Inclusive Democracy, TAKIS FOTOPOULOS in Knowledge & Power in the Global Economy: The Effects of School Reform in a Neoliberal/Neoconservative Age, edited by David Gabbard (Routledge, 2007)

Published in Knowledge & Power in the Global Economy: The Effects of School Reform in a Neoliberal/Neoconservative Age,

The starting point for the Inclusive Democracy project is that contemporary society, which presently takes the form of a market/growth economy and representative “democracy” everywhere, is undergoing a profound and widespread crisis. It is precisely the universal character of this crisis that constitutes the determining factor and differentiates it from other crises in the past while, simultaneously, calling into question practically every structure and value that supports contemporary heteronomous societies in East and West, North and South. Thus, the present crisis calls into question not just the political, economic, social and ecological structures that came into being with the rise of the system of the market economy about two centuries ago, but also the actual values that have sustained these structures and particularly the post-Enlightenment meaning of Progress and its partial identification with growth. This multidimensional crisis can be attributed to the very institutions of modernity which today have been universalised. It is argued that it is the dynamics of the market economy and representative “democracy” that have led to the present concentration of power at all levels which, in turn, is the ultimate cause of every dimension of the present crisis.

The concentration of economic power, as a result of commodity relations and the grow‑or‑die dynamic of the market economy, has led to a chronic economic crisis which today is expressed, mainly, by a huge concentration of economic power. This is shown by the enormous income/wealth gap that separates not only the North from the South, but also the economic elites and the privileged social groups from the rest of society all over the world. Thus, the North has yet to recover from the crisis that surfaced in the mid-1970s as a result of the fundamental contradiction that was created, as I attempted to show elsewhere[1], by the internationalisation of the market economy and the parallel expansion of statism, in the sense of active state control aiming at determining the level of economic activity. The transnational elite, which began flourishing in the context of the internationalisation of the market economy process, embarked on an effort to shrink the state's economic role and to free and deregulate markets, which has already had devastating consequences for the majority of the population. This drastic reduction in statism turned the clock back to the period before the mixed economy and Keynesian policies were used to create a “capitalism with a human face”. The result was an initial huge upsurge of open unemployment followed by today’s period of massive low-paid and low-quality employment. This experience has already been reproduced all over the North, particularly after the collapse of the alternative “Rhineland” model of “social market” capitalism in Germany and the replacement of Scandinavian social democracy by a kind of “social liberalism”[2].

The fierce competition among the countries in the Triad (FTAA, EU, Far East) can safely be predicted to create conditions, not so much of massive open unemployment, but of “poor quality employment” everywhere. However, to my mind, the crisis of the market/growth economy in the North does not constitute the decisive element in the economic crisis. As long as the “two-thirds society” is somehow reproduced, the system may be stabilised when it moves to a new equilibrium resting on the exploitation of the technological advantages of the North and the low production cost of the new South, particularly China and India[3]. We could therefore assume that the decisive element in the economic crisis consists of the fact that the system of the market economy is inherently incapable of transforming the market economy of the South into a self-sustaining growth economy, similar to the one already established in the North. This inherent incapability is the direct result of the fact that the concentration of economic power and the parallel growing inequality all over the world are not just consequences but also preconditions for the reproduction of the market/growth economy. This is because there is an absolute natural barrier that makes the universalisation of the North's capitalist type of growth economy impossible. Assuming, for instance, that the world’s population will be over 7 billion by 2015,[4] for the inhabitants of our planet to reach the per capita energy use rates that those living in the rich countries now enjoy, world energy production would have to quadruple (or increase 6 times over for everybody to enjoy US consumption standards)![5] No wonder that the present Chinese growth “miracle” is accompanied by a huge rise in economic inequality which could somehow sustain the present growth rates (creating an environmental disaster in the process!), but only at the expense of a growing social instability.

