Beyond Statism And The Market Economy:
A New Conception Of DemocracyTakis Fotopoulos
Abstract This article attempts to show that democracy is irreconcilable with any form of concentration of power, political or economic. Therefore, neither the liberal conception of democracy, which takes for granted the political and economic concentration that the representative democracy and the market economy respectively imply, nor the socialist conception of democracy, which presupposes that the separation of state from society will continue until the mythical communist phase is reached, are relevant to democracy. Finally, the article develops a new conception of democracy, which, extending the classical non-statist conception, introduces the elements of economic democracy, community and confederalism that are necessary for any modern conception of democracy. The new conception takes for granted that democracy is not just a particular structure implying political and economic equality, but a process of social self-institution and a project. Therefore, democracy's grounding on any divine or mystical dogmas and "scientific" laws or tendencies about social "evolution" is ruled out.
1. Introduction
Few words, apart perhaps from socialism, have been so widely abused during the century now ending, as the word "democracy". The usual way in which the meaning of democracy has been distorted, mostly by liberal academics and politicians but also by libertarian theoreticians, is by confusing the presently dominant oligarchic system of representative "democracy" with democracy itself. A good illustration of this distortion is offered by the following introduction to the subject by a modern textbook on democracy:
The word democracy comes from the Greek and literally means rule by the people. It is sometimes said that democratic government originated in the city-states of ancient Greece and that democratic ideals have been handed down to us from that time. In truth, however, this is an unhelpful assertion. The Greeks gave us the word but did not provide us with a model. The assumptions and practices of the Greeks were very different from those of modern democrats[1].
Thus, the author, having asserted that democracy is a kind of "rule" (an error repeated by several libertarians and anarchists today), he then goes on to argue that:
if ruling is taken to mean the activity of reaching authoritative decisions that result in laws and regulations binding upon society, then: it is obvious that (apart from occasional referendums) only a small minority of individuals can be rulers in modern, populous societies. So, for the definition to be operational, ruling must be taken in the much weaker sense of choosing the rulers and influencing their decisions"[2].
The author, therefore, having concluded that "an objective and precise definition of democracy" (p 48) is not possible, goes on to devote the rest of the book to a discussion of the Western regimes, which he calls "democracies". However, as I will try to show below, the modern concept of democracy has hardly any relation to the classical Greek conception. Furthermore, the current practice of adding several qualifying adjectives to the term democracy has further confused the meaning of it and created the impression that several forms of democracy exist. Thus, liberals refer to "modern", "representative", or "parliamentary" democracy, social democrats talk about "social", "economic" or "industrial" democracy, and, finally, Leninists used to speak about "soviet" democracy, and, later, "people's" democracies, to describe the countries of "actually existing socialism". But, as this essay will attempt to show, there is only one form of democracy at the political level, i.e. the direct exercise of sovereignty by the people themselves, a form of societal institution which rejects any form of "ruling". Therefore, all other forms of so-called democracy are not but various forms of "oligarchy" i.e. of ruling by the few. This implies that the only adjective that is permissible to precede democracy is "economic", because economic democracy was indeed unknown to Athenians for whom economic activity, unlike political activity, did not belong to the public realm.
However, the meaning we give to democracy crucially depends on the meaning of freedom and autonomy. Furthermore, there is no way of defining democracy today unless we delineate first its relation to the state and then to the market economy and the consequent growth economy. In this article, after an initial discussion of the above issues, the liberal and socialist conceptions of democracy are examined and then an attempt is made to develop a new conception of democracy, by starting from the classical non-statist conception and complementing it with the necessary elements for a modern conception of democracy, namely, economic democracy, community and confederalism. Finally, the discussion concludes by touching upon the important issue of how we move from "here" to "there".
2. Freedom, autonomy and democracy
How to define freedom?
One useful starting point in defining freedom is the distinction that Isaiah Berlin[3] introduced between what he called the "negative" and the "positive" concepts of liberty/freedom (he used the terms interchangeably). The former referred to the absence of restraint, that is, the freedom for the individual to do whatever h/she wants to do ("freedom from"), whereas the latter referred to the freedom "to do things", to engage in self-development, or participate in the government of one's society ("freedom to"). One could, roughly, argue that, historically, the negative concept of freedom was adopted by liberals, individualistic anarchists and libertarians, whereas the positive concept was used by socialists and main stream anarchists.
Thus, the negative concept of freedom was developed by liberal philosophers like Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and others, whose main consideration was to establish criteria for determining the proper limits of state action. In liberal philosophy, citizens are free in so far as they are not constrained by laws and regulations. It is therefore obvious that the liberal conception of freedom presupposes the power relations implied by the existence of the state and the market, as long as they are "within the law". In other words, the liberals' conception of freedom presupposes the existence of state as separate from society; in this sense, their conception of democracy was, also, a "statist" one.
The negative concept of freedom has been criticised on several grounds. Liberals themselves have criticised this conception as it does not imply even the very right to choose rulers in representative democracy[4], which is clearly a "freedom to" and not a "freedom from". But, even more important is the philosophical criticism that human beings have always lived in communities bound together by social rules and regulations and that, therefore, their history is not just a history of isolated individuals, coming together to form a civil society, as liberal philosophers like Hobbes and Locke assumed. In other words, human values are socially determined and social rules and regulations to uphold them do not represent a restriction on some pre-existing freedom but part of the conditions of a satisfactory life[5].
On the other hand, the positive concept of freedom is usually associated with self-realisation through the political institution of society, which supposedly expresses the "general will". But then, of course, the question immediately arises: which type of societal institution could express this general will? Historically, the positive concept of freedom has been associated with the "statist" conception of democracy, where the state was supposed to express the general will. In particular, during the period from the beginning of this century until the Second World War, the positive concept of freedom was fashionable among statists of all persuasions: from Nazis to Stalinists. No wonder that the collapse of statism, as an ideology and political practice, led to the corresponding decline of the positive concept of freedom and the present flourishing of its negative conception. However, as I am going to show below, there is no intrinsic relationship between the positive concept of freedom and statism. In fact, the opposite is true. Statism is incompatible with any concept of freedom, positive or negative, given its fundamental incompatibility with both self-determination and individual as well as collective autonomy.
Still, the ambivalent character of the connection between statism and freedom led to a situation where the positive concept of freedom was adopted by both the statist and the non-statist wings of the Left. Thus, on the Marxist side, freedom was expressed in terms of self-determination, in the sense of the conscious control over society and nature. According to Engels, "freedom consists in the control over ourselves and over external nature[6]". Also, according to Kolakowski, for Marxists, "freedom is the degree of power that an individual or a community are able to exercise over the conditions of their own life"[7] On the anarchist side, Bakunin had exactly the same notion of freedom, which he defined as "the domination over external things, based upon the respectful observance of the laws of Nature"[8]. Similarly, Emma Goldman explicitly adopts a positive concept of freedom:"true liberty...is not the negative thing of being free from something...real freedom, true liberty is positive:it is freedom to something;it is the liberty to be,to do"[9].
