Political democracy is about one person one vote, a convention not reflected in the market place where voting is on the basis of one dollar one vote. This inconsistency between political voting and market voting has fatal implications for democracy, with the wealthy using their power to frustrate its practice.
Awareness of the problem is not new. In 1873 Chief Justice Ryan of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court warned "There is looming up a new and dark power .. the enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economical conquests only, but for political power ... For the first time really in our politics, money is taking the field as an organised power. It is unscrupulous, arrogant, and overbearing ... The question will arise and arise in your day .. which shall rule - wealth or [people]; which shall lead - money or intellect; who shall fill public stations - educated and patriotic free [people], or the feudal serfs of corporate capital."
Venezuela’s recent experience highlights the problem. Its President Hugo Chavez was first elected in 1998 with 56.2% of the votes - the largest percentage in four decades and subsequently a further term. His democratic credentials are well established. So why did the US fund the Venezuelan opposition though its Congress-controlled National Endowment for Democracy and back the coup that attempted Chavez’s removal in April 2002?
Compared with Venezuela today, American democracy benefits its wealthy elite. Since becoming President, Chavez has sought to redistribute wealth and power from the elites to the previously dis-enfranchised poor who comprise 80% of the country’s 25 million people. One way he is doing this is by bartering oil for medical and other assistance from Cuba. 32 year old Eliecer Hernandez one of the 15,000 Cuban doctors providing support has been reported saying,"I never imagined that people's misery could be so acute. It's different in Cuba. I've seen illnesses here that no longer exist in Cuba, that is how abandoned the people are here".
Venezuela is not an isolated case. In February 2004, the US organised and financed the overthrow of Haiti’s democratically elected government and forced its President Aristide into exile. In the Ukraine’s recent elections, in order to displace the Russian military from the Black Sea, the Bush Administration contributed $US65 million to ensure the West-leaning Yushchenko gained power.
Thomas Carothers a scholar and US Republican insider reveals why the US administration is acting in this way. Quoted in Chomsky’s "Hegemony or Survival – America’s quest for world domination", Carothers says that the US has long sought to maintain "the basic order of quite undemocratic societies" and to avoid "populist-based change".
Throughout the world, money plays a dominant role in the electoral process. In nearly all cases only those who are rich and powerful can hope to secure elected office. As foreseen by Chief Justice Ryan, the concentration of wealth in the US has reached the point where to quote John Dewey, politics has become "the shadow cast on society by big business." Far from buying votes, corporates effectively buy politicians. Moreover power in the media has concentrated to the point where 90% is owned by 10 mega-corporations enabling the ready manipulation of the electorate.
Citing the success of public diplomacy "linking the war on Iraq with the trauma of 911" political analyst Anatol Levien commented that most Americans had been "duped by a propaganda programme which for systematic mendacity (lying) has few parallels in peacetime democracies." (1)
In relation to Venezuela, English-language journalists frequently quote analysts who oppose the Chávez government, but rarely cite experts who are sympathetic. In a study of six of US’s main newspapers over two-and-a-half-years following the failed coup of April 2002, it was found that the most frequently quoted anti-Chavez analysts were cited in more than five times as many press reports as their Chavez-sympathising counterparts.
The capacity for the unlimited accumulation of wealth has grown to the point where that of the world’s 3 richest men equals that of 48 countries and over half of the largest economies in the world are multi-national corporations. In such circumstances it is misleading to talk of sovereign governments. Effectively governments throughout the world are largely beholden to the policies of corporates who wield the real power.
Small wonder that in the US presidential elections in 2000, feelings of powerlessness among the electorate reached over 50%, the highest level ever recorded. (2)
Mahatma Gandhi wrote, "Western democracy as it functions today, is diluted fascism … true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the centre. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village."In an article printed in the Observer and subsequently in Christchurch’s Press following the collapse of Enron, Will Hutton wrote, "American democracy is increasingly a fraud. Money buys votes, influence and office."
Shrii P. R. Sarkar the Indian philosopher has written, "The farce of democracy has been likened to a puppet show where a handful of power hungry politicians pull the strings from behind the scene."
With political democracy clearly failing. What needs to take its place? At the heart of the problem is its failure to deliver economic democracy. This has resulted in immense inequality in people's purchasing capacity, unemployment, chronic food shortages, poverty and insecurity in society.
Some of the changes the Progressive Utilisation Theory (PROUT) regards as necessary to make democracy successful, are,
- Economic power being vested in the hands of the common people and that the minimum requirements of life including food, clothing, housing, medical care and education needing to be guaranteed to all.
- That to overcome the ready manipulation of the electorate and to ensure ethical leadership, voters need to be educated regarding their rights and responsibilities, observe basic principles of morality and demonstrate minimum levels of social, economic and political consciousness.
- Restrictions should be placed on actions clearly detrimental to the welfare of others, such as accumulation of excessive physical wealth, and
- To ensure there is consistency between political democracy and the market place, that most businesses be run as co-operatives with voting being on the basis of one person one vote.
Whether or not these proposals are accepted, unless the need for economic democracy is ddressed, the inequalities and the struggle against political democracy’s inherent injustice are certain to intensify.
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Notes:
1. Chomsky "Hegemony or Survival – America’s quest for global dominance", p19
2. Ibid., p139-----------------------------------------------------
Contact: Bruce Dyre