Concentration of political power has been the functional complement of the concentration of economic power. If the grow-or-die dynamics of the market economy has led to the present concentration of economic power, it is the dynamics of representative “democracy” that have led to a corresponding concentration of political power. Thus, the concentration of political power in the hands of parliamentarians in liberal modernity has led to an even higher degree of concentration in the hands of governments and the leadership of “mass” parties in statist modernity, at the expense of parliaments. In neoliberal modernity, the combined effect of the dynamics of the market economy and representative democracy has led to the conversion of politics into statecraft,[6] with think tanks designing policies and their implementation. Thus, a small clique around the prime minister (or the President) concentrates all effective political power in its hands, particularly in advanced market economies that constitute major parts of the transnational elite. Furthermore, the continuous decline of the State’s economic sovereignty is being accompanied by the parallel transformation of the public realm into pure administration.

A “crisis of politics” has developed in the present neoliberal modernity that undermines the foundations of representative “democracy” and is expressed by several symptoms which, frequently, take the form of an implicit or explicit questioning of fundamental political institutions (parties, electoral contests, etc.). Such symptoms are the significant and usually rising abstention rates in electoral contests, particularly in the USA and UK, the explosion of discontent in the form of frequently violent riots, the diminishing numbers of party members and the fact that respect for professional politicians has never been at such a low level, with the frequent financial scandals simply reaffirming the belief that politics, for the vast majority of politicians —liberals and social democrats alike— is just a profession, i.e., a way to make money and enhance social status. Although the historical cause of the present mass apathy can be traced back to what Castoriadis called “the radical inadequacy, to say the least, of the programs in which (the project of autonomy) had been embodied —be it the liberal republic or Marxist-Leninist "socialism"”,[7] the crisis has become particularly acute in the last decade or so. To my mind, the answer has to be found in the cumulative effect of the changes in the “objective” and “subjective” conditions which have marked the emergence of the internationalised market economy since the mid-seventies, namely, the growing internationalisation of the market economy which has effectively undermined the state's power to control economic events, the acute intensification of the struggle for competitiveness among the countries in the Triad (EC, USA, Japan) which, in turn, has resulted in the collapse of social democracy and the establishment of the “neoliberal consensus” and, last but not least, the collapse of “actually existing socialism” which has led to the myth of “the end of ideologies” and further enhanced the spreading of the culture of individualism promoted by neoliberalism.

The growth economy has already created a growth society, the main characteristics of which are consumerism, privacy, alienation and the subsequent disintegration of social ties. The growth society, in turn, inexorably leads toward a “non-society”, that is, the substitution of atomised families and individuals in place of society, a crucial step toward the completion of barbarism. The social crisis has been aggravated by the expansion of the market economy into all sectors of social life, in the context of its present internationalised form. It is, of course, well known that the market is the greatest enemy of traditional values. It is not, therefore, surprising that the social crisis is more pronounced in precisely those countries where marketization has advanced the most. This becomes evident by the fact that neither campaigns of the “back to basics” type (Britain), nor the growth of religious, mystic and other similar irrational tendencies (United States) have had any restraining effect on the most obvious symptoms of the social crisis: the explosion of crime and drug abuse that has already led many states effectively to abandon their “war against drugs”.[8]

The establishment of the market economy implied sweeping aside traditional cultures and values. This process was accelerated in the twentieth century with the spreading all over the world of the market economy and its offspring, the growth economy. As a result, today, there is an intensive process of cultural homogenisation at work, which not only rules out any directionality towards more complexity, but is in effect making culture simpler, with cities becoming more and more alike, people all over the world listening to the same music, watching the same soap operas on TV, buying the same brands of consumer goods etc. The rise of neoliberal globalisation in the last quarter of a century or so has further enhanced this process of cultural homogenisation. This is the inevitable outcome of the liberalisation and de-regulation of markets and the consequent intensification of the commercialisation of culture.