Finally, today's ideological hegemony of liberal ideas has influenced several libertarians who resort to individualistic conceptions of freedom. McKersher, for instance, defines freedom "as the ability to choose between alternatives"[10]. However, this conception of freedom separates the individual's self-determination from that of the community's, or in other words, the individual's self-determination from that of the social individual's. As a result, the link between the political institution of society and the social individual's self-determination is broken (no wonder that Milton Friedman's best seller was entitled "Free to choose"). In fact, even if we qualify the definition as the equal ability to choose, to bring in the ethics of equality and democracy, (what McKercher calls "the qualitative areas of choice") still, the definition does not explicitly posit the question of the political institution of society. But, it is society's political institution which conditions in a decisive way what "the alternatives" are and therefore the ability itself to choose. It is not therefore accidental that such a definition of freedom is amenable to be attached to the ethos of individualism, private property and capitalism. Nor is it surprising that the adoption of such a definition of freedom could easily lead to a situation where "freedom becomes individualism, and individualism becomes the possession of property, and possession becomes democracy", so that, at the end, "private property and capitalism become synonymous with 'democracy'"[11].
To my mind, the best way to define freedom is to express it in terms of individual and collective autonomy. Such a definition of freedom not only combines individual freedom with collective freedom, rooting firmly the freedom of the individual in the democratic organisation of the community, but it also transcends both liberalism (negative freedom) and statism (positive freedom).
Autonomy, as Murray Bookchin correctly points out, has been identified in the English literature with personal freedom or self-government[12]. However, the original Greek meaning of the word had a definite political dimension, where personal autonomy was inseparable from collective autonomy. The term "autonomy" comes from the Greek word αυτο-νομος (autos-nomos), which means (to give to) oneself one's law. This, according to Castoriadis, is "a new eidos within the overall history of being: a type of being that reflectively gives to itself the laws of its being[13]". And he continues:
The poleis- at any rate Athens, about which our information is most complete- do not stop questioning their respective institutions; the demos goes on modifying the rules under which it lives (...) This movement is a movement of explicit self-institution. The cardinal meaning of explicit self-institution is autonomy: we posit our own laws (...) The community of citizens -the demos- proclaims that it is absolutely sovereign (autonomos, autodikos, autoteles -- self-legislating,self-judging,self-governing-- in Thucydides' words)[14].
It is therefore obvious that, in this conception of autonomy, an autonomous society is inconceivable without autonomous individuals and vice versa. This is so, because, if we assume away the concentration of power and its epitome, the State, then, no individual is autonomous unless he/she participates equally in power. Similarly, no society is autonomous unless it consists of autonomous individuals, because "without the autonomy of the others there is no collective autonomy -and outside such a collectivity I cannot be effectively autonomous"[15]. Similarly, Murray Bookchin stresses that "individuality is inseparable from community, and autonomy is hardly meaningful unless it is embedded in a cooperative community[16].
Furthermore, an autonomous society is a society capable of explicitly self-instituting itself, in other words, capable of putting into question its already given institutions and what I will call the dominant social paradigm, namely, the system of beliefs, ideas and the corresponding values, which is associated with these institutions. In this sense, a tribal society which is not capable of questioning tradition, or a religious society not questioning divine law, or, finally, a marxist society which is incapable of questioning the dominant social paradigm are all examples of heteronomous societies, irrespective of the degree of political and economic equality they may have achieved.
The above definition of freedom in terms of autonomy has three very important theoretical implications. First, it implies democracy. Second, it implies the transcendence of the traditional division between individualism and collectivism, liberalism and socialism. Finally, it implies that freedom can not and should not be based on any preconceptions about human nature or on any divine, social and natural "laws" about social evolution.
In the context of an indefinite plurality of individuals belonging to society, it is obvious that the very acceptance of the idea of autonomy inevitably leads to the idea of democracy, We may, therefore, assume that the connection between autonomy and democracy does not need further elaboration and we can proceed with an expansion on the other two implications of the adopted definition of freedom.
The need to transcend both individualism and collectivism
There is no doubt that the central unit of any libertarian analysis should be the individual. However, the issue is not, as some modern libertarians present it, a black and white choice between the individualist tendency (human individuals can be free to create their world) and the collectivist tendency (the world creates the individual)[17]. The real issue is how we can transcend both these two tendencies. This can only be achieved if we recognise the historical fact that individuals are not absolutely free to create their world, nor does the world just create the individual. As long as individuals live in a society, they are not just individuals but social individuals, subject to a process which socialises them into internalising the existing institutional framework and the dominant social paradigm. In this sense, they are not just free to create their world but are conditioned by History, tradition and so on.
Still, this socialisation process is broken, at almost all times, as far as a minority of the population is concerned and in exceptional historical circumstances, even with respect to the majority itself. In the latter case, a process is set in motion that usually ends with a change of the institutional structure of society and of the corresponding social paradigm. This atatement is just a historical observation and I will not attempt to "ground" it somewhere because any such "grounding" will inevitably involve a closed theoretical system --as, for example is the case with the Marxian or Freudian interpretations of the socialisation process. This historical observation should be complemented by another one, which transcends both idealism and materialism. Namely, it is neither ideological factors alone, nor just material factors that determine social change at any moment of time. Sometimes, the former may have been more influential than the latter and vice versa but, usually, as Murray Bookchin[18] stresses, it is the interaction between the two that it is decisive. However, any generalisations aiming at deriving a "philosophy of History", like the ones attempted by Marxists and idealists, are just not possible..
Societies therefore are not just "collections of individuals"[19] but consist of social individuals who are both free to create their world, i.e. a new set of institutions and the corresponding social paradigm, and are created by the world, in the sense that they have to break with the dominant social paradigm in order to be able to recreate the world.
So, it is not just state collectivism but, also, liberal individualism of every type that is incompatible with freedom, defined as individual and collective autonomy. In this context, recent libertarian attempts to "reconcile" individualism and liberalism on the one hand, with left libertarianism on the other, are invalid. This applies, for instance, to Susan Brown's attempt to distinguish between what she calls existential individualism (individualism that stresses freedom as a desirable end in itself) and instrumental individualism (individualism that sees freedom merely as a means to achieve egocentric competitive interests) which she assigns to anarchism and liberalism respectively[20].
But, as Castoriadis points out, "the idea of autonomy as an end in itself would lead to a purely formal 'Kantian' conception. We will autonomy both for itself and in order to be able TO DO"[21]. One may, therefore, argue that, in fact, there is only one type of individualism, istrumentalist individualism, which sees individual autonomy as a means to achieve egocentric competitive interests. Similarly, there is only one type of collectivism, instrumentalist collectivism, which sees collective autonomy as a means to achieve Progress in the sense of the development of productive forces. So, the real point at issue is whether we wish autonomy and freedom in order to further our egocentric interests, which emanate basically from property rights, or whether, instead, we wish autonomy and freedom in order to further our self-development, which is impossible without the self-development of everybody else in society and is not just identifiable with Progreess in the above sense. In the first instance, we refer to liberal individualism (what Brown calls instrumental individualism), which is consistent with a negative conception of freedom and an exclusively individualistic conception of autonomy. In the second instance, we refer to individual autonomy seen as inseparable from collective autonomy. To my mind, Brown's definition of individualism is perfectly compatible with liberal individualism and incompatible with individual and collective autonomy. In this sense, her treatment of anarchism and liberalism confuses the fundamental differences between the two, particularly with respect to their diametrically opposite conceptions of freedom and autonomy .
