Introduction:
One would think that a political doctrine and system that was
propagated by the bourgeoisie in their rise to power, that is
promoted world-wide by the Western ruling classes and that has
only existed in its so-called “pure” form on the backs of slaves,
would at least be suspect in the eyes of those who oppose the
present social order. But such is not the case. The “new movement”
of opposition to the global order that is said to have been born on
January 1, 1994 with the Zapatista uprising and had its coming out
party in Seattle at the demonstration against the WTO has taken as
its slogan: “This is what democracy looks like.” And that without a
hint of irony. But this is fitting for a movement which looks to the
EZLN—that “revolutionary” army which made such radical
demands as a more democratic Mexican government and more
participation by the indigenous people of Chiapas in the democratic
processes of that government—as a founding inspiration. As it
presently exists, this movement is thus a reform movement—a
movement demanding that the present social order live up to its
claims- In other words, it is a loyal opposition.
A lack of analysis with a consequent lack of understanding of what
democracy actually is lies behind this acceptance among so-called
radicals of the political system promoted by the ruling class. It,
therefore, is important to examine this political doctrine and system
both as an ideal and as a social system. The origins of democracy go
back to the ancient Greek city-states. These are considered “direct
democracies” as opposed to the present “representative
democracies” by which most modern nation states are ruled, are
idealized by such libertarian ideologues as Murray Bookchin.
“Democracy” is said to mean “government by the people”. But
“people”, in this case, means “citizens” not individual human beings.
In the ancient Greek city-states, all the citizens did, indeed, meet in
the agora and made political decisions in assembly. Of course, the
citizens only compromised about ten percent of the population. The
other 90 percent-women, children and slaves- were the property of
the citizens, and it was the existence of their large slave class who
did all the physical (and much of the mental) labor, that allowed the
citizens to practice this “direct democracy.”
The only other example given of “direct democracy” is the town
meetings of New England. Of course, what is forgotten in this
example is that the town meetings are not autonomous assemblies.
They exist within the context of the representative systems of the
county, state and federal governments, and cannot override any laws
passed by the representative bodies of the higher governing
institutions. Furthermore, the decisions made in these meetings are
not directly carried out by those who make them—rather they are
delegated to various elected or hired officials who constitute the
town government. Thus, these town meetings can no more be called
“direct democracy” than neighborhood watch programs, which
would have to embrace vigilantism and lynching to be true direct
democracy.
So direct democracy that incorporates all of the people who make
up a society is a utopian ideal. But is this ideal worth pursuing? First
let us keep in mind that democracy is a social and political system, a
form of government. As such, from its inception, it has prescribed
limits for the freedom of individuals, the primary limit being “the
good of all”—that is, the good of the social system. Thus, what one
decides within a democratic system—no matter how direct it is—is
not how to freely create one’s life and relationships as one sees fit,
but rather how to maintain the social system and exercise one’s
rights and roles within it. These decisions are not those of
individuals, but of the group as a whole—whether the
decision-making process is by majority by unanimous consensus or
through elected representatives—and the individual’s life is subject
to these decisions. In other words, she is ruled by the democratic
system, his life is determined by its needs. So for those of us who
consider self-determination, the freedom of each individual to create
her life as he sees fit in relationship with whoever and whatever she
chooses, democracy—even direct democracy—is useless or even
detrimental to our movement toward this freedom.
But the ideal of democracy examined above and the democracy we
confront in our daily lives are two different things. The latter is the
political system that the bourgeoisie put in place when they came to
power after the overthrow of the feudal aristocracy. There are
several reasons why the new ruling class chose to wed democracy
to the representative system—it certainly is not possible to practise
direct democracy on the scale of the nation-state, the other new
institution that the rise of capitalism brought into being. But more
significant to the new rulers who came to power with the bourgeois
revolutions was the fact that representative democracy allows the
active and voluntary participation of the exploited classes in their
own exploitation and domination while keeping real political power
in the hands of the capitalist class who can afford to run for office or
pay others who will support their interests to do so. In M. Sartin’s
essay, “The Representative System”, the feudal origins of political
representation and the reasons behind the bourgeois marriage
between this and the democratic system are exposed.
My own essay, “A Desolate Landscape”, points out the reality that
the repressive police state that has arisen in the United States over
the past several years has been developing through democratic
processes—a social consensus produced by media-induced fear.
To oppose this police state in the name of democracy is therefore an
absurdity—it most be opposed as part of our opposition to the
democratic and all other forms of state.
“The Lesser Evil” by Dominique Misein exposes how the logic that
is so basic to a democratic system—the logic of compromise and
negotiation, mediocrity and making do—comes to permeate every
aspect of life to the point where dreams and desires fade, passion
disappears (what passion can one feel for a lesser evil?) and
revolution loses all meaning. This domination over all of life is the
purpose of the participatory social system the bourgeoisie imposed.
This permeation into every aspect of life makes the democratic
order the most successful totalitarian social system to ever exist. In
“Who Is It?”, Adonide compares classical dictatorships with the
totalitarianism of the democratic system where everyone can excuse
himself because she is only a cog in this vast social machine, and
individual responsibility, which is the basis for individual
self-determination, seems to disappear.
Occasionally within these pages, readers may notice language with
somewhat moralistic overtones. I reject the moralism and any
implications that there is a universal standard of “right” and “wrong”.