Furthermore, the changes in the structural parameters marking the transition to neoliberal modernity were accompanied by a parallel serious ideological crisis which put into question not just the political ideologies, (what postmodernists pejoratively call “emancipatory metanarratives”), or even “objective” reason[9], but reason itself, as shown by the present flourishing of irrationalism in all its forms: from the revival of old religions like Christianity and Islam etc to the expansion of various irrational trends, e.g. mysticism, spiritualism, astrology, esoterism, neopaganism and “New Age”.

The ecological crisis, as manifested by the rapid deterioration in the quality of life, is the direct result of the continuing degradation of the environment, which the market economy and the consequent growth economy promote. It is no accident that the destruction of the environment during the lifetime of the growth economy, in both its capitalist and state socialist versions, bears no comparison to the cumulative damage that previous societies have inflicted on the environment. The fact that the main form of power within the framework of the growth economy is economic, and that the concentration of economic power involves the ruling elites in a constant struggle to dominate people and the natural world, could go a long way toward explaining the present ecological crisis. In other words, to understand the ecological crisis we should refer not simply to the prevailing system of values and the resulting technologies (as the environmentalists and the deep ecologists suggest), nor exclusively to capitalist production relations (as eco‑marxists propose), but to the relations of domination that characterise a hierarchical society based on the system of market economy and the implied idea of dominating the natural world.

In this context, humanity is faced today with a crucial choice between two radically different proposed solutions: “sustainable development” and what we may call the “eco‑democratic” solution. The former seeks the causes of the ecological crisis in the dominant system of values and the technologies used and naively presumes that a massive change in them is possible, if only we could persuade people about the need for such a change. This solution is supported not just by the mainstream green movement but also by the “progressive” parts of the transnational elite, as it takes for granted today's institutional framework of the market economy and representative “democracy”. Alternatively, the eco‑democratic solution seeks the causes of the ecological crisis in the social system itself, which is based on institutionalised domination (not only economic exploitation) of human by human and Nature by society. It is obvious that this solution requires forms of social organisation that are based on the equal distribution of political and economic power. And this brings us to the relevance of the democratic project today.

If we accept the premise of the first section that we face a multidimensional crisis, which is caused by the concentration of power in the hands of various elites, the clear implication is that the way out of it can only be found through a process of creating a form of comprehensive or “inclusive” democracy. Such a democracy should be based on a form of social organisation that re-integrates society with economy, polity and nature within an institutional framework that secures the necessary conditions for the equal distribution of all forms of power, i.e. political democracy, economic democracy, democracy in the social realm and ecological Democracy. In this sense, an Inclusive Democracy is seen not as a utopia (in the negative sense of the word) but as perhaps the only way out of the present crisis.

Inclusive Democracy is, therefore, a new conception of democracy which, using as its starting point the classical definition of it, expresses democracy in terms of direct political democracy, economic democracy (beyond the confines of the market economy and state planning), as well as democracy in the social realm and ecological democracy. The concept of Inclusive Democracy is not simply a theoretical construct but is derived from a synthesis of two major historical traditions, the classical democratic and the socialist, although it also encompasses radical green, feminist and liberation movements in the South. It therefore expresses trends that have manifested themselves throughout History as expressions of the broader autonomy tradition, which has always been in implicit or explicit conflict with the alternative—and historically dominant-- heteronomy tradition^{^[10]}.

In the political realm there can only be one form of democracy: what we may call political or direct democracy, in which political power is shared equally among all citizens. Political democracy is, therefore, founded on the equal distribution of political power among all citizens, the self-instituting of society. This means that the following conditions have to be satisfied for a society to be characterised as a political democracy:

The above conditions are obviously not met by parliamentary democracy (as it functions in the West), soviet democracy (as it functioned in the East) and the various fundamentalist or semi-military regimes in the South. All these regimes are, therefore, forms of political oligarchy, in which political power is concentrated in the hands of various elites (professional politicians, party bureaucrats, priests, the military and so on). Similarly, in the past, various forms of oligarchies dominated the political domain, when emperors, kings and their courts, with or without the co-operation of knights, priests and others, concentrated political power in their hands.