What is the foundation of freedom and democracy?
Although, as I pointed out above, the connection between freedom/ autonomy on the one hand and democracy on the other can be taken for granted, the question still remains about the foundations of democracy, indeed freedom itself. Traditionally, most libertarians, from Godwin to Bakunin and Kropotkin, based their ethics and politics, freedom itself, on a fixed human nature governed by "necessary and universal laws", by which --in contrast to marxists who emphasised economic "laws"-- they usually meant natural laws. This reflected the same nineteenth century incentive which led Marx to develop his "scientific" economic laws, namely, the incentive to make the liberatory project look "scientific" or, at least, "objective". However, this approach is not tenable anymore, since it is not possible today to continue talking about objectivity, at least as far as the interpretation of social phenomena is concerned. As I pointed out elsewhere[22], the very existence of several competing and incommensurable (in the Kuhnian sense) interpretations about social reality, combined with the absence of any "objective" criteria to choose among them, makes the "objectification" of the liberatory project at least doubtful. At the same time, in view of the role that the marxist "scientification" of the socialist project played with respect to the establishment of new hierarchical structures in the socialist movement first and in society at large later, the desirability of grounding the liberatory project on an "objective" base is also questionable.
It is not therefore accidental that some libertarians today (Benello, Brown, Marshall et al) question the traditional grounding of freedom on a fixed human nature, or on "scientific" laws and "objective" tendencies. However, several of those libertarians usually link this questioning with liberal individualistic assumptions about society. But, such linking is anything but necessary. If we adopt a definition of freedom in terms of individual and collective autonomy, then, it is possible to avoid the trap of objectivism, without succumbing to liberal individualism. In this case, autonomy/freedom, as well as its political expression, democracy, becomes a social project, i.e. a matter of conscious and self-reflective choice at the individual and collective level, and not the outcome of debatable interpretations of social "evolution".
Just to give an important historical example, the historical uniqueness of the Athenian democracy can not be explained adequately by any "grand" scheme of social or natural "evolution". Thus, despite the fact that several places in the Mediterranean, including "next door" Sparta, were at a similar phase of social and natural "evolution" as Athens, still, it was only in the latter that direct democracy reached its highest stage. As Castoriadis put it:
Democracy and philosophy are not the outcome of natural or spontaneous tendencies of society and history. They are themselves creations and they entail a radical break with the previously instituted state of affairs. Both are aspects of the project of autonomy...the Greeks (discovered) in the sixth and fifth centuries that institutions and representations belong to nomos and not to physis, that they are human creations and not "God-given" or "nature-given[23] .
Still, the fact that the project of autonomy is not objectively grounded does not mean that "anything goes" and that it is therefore impossible to derive any definable body of principles to assess social and political changes, or to develop a set of ethical values to assess human behaviour. Reason is still necessary in a process of deriving the principles and values which are consistent with the project of autonomy and, in this sense, are rational. Therefore, the principles and values derived within such a process do not just express personal tastes and desires. In fact, they are much more "objective" than the principles and values that are derived from disputable interpretations of natural and social evolution, since the logical consistency of the former with the project of autonomy could be assessed in an indisputable way, unlike the contestable "objectivity" of the latter.
3. Democracy, sovereignty and the state
The concentration of power is incompatible not only with freedom in the sense of autonomy but even with freedom in the negative sense of "freedom from"[24]. It is not therefore accidental that today, when the market economy and representative democracy lead to increasing concentration of economic and political power respectively[25], neo-liberals and "libertarians" of the Right try to dissociate power from freedom[26]. However, the oligarchic character of the present regimes does not just arise from the fact that real power is in the hands of a political elite, as supporters of the theory of elitism suggest, or, alternatively, in the hands of an economic class for whom politicians act directly or indirectly as agents, as instrumentalist versions of marxism imply. The oligarchic character of the present "democracies", which, in fact, negates any conception of freedom, is the direct outcome of the fact that the present institutional framework separates society from the economy and society from the state.
Although the market economy was formed two centuries ago, when, within the process of marketization of the economy[27] most social controls over the market were abolished, still, the separation process had begun earlier, in 16th century Europe. At the political level, the emergence of the nation-state, at about the same time and place, initiated a parallel process of concentrating political power, initially in the form of highly centralised monarchies and later in the form of representative "democracies". From then on, as Bookchin points out, "the word "state" came to mean a professional civil authority with the powers to govern a 'body politic'"[28]
It was also during the same 16th century that the idea of representation entered in the political lexicon, although the sovereignty of Parliament was not established until the 17th century. In the same way that the king has once "represented" society as a whole, it was now the turn of Parliament to play this role, although sovereignty itself was still supposed to belong to the people as a whole. In fact, the doctrine that prevailed in Europe since the French revolution was not just that the French people were sovereign and that their views were represented in the National Assembly, but that the French nation was sovereign and the National Assembly embodied the will of the nation. As it was observed
this was a turning point in continental European ideas since, before this, the political representative had been viewed in the continent as a delegate. According to the new theory promulgated by the French revolutionaries...the elected representative is viewed as an independent maker of national laws and policies, not as an agent for his constituents or for sectional interests[29]
The European conception of sovereignty was completely alien to Athenians, since the separation of sovereignty from its exercise was unknown to them. All powers were exercised directly by the citizens themselves, or by delegates who were appointed by lot and for a short period of time. In fact, as Aristotle points out, the election by voting was considered oligarchic and was not allowed but in exceptional circumstances (usually in cases where special knowledge was required) and only the appointment by lot was considered democratic[30].
Therefore, the type of "democracy" that has been established since the 16th century in Europe has had very little in common with the Athenian democracy. The former presupposes the separation of state from society and the exercise of sovereingty by a separate body of representatives, whereas the latter is based on the principle that sovereingty is exercised directly by the free citizens themselves. Athens, therefore, may hardly be characterised as a state in the normal sense of the word. As Thomas Martin[31] rightly points out "decentralised self-governing communities like ancient Athens or medieval Lubeck were not 'city-states'. Without centralised authority there is no sovereign. Without a sovereigh there is no state".So, despite the fact that Greek philosophers did speak about sovereingty in the polis[32], a fact that some could take it as implying the existence of a state, I think that in the case of the Athenian polis we can not properly speak of sovereignty and state
It is true that power relations and structures did not disappear in the Polis--not only at the economic level, where inequities were obvious, but even at the political level, where the hierarchical structure of society was clear. At the top of the social pyramid, the free citizens, who were entitled to take part in the democratic process and in particular the proceedings of the ecclesia, and, at the bottom, women, followed by slaves. We may therefore argue that overall, Athens was a mix of non-statist and statist democracy. It was non-statist as regards the citizen body, which was "ruled" by nobody and whose members shared power equally among themselves, and statist as regards those not qualifying as full citizens (women, slaves, immigrants), over whom the demos wielded power.