However, I do accept the ethical (as opposed to moral) conception
that each of us is responsible for the choices we make and the
actions we take (though certainly not for the circumstances in which
we are forced to make those decisions). I consider such
responsibility to be the basis
of the concrete freedom to create one’s own life. Thus, if I desire to
live in a particular way in a world of a particular sort, it is my
responsibility to act projectually toward the fulfillment of this desire.
And when others act to obstruct this, I hold them responsible for
their actions—not as wrongdoers or criminals, but rather as my
enemies and as enemies of what I desire and love. However, the
moralistic language here is minimal and the main thrust is that of an
insurgent ethic of responsibility. Furthermore, the essays expose the
underlying opposition between democracy and the freedom of
individuals to create their own lives as they see fit.
At present, capitalism and the socio-political system that best
corresponds with it—democracy—dominate the planet. They
undermine real choice, creativity and self-activity…all that is
necessary for individuals to be able to crate their lives as they desire
and for the exploited to be able to rise up intelligently against their
exploitation. For this reason, it is necessary that those of us who
want to make our lives our own and live in a world where every
individual has access to all she needs to create his life as she sees fit
stop demanding that this system become more of what it claims to
be and instead start attacking it in all of its aspects including the
democratic system in order to destroy it. At this time such
insurgence is the truest expression of real choice, self-determination
and individual responsibility.
And what of those times when we need to act together with others
and need to decide what to do? In each instance, we will figure out
how best to make decisions without turning any such process into a
system or an ideal to strive for. A decision-making process is a tool
to be taken up as needed and laid down when not; democracy is a
social system that comes to dominate all of life.
What does democracy look like? The jackboot that you voted to
have in your face.
W. L.
THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM
by
M. Sartin
“Saying that a government represents public opinion
and public will is the same as saying a part represents the
whole.” —Carlo Pisacane
The representative system is a political expedient by means of which
the bourgeoisie attempts to realize the principle of
popular sovereignty without renouncing its privilege as ruling class.
The idea of popular sovereignty in its modern sense his been
the dominant political conception since the revolutions of
the 18th century. Before that sovereignty resided in the monarch,
in the noble and theocratic classes, which held and
exercised it through the right of conquest, through hereditary
right and by virtue of a mystical divine investiture—in
each case by virtue of brute force.
When the Third Estate demolished the power of the aristocracy
and destroyed the myth of the divine right of monarchs
by beheading the king, the bourgeoisie, heirs to the wealth that
had belonged to the lords of the old regime, looked for
a system that would let them legalize the privileges delivered
to them thanks in particular to the insurrectional actions
of the people, and to justify the exercise of political power
without which they would not have been able to maintain
their monopoly over such wealth for long. They found such a system
by grafting to the idea of popular sovereignty that
of representation through which the sovereign people entrust
the functions of power to an elected body for shorter or
longer periods. In every case the elected body consists of people from
the bourgeois class.
The idea of representation is independent from the idea of popular
sovereignty and has different origins. Whereas the
latter was born in the simmering of revolution,
the latter came out of the thickest darkness of the Middle Ages.
“The idea of representatives”—wrote Rousseau—“is modern: it comes
from feudal government, from that unique and
absurd government in which the human species is degraded and
the name of the human is disgraced. In the ancient
republics as well as in the old monarchies, the people never
had representatives: this word was not even known. It is
very strange that in Rome, where the tribunes were so sacred,
no one would ever have thought that could usurp the
functions of the people; nor would they have ever considered
neglecting to take a plebiscite into account in the midst
of such a great multitude…According to the Greeks,
whatever ‘the people’ had to do it did itself; in fact, it was
continually assembled on the plaza…”
Thus, the Greeks conceived of democracy not only as sovereignty,
but also as the direct government of the people.
This would not have provoked insoluble problems, because
the democratic republics of Greece were founded on a
slave economy, only free men were citizens and constituted the
people. They were exempted from material labor which
was carried
out by the slaves and had all their time to devote themselves to the public
thing.
Modern democracy is different. The emancipation from slavery
and servitude slowly elevates all people to the dignity
of citizens, creating a numerical problem that did not exist in ancient
times.
But the representative system was developing independently of
this problem. Before the emancipated slaves had yet
aspired to the dignity of citizens, the monarchs felt
the necessity of giving them the illusion of participating in the
public thing…The origins of the representative
system go back to the obscure times of the Middle Ages when
christianity and feudalism shared in the management
of the human herd. The position of the “serfs” eventually
became unbearable, so they delegated some people…to present a
list of their complaints before the lord. Thus, before
the absolute and divine right these poor pariah personified
the miserable existence of the governed clod. It was the
first representation; England was its cradle. Its mission barely ended,
this wretched delegation dissolved and we do not
know how the obscure work of the centuries transformed
this delegation into today’s powerful parliamentary
assemblies.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think that in those remote
times of royal absolutism the peasant delegations had
spontaneous origins. It is more probable that the
dissatisfied peasants resorted to revolt than to petitioning the
sovereign by means of unanimously selected representatives who
might well lose their heads if the sovereign found
them unbearable.