However, several attempts have been made in History to institutionalise various forms of direct democracy, especially during revolutionary periods (for example, the Parisian sections of the early 1790s, the Spanish collectives in the civil war etc.). Most of these attempts were short-lived and usually did not involve the institutionalisation of democracy as a new form of political regime which replaces, and not just complements, the State. In other cases, democratic arrangements were introduced as a set of procedures for local decision-making. The only historical example of an institutionalised direct democracy ―apart from that of some Swiss cantons which were governed by assemblies of the people (Landsgemeinden)^{^[11]}― in which, for almost two centuries (508/7 BC- 322/1 BC), the state was subsumed into the democratic form of social organisation, is that of Athenian democracy. Of course, Athenian democracy was a only a political democracy and, in fact, a partial one. However, what characterised it as partial was not the political institutions themselves but the very narrow definition of full citizenship adopted by the Athenians ―a definition which excluded large sections of the population (women, slaves, immigrants) who, in fact, constituted the vast majority of the people living in Athens.

If we define political democracy as the authority of the people (demos) in the political sphere, implying the existence of political equality in the sense of equal distribution of political power, then economic democracy could be correspondingly defined as the authority of demos in the economic sphere, implying the existence of economic equality in the sense of equal distribution of economic power. And, of course, we are talking about the demos and not the state, because the existence of a state means the separation of the citizen body from the political and economic process. Economic democracy therefore relates to every social system which institutionalises the integration of society and the economy. This means that, ultimately, the demos controls the economic process, within an institutional framework of demotic ownership of the means of production.

In a more narrow sense, economic democracy also relates to every social system which institutionalises the minimisation of socio-economic differences, particularly those arising out of the unequal distribution of private property and the consequent unequal distribution of income and wealth. Historically, it is in this narrow sense that attempts were made by socialists to introduce economic democracy. Therefore, in contrast to the institutionalisation of political democracy, there has never been a corresponding example of an institutionalised economic democracy in the broad sense defined above. In other words, even when socialist attempts to reduce the degree of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth were successful, they were never associated with meaningful attempts to establish a system of equal distribution of economic power. This has been the case, despite the fact that in the type of society which has emerged since the rise of the market economy, there has been a definite shift of the economy from the private realm into what Hannah Arendt called the “social realm”, to which the nation-state also belongs. But, it is this shift which makes any talk of democracy which does not also refer to the question of economic power ring hollow, as it is clearly meaningless to talk today about the equal sharing of political power without conditioning it on the equal sharing of economic power.

On the basis of this definition of economic democracy, the following conditions have to be satisfied for a society to be characterised as an economic democracy:

Based on these general principles, we may draw an outline of a model of economic democracy, as an integral part of an Inclusive Democracy.^{^[12]} The dominant characteristic of this model, which differentiates it from similar models of centralised or decentralised Planning, is that, although it does not depend on the prior abolition of scarcity, it does secure the satisfaction of the basic needs of all citizens, without sacrificing freedom of choice, in a stateless, moneyless and marketless economy. The preconditions of economic democracy are defined in terms of demotic self-reliance, demotic ownership of productive resources, and confederal allocation of resources. The third condition in particular implies that the decision mechanism for the allocation of scarce resources in an Inclusive Democracy should be based at the confederal rather than the community level, (i.e. at the level of the confederation of demoi), so that problems arising at the inter-community level (energy, environment, transportation, communication, technology transfer etc.) could be tackled effectively.

The mechanism proposed to allocate scarce resources aims to replace both the market mechanism and the central planning mechanism, both of which have failed historically. The former because it can be shown that the system of the market economy has led, in the two hundred years since its establishment, to a continuous concentration of income and wealth at the hands of a small percentage of the world population and, consequently, to a distorted allocation of world resources. This is because in a market economy the crucial allocation decisions (what to produce, how and for whom to produce it) are conditioned by the purchasing power of those income groups which can back their demands with money. The latter because it can be shown that centralised planning, although better than the market system in securing employment and meeting the basic needs of citizens (albeit at an elementary level), not only leads to economic irrationalities (which eventually precipitated its actual collapse) and ineffectiveness in covering non-basic needs, but is also highly undemocratic.