Still, the Athenian democracy was the first historical example of the identification of the sovereign with those exercising sovereignty. As Hannah Arendt points out:
[T]he whole concept of rule and being ruled, of government and power in the sense in which we understand them, as well as the regulated order attending them, was felt to be prepolitical and to belong to the private rather than the public sphere (...) equality therefore far from being connected with justice, as in modern times, was the very essence of freedom: to be free meant to be free from the inequality present in rulership and to move to a sphere where neither rule nor being ruled existed[33].
Therefore the Greeks, having realised that "there always is and there always will be an explicit power, that is, unless a society were to succeed in transforming its subjects into automata that had completely internalised the instituted order"[34], concluded that "no citizen should be subjected to power and if this was not possible that power should be shared equally among citizens[35]. It is therefore obvious that libertarian definitions of politics as "the rule of one, many, a few, or all over all" and of democracy as "the rule of all over all"[36], are incompatible with the classical conceptions of both politics and democracy.
4. Liberal and socialist "democracy"
Democracy and the growth economy
The dynamics of the market economy, namely the economic system which emerged about two centuries ago, led to the growth economy, which, in this century, took the form of either a capitalist growth economy, or a socialist growth economy. The growth economy, in both its versions, implied a high degree of concentration of economic power[37]. But, as a high degree of economic concentration is incompatible with the spreading of political power, it is no wonder that the growing concentration of economic power this century was accompanied by a corresponding concentration of political power.
Thus, as regards, first, the compatibility of democracy with the capitalist growth economy, one could easily see the fundamental incompatibility between the marketization process, namely, the process that involves the phased removal of social controls over the market and democracy. It is obvious that the marketization process would have been impossible in a democracy, since in a capitalist growth economy it is those who are not in control of the economic process who constitute the vast majority of the population. In other words, the more oligarchic the form of political organisation, the more amenable to the marketization process the economy is.
It is not therefore surprising that the present internationalisation of the market economy, which implies further concentration of economic power, has been accompanied by a parallel concentration of political power. So, although It is true that today we see the end of sovereignty, (as Thomas Martin points out in this issue), still, it is not sovereignty in general that withers away but the nation-state's sovereignty, particularly its economic sovereignty. The decline of state sovereignty is directly linked to the present internationalised phase of the market economy and the consequent withering away of the nation-state[38]. In this context, one may argue that state sovereignty is today replaced by market sovereignty and a form of supra-national sovereignty. The former means that, today, it is the market which defines effective human rights, not just economic rights, but even who can really exercise his/her human rights in general. The latter means that, at present, political and economic power is concentrated at the supra-national level of new inter-state organisations (like the European Commission) on the one hand, and of the emerging network of city-regional governments[39] on the other.
Furthermore, the continuous decline of the State's economic sovereignty is being accompanied by the parallel transformation of the public realm into pure administration. For instance, international central banks are being established, which, in the future, independent from political control, will take crucial decisions about the economic life of millions of citizens (see for instance the planned European central bank that is designed to take over the control of the new European monetary system and the common European currency). Hannah Arendt prophetically described this process as follows:
A complete victory of society will always produce some sort of 'communistic fiction', whose outstanding political characteristic is that it is indeed ruled by an 'invisible hand', namely by nobody. What we traditionally call state and government gives place here to pure administration -- a state of affairs which Marx rightly predicted as the 'withering away of the state', though he was wrong in assuming that only a revolution could bring it about and even more wrong when he believed that this complete victory of society would mean the eventual emergence of the 'realm of freedom'[40].
In the light of the above trends, it may be interesting to examine briefly the "proceduralist" model of democracy that is promoted by Habermas lately, as a third way between the liberal model on the one hand and "a communitarian interpretation of the republican model" on the other. Habermas, differentiating his model of democracy from what he calls the "state-centred understanding of politics" that, according to him, both the liberal and the republican models of democracy represent, stresses that according to discourse theory the success of deliberative politics depends "not on a collectively acting citizenry but on the institutionalization of the corresponding procedures and conditions of communication". His model consists of a "decentered society", i.e. a "democracy" which is based on a civil society that "provides the social basis of autonomous public spheres that remain as distinct from the economic system as from the administration"[41].
However, the Habermasian view of democracy not only converts democracy into a set pf procedures, as Castoriadis rightly points out (in this issue), but it is also utterly irrelevant to the present trends of the market economy and the bureaucratization of today's "politics" that I described above. The fact that the present internationalised economy rules out the possibility of "autonomous" public spheres at the economic level (unless new forms of economic organisation are created outside it) is obviously ignored by Habermas. Equally ignored by him is the fact that, even at the political level, the possibility of autonomous public spheres is effectively undermined by the marketization process (deregulation of markets etc) which was accelerated during the present internationalised phase of the market economy (see, for instance, the present withering away of autonomous trades unions).
As far now as the compatibility of democracy with the socialist growth economy is concerned, we should remember that the dominant social paradigm in the latter was grounded on the idea that the principal goal of human society was the maximisation of production on the one hand, and the creation of a just system of distribution on the other. Furthermore, the fact that the dominant social paradigm was supposed to be grounded on a "science" (marxism) implied the imperative need to "prove" it, in the sense of outproducing all competitor economic systems. There was therefore no doubt whatsoever in the minds of the Soviet elite about what will have to be sacrificed in any possible clash between the dominant social paradigm and democracy. No wonder therefore that, as early as 1920, Lenin was declaring that "In the final analysis every kind of democracy, as political superstructure in general...serves production",reminding the romantics who wanted to go back to 'workers' control and industrial democracy that "Industry is indispensable, democracy is not"[42].
So, whereas the original Leninist project for the soviet democracy, as expressed in The State and Revolution, was about the transformation of power relations, the Soviet elite, from 1920 onwards, consistently maintained the view (no doubt, "external" events have also played a role on this) that socialism wholly consisted in equality of ownership relations and not at all in equality in power relations.The incentive was obvious: to achieve the goal of maximising production, which was identified as the main goal of socialism. As Harding points out:
Socialism was conceived of as the maximisation of production which could only be achieved by state ownership of the means of production and the implementation of national plan for the allocation of all resources (...) the trick was (...) to convince its adherents that the essential matters that concern society were not at all political matters that involved the power of some over others (...) but that they were, rather, matters whose optimal resolution proceeded from the correct application of objective or scientific knowledge[43]
History, therefore, has shown in an unambiguous way that democracy is incompatible with both versions of the growth economy. However, the question still remains whether it is just the practice of liberal and socialist democracy that is to be blamed for the oligarchic character of the liberal and socialist regimes respectively, or whether instead it is the very conception of democracy that liberals and socialists adopt, which is incompatible with democracy --a conception that is identified by a fundamental common characteristic: "statism".