In the archives of the English monarchy, one can find the documentation
of the most humble and utterly undemocratic
origins of the representative system. Here one finds an ordinance
of Henry III that dates back to 1254. In Britain, up
until very recently, the nobles—the temporal and spiritual lords—were
still to be seated, personally and by law, in the
parliament where they represented themselves and the class that
they constituted together. In the document mentioned
above, Henry invited the lords to take up their posts in parliament
and, furthermore, gave the sheriffs of all counties in
the kingdom the order that they provide “two good and discreet
knights” selected by the people of the county for the
purpose of representing them before the council of the king “
in order to examine the whole of the knights of the other
counties who give help to the king.” (Encyclopedia Britannica, entry: Representation)
Here, in the regime of economic and political privilege, the
essence of the representative system is already found. The
peasants do not take the initiative to send their own representatives
to the king; rather the king orders the dispatch of
representatives to the council through the sheriffs, and he does
not want them to be peasants, but gives the order that
they be “good and discreet knights”. The king wants the funds that
will be allocated in his favor to have the consent of
the representatives of the people, but the sheriff must make
sure that these representatives are people of high birth,
which is to say’ people devoted to the king. In other words,
it doesn’t matter whether the elected representatives of the
counties represent the people of their counties; rather he wants
to be certain that they represent the interests of the
king.
The pretense of the representative politics is already transparent
in this ancient document. In the current form of the
representative system, the names change,
but the substance is the same. “The sovereign people” elects its
representatives, but these representatives—like the good and
discreet knights of Henry III of England—must be good
citizens above all, devoted to the constituted order, which
is to say, respectful of the right to private property, of the
capitalist monopoly over social wealth and of the authority
of the state. In other words, rather than representing the
will, the aspirations or the interests of those who elected them,
they must represent the power, authority and privilege
that the constituted order consecrates and protects.
“Representative government,”—the Russian anarchist Kropotkin
wrote—“is a system elaborated by the bourgeois
classes to gain earthly respect from the monarchic system,
maintaining and increasing their own power over the
workers at the same time. The representative system is the characteristic
orm of power of the bourgeois classes. But
even the most passionate admirers of this system have never seriously
sustained that a parliament or municipal body
really represents a nation or a city: the most intelligent among
them understand quite well that this is impossible. By
supporting parliamentary government, the bourgeoisie
has simply sought to raise a dike between itself and the
monarchy and between itself and the landed aristocracy without
granting freedom to the people. Nevertheless, it is
evident that as the people slowly become aware of their own interests
and the variety of those interests increases, the
representative system reveals itself to be inadequate.
This is the reason why democrats of all lands bustle around
searching for palliatives and correctives that they never find.
They try referendum and discover it is worthless; they
babble about proportional representation, representation of minorities
and other utopias. In other words, they seek the
impossible, namely a method of delegation that represents
the infinite variety of interest of a nation; but they are
forced to admit that they are on a false road, and
faith in representative government vanishes little by little.”
…Political power has its roots in economic power, and since this
remain a monopoly of small powerful minorities, it is
inevitable that it is utopian to hope in the triumph of pure
democracy, where the management of the public thing is
truly the task of the people to the benefit of these same people.
The representative system is, in the final analysis, a contrivance
conceived in order to governments deprived of divine
investiture the appearance of popular investiture. Anyone
who is not satisfied with appearance and searches for
substance in human relationships must necessarily find fault
with the illusions perpetuated through this contrivance….
A DESOLATE LANDSCAPE
by
W. L.
In the United States at this time, the social landscape is certainly
desolate. Meager, stingy people creep about
this psychologically post-apocalyptic landscape thanking
those in power for the jackboot in their face and
begging to be kicked even harder into the dirt in order to be
“safe and secure”. A democratic police state is
developing at a rapid pace.
I can hear the cries of those so-called radicals who feel obliged
to uncritically defend democracy in order to
maintain their ideology: “But the United States is not a true
democracy; the corporations control the politicians.”
This statement reflects the delusive ideology of these would-be
“anti-authoritarian” and “revolutionary” leaders
which views people as nothing more than passive, manipulated
victims. In fact, when enough people choose to
resist fiercely enough, the ruling class is forced to make concessions,
even to retreat or stand down. But in the
U.S.A. at present, people are demanding
the clamp-down that those in power are so glad to give.
In several states, voters have voted the “three-strike” policy
or something similar into effect. Such policies make
a 25-year to life sentence without parole mandatory for anyone
on their third felony conviction regardless of their
crime. In a similar vein, three states have reinstituted c hain-gangs
with popular support. Snitching has been
institutionalized in television shows like “America’s
Most Wanted”, in “WeTip” hotlines, in “Neighborhood
Watch” programs and in reward systems in schools—along with numerous
other programs. All these programs
attempt to portray the cowardly act of snitching as heroic—and
the success of these programs indicates their
popular support. I could go on and on with examples of the democratic
support of police state programs and
policies, but anyone
with open eyes can see it all around us, and such lists become tedious.
I’m quite aware of the manipulation of public opinion by those
in power, but—as I’ve said—people are not just
passive lumps to be molded to any shape. Manipulation of public
opinion can only work on tendencies that are
already there, guiding them in the direction that is most useful
to power. The development of a police state here
has been a democratic process, an expression of “the will of
the people”—that is to say the general consensus.
Any anarchist in this country who still has illusions about a
connection between democracy and the freedom to
determine ones own life and interactions (or about
creating a mass movement) deserves only the most
merciless ridicule.