The system of allocation proposed by the Inclusive Democracy project aims to satisfy the twofold aim of:

Both the macro-economic decisions and the individual citizens’ decisions are envisaged as being implemented through a combination of democratic planning ―which involves the creation of a feedback process between workplace assemblies, demotic assemblies and the confederal assembly― and an artificial “market” which secures genuine freedom of choice, without incurring the adverse effects associated with real markets. In a nutshell, the allocation of economic resources is made first, on the basis of the citizens’ collective decisions, as expressed through the community and confederal plans, and second, on the basis of the citizens’ individual choices, as expressed through a voucher system. The general criterion for the allocation of resources is not efficiency, as it is currently defined in narrow techno-economic terms. Efficiency should be redefined to mean effectiveness in satisfying human needs and not just money-backed wants. As far as the meaning of needs is concerned, a distinction is drawn between basic and non-basic needs and a similar one between needs and “satisfiers” (the form or the means by which these needs are satisfied). What constitutes a need ―basic or otherwise― is determined by the citizens themselves democratically. Then, the level of need-satisfaction is determined collectively and implemented through a democratic planning mechanism, while the satisfiers for both basic and non-basic needs are determined through the revealed preferences of consumers, as expressed by the use of vouchers allocated to them in exchange for their “basic” and “non-basic” work.

It is, therefore, clear that the project for an Inclusive Democracy refers to a kind of political economy which transcends both the political economy of state socialism, as realised in the ex-socialist countries of Eastern Europe, and the political economy of the market economy, either in its mixed economy form of the social democratic consensus, or in its present neo-liberal form.

The satisfaction of the above conditions for political and economic democracy would represent the re-conquering of the political and economic realms by the public realm ― that is, the reconquering of a true social individuality, the creation of the conditions of freedom and self-determination, both at the political and the economic levels. However, political and economic power are not the only forms of power and, therefore, political and economic democracy do not, by themselves, secure an Inclusive Democracy. In other words, an Inclusive Democracy is inconceivable unless it extends to the broader social realm to embrace the workplace, the household, the educational institution and indeed any economic or cultural institution which constitutes an element of this realm.

Historically, various forms of democracy in the social realm have been introduced, particularly during the last century, usually in periods of revolutionary activity. However, these forms of democracy were not only short-lived but seldom extended beyond the workplace (e.g. Hungarian workers' councils in 1956) and the educational institution (e.g. Paris student assemblies in 1968). The issue today is how to extend democracy to other forms of social organisation, like the household, without dissolving the private/public realm divide. In other words, how, while maintaining and enhancing the autonomy of the two realms, such institutional arrangements are adopted which introduce democracy to the household and the social realm in general and ―at the same time― enhance the institutional arrangements of political and economic democracy. In fact, an effective democracy is inconceivable unless free time is equally distributed among all citizens, and this condition can never be satisfied as long as the present hierarchical conditions in the household, the workplace and elsewhere continue. Furthermore, democracy in the social realm, particularly in the household, is impossible, unless such institutional arrangements are introduced which recognise the character of the household as a needs-satisfier and integrate the care and services provided within its framework into the general scheme of needs satisfaction.

If we see democracy as a process of social self-institution in which there is no divinely or “objectively” defined code of human conduct, there are no guarantees that an Inclusive Democracy would secure an ecological democracy in the sense defined above. Therefore, the replacement of the market economy by a new institutional framework of Inclusive Democracy constitutes only the necessary condition for a harmonious relation between the natural and social worlds. The sufficient condition refers to the citizens’ level of ecological consciousness. Still, the radical change in the dominant social paradigm which will follow the institution of an Inclusive Democracy, combined with the decisive role that paedeia will play in an environmentally-friendly institutional framework, could reasonably be expected to lead to a radical change in the human attitude towards Nature. In other words, there are strong grounds for believing that the relationship between an Inclusive Democracy and Nature would be much more harmonious than could ever be achieved in a market economy, or one based on state socialism.