The liberal conception of democracy
The starting point in the description of the liberal position on democracy should be that none of the founders of classical liberalism was an advocate of democracy, in the sense of direct democracy. In fact, the opposite was the case. For instance, the American Founding Fathers Madison and Jefferson were sceptical of democracy, precisely because of its Greek connotation of direct rule: This is why they preferred to call the American system republican because, "the term was thought to be more appropriate to the balanced constitution that had been adopted in 1787 than the term democratic, with its connotations of lower-class dominance"[44].Furthermore, not only the liberal philosophers took for granted the separation of the state apparatus from society but, in fact, saw democracy as a way of bridging the gap between state and society. The bridging role was supposed to be played by representative "democracy", a system whereby the plurality of political parties would provide an adequate forum for competing interests and systems of values.
However, the fact that, as Jean-Jackes Rousseau pointed out, men's wills can not be represented by others could lead to a different understanding of the motives behind the liberal adoption of representative "democracy". In this understanding, representative democracy is a form of statist democracy whose main aim is the exclusion of the vast majority of the population from political power. As John Dunn stresses:
It is important to recognise that the modern state was constructed, painstakingly and purposefully, above all by Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes, for the express purpose of denying that any given population, any people, had either the capacity or the right to act together for themselves, either independently of or against their sovereign. The central point of the concept was to deny the very possibility that any DEMOS (let alone one on the demographic scale of a European territorial monarchy) could be a genuine political agent, could ACT at all, let alone act with sufficiently continuous identity and practical coherence for it to be able to rule itself....the idea of the modern state was invented precisely to repudiate the possible coherence of democratic claims to rule or even take genuinely political action (...) representative democracy is democracy made safe for the modern state[45].
It is not therefore surprising that Adam Smith, the father of economic liberalism, was in pains to stress that the main task of government was the defence of the rich against the poor --a task that, as John Dunn points out, is "necessarily less dependably performed where it is the poor who choose who is to govern, let alone where the poor themselves, as in Athens, in large measure simply ARE the government"[46].
The socialist conception of democracy
As regards the socialist conception of democracy we have to distinguish first between the social democratic and the marxist conceptions of democracy. The social democratic conception is essentially a version of the liberal conception. In other words, social democracy consists of a "liberal democracy" element, in the sense of a statist and representative form of democracy based on a market economy, and an "economic democracy" element, in the sense of a strong welfare state and the state commitment to implement full employment policies. However, for reasons that I developed elsewhere[47], social democratic parties, all over the world, have now dropped the "economic democracy" element of their conception of democracy. As a result, the social democratic conception of democracy is by now indistinguishable from the liberal one, in the context of what I call the present "neoliberal consensus"[48].
As far as the marxist conception is concerned, I will argue that, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, it is clearly a statist conception of democracy. In this conception, democracy is not differentiated from the state for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from communism i.e. for the entire period that is called the "realm of necessity", when scarcity leads to class antagonisms which make inevitable class dictatorships of one kind or another. In this view, socialism will simply replace the dictatorship of one class, the bourgeoisie, by that of another, the proletariat.
Thus, according to Lenin, "democracy is also a state and consequently democracy will also disappear when the state disappears. Revolution alone can 'abolish' the bourgeois state. The state in general, i.e. the most complete democracy can only 'wither away'"[49]. And he continues that the state (and democracy) will wither away only when:
people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when their labour becomes so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability (...) there will then be no need for society to regulate the quantity of products to be received by each; each will take freely 'according to his needs[50] (...) from the moment all members of society, or even only the vast majority have learned to administer the state themselves (...) the need for government of any kind begins to disappear altogether (...) for when all have learned to administer and actually do independently administer social production, independently keep accounts and exercise control over the idlers etc (...) the necessity of observing the simple fundamental rules of human intercourse will very soon become a habit[51] .
It is therefore obvious that in the marxist world-view, a non-statist conception of democracy is inconceivable, both at the transitional stage leading to communism and at the higher phase of communist society. In the former, because the realm of necessity makes necessary a statist form of democracy where political and economic power is not shared among all citizens, but, only among members of the working class. In the latter, because when we reach the realm of freedom no form of democracy at all is necessary, since no significant decisions will have to be made! At the economic level, scarcity and division of labour will by then have disappeared and therefore there will be no need for any significant economic decisions to be taken about the allocation of resources. Also, at the political level the administration of things will have replaced the administration of people and therefore, there will be no need for any significant political decisions to be taken either.
However, the marxist abolition of scarcity depends on an objective definition of "needs" which is neither feasible, nor-- from the democratic point of view--desirable. It is not feasible, because, although basic needs may be assumed finite and independent of time and place, the same can not be said about their satisfiers (i.e. the form or the means by which these needs are satisfied), let alone non-basic needs. It is not desirable, because, in a democratic society, an essential element of freedom is choice as regards the ways in which needs are formed and satisfied. As Bookchin points out:
[I]n a truly free society needs would be formed by consciousness and by choice, not simply by environment and tool-kits (...) the problems of needs and scarcity, in short, must be seen as a problem of selectivity-of choice (...) freedom from scarcity, or post-scarcity presupposes that individuals have the material possibility of choosing what they need- not only a sufficiency of available goods from which to choose but a transformation of work, both qualitatively and quantitatively[52].
So, the communist stage is in fact a mythical state of affairs and the reference to it could simply be used to justify the indefinite maintenance of state power and power relations and structures. It is therefore obvious that, within the problematique of the democracy project, the link between post-scarcity (defined "objectively") on the one hand, and freedom on the other, should be broken. The abolition of scarcity and, consequently, of the division of labour is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for democracy. Therefore, the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom should be de-linked from the economic process. Still, from Aristotle, through Locke and Marx, to Arendt, the distinction between the "realm of necessity" (where nature belongs) and the "realm of freedom" always has been considered to be fundamental. However, although this distinction may be useful as a conceptual tool in classifying human activities, there is no reason why the two realms must be seen as mutually exclusive in social reality. Historically, there have been several occasions when various degrees of freedom survived under conditions that could be characterised as belonging to the "realm of necessity". Furthermore, once we cease treating the two realms as mutually exclusive, there is no justification for any attempt to dominate Nature--an important element of Marxist growth ideology-- in order to enter the realm of freedom.
In conclusion, there are no material preconditions of freedom. This, of course does not mean that the satisfaction of material needs, particularly the basic needs, is not important for freedom. On the contrary, it means that it is freedom, as expressed in direct and economic democracy, which is the precondition for the satisfaction of the basic needs of the ENTIRE population (as they define them democratically) and not the other way round. Therefore. the entrance to the realm of freedom does not depend on any "objective" factors, like the arrival of the mythical state of affairs of material abundance. The level of development of productive forces that is required so that material abundance for the entire population on Earth could be achieved makes it at least doubtful that such a stage could ever be achieved without serious repercussions to the environment-- unless "material abundance" is defined democratically and not "objectively", in a way which is consistent with ecological balance. By the same token, the entrance to the realm of freedom does not depend on a massive change of consciousness through the adoption of some form of spiritualistic dogma, as some deep ecologists and other spiritualistic movements propose. Therefore, neither capitalism and socialism, on the "objective" side, nor the adoption of some kind of spiritualistic dogma, on the "subjective" side, constitute historical preconditions to enter the realm of freedom. Today, the realm of freedom is even more feasible than in the past, as a result of recent developments on both the "objective" and the "subjective" levels that make easier a new synthesis between the two .
