Democracies without 'demos'
On other occasions I have written here about the crisis of democracy and its weakening at the hands of the wildest capitalism and the individualistic and consumerist culture it promotes. Today, however, and especially after the elections in Colombia on Sunday the 21st and other events happening not so far from home, I want to express my personal and political doubts about what we call 'democracy'. Or, if you prefer, about the meaning we attribute to an instrument that increasingly resembles an empty shell.
I raise this not from radicalism, but from the classic liberal conception of democracy, where for things to work there must be a certain balance between the three actors that articulate the societies of our environment: the state, the market, and civil society. Of civil society, little to say: it remains atomized, and from time to time it shows its resistance to retreating on things that have taken decades or centuries to achieve. Rarely to propose utopian futures, as if assuming that there is no other possible world than the permanent dystopia in which we live. We have stopped talking about revolution, and when they let us govern, we entertain ourselves with acceptance, management, and communication.
Of the State, it is only necessary to remember that it is increasingly small and insignificant, especially in the face of the challenges we face on a global scale: whether to fight climate change (even though Europe is burning these days), or against inequalities.
The market, led by technocrats like Elon Musk, who concentrate more wealth in very few hands than more than half of humanity and many countries combined, is increasingly strong and increasingly ruthless. That Musk is the first billionaire in history should be something more than an anecdote, especially when a good part of his fortune comes from the immoral and antidemocratic use of technology.
While the new techno-capitalist class destroys us, we continue to defend the concept of a democracy that no longer exists, because there is no balance between the state, the market, and civil society… the perfect excuse for everything to continue as it is. When I say it destroys us, I am referring both to the algorithm that allows speculators to appropriate houses that others need to live in, and to the families who have to manage the addictions and mental health problems generated by their business among the youngest. I am referring to the misogynistic reaction that, while co-education is being worked on in schools, the most rancid sexism and the most savage violence against women are promoted on social media. And to the new arms race, energy and extractivist race that threatens the life of the planet and that of everyone, when science has long been warning us that we should be going in the opposite direction.
And in this context, elections that increasingly have less to do with freedom, because if until a few years ago voting was already more of a market act ("vote for brand x or brand y"), now with the manipulation of the media, social networks, bots, AI and algorithms, there's no stopping it. I confess: I have serious doubts that we should call all of this 'democracy', and that we innocently think we will achieve change all of this by respecting rules that no longer work, because they have changed the game board.
This is what happened in Colombia with the victory after the promotion express of the fascist candidate known as ‘The Tiger’, despite the growth in millions of votes for the left. A candidate who does not even have Colombian nationality, but is driven by Trump's doctrine, by technocapitalist doping and the most crude manipulation of the elections of one of the most important countries in Latin America with the complicit silence of countries that consider themselves democratic, including the Kingdom of Spain.
This violent assault on the democratic system also has its Spanish particularities, and we have been observing them in recent weeks with the addition that here not only does all of the above apply, but also the particularity that a power, the judicial one, which no one has voted for, considers itself above the demos, from the town.
The question is: can there be democracies without demos? Can all this be stopped? The answer to both questions is yes. Yes, we already have more procedural than real democracies. And yes: it can be stopped, but we need to hurry. That's why the speeches of the extreme right involve dividing us as much as they can (for example, 'those from here' versus 'those from outside'), instead of pointing to who gets the whole cake. Here we already have a key job: to unite the demos, to make a people. Another line of action involves calling things by their name, and not defending a procedural democracy that does not solve real problems: people do not live on empty shells, and everyone needs a home and good food. That said, one last warning: do not think that we will fight all this structural and procedural violence with mere good words.
