2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
The Western concept of democracy is based not upon the co-operative ideal enshrined in 'all of the people' but upon the contrary notion that politics, along with many forms of public life, demands a contest between opposing ideas - of which only one can be the winner. This concept was previously seen in its purest form in the confrontation with communism; then, at least, western democracy was most easily defined in terms of its opposition to the dark forces of that communism. It is, though, still enshrined in 'party politics'. In the traditional ideal, this has just two equally matched contestants (Democrats and Republicans or Conservatives and Socialists), whose opposing manifestos - typically the imaginative creation of the party leaders, informed by their party's traditionally accepted dogma - are placed before the people in a perverse form of beauty contest.
It turns out, however, that the major Western powers simply cannot cope with such a co-operative concept! I was made very aware of this problem when I was caught between the Ethiopian government - which was trying to make its new constitution as genuinely democratic as possible, in terms of popular involvement and the Western governments - which wanted to impose their own confrontational party system. This was in a situation where the government in power had recently won, to massive popular acclaim, a civil war against a brutal regime (supported actively by Moscow and tacitly by Washington); and had gone on to create the first real peace in three decade. With everyone's standards of living rising as a result, the government parties between them held more than 80 per cent of the overall vote; as was proved in the subsequent national elections - the first ever held in that country - rigorously supervised by the United Nations. Even so, and despite the fact that it was a consensual coalition, it was categorised (indeed stigmatised) - by the West - as 'single party’ and hence anti-democratic. Such coalitions are typically dismissed in this way no matter how sophisticated are their other processes for involving their electorates in the processes of government, and of guaranteeing the fairness of it. It may come as something of a surprise to their electorates, but democracy is - in Western (political) eyes - simply defined in terms of the existence of competing political parties. The wider, and more bitter, the divisions between them - even if these are artificially created - the more democratic is the process considered to be! Even more surprising is the fact that, despite their claims at home, the concept of 'government by all the people' simply plays no part whatsoever in the considerations of western governments!
For many years this conflict was idealised on the global stage as the - eyeball to eyeball - confrontation; between the Western alliance and the Soviet Union. This was conveniently encapsulated in the concept of Western (market) democracy versus (totalitarian) communism. In this context, all other issues could ultimately be reduced to the basic decision as to which of these two sides you supported in the long-running global battle for minds That battle has, however, ended and it is no longer clear to populations around the world what the real issues may now be. It seems as if the politicians are even more at a loss; the old landmarks have disappeared! Thus, the demise of communism has just as effectively undermined its Western opponents. It is no longer sufficient to claim that you are anti-Communist; and it is proving difficult to find alternative enemies of such stature that they can be used in the same way!
Probably the most distinctive feature of the Western model of democracy is its emphasis on competition; between powerful (opposing) political parties. Where, with the demise of communism, the only significant competitor has been disqualified this immeasurably weakens such a system. Where the increasing need is for co-operation, rather than confrontation, this becomes a fatal weakness - which will cause great tension before it is resolved.
Hazel Henderson looks to the broadest sweep of human history, when she says "In the twentieth century, humans have clearly demonstrated the limits of their six-thousand-year experimentation with competition, territoriality, expansionism and military conflict."
As Stewart Lansley points out "The demise of communism has, it is agreed, swept away the old ideological enemy that was necessary to secure a sense of common purpose."
Stewart Lansley also makes the connections very clear when he reports that, in the United States at least, the "...1980s was a decade of. Tax fiddling became widespread and acceptable. In the United States, government surveys in the mid-1980s showed that 30 per cent of taxpayers had deliberately under-reported their incomes, particularly among the rich, compared with only two percent in the 1940s."
15 May 2003
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