Finally, as regards recent developments with respect to the marxist conception of democracy, the present ideological hegemony of liberalism has led to a situation where most marxists, neo-marxists, post marxists and so on, today identify socialism with an extension of (liberal representative) democracy rather than with the emancipation of the working class[53] and concentrate their efforts in theorising, in several ways, that socialism is the fulfilment of liberalism rather than its negation. A typical example of this trend is Norberto Bobbio[54] who characterises liberal democracy as 'the only possible form of an effective democracy' to protect the negative freedom of citizens from the state! In the process, Bobbio attacks what he calls the 'fetish' of direct democracy on the usual grounds of scale (ignoring the proposals of confederalism) and the experience of the student movement (ignoring the fact that democracy is not just a procedure but a form of social organisation). In essence, therefore, what Bobbio, Miliband[55] and other writers in the same ideological space promote today is a form of economic democracy to complement liberal democracy. In so doing, in effect, they try to take over the social democratic space, which was abandoned by social democrats after they moved to the right and adopted the neoliberal consensus.
As regards the marxist ecological left, we should mention the views expressed by James O'Connor, who talks about "sublating" "local" and "central", spontaneity and planning, exclusive and inclusive cultural identities, industrial and social labour etcetera[56]. Similarly, John Dryzek[57] stresses the need for "democratization at all possible levels: in the autonomous public spheres, such as those constituted by new social movements, at the boundaries of the state, where legitimacy is sought through discursive exercises, and even within the state, e.g. in the form of impact assessment". It is therefore obvious that the red-green conceptions of democracy are, also, statist and, in this sense, are incompatible to democracy as such.
5. A new conception of democracy
But, let us now turn to the characteristics of democracy and consider how we may define the conditions for democracy and develop a new conception of it which is appropriate to today's conditions.
Direct democracy
As I mentioned above, there is a lot of confusion today about the meaning of democracy. A typical illustration of this fact is the various "qualifying" adjectives added to democracy. However, in fact, there are no various forms of democracy, among which we can choose the one which is compatible with the institutional framework of our liking, as liberals, socialists and some libertarians do. At the political level, there can only be one form of democracy, what we may call political or direct democracy, where political power is shared equally among all citizens. This implies that 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 are just forms of political oligarchy, where political power is concentrated in the hands of various elites (professional politicians, party bureaucrats, priests, military and so on). Similarly, in the past, there had been various forms of oligarchy when emperors, kings and their courts, with or without the cooperation of knights, priests and others, concentrated political power in their hands.
Several attempts were made in the past to institutionalise various forms of direct democracy, especially during revolutionary periods (for example, the sections of the French commune, the Spanish assemblies, the Hungarian worker councils etc). However, most of these attempts were short-lived, whereas, in other cases, democractic arrangements were introduced just as a set of procedures and did not involve the institutionalisation of democracy as a new form of political regime which replaces, and not just complements, the State. The only historical example of an institutionalised direct democracy where, for more than a century, the state was subsumed in the democratic form of social organisation, was the Athenian democracy.
Of course, the Athenian democracy was a partial political democracy. But, what characterised the Athenian democracy 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 majority of the people living in Athens. Furthermore, I refer to "institutionalised" direct democracy in order to make clear the distinction between democratic institutions and democratic practice. The latter, as critics have pointed out, could sometimes be characterised as defacto "oligarchic", in the sense that the decision-taking process was often effectively controlled by a strong leader (e.g. Pericles), or a small number of demagogues. However, this could hardly be taken as a serious criticism of the democratic institutions themselves. It could be argued, instead, that it was precisely the partial character of the political democracy, which, combined with the prevailing significant disparities in the distribution of income and wealth[58], not only created serious contradictions in the democratic process but also, at the end, by weakening the economic base on which this process was built, led to the collapse of the democratic institutions themselves[59].
Economic democracy
However, it should not be forgotten that direct democracy refers just to the question of political power. In classical Athens, for instance, the question of economic power, in other words,. who controls the economy, was never a public issue, except in the limited sense of redistribution of income and wealth. The reason was, of course, that the accumulation of wealth was not a structural characteristic of the Athenian democracy and consequently part of the dominant social paradigm. Therefore, questions about the way economic resources were to be allocated did not belong to the public realm[60], except to the extent that they referred to the setting of social controls to regulate the limited market or to the financing of "public" spending. It was only when the market economy and the consequent growth economy emerged, two centuries ago, that the question how the important economic decisions are taken, (how, what and for whom to produce) and the lcorresponding issue of economic power arose.
In the type of society that has emerged since the rise of the market economy, there was a definite shift of the economy from the private realm, into what Hannah Arendt called the "social realm", where the nation-state also belongs. Today, it is no longer possible to talk about democracy, without referring to the question of economic power, since, to talk about the equal sharing of political power, without conditioning it on the equal sharing of economic power, is at best meaningless and at worse deceptive. This is why I think that it would be wrong to consider the USA as "an unusually free country", as Noam Chomsky seems to suggest in a recent interview to an Athens daily[61]. I think that such an assessment would only stand if we could separate political freedom and equality from economic freedom and equality. But, taking into account Chomsky's political work[62], I think that he will not agree with such a separation of the two freedoms. So, even if one agrees that a significant degree of political freedom may have been secured in the USA at the legislative level (though, of course, one may have serious reservations about how the relevant legislation is implemented with respect to minorities etc), still, the very high degree of economic inequality and poverty that characterise this country with respect to its level of economic development would rather classify it as "an unusually unfree country" .From this point of view, also, it is not surprising that the present decline of representative democracy has led many liberals, social democrats and others to pay lip service to direct democracy, without referring to its necessary complement: economic democracy.
Historically, In contrast to the institutionalisation of political democracy, there has never been a corresponding example of an institutionalised economic democracy. The forms of economic organisation that had prevailed since the emergence of the market economy, i.e. capitalism and state socialism, were just versions of economic oligarchy, where economic power was concentrated in the hands of capitalist and bureaucratic elites[63].
I am not going to expand here on the meaning of economic democracy, which I have attempted elsewhere[64], but I only wish to make the following point clear. The type of economic democracy I propose does not assume what Arendt called the "communistic fiction" that there is one interest in society as a whole. Such an assumption, (which implies that the "invisible hand" in a market economy -or, alternatively, the planning process in a state socialist economy- would satisfy the general interest), abstracts from the essential fact that social activity is the result of the intentions of several individuals[65]. What I propose, instead, is to explicitly assume the diversity of individuals (which, in turn, implies that consensus is impossible) and to institutionalise this diversity, through the adoption of a combination of democratic planning procedures on the one hand and voucher schemes within an artificial "market" on the other. The aim is to secure an allocation of resources that ensures both freedom of individual choice and the satisfaction of the basic needs of all citizens.