What is happening in the United States is part of a world-wide
trend: rabid nationalism, even openly fascist
movements, in many places; an upsurge in religious fanaticism
in the middle east, eastern Europe, here and in
many other places; leftist causes and
liberation movements embracing identity politics, often with a
corresponding separatism. People feel so small, so weak, so pathetic,
that they would rather lock themselves in
prisons of social identity, protected by laws,
cops and the state than create their lives for themselves.
Within a social system in which suicide may show a greater love
for life than the impoverished existences that
most people embrace, people are demanding that authority defend
their pathetic way of “life” by suppressing
anyone who disturbs their illusions. Certainly this is not a
new situation. Though at times its methods are more
liberal or more harsh, the policies of the ruling order
always serve one purpose: the maintenance of social
control. So we are documented and required perpetually to ask
permission. But I will not ask permission—nor
will anyone who would take their life as their own—and I will
avoid documentation to the extent that I am able to
without impoverishing myself, while striving to destroy all that
makes documentation necessary. My friends and
I, together because, and for as long as, we enjoy each
other, will create projects, desires and dreams that
enrich our lives, which run counter to the
meager fare offered by society. Wanting so much, my greedy
generosity, my hunger for vitality and passionate intensity,
demands that I attack this society and the puny and
desolate existence it offers. We who demand the fullness of life
cannot wait for the masses to be convinced that
they would prefer life to security; our revolt against society
is now. Democracy has always been a desert; we
want a lush and verdant jungle.
THE LESSER EVIL
by
Dominique Misein
Several years ago during an election, a famous Italian journalist
invited his readers to hold their noses and
fulfill their duty as citizens by voting for the party
then in power. The journalist was well aware that to the
people this party sent forth the stench of decades
of institutional rot—abuse of power, corruption, dirty
dealings—but the only political alternative on the market, the
left, seemed even more ominous. There was
no choice but to hold one’s nose and vote for the rulers already in power.
At the time, though it was the subject of much debate, this invitation
had some success and can be said, in a
sense, to have won the day. This is not surprising. Basically,
the journalist’s argument used one of the most
easily verified conditioned social reflexes, that of the politics of
the lesser evil that guides the daily choices of
the majority of people. Faced with the affairs of life, good
common sense is always quick to remind us that
between equally detestable alternatives the best we can do is choose
the one that seems to us to be the least
likely to bring unpleasant consequences.
How can we deny that our entire life has been reduced to one long
and exhausting search for the lesser evil?
How can we deny that that concept of choosing the good—understood
not in the absolute sense, but most
simply as what is esteemed as such—is generally rejected a priori?
All of our experience and that of past
generations teach us that the art of living is the hardest and
that the most ardent dreams can only have a
tragic conclusion: victims of the alarm clock, of the closing
titles of a film, of the last page of a book. “It has
always been this way”—we are told with a sigh, and from
that we conclude that it will always be this way.
Clearly, all this does not keep us from understanding how harmful
everything we have to face is. But we know
how to choose an evil. What we lack—and we lack it because it
has been taken from us—is not the capacity
to judge the world around us, the horror of which imposes itself
with the immediacy of a punch in the face, so
much as the ability to go beyond the given possibilities—or
even merely attempt to do so. Thus, accepting
the eternal excuse that one runs the risk of losing everything
if one is not satisfied with what on already has
here, one winds up going through one’s existence under the flag
of renunciation. Our own daily lives with their
indiscretions offer us numerous examples of this. In all sincerity,
how many of us can boast of reveling in life,
of being satisfied by it? And how many can say that they are
satisfied by their work, by these hours without
purpose, without pleasure, without end? And yet, faced with
the bugaboo of unemployment, we are quick to
accept waged misery in order to avoid misery without wages. How
do we explain the tendency of so many to
prolong their years of study for as long as possible—a characteristic
that is quite widespread—if not in terms
of the refusal to enter into an adult world in which one can
see the end of an already precarious freedom?
And what can we say then of love, that spasmodic search for somebody
to love and by whom to be loved that
usually ends up as its parody, since merely in order to remove
the specter of loneliness we prefer to prolong
emotional relationships that are already worn out? Stingy with
amazement and enchantment, our days on
earth are only able to grant us the boredom of serial repetition.
So in spite of the numerous attempts to hide or minimize
the injuries brought about by the current social
system, we see them all. We know all about living in a world that damages
us. But to render it bearable, which
is to say acceptable, it is enough to objectify it, to furnish
it with a historical justification, to endow it with an
implacable logic before which our bookkeepers’ consciousness
can only capitulate. To render the absence
of life and its ignoble barter with survival—the boredom of years passed
in obligation, the forced renunciation
of love and passion, the premature aging of the senses, the
blackmail of work, environmental devastation
and the various forms of self-humiliation—more bearable, what
is better than to relativize this situation, to
compare it to others of greater anguish and oppression; what
is more effective than to compare it with the
worst?
Naturally, it would be a mistake to believe that the logic of
the lesser evil is limited to merely regulating our
household chores. Above all it regulates and administers the
whole of social life as that journalist knew well.
In fact, every society known to the human race is considered
imperfect. Regardless of their ideas, everyone
has dreamed of living in a world different from
the present one: a more representative democracy, an
economy more free from state intervention, a “federalist”
rather than a centralized power, a nation without
foreigners and so on even to the most extreme aspirations.
