ABSTRACT
It was no coincidence that the biggest economic crisis in decades was in fact a twin crisis; the financial crisis coincided with a crisis of democracy. It was also not by chance that a host of new pro-democratic social movements sprang up in response to this crisis. Throughout its modern history, democracy has developed in tandem with capitalism on the one hand, and popular politics and protest on the other. It was, therefore, inevitable that democracy would be implicated in the current crisis both as its culprit and as a potential force that could bring about more egalitarian forms of social and political life. The perceived failure of the liberal representative model of democracy in Europe and North America had its roots in decisions made by politicians and unelected officials long before, during and after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 (Runciman, 2015). The cumulative effect of those decisions (aided by various social and cultural processes used by states to legitimise those decisions) elevated economic principles as foundational and seemingly ‘natural’ in all other spheres of social and personal life (Kapferer, 2010). In response to the financial crisis, political representatives in the democratic West often chose to impose harsh austerity measures on their populations, effectively socialising the costs of the risks taken by private investors. Politics became subordinated to financial interests of the elites (Hardt & Negri, 2011). Liberal democracy has also failed miserably in ensuring a more equitable society and in the last few decades broadened the gaps between the haves and the have nots even further (Piketty, 2014). Moreover, the crisis exposed the limits of technocracy, a belief that public and independent officials would act as a safety valve against the excesses of unreliable and fickle voters (Runciman, 2015). However, it was not the public that democracy needed to be guarded against. Instead, there was a fundamental flaw in the way the liberal representative model of democracy worked in that the minimal degree of political participation that it required guaranteed passive acquiescence and self-blame of citizens in the face of an increasingly unequal society. A politically passive and apathetic society made liberal democracy good at free market and global finance but being top of the class in those areas was not good for democracy in the long run. Liberal democracy needs voters but it hardly needs ‘the people’.1 Unlike such forms of democracy as participatory or deliberative models, representative
democracy is not going to collapse because citizens are reluctant to turn up to participate (Tormey, 2014). In fact, the particular compatibility of the liberal representative model with financial capitalism calls into question the relevance of the very image of ‘the people’ as the cornerstone of the contemporary form of democracy in the West. Capitalism produces and justifies various forms of inequality in wealth and power (as well as corresponding forms of violence) and, as such, it exacerbates the acute tension between its inegalitarian tendencies and the political equality that is the basis of democracy. Some have even suggested that liberal representative democracy acts like a retroactive redefinition of democracy to fit whatever capitalism requires for legitimation (Dolbeare, 1990). The minimalist vision of democracy (della Porta, 2013) fostered by neoliberal politics depends not only on the predominance of the economic in the political arena but also on an elitist conception of citizen participation (electoral, sporadic and easily manipulated by spectacle and demagoguery). Due to its historical affiliation with the structures of the nation-state, democracy has always been exclusionary – in the last resort, it divides people into those with rights, i.e. citizens, and those without them, namely non-citizens (Markoff, 1999). But the reason why so many people, who were formally included and had political rights, took to the streets in 2011 was that they experienced this particular model of democracy as anti-democratic (Sitrin & Azzellini, 2014). Democracy based on electoral representation ignored the realities of vast disparities in wealth and power and rendered the entire model irrelevant. It may be easy for us today to forget that democracy in its current form is a quite recent phenomenon. At the start of the last century, democracy was a largely untested form of politics. The only certainty about democracy in general seemed to be that it could not last (Runciman, 2015). This claim is not surprising given that until recently most details about democracy were recorded by its staunch critics if not its outright opponents. Social movements shared a similar fate as they were initially regarded as irrational mobs. The fact is, however, that movements about the character of democracy have played and continue to play a major role in altering democratic practice (Allahar, Bachriadi, Markoff & Meyer, 2008; Markoff, 1999). For example, throughout history, movements have often re-appropriated and redefined liberal ideas and imbued them with more radical meanings. Even though they lost many of their battles, it seems that their ideas have always had a lasting effect on and forever changed the terms of political debates. The Levellers during the English Civil War, for example, typically took for granted the right of private property. Even if they fell short of advocating communal property, their ideas about popular sovereignty (as the rule of the people, not the Parliament or representatives) undermined and challenged the rule of the dominant propertied classes. Their radical ideas included emphasis on local self-government and universal male suffrage. Even as late as the start of the Civil War, the doctrine of popular sovereignty was largely repudiated, even by the theorists of the parliamentary cause, so the shift that the Levellers and Diggers introduced should not be underestimated. The historic events that those movements were part of brought
into being the idea of government by consent of the people; once this happened, it soon became the basis of a democratic theory. The influence of Leveller ideas (like many other pro-or proto-democratic movements) can then be found in the events and traditions of revolutions, movements, parties and political theories in many parts of the world (Wood, 1997). Occupy and the entire pro-democratic wave of contemporary movements have been powerfully expressing a demand for a ‘real democracy’ (Flesher Fominaya, 2015; Hardt & Negri, 2011; Szolucha, 2015) and mobilising new forms of social action for a democratisation of power (Szolucha, 2013). Occupy participants expressed their indignation against corporate power, economic inequality and the failure of the political system to protect its citizens from the unfair distribution of power and resources and to guarantee equal access to political participation (Chou, 2014, 2015b). The movement sought to actively create and engage in alternative models of democratic decision-making and social organising. I believe that the current moment in the history of democracy and the central role played by movements is significant because it explicitly calls for democracy renewal. For me, street protest, messiness, noise, uncertainty, direct engagement and action are indispensable parts of democratic life. Where conservative devotees of the representative model see anti-democratic mobs mobilising in opposition to elected representatives, I see a creative, although not unproblematic, expression of the old rule of ‘the people’ and skilled attempts at democratisation of power. Having said that, I have to acknowledge that my own interpretation is limited by the peculiarity of the current historical moment. Moreover, all my claims have a conjectural quality tainted by my participation in the Occupy movement. In other words, my experience makes me hopeful and vigilant and, in all internal democratic iterations of Occupy (that form the bulk of this book), I want to help us broaden the conception of democracy and democratic life that is not necessarily limited by the coordinates of the liberal representative model. I wish to capture what I feel is a spirit of the day where many in movements think about and act as if the future of democracy was not necessarily the future of representative democracy.
