Opinion Sur
A turbulent world of reduced hopes[1]
After neo-liberalism and in the prelude to fascism, the beaten Western democracy has shown signs of a certain resilience, but it has not managed to dispel the dangers that lie in wait for it.
The results of the recent elections in the United Kingdom and France have shown a more promising picture than that predicted by so many analysts and commentators in the media establishment. Citizens of both countries opted for a course correction from right to left, or rather, to the center-left. The vote would seem to confirm the pendulum balance characteristic of modern liberal democracy in the advanced capitalist countries.
Will they be an exception or a return to the average? In statistics, regression towards the mean is the phenomenon in which, if a variable is extreme in its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the mean in its second measurement. But in my opinion these two “best” cases do not indicate a return to normality, but a waiting period.
The rules of the electoral game are different in the two countries (medium-sized but important nuclear powers) and in each case they limit the results.
In the United Kingdom, first-past-the-post. Thus, with a third of the votes, the Labor Party won two-thirds of the parliamentary seat[2]. The over-representation of the winner does not mean an imbalance of the system, but rather the opposite, demonstrated time and again in English political history. What is worrying is something else, namely: the heavy legacy of paralysis and administrative failure of Conservative governments for 14 years in total and in the 8 years that followed Brexit. In those years, English conservatism was carried away by the nationalist and reactionary impulse promoted by Brexit, under the leadership of agitators and not statespersons. Today, that party is in ruins and on the way to a rebuilding (probably by the extreme right, for reasons that I will explain later), something that happened in the United States with the capture of the Republican Party by Donald Trump[3]. For the time being, it is up to Labor to re-stabilize the system and mend the social fabric with a stagnant economy and a broken state, something as difficult as going back from an omelet to the eggs that made it in the first place.
In France, the system of proportional representation makes it very difficult to achieve a solid majority in the legislative assembly, and leads to fragile and repeated coalitions – a balancing act that makes governing painful and delegitimizes the entire system. It is one thing to stop the advance of the extreme right and another to govern in a sustained manner. It is not advisable to rely too much on the effectiveness of a Maginot line[4], neither in war nor in politics.
For its part, in the most important country of the Western system, the United States, the model of indirect presidential elections means that a minority of voters can bring to power a party that would lose by far in a system of direct election[5], with the aggravating factor that this party is today a declared enemy of liberal republican democracy.
Given these first observations, and looking at the broader context, it is worth asking what is the global situation of democracy in 2024? At first glance it is positive. By the end of 2024, important votes will have been held in 64 countries on the planet containing four billion people. It is half of the global population. Without looking further here or there, it would seem that we are facing a great democratic tide. But this is not the case if we can see precisely both closer and farther away. To clarify all that has been said so far, I allow myself to present two imaginary dialogues, as follows.
(1)
An Optimist: The shift of voters to the center and left in the United Kingdom and France is the best of all possible worlds for democracy.
A Pessimist: –I am afraid that it will be so.
(2)
An Optimist: –That half of the world’s population elects rulers by vote means the triumph of democracy.
A Pessimist: It is a triumph of demi-cracy: a half-baked democracy or in name only.
Faced with these fictitious dialogues, I lean towards the pessimistic version, and I will explain why. What at first glance would seem like a democratic tsunami, if we go into the details, it is not at all a cause for celebration. I will give six reasons.
- Voting is not enough.
In many cases, the turnout at the polls takes place in a manipulative or even worse repressive framework, which limits options and distorts popular opinion, and even more so what Rousseau called the “general will.” The proscription, disinformation, censorship, silencing of dissenting opinions, or the outright persecution of the supposed “enemies of power” produce electoral figures as a screen to hide domination. The limitation of the popular will can be harsh (physical repression) or subtle, especially in times of monopolistic mass media and (dis)computer networks. There is a very sophisticated version of the old “patriotic fraud” of sad memory in some countries. Dictatorial regimes frequently publish bizarre figures of overwhelming majorities in their favor. In these cases, Jorge Luis Borges’ lapidary criticism (aimed at provocation) comes to mind. On one occasion, Borges replied in an interview with a well-known journalist the following:
“For me, democracy is an abuse of statistics. And besides, I don’t think it has any value. Do you think that in order to solve a mathematical or aesthetic problem, you have to consult most people? I would say no. So why assume that most people understand politics? The truth is that they do not understand, and they allow themselves to be fooled by a sect of scoundrels, who are usually national politicians. These gentlemen who scatter their portrait, making promises, sometimes threats, bribing, in short.”
Discounting his visceral anti-populism and his old-fashioned conservatism, it must be recognized that he certainly aimed at the weak flank of demi-cracies, that is, degraded democracies that betray the imperative of “educating the sovereign.” In other more serene words, Borges claimed education and civic culture as requirements for a democratic vote. He followed Sarmiento. This and other similar opinions try to apprehend the change from voter to follower (the latter is a key word in social networks) in postmodern politics. In the first case, a residue of deliberation is maintained. In the second, which succeeds it, the adhesion to a leader or a cause is emotional, total, and thoughtless, like that of some soccer fans.