But the desire to realize one’s dreams goads one to action, because
only action resolves to transform the
world, rendering it similar to the dream. Action resounds in
the ear like the din of the trumpets of Jericho. No
imperative exists that possesses a ruder efficacy, and
for anyone who hears it the need to go into action
imposes itself without delay and without conditions. But anyone
who calls for action to realize the aspirations
that enliven her quickly receives strange and unexpected
replies. The neophyte learns in a hurry that an
effective action is one that limits itself to realizing circumscribed,
gloomy and sad dreams. Not only are the
great utopias apparently beyond reach, but
even much more modest objectives prove to be barely
realizable. Thus anyone who considered transforming the world
according to his dream finds herself unable
to do anything but transform the dream, adapting it to the more
immediate reality of this world. With the aim
of acting productively, one finds oneself constrained to repress
their dream. Thus, the first renunciation that
productive action demands of anyone who wants to
act is that she reduce his dream to the proportions
recommended by what exists. In this way, she comes to
an understanding, in a few words, that ours is an
epoch
of compromise, of half measures, of plugged noses. Precisely, of lesser
evils.
If one considers it carefully, it makes sense that the concept
of reformism, a cause to which all are devoted
today*, represents an accomplished expression of the politics
of the lesser evil: a prudent act subject to the
watchful eye of moderation which never loses sight
of its signs of acceptance and which proceeds with
caution worthy of the most consummate diplomacy. The preoccupation
with avoiding jolts is such that when
some adverse circumstance renders them inevitable, one hurries
there to legitimate it, showing how a worse
calamity was avoided. Didn’t we just go through a war
last summer that was justified as the lesser evil in
respect to a savage “ethnic cleansing”, just as
fifty years ago the use of atom bombs on Hiroshima an
Nagasaki was justified as a lesser evil in respect to the continuation
of the world war? And this in spite of the
claim of every government on the planet to
abhor the recourse to force in the resolution of conflicts.
Indeed. Even the ruling class recognizes the basis of the
critiques formulated with regards to the present
social order for which it is otherwise responsible. Sometimes
one may even find several of its spokespeople
in the frontline in formally denouncing the discriminations
of the laws of the market, the totalitarianism of
“single thought”, the abuses of liberalism. Even for this reality
this is all an evil. But it is an inevitable evil,
and the most one can do is to try to diminish its effects.
The evil in question, from which we cannot be freed—as should
be clear—is a social order based on profit,
on money, on merchandise, on the reduction of the human being
to a thing, on power—and that has in the
state an indispensable tool of coercion. It is only after having
put the existence of capitalism, with all of its
corollaries, beyond debate that the political attaches
can ask themselves which capitalistic form can
represent the lesser evil to support.
Nowadays, the preference is granted to democracy, which is
presented—not inadvertently—as the “least bad of known political
systems.” When compared with fascism
and stalinism, it easily gets the support of western common sense,
more so since the democratic lie is based
on the (illusory) participation of its subjects in the management
of the public thing that, therefore, comes to
seem perfectible. Thus people are easily convinced that “more
just” state activity, a “better distribution of the
wealth”, or rather a “more prudent exploitation of resources”
constitute the only possibilities at their disposal
for confronting the problems of modern civilization.
But in accepting this, a basic detail is omitted. What is omitted
is an understanding of what essentially unites
the different alternatives advanced: the existence of money,
of commodity exchange, of classes, of power.
Here one could say it is forgotten that to choose an evil—even
if it is a lesser evil—is the best way to prolong
it. To use the examples above once more—one “more
just” state decides to bomb an entire country to
convince a “more evil” state to stop the ethnic cleansing operations
within its own borders. There’s no use in
denying that the difference exists, but we perceive it only in
the repugnance that, in this situation, inspires a
state logic capable of playing with the lives of
thousands of people who are slaughtered and bombed.
Similarly, a “better distribution of wealth” tries to avoid
concentrating the fruits of the labor of the customary
many into the hands of the customary few. But what does that mean?
Briefly, the knife witrh which the masters
of the earth slice the pie of the world’s wealth would change
and maybe they would add another place to the
table of merry guests. The rest of humanity would have to continue
to be content with crumbs. Finally, who
would dare to deny that the exploitation of nature has caused
countless environmental catastrophes. But it
isn’t necessary to be experts in the matter to understand that
making this exploitation “more prudent” will not
serve to impede further catastrophes, but solely to render them
“more prudent” as well. But does a “prudent”
environmental catastrophe exist? And within what parameters can it be measured?
A small war is better than a big war; being a billionaire
is better than being a millionaire; circumscribed
catastrophes are better than extended catastrophes. How
can we not see that along this road the social,
political and economic conditions that render the outbreak
of war, the accumulation of privilege and the
continuing occurrence of catastrophes possible will continue
to perpetuate themselves? How can we not see
that such politics does not even offer a minimal practical utility,
that when the bucket is full to the brim a drop
suffices to make it overflow? From the moment we renounce questioning
capitalism as a totality common to
all the varieties of political regulation, giving preference
instead to the mere comparison between various
techniques of exploitation, the persistence of “evil” is guaranteed…
Rather than asking oneself whether one
wants to have a master to obey, one prefers to choose the master
who beats one the least. In this way, every
outburst, every tension, every desire fore freedom is reduced
to a tamer decision; instead of attacking the
evils that poison us , we blame them on the excesses of
the system. Within this context, the greater the
virulence with which these excesses are denounced, the
more the social system that produces them is
consolidated. The plague once more closes in on
this ideological whitewash, without leaving a way of
escape. And as long as the question to resolve is that of how
to manage domination rather than considering
the possibility of getting rid of it and figuring out how to
do so, the logic of those who govern and manage us
will continue to dictate the measures to take with regard to everything.
