TAKIS FOTOPOULOS
In his article entitled, “This
is classic democracy”[2]
Costas Douzinas provides an idealised view of the movement
of the aganaktismenoi (outraged) in Greece, which has very
little to do with reality and even less to do with classic
democracy. As this has wider political implications, given
that a similar movement (indignados) has risen and has
already been phased out, with no tangible political effects
in Spain, and a similar future seems to be awaiting the
Greek “movement”, it may be worth considering in greater
detail what seems to be
the new dream of the reformist Left as regards the political
subject in the fight against neoliberal globalisation
― following the demise of their
previous, similar dream with respect to the now defunct
World Social Forum, or the inevitable marginalisation of
various forms of local democracy (Porto Allegre, Marinaleda
etc). In fact,
some within the same Left already present the
“movement” that has emerged everywhere from Tahrir to
Syntagma Square as “a European and world alliance of the
peoples, a deep social radicalism which could overturn the
neoliberal nightmare”.[3]
Douzinas writes that “in Syntagma the parallels with the
classical Athenian agora, which met a few hundred metres
away, are striking... The speakers stick to strict
two-minute slots to allow as many as possible to contribute…
This is democracy in action. The views of the unemployed and
the professor are given equal time, discussed with equal
vigour and put to the vote”.
Although it is true that speakers are given two-minute
slots, it is untrue that the views of the unemployed and the
professor are given equal time. The
“experts”
who are
(eventually) invited by the assembly to express their views
on crucial issues like the causes of the Greek economic
crisis and the possible way out of it are, in fact, given
multiple time slots to do so (amounting to at least fifteen
minutes for each of their main speeches, followed by
five-minute slots to answer each question). And rightly so,
given that no one could seriously develop an argument within
a two-minute slot (a TV time slot, as it was described) and
without the right to respond to points raised as a result of
his/her intervention—the time allocated to
“commoners”.
Therefore the assembly members are, in effect, only given
the time to approve or disapprove what the experts suggest
and the assembly is easily amenable to manipulation by these
“experts”.
However, the modern manipulation of direct democracy does
not stop there.
In classical democracy, the agenda of the ekklesia was in
the hands of a council called the
boule, a body of
500 men who were chosen
―
by lot ―
from the ekklesia and who
served for just one year. Furthermore, all those qualifying as citizens could
participate in the ekklesia, with this qualification being
restricted so as to exclude mainly women and slaves, as is
well known
―
although we should not forget that the
abolition of slavery and the end of women’s
disenfranchisement are very recent historical phenomena!
In the present
parody of classical democracy the agenda and, crucially, the
list of
“experts”
to be invited to speak at the assembly are
determined by committees whose membership is
“open to
everybody,”
and are then rubber-stamped by the popular
assembly. Furthermore, there have been serious allegations
that crucial committees, like the one determining the
procedure through which the all-important economic crisis
was to be discussed, were being manipulated by members of
well-known Left parties (posing as ordinary citizens). These
allegations have been confirmed by the fact that most of the
experts chosen belonged to a particular front organisation
of the reformist Left, who have been heavily promoting the
view that the way out of the crisis is to appoint a
committee
to carry out
a debt audit in order to establish whether banks lent money
to Greece responsibly.[4]
The expectation
is, of course, that at least some of the debt will be found
to be “illegitimate,” and can therefore be repudiated — an
impractical as well as theoretically-flawed method for
dealing with the structural economic problems of Greece,
which led to the present explosion of debt.[5]
The obvious conclusion is that, if classical democracy
suffered from the demagogues,
the modern attempt at creating a direct democracy suffers
from an even more important problem: that such a democracy
has to co-exist with representative democracy, i.e. an
institutional framework that is intrinsically hostile to
direct democracy. This means that Douzinas’s implied
proposition, that “the
outraged have shown that parliamentary democracy must be
supplemented with its more direct version,” is unviable. In
fact, representative democracy is as incompatible with
direct democracy
― if the latter is properly conceived as a
form of polity rather than just as a procedure
― as ever.
It remains
the case that
the outraged represent
the broader political significance of the
“peaceful
insurrection”. Douzinas’s conclusion that it has already
been
“the greatest anti-austerity achievement in Europe so far”
is already outdated, and
the Greek Parliament is shortly expected
to approve the worst austerity measures imposed on any
country
in Europe
or
beyond, which
are to be
accompanied by the enforced
sale
of every
public asset
in Greece at a bargain price,
in order
to satisfy
the country’s
creditors. This clearly shows that unless this movement
adopts a political project with concrete goals and means
of
achieving
them, it will soon be either integrated
into the system
or marginalised
by
it,
as
have been all
the other movements I mentioned above.
[1]
This
article was first submitted for publication in the
“Comment is Free” column of the well-known newspaper
of the British liberal Left, The Guardian, in
response to an article by one of its protégés in the
Greek Liberal Left. Of course, the Guardian declined
publication, confirming once more how “free” comment
is in this newspaper.
[2]
Costas Douzinas,
“This
is classic democracy”,
The Guardian
(16/6/2011).
[3]
Declaration signed
by over 100 Greek intellectuals of the liberal Left
in
Eleftherotypia (16/6/2011).
[4]
This is the disorienting systemic view promoted by
the “stars” of the Greek liberal Left Costas Lapavitsas, Costas Douzinas et al, both of them, as
well as a film, in which they star and is heavily
promoted by the Guardian, “Debtocracy” (see e.g.
Aditya Chakrabortty “Debtocracy: the samizdat of
Greek debt”, Guardian, 9/6/2011)
and in which no word is uttered about the role
of the integration of Greece into the EU in leading
to the present crisis. Needless to add that the EU
is funding both the liberal Left front organisation
mentioned in the text, as well as the best-seller
film on debtocracy:
http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/brochures/2011.06.09__exeftelismos_amesis_dimokratias.html