- By democratic means its opposite can be reached.
When the vote expresses disillusionment and dissatisfaction with a corrupt system, it can be channeled into the promises – often punitive – of a supposed “savior.” In pre-industrial times, the saviors did not come to power by vote, but by the acclamation of some crowd. They came from the religious quadrant, and sometimes from the military quadrant. The classic examples were in Italy: in Rome, with the tribune Cola di Rienzo (fourteenth century), and a century later in Florence with the fanatical monk preacher Savonarola. In industrial times, the popular vote was part of the totalitarian scaffolding, built with modern techniques of agitation and disinformation. In 1932, Hitler’s future propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was the inventor of modern manipulative engineering in democracy. He invented election campaigns and other political marketing tricks that are used today. Bearing in mind that Goebbels’ aim was clearly to manipulate the masses, and to substitute sensory impressions for critical judgment, today we can consider him a forerunner of what Giuliano Da Empoli calls “the engineers of chaos.”[6] In the post-industrial era, social networks and the Internet complete the agitation props that allow democracy to be used to achieve dictatorship. But the objective is the same as Cola di Rienzo’s motto: “Let’s make Rome great again”. In English, the slogan is very close to the one that Donald Trump proclaims today for the United States.
- The classical representation has been surpassed.
We have gone from traditional politics with institutions and parties that shape and represent the electorate, to the direct electronic link between a leader and his followers. It is not representation that is sought, but adhesion and identity with the electorate. This state of affairs was foreseen a hundred years ago by the most erudite sociologist and political scientist of the twentieth century: Max Weber. He proposed a novel concept in 1920: plebiscitary democracy with strong leadership (Plebiszitaren Fuhrerdemokratie).[7]
- Emotion replaces reason.
When agitators come to power using democracy as a means and not as an end; when they leap over the representative instances and institutional filters characteristic of a republic, and adhere to an ill-informed public (“I am one of you”), they use an emotion as the main instrument of political mobilization. That emotion is fear. Let’s see how it works.
- The cascade of fears.
One of the main characteristics of late capitalism, in addition to the frightening concentration of wealth, is social insecurity that is widespread in almost all strata of society. In this sense, downward social mobility can be interpreted as a cascade of fears that each social class has of descending to the lower rung. In industrial society one could speak of proletariat and proletarianization. Social movements were preponderantly left-wing. In today’s society (post-industrial or “liquid”)[8], we must speak of a growing precariat. And it is not only in terms of income, but in particular in terms of status, or social dignity. The cascade of fears of relegation generates reactionary resentment and a search for scapegoats. Politically, it favors the far right, as we observe in many countries, including the most “advanced.”
- Bellicose nationalisms and the breakdown of international solidarity.
The same retreat in the face of social decline is reproduced at the global level in a desire for autarky and in the suspicious competition in matters of security between states. Military spending is increasing everywhere[9], at the expense of investments in the protection of the planet and coexistence. Solid old alliances and regional blocs are replaced by partial, temporary, and occasional approaches.
Conclusion: The demi-cracies that prevail in the world today do not succeed in calming, but rather aggravate, the national and international turbulence. It is a period with a high risk of war – perhaps not a total war, but a multiple and metastatic one. Like a ship that crosses stormy waters, it must pass through them without capsizing and with the limited hope of reaching calmer waters in which the wounds of turbulence can be healed. We are thus left with a “minimum moral” of resistance.
In Memoriam of Juan Rial, Uruguayan friend and political scientist
[1] The title comes from the famous book of the same name Minima Moralia. Reflections from Damaged Life, by Theodor W. Adorno, published in 1949, in which he pointed out the difficulty of an authentic life in post-liberal fascism.
[2] To be more precise: the Labor Party won 412 seats, against 121 for the Conservatives. It won 65% of seats with 34% of the vote. It has very broad but shallow support. See James Butler, “What’s a majority for?”, London Review of Books, July 18.
[3] It will take longer in the United Kingdom, but it is the strategy of Nigel Farage, an architect of Brexit. It is also likely that in the US the effort will return to square one after Trump’s disappearance.
[4] For an analogy, see https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%ADnea_Maginot
[5] In the 2016 election, Donald Trump became president with 3 million fewer votes than his rival Hillary Clinton.
[6] Giuliano Da Empoli, Los ingenieros del chaos, Madrid: Anaya, 2020. A brilliant predecessor of this argument, by authors of the Frankfurt School, is the study by Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman, Prophets of Deceit. A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator, published in 1949 and re-edited several times, with prefaces by Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse. It is a prescient text about the advance of the extreme right under late capitalism.
[7] See “Between Ratio and Charisma: Max Weber’s Views on Plebiscitary Leadership Democracy” by Sven Eliaeson, Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
1991 (English) In: Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift, ISSN 0039-0747, no 4, pp. 317-339.
[8] Zygmunt Bauman’s concept, https://catedraepistemologia.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/modernidad-liquida.pdf
[9] https://es.statista.com/estadisticas/1419257/gasto-militar-mundial/
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