After the injury, the mockery cannot be lacking. At every
turn of the screw, we are assured that the result
obtained cannot be worse than that which came before, that the
persecuted politics—always aimed toward
progress—will block the path of more conservative politics,
that after having suffered so much difficulty in
silence we are now on the right road at last. From lesser
evil to lesser evil, the countless reformists who
overrun this society drive us from war to war, from catastrophe
to catastrophe, from sacrifice to sacrifice. And
because one accepts this mortifying logic of petty (change)
accounting and of submission to the state, by
dint of making calculations to weigh between evil and evil, a day could
come when one places one’s very own
life on the scale: better to croak right now than to continue
to languish on this earth. It must be this thought
that puts the weapon in the hand of the suicide. Because one
plugs one’s nose in order to vote for the benefit
of power, one ends up no longer breathing.
As we have seen, remaining within the context of the lesser
evil does not raise too many difficulties; the
difficulty begins at the moment one leaves this context, at
the moment one destroys it. All one has to do is
affirm that between two evils the worst thing one could do is
to choose either one of them, and there it is: the
knock of the police at the door. When one is the
enemy of every party, every war, every capitalist, all
exploitation of nature, one can only appear suspicious
in the eyes of the authorities. In fact it is here that
subversion begins. Refusing the politics of the lesser evil,
refusing this socially instilled habit that induces
one to preserve one’s existence rather than living it,
necessarily leads one to put everything that the real
world and its “necessity” drains of meaning into play.
Not that Utopia is immune to the logic of the lesser
evil—that is not guaranteed. During revolutionary periods, it
has been precisely this logic that has stopped
the assaults of the insurgents: when the tempest rages and the
billows threaten to sweep everything away
there is always some more realistic
revolutionary who rushes to detour popular rage toward more
“reasonable” demands. After all even someone who wants to turn the
world upside down fears losing all. Even
when from that all, there is really nothing that belongs to him.
_______________________________________________________
*or “a cause for which everyone votes today”—in the Italian, I suspect both meanings were intended.
WHO IS IT
by
Adonide
When one speaks of totalitarianism, thought runs immediately to
a form of implacable domination that has historically
been embodied in the figure of a single dictator. Hitler the
Fuhrer, Mussolini the Duce, Franco the Caudillo, Stalin the
Little Father, Ceausescu the Leader, Mao the Great Helmsman,
Pinochet the generalissimo: all are examples of
dictators from a not too distant past that is nevertheless considered
difficult to repeat. In the course of the past few
years we have been experiencing the end of the era of individual
dictatorship as this form of power receives nearly
unanimous condemnation. And if in a few parts of the world,
regimes still survive that are led by strongmen, the
tendency to replace them with modern democracies is taking hold
without much dispute. The Fuhrer, the Duce and
their like have had to give up their place to somewhat disembodied,
cold systems of domination, without surprise, from
which the human element is almost completely banished.
But a dictatorship—a totalitarian system—does not necessarily
have to be led by a single individual to be considered
such. One can consider any regime in which power is concentrated
absolutely into the hands of a group of people who,
thus, come to have control over all aspects of everyone’s existence
to be such. From this one can deduce that the most
important element in a totalitarian system is not so much
who holds the power as how it is exercised. It does not
matter what reasons such a system adopts to justify absolute
control whether racial purity or the development of
markets. It isn’t even particularly important whether control
is secured violently through the presence of tanks in the
street or gently by means of media anesthesia. It is the inexorable
application of this control to all aspects of life that
counts, the fact that it leaves no loophole, it gives no possibility of
escape.
Thus, democracy itself is also a form of dictatorship—certainly
less obvious, but not for this less effective, quite the
contrary—that must i9mpose its values in every field on all individuals
and social classes for its own self-preservation.
From this perspective, many consider it the most perfect totalizing
system. The main reason that it has succeeded in
replacing the old and obsolete forms of power is that
it is not merely one of the various forms power can assume;
democracy corresponds to the very essence of capitalism, to the
normal functioning of market society in its expansion.
Within the marketplace, social classes don’t exist; there are
only “free and equal” consumers. This “freedom” and
“equality” covers a basic role in the gathering of consensus,
that consensus which represents the highest virtue of the
democratic system in the eyes of its supporters.
In fact, the classic totalitarian regimes are based on an exercise
of violence that is, paradoxically, a profound sign of
weakness. The conditions of life that are imposed are intolerable—everyone
knows this—and it is up to the forces for
the maintenance of order to materially obstruct the realization
of a different life, the possibility of which still remains
as the conscious aspiration of the majority of people. On the other
hand, in democratic systems the very possibility of a
different life is to be eradicated. To maintain order, the democratic
state does not take out its cudgels except under
very specific circumstances; rather it uses the
organs of information. These don’t leave bruises on the skin, but
preventatively nullify all awareness, extinguish every desire,
placate every tension; the individual dissolves and her
alienation from the world becomes irreconcilable.
