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The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy

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The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy The Multidimensional Crisis and Inclusive Democracy takis fotopoulos ISSN 1753-240X THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY A quarterly journal published by the International Network for Inclusive Democracy iv This IJID publication is an English translation of the book with the same title published in Athens in 2005 (Gordios) ISBN 960- 7083-69-5 Copyright (C) reserved for the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy, 2009. We welcome requests for translations and/or printed publications into any language (except Greek), which will not be charged for “copyright law rights” provided that we are informed about them in advance and the source is fully mentioned. v Contents PROLOGUE ....................................................................1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................3 CHAPTER 1 THE EMERGENCE OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM .......................... 11 CHAPTER 2 FORMS OF MODERNITY .................................................. 27 CHAPTER 3 THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF THE MARKET ECONOMY ........ 41 CHAPTER 4 “GLOBALISATION” AND THE LEFT ..................................... 65 CHAPTER 5 GROWTH ECONOMY AND GROWTH IDEOLOGY ....................... 83 CHAPTER 6 THE CAUSES OF THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOCIALIST PROJECT .... 99 CHAPTER 7 THE ECOLOGICAL FAILURE OF THE GROWTH ECONOMY ......... 121 vi CHAPTER 8 THE FAILURE OF THE GROWTH ECONOMY IN THE SOUTH ....... 133 CHAPTER 9 THE DIMENSIONS OF THE CRISIS .................................... 149 CHAPTER 10 IS THERE A WAY OUT OF THE CRISIS? ............................... 167 CHAPTER 11 THE MEANING OF DEMOCRACY ........................................175 CHAPTER 12 THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE NEW LIBERATORY PROJECT .........191 CHAPTER 13 DIRECT POLITICAL DEMOCRACY ..................................... 199 CHAPTER 14 ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY ............................................... 215 CHAPTER 15 THE OTHER ELEMENTS OF INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY .............. 241 CHAPTER 16 THE TRANSITION TO AN INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY ................ 253 INDEX ..................................................................... 279 PROLOGUE oday, after the collapse of socialist statism, either in the form of “actually existing socialism” in the East T or in the form of social democracy in the West, there is a historic opportunity for the regeneration of this tradi- tion. Particularly so, when it is now obvious that the “so- cial Europe”, which is supposedly created by the take over of power by centre-Left governments –with the help of the Green parties which abandoned any liberatory pretence– is singularly inappropriate to reverse the present huge con- centration of power, which is the cause of the present cri- sis. This concentration, in turn, is the inevitable outcome of the separation of society from polity and the economy that was institutioned all over the world in the last few centuries, through the installation of representative “de- mocracy” and the market economy respectively. In fact, within the present internationalised market economy, no controls to protect society and nature effectively from the workings of the market, not even the type of controls in- troduced by socialdemocratic governments in the past, are feasible anymore. At the same time, neoliberal globalisa- tion itself is irreversible, since it represents the inevitable outcome of the market economy’s grow-or-die dynamics. However, a regeneration of the democratic tradition today is incompatible with the postmodern abandonment of any universalist political project for the sake of a pseu- do-pluralistic celebration of “difference” and “identity”, which however takes for granted representative “democ- racy” and the market economy, i.e. the present universal in- stitutions for the concentration of political and economic power. At the beginning of a new millennium, the need to formulate a new liberatory project for today’s reality and 2 TAKIS FOTOPOULOS consequently the need for a new “antisystemic” movement aiming at establishing the institutional preconditions for an inclusive democracy, is imperative. Therefore, the project for an Inclusive Democracy is proposed not just as another libertarian utopia but, in effect, as perhaps the only realistic way out of the multidimensional crisis, in an effort to integrate society with polity, the economy, and Nature. This book has one aim and one ambition. The aim is to show that the way out of the present multi-dimensional crisis can only be found from without rather than from within the present institutional framework. The ambition is to