It is obvious that the proposed economic democracy assumes away the mythical stage of free communism and addresses the issue of how, within the context of a scarcity society, a method of resource allocation might be found which ensures that the above aim is achievable. From this viewpoint, it is not accidental that some modern anarchists who support the "politics of individualism" find it necessary, in order to attack democracy, to resort, on the one hand, to the myth of free communism[66] and, on the other, to the distortion that democracy involves a kind of "rule" in the form of majority rule. The intention is clear: the former makes economic democracy superfluous whereas the latter makes direct democracy undesirable. It is however characteristic of the distortion involved that when libertarians attack democracy as a kind of "rule" they usually confuse direct democracy with statist democracy. This is not surprising, in view of the fact that it is obviously impossible to talk about a "rule" in a form of social organisation where nobody is forced to be bound by laws and institutions, in the formation of which he/she did not, directly, take part[67].
Finally, it should be stressed that economic democracy does not just mean, as Castoriadis seems to suggest, equality of income within the framework of an economy where money is still used as an impersonal means of exchange and a unit of value (although--in a way never clearly defined--money will not be used as a store of wealth as well) and where a "true" market is combined with some sort of democratic planning, Such a system is based on a crucial institutional arrangement, what the author describes as "non-differentiation of salaries, wages and incomes"[68]. But, such an arrangement is not only utterly impractical and makes this system utopian in the negative sense of the word; it is also undesirable because, as I pointed out elsewhere, "given the inequality of the various types of work, equality of remuneration will in fact mean unequal work satisfaction"[69].
In conclusion, the type of direct and economic democracy that is proposed here would represent the re-conquering of the social realm (in Arendt's sense) by the public realm, i.e. 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.
Democracy as a process of social self-institution
One common error in libertarian discussions on democracy is to characterise various types of past societies, or communities, as democracies, just because they involved democratic forms of decision-taking (popular assemblies) or economic equality. However, democracy is not just a structure institutionalising the equal sharing of power. Democracy, is, also, a process of social self-institution, in the context of which politics constitutes an expression of both collective and individual autonomy. As an expression of collective autonomy, politics takes the form of calling into question the existing institutions and of changing them through deliberate collective action. As an expression of individual autonomy, "the polis secures more than human survival. Politics makes possible man's development as a creature capable of genuine autonomy, freedom and excellence"[70]
Democracy, as a process of social self-institution, implies a society which is open ideologically, namely which is not grounded on any closed system of beliefs, dogmas or, ideas. "Democracy", as Castoriadis puts it, "is the project of breaking the closure at the collective level"[71]. Therefore, in a democratic society, dogmas and closed systems of ideas can not constitute parts of the dominant social paradigm, although, of course, individuals can have whatever beliefs they wish, as long as they are committed to uphold the democratic principle, namely the principle according to which society is institutionalised as direct and economic democracy.
The democratic principle itself is not grounded on any divine, natural or social "laws" or tendencies, but on our own conscious and self-reflective choice between the two main historical traditions: the tradition of heteronomy which has been historically dominant, and the tradition of autonomy. The choice of autonomy rules out any kind of irrationalism (faith in God, mystical beliefs etc), as well as any "objective truths" about social evolution based on social or natural "laws". This is so, because any system of religious or mystical beliefs (as well as any closed system of ideas), by definition, excludes the questioning of some fundamental beliefs or ideas and, therefore, it is incompatible with individuals setting their own laws. In fact, the principle of "non-questioning" some fundamental beliefs is common in every religion or set of metaphysical and mystical beliefs, from Christianism up to Taoism. Thus, as far as Christianism is concerned, it is rightly pointed out that "Jesus' ethics are theologically based: they are not autonomous, i.e. derived from the needs of human individuals or society"[72]. Similarly, as regards Taoism (adored by some anarchists today!) it also explicitly condemns reasoning and argumentation ("Disputation is a proof of not seeing clearly" declares Chuang Tzu[73]).
Therefore, the fundamental element of autonomy is the creation of our own truth, something that social individuals can only achieve through direct democracy, i.e. the process through which they continually question any institution, tradition or "truth". In a democracy, there are simply no given truths. The practice of individual and collective autonomy presupposes autonomy in thought, i.e. the constant questioning of institutions and truths. This could also explain why in classical Greece it was not just democracy that flourished, but, also, philosophy, in the sense of questioning any "truths" given by custom, tradition or previous thought. In fact, questioning was the common root of both philosophy and democracy. While popular assemblies, as a form of decision-taking, existed both before and after the Athenian ecclesia, (usually having their roots in tribal assemblies), still, the differentiating characteristic of the Athenian ecclesia is the fact that it was not grounded on religion or tradition but on citizens' doxa (opinion).
From this point of view, the practice of several modern libertarians of characterising some European Christian movements, or mystery Eastern religions, as democratic is obviously out of place. For instance, George Woodcock's references to "mystery religions that emerged from the East", or to the Christian Catharist movement of the 11th century, are completely irrelevant to the democratic tradition[74]. Similarly out of place is Peter Marshall's focusing on those philosophical currents which emphasised natural law (Cynics, Stoics etc) and his understating of the significance of the Polis, as a form of social self-instituting and equal sharing of power among citizens[75]. No wonder that the same author, as well as many anarchists today, stress the significance of mysticist and spiritualist "philosophical" currents of the East (Taoism, Buddhism etc). But, these currents, as Bookchin, Castoriadis and others have stressed, have nothing to do with democracy and collective freedom, let alone philosophy, which always consisted in the questioning of any type of law (natural or man-made) rather than in interpreting the teachings of the masters. No wonder, also, that in the non-democratic societies of the East, where the spiritualist philosophies have flourished, the attachment to tradition meant that "new ideas were often offered as the rediscovery, or the correct interpretation, of earlier lore...the focus was on how to perfect a given system, not how to justify any system by the pure dictates of reason"[76].
The conditions for democracy
After this discussion of the fundamental characteristics of democracy we are now in a position to summarise the conditions necessary for democracy. Democracy is incompatible with any form of a closed system of ideas or dogmas, at the ideological level, and with the concentration of power, at the institutional level. If, therefore, we assume that the two main forms of institutionalised power today are the political and economic power, i.e. the power to control the political and economic decision-making processes respectively, then, democracy implies the equal sharing of institutionalised power at the political and economic levels. Of course, there are other, also important, forms of power (patriarchal power, religious power, cultural power etc). However, these other forms of power usually are not institutionalised any more -at least in all societies in the North and many in the South. In other words, although the constitutions of many countries preach equality between sexes, races, religions etcetera (a fact which, of course, does not preclude various forms of discrimination to flourish de facto and, in many cases, even de jure) none preaches the equal sharing of political and economic power among citizens in the sense of direct and economic democracy.