Thus, at the political level, there are grounds for believing that the creation of a public space will in itself have a very significant effect on reducing the appeal of materialism. This is because the public space will provide a new meaning of life to fill the existential void that the present consumer society creates. The realisation of what it means to be human could reasonably be expected to throw us back toward Nature.

Also, at the economic level, it is not accidental that, historically, the process of destroying the environment en masse has coincided with the process of marketization of the economy. In other words, the emergence of the market economy and of the consequent growth economy had crucial repercussions on the society-Nature relationship and led to the rise of the ideology of growth as the dominant social paradigm. An “instrumentalist” view of Nature became dominant, in which Nature was seen as an instrument for economic growth, within a process of endless concentration of power. If we assume that only a confederal society could secure an Inclusive Democracy today, it would be reasonable to assume further that once the market economy is replaced by a democratically-run confederal economy, the grow-or-die dynamics of the former will be replaced by the new social dynamic of the latter: a dynamic aiming at the satisfaction of the community needs and not at growth per se. Furthermore, if the satisfaction of community needs does not depend, as at present, on the continuous expansion of production to cover the “needs” which the market creates, and if the link between economy and society is restored, then there is no reason why the present instrumentalist view of Nature should continue to condition human behaviour.

Finally, democracy in the broader social realm could also be reasonably expected to be environmentally-friendly. The phasing out of patriarchal relations in the household and hierarchical relations in general should create a new ethos of non-domination which would embrace both Nature and Society. In other words, the creation of democratic conditions in the social realm should be a decisive step in the creation of the sufficient condition for a harmonious nature-society relationship.

The institutionalisation of Inclusive Democracy in terms of the above conditions is only the necessary condition for the establishment of democracy. The sufficient condition refers to the citizens’ level of democratic consciousness, in which a crucial role is played by paedeia^{^[13]} ―involving not simply education but character development and a well-rounded education in knowledge and skills, i.e. the education of the individual as citizen, which alone can give substantive content to the public space.

[1] Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, (Cassell/Continuum:London/New York) 1997, ch 1

[2] Takis Fotopoulos, “The European Left and the myth of the European social model”, The inclusive democracy journal's newsletter # 23 (14 November 2005), http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/newsletter/European_Left.htm

[3] see Takis Fotopoulos, “The Neoliberal Myths about Globalisation”, The inclusive democracy journal's newsletter # 11 (21 March 2005), http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/newsletter/neoliberal_myths.htm

[4] Human Development Report 2005, Table 5

[5] Calculations on the World Development Report 2000/2001, World Bank, Tables 1 and 10.

[6] Bookchin, From Urbanisation to Cities, (Cassell:London,1995), Ch. 6 and Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy , (Oxford University Press, 1991), Ch.7

[7] Cornelius Castoriadis, “The Retreat from Autonomy” in World in Fragments, ed by David Ames Curtis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) pp. 32-43.

[8] See T. Fotopoulos, Drugs: Beyond penalisation and liberalisation (in Greek) (Athens: Eleftheros Typos, 1999).

[9] See, e.g., Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Imre Lakatos, Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1975).

[10] See Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, ch 8 ; cf. C. Castoriadis, “The Retreat from Autonomy” and Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom, (Black Rose Press: Montreal, 1991), chs 5 &7

[11] Mogens Herman Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the Age of Demosthenes, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).

[12] See for a detailed description Takis Fotopoulos, Towards An Inclusive Democracy, ch 6

[13] see Takis Fotopoulos, “From (mis)education to Paideia”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 9, no.1 (March 2003) http://www.democracynature.org/dn/vol9/takis_paideia.htm and, also, Defending Public Schools, ed. by David A. Gabbard & Wayne Ross, vol I, ch. 2 (Praeger: Westport/London), 2004, pp. 15-27.