initiate a discussion concerning the need for a new libera- tory project and the strategies for implementing it. Takis Fotopoulos INTRODUCTION he present universalisation of what we may call ‘het- eronomous modernity’ induced Fukuyama1 to trium- T phantly declare the ‘end of History’. But, today’s mul- tidimensional crisis is in fact a crisis of the main political and economic institutions of this form of modernity. The aim of this book is to show that the ultimate cause of the present multidimensional crisis is the present huge and growing concentration of power at all levels, which is seen as the inevitable outcome of the dynamic of the institu- tions of heteronomous modernity (i.e. of the market econ- omy and representative ‘democracy’) and to propose a new liberatory project, not just as a new utopia but as perhaps the only way out of the crisis. In this book’s problematique both the analysis of the causes of the present crisis as well as the ways out of it have to be seen in terms of the historical conflict between the autonomy/democratic tradition and the heteronomy tradition. The fundamental aim of those inspired by the former was the equal distribution of all forms of power, particularly the political and economic power, whereas the aim of supporters of the latter had always been to produce and reproduce forms of social organisation based on the concentration of power. The autonomy project, which emerged in classical Athens, was eclipsed for almost 15 centuries, a period during which the heteronomy tradition was dominant, but reappeared again in the twelfth century AD, in the medieval free cities of Europe, soon coming into conflict with the new statist [1] Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin 1993). 4 TAKIS FOTOPOULOS forms of heteronomy which, at the end, destroyed the at- tempts for local self-government and federalism.2 The shift to modernity was marked by a fierce political, social and ideological conflict between the two traditions, with the heteronomy tradition expressed, mainly, by the spread- ing of the market economy and representative ‘democracy’. During the same period, the autonomy project, under the influence of the Enlightenment’s ideas, was radicalised at the intellectual, social and political levels (e.g., Parisian sections of the early 1790s, Spanish collectives in the civil war etc.) It is therefore obvious that the present predominance and universalisation of the heteronomous form of moder- nity does not imply the existence of some sort of evolution- ary process towards this form of modernity, as Fukuyama and other ideologues of heteronomous modernity assume. Similarly, no evolutionary process towards an autonomous society could also be established.3 Therefore, an autono- mous society, like the inclusive democracy proposed here, represents simply the conscious choice among two social possibilities, which schematically may be described as the possibility for autonomy versus the possibility for heter- onomy, rather than the actualisation of any unfolding po- tentialities. In other words, a democratic society will sim- ply be a social creation, which can only be grounded on our own conscious selection of those forms of social organisa- tion that are conducive to individual and social autonomy. However, the fact that a democratic society represents a conscious choice does not mean that this is just an ar- bitrary choice. This is clearly implied by the very fact that the autonomy project turns up in history again and again, [2] Petr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (London, 1902), chs 5-6. [3] TID, ch. 8. INTRODUCTION 5 particularly in periods of crisis of the heteronomous soci- ety. Furthermore, the fact that the heteronomous society has been the dominant form of social organisation in the past is not indicative of its intrinsic superiority over the autonomous society. Heteronomous societies have always been created and maintained by privileged elites, which aimed at the institutionalisation of inequality in the dis- tribution of power, through violence (military, economic) and/or indirect forms of control (religion, ideology, mass media). In this book’s problematique therefore, the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’ does not reflect the ‘triumph of capitalism’, as celebrated by its ideologues. Nor, of course, does it ‘legitimise’ a social system which, in its present uni- versality, condemns to misery and insecurity the vast major- ity of the world population and threatens the planet with an ecological catastrophe. Furthermore, it does not herald the historical victory of Western ‘socialist’ statism over Eastern ‘socialist’ statism, as social democrats have hastened to declare. Social democracy, in the form that dominated the quarter of a century after the World War II (full employment through active state intervention, state commitment to welfare state and the redistribution of income and wealth in favour of the weaker social groups) is dead and buried.
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