Towards
an Inclusive Democracy is a comprehensive response to the global triumph of
neo-liberalism and the failure of socialism. It analyses the present state and
past history of the world economy, offers a vision of an alternative future for
the world, and provides a philosophical justification for this vision. While
Fotopoulos is highly critical of the socialism of former communist countries,
his more important arguments are directed against socialists who believe that
social justice can be achieved through state control of the market. Inclusive
democracy is presented as the only realistic response to a looming social and
environmental crises engendered by neo-liberalism.
Fotopoulos’
study of the global economy develops Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the separation
of the market economy from society and the subordination of society to the laws
of the market. The extension of the market has never been inevitable, Fotopoulos
argues. Those controlling the market have, where feasible, always striven to
extend it to labor and land to augment their own power. This is as true of those
people in the eighteenth century who extended the market to encompass labor as
it is of neo-liberals of recent years who have deregulated the labor market,
privatized public utilities and social services and broken down the barriers
between national economies. For Fotopoulos, the fundamental conflict is not that
between the forces and the relations of production, but between the market
dominated economy and society.
This
provides a new perspective on recent history. Fotopoulos reviews debates over
whether the growth of international trade heralds a new era, whether the
division between the first and third world is breaking down, and whether
capitalism is now disorganized or is being reorganized at an international
level. To this end he argues that the shift from socially controlled markets to
self-regulating markets occurred at the end of the eighteenth century, but they
were reregulated. While this reregulation took place largely because it served
the interests of the ruling elites, Fotopoulos, unlike most Marxists,
acknowledges that this regulation resulted in a structurally different economic
system. The so-called statist phase of capitalism was not merely a stage in the
expansion of capitalism; it was the period of the social-democratic consensus.
But, argues Fotopoulos, while control over the economy was achieved at the
national level, the marketization process continued at an international level.
The growth of the international market eventually made it impossible to sustain
state control over the economy. This heralds a new phase in the concentration of
power through the market. Although this phase extends the market into the Third
World, power is concentrated as never before with the elites of the core zones.
In the new order, the state’s role, along with a range of new institutional
structures ranging from the local to the international level, is reduced to
creating the stable framework for the efficient functioning of the market. Civil
society has dissolved almost completely, people have been brutalized, and
politics and democracy rendered superfluous.
Fotopoulos
argues that with liberalized commodity and capital markets and an over-riding
commitment to economic growth, the Anglo-Saxon model of a deregulated market
will inevitable prevail over social democracies. Market efficiency and social
control of the market are irreconcilable. But only a small minority of the
world’s population, mostly in a few affluent regions in North America, Western
Europe and East Asia, are benefiting from these developments. And the
consequence of the internationalization of the market economy and the
concentration of economic power it engenders, is “an ecological crisis that
threatens to develop into an eco-catastrophe, the destruction of the
countryside, the creation of monstrous mega-cities and the uprooting of local
communities and cultures.” (p.116)
This
argument provides the background for the defence of inclusive democracy.
Inclusive democracy encompasses the political, economic, social and ecological
realms; that is, any area of human activity where decisions can be taken
collectively and democratically. Democracy is defined as the ‘institutional
framework that aims at the equal distribution of political, economic and social
power… in other words, as the system which aims at the effective elimination
of the domination of human beings over human being.’(p.206f.) Correspondingly,
ecological democracy is defined as the institutional framework that aims to
reintegrate humans and nature. The original example of genuine democracy
(although confined to a small proportion of the population) is taken to be
ancient Athens. The liberal “democracies” of the modern world, social
democratic models and Marxist socialism which reduces politics to the scientific
management of production, are dismissed as various forms of oligarchy.
Fotopoulos traces the history of these social forms, claiming them to be
perversions of the democratic ideal.
