DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE
DEMOCRACY
vol.8, no.2,
(July 2002)
Editorial
—
10
years of D&N
Democracy & Nature
(formerly
Society & Nature) is ten years old this year! It has been an exciting but at
the same time difficult time. Still, thanks to the support of its readers and
contributors and the help of our
publishers (Aigis and later Carfax), the journal is now entering its
second decade. Its main aim, since the beginning, was the renewal of the Left
and the development of a new universalist paradigm, in the aftermath of the
collapse of the socialist paradigm and the rise of postmodern anti-universalism,
as well as the parallel triumph of reformism in the traditional Left. In other
words, given that, as we stress in OUR AIMS, the
collapse of statist socialism (in its forms of ‘actually existing socialism’
in the East and social democracy in the West) meant that the liberation
discourse has moved from socialism to democracy, we saw the
attempt to save the discussion on the project of democracy from the sort of
abuse that the socialist project has gone through, as an imperative need.
Particularly so since the discourse on democracy in the traditional Left has
already moved to the exploration of various forms of ‘radical’ democracy,
which have little, if any, relation to true democracy. We feel proud that
regarding this aim, we succeeded in developing a new project, as a synthesis of
the old antisystemic traditions and the radical currents within the new social
movements: the Inclusive Democracy project. Inevitably, the cost of this effort
was exceedingly high. As D&N expressed a new paradigm, which by definition
was critical of other paradigms, it met indifference, if not outright hostility,
from many quarters, (e.g. by journals and magazines of the statist Left like Capitalism,
Nature, Socialism, Red Pepper and New Internationalist, but
also, more surprisingly, of the libertarian Left —as the Dialogue section
shows). Still, no one has
ever disputed the high quality of D&N’s contributions, (something which by
itself is a big achievement) and we hope that, with the help of our readers,
contributors and publishers, we will be able to continue this
task.
Unfortunately, however, we have
to celebrate the completion of ten years of D&N work with an atrocious
development: the launching of a new type of
global ‘war’
by the
transnational elite, in the aftermath of the attacks of September last year
which functioned as the catalyst for this ‘war’. As the excellent
contributions on this
theme show, the real aim of this ‘war’ is nothing less than the control of
populations, mostly in the South but also in the North, for the benefit of the
transnational elite, i.e. for the reproduction of the New World Order, which is
founded on capitalist neoliberal globalisation and representative
‘democracy’.
In
my contribution (Takis Fotopoulos), I attempted to show that the so
called ‘war’ against terrorism that was launched by the transnational elite
in the aftermath of the events of September 11, like the previous
‘wars’ of the transnational elite (Iraq, Yugoslavia),
aims at securing the
stability of the New World Orderby crushing any perceived threats against it.
Unlike the previous ‘wars’, this is a global and permanent war.
It
is a global war, because its targets are not only specific ‘rogue’
regimes, which are not fully integrated in the New World Order or simply do not
‘toe the line’, but any kind of regime or social group and movement which
resists the New World Order: from the Palestinian up to the antiglobalisation
movements. It is a permanent war, because
it is bound to continue for as long as the New World Order and the systemic and
state violence associated with it, which aims to protect
the present huge asymmetry of power between and within nations , are
perpetuated. The conclusion is that if the ultimate cause of political violence
in all its forms is the asymmetry of power between and within nations, then, as
long as this asymmetry is reproduced the bloody cycle of violence will be
continue indefinitely.
Carl Boggs offers an
insightful analysis of the militarism-terrorism cycle and, more generally, of
the dialectic between state terrorism and violent reaction. As he rightly
stresses, ‘the goal of U.S. ruling elites is to make the world increasingly
accessible to capital investment, free trade, and corporate domination while
simultaneously closing off viable alternatives to the neoliberal New World
Order’. Although one may express reservations on Bogg’s identification of
the Empire with the US hegemony within the transnational elite, his article
provides a brilliant description of the sheer manipulation by the mass media,
with the connivance of conservative but also liberal intellectuals, of a
politically unsophisticated public. The inevitable result is the creation of a
stifling climate of patriotism, jingoism and ethnocentrism within which not only
dissent and protest become easily marginalized but even any rational discussion
of the causes of terrorism (a common feature of European political discourse on
the matter) becomes impossible, even inside the supposed bastions of
intellectual freedom, i.e. the University campuses.