* * *
Freedom is simply self-determination. It is the choice each individual
makes concerning his existence and the world in
which she lives. But a choice in a situation in which
there is nothing to choose, because conditions determined by
others limit the situation, is a choice only in name. Thus, a
regime that represses challenges with blood is denounced as
totalitarian; it hinders different choices. But what can one
say about a regime in which no significant social tumult
ever breaks out, a regime that has nothing to hinder because
it does not even provide for the possibility of different
choices. As someone has said, “ The most perfect
police state has no need for police.” A decisive aspect of the
totalitarian form—the single party—can express itself
completely now even within the western political systems.
Contemporary political analysts themselves are forced
to admit that when one takes the economic bonds and the
increasingly clear agreement on the principles of the market
economy between the left and the right into account, the
discourse and the programs of the great parties
overlap more and more. Instead of presenting objectives that
obviously differ from one another, developed through
the use of opinion polls, the great governing parties have
reached the point where they no longer divide on specific
objectives… These considerations no longer succeed in
rousing amazement, expressing a situation
that has in fact become familiar. Among the apologists for the
totalitarianism of the market, this familiarity loses all shame
and becomes inescapable. In his last book celebrating
global capitalism, journalist Thomas Friedman—columnist
for the New York Times, winner of two Pulitzer
Prizes—does not hide his satisfaction in establishing
that political choice has been reduced to Pepsi against Coca
Cola—slight nuances of taste, slight political variants, but
never any deviation from the respected assumption of the
rules of gold, those of the main street, the
multiplicity of parties, which has been proclaimed as a sure sign of
democratic health because it supposedly guarantees the possibility
of choice, thence of “freedom”, is seen ever more
clearly for what it is: a competition between identical things.
Today more than ever before, politics is action as an end in
itself, particularly in its parliamentary form in which the
shuffling of people and things serves no other purpose than that
of disguising not only the uselessness of the work, but
also its essential unity. The numerous political parties that
throng into the parliament today are the “natural” heirs of
the different factions that battled inside the old single
dictatorial party. As in the case of the factions, the various
parties share the same vision of the world, the same values,
the same methods. Only the details differentiate them.
* * *
Totalitarianism has met with almost universal
condemnation everywhere, and yet every day we can see how
democracy is just another form of totalitarianism. And
one of the worst. A modern democracy is rarely shaken by
revolt. Democracy has taken hold as the political system most
impermeable to the risk of revolt. Even if such a revolt
managed to emerge, it would have difficulty fueling the
passions of individuals since it no longer has a role in the
collective imagination. And this still doesn’t take into account
that even in such a hopeful case, the wrath generated
would not find anyone against which to direct itself, precisely
because in democratic systems power is not embodied in
a human being, but is represented by an entire social system.
It goes without saying that the parliamentary and union
institutions never furnish the governed individuals with
adequate means for making their claims, while dissatisfaction—even
when generalized—leads in the best of cases to
the formation of some current of opposition. When there
is not a figure in a position to polarize the totality of the
opposition against itself in an enduring manner—precisely when
there is no dictator—in a situation where a governing
functionary becomes the object of a widespread challenge,
the normal interplay of institutions can even act to
eliminate him in order to mollify at least a part of the discontent.
The lack of a king whose head can be cut off, of a
strong authoritarian figure capable of drawing popular hatred
onto itself, in other words of someone to whom we can
attribute the responsibility for the exercise of power, constitutes
the genuine great bulwark in defense of democratic
totalitarianism. In the old and caricatured dictatorships, power
had the moustache of Hitler or the jaw of Mussolini,
and it could be seen goose-stepping in the street or wearing
the black shirt. But today in the modern democracies, who
is power? And the aim of the question is not to identify the
particular people who exercise power, which is still possible
on some level, but to attribute the responsibility for the existence that
we lead to them.
* * *
Over and over again it is said that today there is a single
social system managed by people who are mere cogs in a
machine, petty functionaries who cover most administrative roles.
The very concept of responsibility comes to lose all
meaning. Responsibility is the possibility of foreseeing the
effects of one’s behavior and changing this on the basis of
such foresightedness. But the cog in a machine has no foresight;
it has no need of foresight; it can never do anything
but spin. Therefore, it is no longer possible to attribute the
fault for an action to anyone, even if the action was most
aberrant.
Let’s look at an example taken from the realm of what is commonly
called “judicial errors”. Consider a man who has
been sentenced to prison for life but actually did not commit
the crime of which he was accused. He is placed under
investigation, arrested, incarcerated, tried, sentenced and kept segregated
for the rest of his life. Who is responsible for
all this? In the old totalitarian systems, the response was much
too simple. Everyone would have seen the unfortunate
fellow dragged away, condemned and locked up by the hired thugs
of the dictator who would have been considered
responsible for the injustice perpetrated. In modern democracies,
on the other hand, no one is held responsible. The
police officer who arrested him is not responsible since he was
limited to carrying out orders from someone else. Nor
can we blame the prosecutor although he asks for the sentence,
because he does not decree it; this is done by someone
else. Even the judges are not at fault since they have to make
a decision on the basis of evidence presented to them by
someone else and then apply the provisions of a penal code compiled
by someone else. Finally, one cannot blame the
guard, who as the last link in this chain, is certain to have
a clean conscience unlike someone else. Yet that man finds
himself there in prison, and it is his body
that is enclosed behind bars, not that of someone else. Thus, in the
dictatorships that once existed the fact that power was
embodied in one man made him responsible along with his
underlings, but in modern democracy the distribution of power through
out the social apparatus removes responsibility
from everyone without distinction.