Fotopoulos
offers an historical, social and economic analysis of ancient Greek democracy to
show what true democracy is and what are the conditions for its success. The
basis of democracy must be the choice of people for individual and collective
autonomy. Political decisions should be made by citizens collectively in
community assemblies, not through representatives. Positions to which authority
is delegated should be filled by lot on a rotation basis. All residents in a
particular geographical area should be directly involved in decision-taking
processes and should be educated to enable them to do so. Political rights
should be accompanied by social and economic rights and, to ensure this,
productive resources should be owned by the demos (the people). In one of the
most important sections of the book, Fotopoulos provides a detailed model of a
distribution system simulating and gaining the benefits of a market economy
while avoiding the destructive effects of real markets. Satisfaction of basic
needs involving more than one community should be coordinated through a
confederal plan formulated in regional and confederal assemblies made up of
delegates. Fotopoulos offers a detailed analysis of how such a system could be
made workable economically and politically. He argues we do not have to wait for
the conditions for inclusive democracies to emerge. They can be created at any
time. To escape the destructive imperatives and brutalizing effects of the
present order, “[t]he immediate objective should … be the creation, from
below, of ‘popular bases of political and economic power’, that is, the
establishment of local and public realms of direct and economic democracy which,
at some stage, will confederate in order to create the conditions for the
establishment of a new society.” (p.284) This struggle must be undertaken
simultaneously at the political, economic, social and cultural levels.
The
final part of the book is devoted to the philosophical justification of
inclusive democracy. Essentially, Fotopoulos develops Castoriadis’ arguments
that the core of democracy is autonomy – the freedom of people to be
self-instituting, that is, to be able to put into question and transform their
existing institutions and their dominant social paradigm (beliefs, ideas and
values).[1]
Any philosophy that denies the possibility of such autonomy is criticised. The
question then is whether people are prepared to struggle for democracy now,
given that their failure to do so not only means accepting their subjugation and
brutalization, but also the destruction of the ecological conditions of their
existence.
How
convincing is Fotopoulos’ argument? Some recent events support his analysis of
the present and its possibilities. Following the Asian meltdown, countries
thoughout the world are moving to emulate USA and Britain. More social
democracies appear to be disintegrating. Does this mean that the only
alternative to neo-liberalism is the inclusive democracy as elaborated by
Fotopoulos? This is questionable, at least for the immediate future. New
Zealand, which de-regulated its markets more than any other country, has
stagnated, while Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands which, so far, have
maintained forms of social democratic consensus, are flourishing. Nor is the
argument entirely convincing that only an inclusive democracy in its pure form
could avoid the corrupting effects of the concentration of power in the longer
term. Benjamin Barber, for instance, whose study of a Swiss canton had revealed
how corrupt a small, democratic society could become,[2]
has argued for the recreation of participatory politics (what he calls “strong
democracy”) without totally abolishing the state as an alternative way of
decentralizing power.[3]
And while Fotopoulos offers us a detailed, attractive and plausible model of a
fully democratic society, his proposal that confederations of such societies
could overwhelm existing nation states committed to maximising economic and
military power, is less plausible.
However,
these objections do not touch what is most important in Fotopoulos’ work. He
has shown the disastrous effects on society and nature of the concentration of
power through the global market, and consequently the need to overcome not only
the market, but also concentrations of power. We need to create genuinely
democratic societies. And this requires us to envisage such societies. Until
such efforts are made we will remain saddled with the neo-liberal vision of the
future.
This
work should be of interest not only to environmentalists, political economists,
political scientists and philosophers, but to all those seriously concerned
about the world's future.
Reviewed by
Arran
Gare
Swinburne
University,
Melbourne, Australia
[1]
On this notion of autonomy see Cornelius Castoriadis,
Philosophy,
Politics, Autonomy: Essays in Political Philosophy (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991).
[2]
See Benjamin R. Barber, The Death of
Communal Liberty: A History of Freedom in a Swiss Mountain Canton
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974).
[3]
Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy:
Participatory Politics for a New Age (London: University of California
Press, 1984).