, among many others.
From the systemic to despicable behaviors
We have focused on the urgent need to transform the functioning of the socioeconomic system. It is worth closing these lines by highlighting the individual and group responsibilities of those who condition the global course. Despicable behaviors of leaders responsible for the tremendous social and environmental damage.
Social suffering and environmental degradation do not exist by chance, as if they arose naturally from nothing, they exist because of the oppression imposed by unbridled human beings focused on obtaining and preserving opprobrious privileges.
These groups accumulate wealth beyond all need and morality. Appropriated wealth that they apply following the ordering criterion of maximizing profit, some respecting rules and laws that they imposed on societies and others surpassing them. They operate with advisors who become accomplices by identifying onerous opportunities at the expense of what results for others, they call them “collateral” effects for which they do not take responsibility. They use computer systems of very high speed and penetration in any market equipped with formatted algorithms to appropriate the best profits.
The dynamics thus imposed are of an unstable nature. On the one hand, because the “success” of a few (1% of the world’s population) destroys immense multitudes and affects the sustainability of critical planetary functions. In addition, because tough competition enthrones abuse since those who do not abuse end up being abused. Hence the above-mentioned crimes, including disrespect for regulations, the financing of political and judicial corruption, connections with drug trafficking, human trafficking, trafficking in arms, agricultural inputs and medicines that affect human health, among much more. They profit from the illegal and the illegitimate (what would be illegal in fair societies).
The billionaire dominators are part of a kind of global “class” that they value. They squander enormous resources on superfluous consumption while unprotected majorities grow with barely surviving living standards. Consciously or not, they lead to the dehumanization of entire societies.
We would be naïve to ask why they do it, how they do not care about the disasters they generate. By the way, they do not feel guilty or responsible and must believe that the impunity they enjoy will be eternal. Will it be eternal?
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