This exists as a social reality that is quite tangible,
concrete and above all tragic. It is able to grind up human life
without anyone being blamed. And if this happens when human
responsibility is indisputable, we can imagine what
would happen when other factors can be planned.
Here is another example. Numerous “experts” have had to agree
that the origins of the huge storms that periodically
strike the coasts of the United States and eastern Asia are
undoubtedly found in climactic changes brought about by
human activity. On the other hand, in the face of the series
of earthquakes that shook the entire planet in the summer
of 1999, the experts thought it good to reassure
public opinion that in this case at least the responsibility lies
elsewhere, in the unfathomable workings of nature. This may be
true, but whatever they say about the causes, they fail
to consider the effects of these cataclysms. If seismic tremors
escape human control, we are facing a natural fact in
which we are unable to intervene and to which we can only submit;
but when these tremors destroy the modern cities
of Greece causing deaths and injuries while leaving the acropoli
intact, then we are facing a social question. To build
houses, apartments, entire cities, using building techniques
and city planning projects intended to bring the highest
level of economic profit and social control without considering
even the most elementary safety precautions cannot be
considered among the inborn human characteristics.
In the end, who is responsible for the thousands of deaths on
the job? Who is at fault for poisoning nature? Who do we
hold accountable for the wars, the massacres, the deaths of
millions of people? Is it possible to exit from this dense
fog?
* * *
In a famous essay entitled “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship”,
which took a polemic that arose from the
trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann as its starting point, Hannah Arendt
recalled that the principle argument of the defense
was that Eichmann had been a mere cog, but regardless of whether
the defendant is incidentally a functionary, he is in
fact accused because a functionary remains a human individual. In order
to clear the field of a confusionism that could
only serve self-interest, the writer invites one to consider
the functioning of wheels and cogs as a global support to a
collective undertaking, rather than to speak in the customary
manner of obedience to leaders. In this light one would
never have to ask those who collaborated and obeyed “why did
you obey?” but “why did you give support?” If these
observations don’t minimally shake up the conscience of anyone
who finds themselves reading them today, naturally it
is because they refer to persons who served a dictatorship of
the classical type. Under Nazism—Hannah Arendt tells
us—all those who collaborated with the regime were equally responsible.
When power is embodied in one man, the
Man himself is responsible for it as well as the “black shirt”,
as the partisans who shot the adolescent “black shirts”
without posing themselves too many ethical questions well
knew. On the other hand, when power has no name or
surname, no single person is more responsible than any
other. Thus, the very people who justify the shooting of a
16-year-old “black shirt” are horrified, at the same time, by
the violent death of a personage of the democratic state.
But were these young “black shirts” of yesterday actually more
responsible than the president of the United States for
rendering our existence intolerable? We can’t get rid of the
thought that personal responsibility persists not only under
the Nazi dictatorship but under the democratic one as well. It
doesn’t nullify the responsibility of its functionaries. If it
dilutes this responsibility, it does do to disguise it,
to render it impalpable, invisible to our eyes. In the threadbare
dialogue with which dominant thought has entertained itself
for decades now, Responsibility is said to have gone
through the same shipwreck that is supposed to have made History,
Meaning, Reality sink forever. All one needs to do
is stop listening to this chattering for a moment and here is
what one would see: these alleged shipwrecks that never
were such reappearing.
* * *
All discourse that sets out to compare human life to the
functioning of a machine, in that unrelenting process of
making the individual disappear, omits one thing: individuals
are not cogs, they are human beings. They were human
animals under the Nazi dictatorship and are such under that of
the democratic state as well. The difference between a
cog—which is a mere piece of metal—and a human being should be
evident. A person is always in a position to discern
and choose. If this is not so now, if one has indeed become
a mere cog, this would be further confirmation of the
totalizing and totalitarian reality in which
we find ourselves unable to live, and of the urgent necessity of its
overthrow. In any case, the social system in which we
live is not an inherent aspect of the world; it is a historical
project. We are not free to decide whether or not we are born
into it, but we can decide whether and how to live with
it. From the moment we accept taking on one
of its roles, participating in its administration, we accept the
responsibilities implicit in this. Being easily interchangeable
particles of a very complex system does not free us from
our responsibilities, because we could have chosen to refuse
that system. Thus, even in this case one cannot excuse
herself by saying that he only obeyed, that she only followed
the current, that he only did what everyone else did.
Because before obeying, before following the current, before
imitating others, a human being poses herself, must pose
himself, a question: would I consider it appropriate
to do this? And then she must answer himself. Just like the
Germans of whom Hannah Arendt spoke—we too are in the situation
of having to choose whether to give our support
or at least our consent to this social organization or not. Once
again choice comes into play. In the myth of Er, Plato
makes the destiny of each person depend on the choice each one
makes of their model for life: “There was nothing
necessarily preordained in life because each person had to change
according to the choice she made.” Now, we can
choose to give our contribution to the maintenance of this world.
Or else we can choose to withhold it. In either case,
we make a choice for which we alone are responsible, not someone
else. If it is true that “the original choice is always
present in each subsequent choice”, then we must also know how
to accept the consequences of our actions. All of us,
no one excluded.