Therefore, democracy, according to our definition, implies that the following three sets of conditions have to be met:
First, at the ideological level, society is grounded on the conscious choice of its citizens for individual and collective autonomy and not on any divine or mystical dogmas and preconceptions, or any closed theoretical systems involving social/natural "laws" or tendencies determining social change
Second, at the political level, society is founded on the equal sharing of political power among all citizens, i.e. on the self-instituting of society (direct democracy). This means that the following sub-conditions have to be satisfied:
a) that there are no institutionalised political processes of an oligarchic nature. This implies that all political decisions (including those relating to the formation and execution of laws) are taken by the citizen body collectively and without representation
b) that there are no institutionalised political structures embodying unequal power relations. This means that where delegation of authority takes place to segments of the citizen body, in order to carry out specific duties (e.g. to serve as members of popular courts, or of regional and confederal councils etc) the delegation is assigned, on principle, by lot, on a rotation basis, and it is always recallable by the citizen body. Furthermore, as regards delegates to regional and confederal bodies, the mandates should be specific. This is an effective step towards the abolition of hierarchical relations since such relations today are based, to a significant extent, on the myth of the "experts" who are supposed to be able to control everything, from nature to society. However, apart from the fact that the knowledge of the so-called experts is doubtful, (at least as far as social, economic and political phenomena is concerned), still, in a democratic society, political decisions are not left to the experts but to the users, the citizen-body--a principle consistently applied by the Athenians.
c) that all residents of a particular geographical area (which today-- for reasons I will explain below-- can only take the form of a geographical community) are members of the citizen body and are directly involved in the decision-taking process.
Third, at the economic level, society is founded on the equal sharing of economic power among all members of society (economic democracy). This means that the following sub-conditions have to be satisfied:
a) that there are no institutionalised economic processes of oligarchic nature. This means that all "macro" economic decisions, namely, decisions concerning the running of the economy as a whole (overall level of production, consumption and investment, amounts of work and leisure implied, technologies to be used e.t.c..) are taken by the citizen body collectively and without representation
b) that there are no institutionalised economic structures embodying unequal economic power relations. This implies that the means of production and distribution are collectively owned and controlled by the citizen body directly. Any inequality of income is exclusively the result of additional voluntary work at the individual level. Such additional work, beyond that required by any capable member of society for the satisfaction of basic needs, allows only for additional consumption, as no individual accumulation of capital is possible and any wealth accumulated, as a result of additional work, is not inherited.
Of course, the above conditions for democracy refer just to the institutional framework and constitute only the necessary conditions. The sufficient condition for a true democracy, so that it will not degenerate into some kind of "demagogue-cracy" where the demos is manipulated by a new breed of professional politicians, is crucially determined by the citizens' level of political consciousness that, in turn, is conditioned by paedeia, the education of the individual as citizen.
Historically, the above conditions for democracy have never been satisfied fully. The Athenian democracy was a partial democracy since it only met the first condition above and the first two sub-conditions of the second. The socialist 'democracies' that collapsed a few years ago did not satisfy any of the above conditions, although they represented a better spreading of economic power (in terms of income and wealth) than liberal 'democracies'. Finally, today's liberal 'democracies', also, do not satisfy the above conditions, although they represent a better spreading of political power than socialist 'democracies'. However, an argument can be put forward that today's advanced liberal 'democracies' may partially satisfy the first condition. This is so because these societies are not grounded on any divine and mystical dogmas, or some closed theoretical systems involving "laws" about social change. Furthermore, the very institutioning of the market economy and representative democracy is not based on some divine, natural or economic "laws" or tendencies, but on a choice: the choice of heteronomous society (I am not considering here how this choice was made) at the political and economic levels.
In conclusion, the above conditions for democracy imply a new conception of citizenship: economic, political, social and cultural. Thus, political citizenship involves new political structures and the return to the classical conception of politics (direct democracy). Economic citizenship involves new economic structures of community ownership and control of economic resources (economic democracy). Social citizenship involves new welfare structures where all basic needs (to be democratically determined) are met at the community level. Finally, cultural citizenship involves new democratic structures of dissemination and control of information and culture (mass media, art etc), which allow every member of the community to take part in the process and at the same time develop his/her intellectual and cultural potential.
6. Democracy and confederal municipalism
Community and democracy
Today few doubt, and research has conclusively shown, that participation should infuse any model of social change, i.e. that social change should at least be initiated at the local level. The real issue therefore is not whether the participatory model of social change is desirable or not, but whether any real participation is feasible within the present institutional framework. This is a framework, which is defined, at the political level, by representative forms of democracy and, at the economic level, by the internationalised market economy and its institutions (TNCs, IMF, World Bank etc.)--a framework which, today, tends to develop into a series of networks of city-regions within federated structures of political power. In short, the real issue is decentralisation versus remaking society.
In this context, it is interesting to note that today both the proposals to decentralise and those to remake society are centred at the community level. This is not of course a surprising development, as it just represents the inevitable consequence of the collapse of socialist statism on the one hand and the failure of "actually existing capitalism" on the other. A failure that is both economic, as shown by the fact that this system cannot even meet the basic needs of at least 20% of the world's population[77], and ecological, as the advancing ecological disintegration reveals. Thus, a new consciousness is emerging among radical movements in the North and the various community movements in the South- a consciousness, which ascribes the basic cause for the failure of both capitalism and socialism to the concentration of power. It is therefore becoming increasingly realised that collective and individual autonomy can only be achieved in the context of direct and economic democracy.
However, the rebirth of democracy is today possible only at the community level (the municipality or its subdivisions). It is only at the community level that the conditions that would make direct and economic democracy possible could be fulfilled, i.e. economic self-reliance, municipalization of economic resources and democratic allocation of goods and services among the confederally organized communities; it is also at the same level of confederated communities that the preconditions for an ecological society can be met, as I will try to show below
The community is, of course, a notoriously disputed -some even say anachronistic- concept. However, I would agree with David Clark that community could never be destroyed or civilisation itself would collapse and that the real issue is how to define and operationalise the community, so that it would be useful in the urbanised, technological and highly mobile society of today. A useful starting point in this effort might be David Clark's definition of community in terms of what he calls "ecumenicity" (defined as a sense of solidarity that enables people to feel themselves part of and not hostile towards wider society) and autonomy (defined as a sense of significance that enables people to feel they have a role to play in the social scene, a role that is determined by rules that members of the community choose themselves and feel free to modify)[78].
But, to my mind, the ecumenicity and autonomy elements constitute only the necessary condition defining community relations. I think that community members cannot have a real sense of solidarity and especially a real sense of significance, unless a third element is present, which I would call the democracy element. The democracy element, which rules out the concentration of political and economic power, is in fact the sufficient condition for any true community. Historically, this has always been the case. Thus, as Michael Taylor[79] has shown, drawing on the experience of stateless primitive societies, peasant communities and `intentional' (utopian) communit