Arran Gare’s
contribution illuminates in painstaking detail the background behind the
transnational elite’s ‘wars’ with particular reference to the war on
terrorism. His bright description of the machinations used to trap the victims
of these wars is extremely useful. As the author rightly points out, ‘hatred
as a basis for self-definition is contingent on existing power relations and
undermines the basis for reciprocal recognition that is the condition for
achieving a true self’—a basis which, one may add, involves
the need for a new paradigm relying on individual and social autonomy,
like the one proposed by the Inclusive Democracy project. Gare is also right in
insisting that ‘the most important reciprocal recognition is that which is
institutionalised’. However, the institutionalisation of reciprocal
recognition cannot simply be based on enhancing existing institutions like the
World Court and the UN, as the author seems to assume when he approvingly quotes
Chomsky on this. It is clear that a change in existing power relations cannot be
based on institutions expressing the present power structures. A change in the
dominant social paradigm and the institutions that are compatible with it, which
could lead to the elimination of the present ‘mutually reinforcing system of
hatred’, clearly depends on the emergence of a new antisystemic movement that
would function as the catalyst for the radical change in institutions, in
interaction with the change in the social paradigm.
Ted Trainer’s
perceptive analysis of the economic background of terrorism
shows that as long as the ‘empire’ (which he identifies with
the rich Western nations in general) reproduces itself
—with all the huge inequality in the distribution of
resources, income and wealth that it implies— terrorism, war and insecurity,
as well as unsustainability, will be the endemic characteristics of the world
order. This is inevitable given that,
as he rightly points out, conventional
development is a form of plunder since it takes most of the world’s wealth,
especially its productive capacity, and allocates it to the rich few .
However, when the author stresses that ‘the core problem is the
powerful acquisitive drive in the Western mentality which fuels the insatiable
quest for greater personal wealth and higher
“living standards”, greater corporate wealth, and a rising GDP…
(and) generates imperialism and related problems, such as ecological destruction
and resource depletion’ the impression given is that what is wrong is not the
market economy system itself but the Western culture, as if the latter is
somehow independent from the former. This impression is enhanced
when the solution recommended is some sort of ‘global economic
justice’ which involves a reduction in the luxurious living standards of the
rich countries in the North, without any referrence being made to the fact that that these living standards are simply averages and hide
poverty (sometimes extreme) for many millions of people there--in other words,
without any referrence to the need to abolish the inequalities inevitably
created by the market economy, not only between the North and the South, but
also within them. Still, the latter implies the abolition of class society
itself rather than merely establishing a ‘Simpler Way’ of living, as the
author proposes who, not surprisingly, concludes that the only hope for the
future lies in the recent emergence of the Global Alternative Society Movement.
However, one could raise serious resrvations on whether this movement qualifies
as an antisystemic movement, let
alone a movement at all, since the main aim of its members is little else than
the establishment of some sort of an ecologically sustainable society rather
than the abolition of the unequal distribution of economic and political power
between and within nations-- the main cause of the cycle of
political violence.
Wolfgang Haug
systematically examines the available evidence about the causes of the
‘war against terrorism’ asking some crucial questions in the process, as
‘what exactly is terrorism’, ‘who has the power to define what terrorism
is’ and ‘who sets the standards’? His conclusion is
that, if we apply any strict criteria seriously, ‘the term
“terrorism” is nothing but an empty phrase and the means of the two opposing
forces do not differ greatly; hence, they should all together fall within the
scope of the questionable phrase “terrorism.”’ However, one may raise
serious reservations on the indiscriminate use of the term ‘terrorism’ to
describe both the violence of the oppressor as well as that of the oppressed (a
use that is implicit in the author’s stand), as this could easily lead to
classifying as terrorist almost every national liberation movement in History,
including those fighting military regimes, as well as the resistance movements
against Nazi occupation yesterday or Israeli occupation today. It is clear that
although the indiscriminate use of violence against civilians is definitely
reproachable, still, the violence of the oppressors should be clearly
differentiated from, and in no way equated to, that of the oppressed.
The best seller by Hardt and
Negri Empire has generally been characterised by the establishmentagainst D&N that culminated in the refusal of Social
Anarchism to publish a retraction of John Clark‘s
distortions against D&N, which, however, were eagerly hosted by the editors of SA.
The text, which the editors of Social Anarchism refused to
publish, is reproduced in this section.
Takis Fotopoulos,
Editor