8 / COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Without a doubt, I must be masoquist. Due to an unforgivable mistake, I wrote two writings last week. I spent writing the whole saturday afternoon, what actually means a sacrilege to the "dolce far niente" faith that I do profess. So, I decided to upload it here, just for the curious reader, or the very bored reader. Just in case you are this one, you can play finding the many mistakes I've surely made.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

The financial and economic crisis is spreading others essential aspects of current society. Everything seems to be shaking. That is the reason why some people think that a true new age is coming. So, we would be living the very beginning of it (In this case, I wouldn’t be able to stifle my distress due to the unforgivable lack of an appropriate name). Anyway, we will have to wait for a long time to know it for sure. However, even if the crisis is only a sign of a whole mutation of society, we mustn’t give up the effort to understand what is happening to some specific (but important) matters, in order to improve, update or defend then. And this is just the democracy case.

Following Gustavo Bueno teachings, we have to make a difference between technical democracy and ideological democracy. The ideological definition of democracy is the government of the people. Technical democracy is a government system in which representatives of political parties are elected by the people, trusting in the coincidence of interests. But the representatives actually are represented for a couple of them, who really make laws and direct domestic and foreign policy. In addition, we would surprise (perhaps, not) if we knew the ignorance of many members of Parliament about their own political programs. So, in this complex and defective machine doesn’t seem to be very connected the people’s power and the government of the countries. Is the ideological democracy corrupted by the technical democracy from the beginning? 

The current economic crisis has let us know, glaringly, how states depend on economic corporations and financial games in this new global capitalism.  In this way, eager governments run to obey Holy Market’s orders, trembling about the threats of the credit rating agencies. Actually, they run as never they did before for a people’s order. And the most amazing thing is the great amount of money given to the banks as a prize for their financial irresponsibility. This money is our taxes money. But, it seems, we depend on the banks, so we cannot let them fall. I mean, our governments cannot let them fall, because we cannot decide anything, indeed. I am talking about  governments, in general, no matter if they are right or left wing, the answer is almost the same. Then, “Who are the masters of all this?-  ask the people in the bus stops – Where do they live?, What are their names?.” Nobody knows it for sure. The answers are blowing in a dark fog. At last, it means that people’s power is not power enough in democratic countries.

As a result of this state of things, a big wave of protests is spreading all over the world. The so called 15M movement or Spanish Revolution (in Spain) is clamming for a real democracy. Nowadays, the distance between the people and his representatives seems to be enormous. People feel swindled and furious watching how they are poorer and the riches get richer. They feel swindled and furious watching how the legitimate receivers of his democratic power are only facing the deal deconstructing the welfare state. At last, people are fed up of this false democracy.

However, even if politics and democratic order have become more and more estranged from people’s problems and wishes, the naked true is that we have no better alternative system of government. So, the answer to this complex situation mustn’t be less democracy but a deeper and best one. The people and his governments must find the way to improve the direct participation and responsibility of ordinary people in politics. Maybe, we should consider Porto Alegre’s model as a possible way.

Finally, it is absolutely necessary the so called capitalism reformation. The root of all the current problems is just this global economy. The financial business, which has neither rules nor borders, has increased corporation’s power all over the world enormously. Governments have nothing to do with this sort of riches revolution, unless they could face it all together. In other words, the only thing which can stop this global coup d’état of economic power is a global political front. Corporations and financial business must be controlled by rules and laws which democratic governments agree to impose all over the world, as they were only a voice of the only People: the human beings.

Now, you are probably thinking that this is other useless utopian dream. But you are forgetting that utopias are the horizon which guides action. When the “pensée unique" claims the death of ideologies, it is trying to avoid utopias. We need utopias and we need dreams. In order to change something, we need a goal. In other case, critic thought is nothing but a bitter, futile nightmare.