What Happened to Democracy?

Part I : Modern Democracy Began in Classic Greece

* In 2003 around the world millions march in opposition to a war against Iraq. Public opinion polls show majorities everywhere oppose a war. But the US government and its allies launch a war anyway.

* Citizens in Regina who question whether the city government should use tax money to build a new football stadium ask for a public referendum. The city says no. “They may do this in the USA, but this is Canada!”

* A major public opinion poll in 2006 finds that 65% of Canadians see climate change as the most important political issue. Yet the federal government takes only limited action and then endorses new pipelines to export Alberta Tar Sands bitumen.

* A public opinion poll sponsored by the Toronto Star finds that 94% of Canadians think governments should take actions against corporations and individuals who use offshore tax shelters to avoid paying taxes. But nothing happens.

* Polls show a majority of Canadians are concerned about the steady growth of income and wealth inequality and the capture of new wealth and income by the richest 10%. Yet no government in Canada is willing to take action to begin to redress the problem.

* A Nanos poll finds that 64% of Canadians do not want the government to provide military equipment to Saudi Arabia. The Trudeau government keeps selling weapons to its political ally, the feudal government, as it steps up its war to kill all the Shia Muslims in  Yemen.

What is going on?

The Pynx where the Athenian Assembly met

We live in a country which supposedly is a democracy. Yet the majority of citizens regularly find that they have no influence on government policy. But isn’t democracy supposed to be a political system where the majority of the citizens determine policy? Why is this happening?

I think that if we asked people to define democracy they would most likely say that a country has a democratic form of government if it has regularly scheduled elections and the majority of voters have the power to change who runs the government. Many Canadians would likely add that a democracy should also have a constitution which guarantees liberal, civil and human rights. No government should have unlimited power over its citizens.

Canada, the United States and many other countries had a liberal form of government well before they had a democracy, where all citizens had the right to vote and hold political office. Slaves were not citizens Nor were women. Indigenous Canadians, Canada’s first peoples, did not get citizenship rights until 1956. Non-white immigrants from Asia were denied full citizenship rights for many years.

We should remember: in both Canada and the United States men were denied the right to vote and hold office unless they held a required amount of real property. The Founding Fathers in both countries, who drafted the constitutions, were very clear on this key issue: they were creating a liberal government and not a democracy. There would be no universal suffrage! The role of government was to protect the rights of property owners. As the  famous liberal,  John Locke argued, the government should be run by men with property.

Greek Democracy Fifth Century BC

The Origin of Democracy

It is widely recognized that democracy, as a modern system of government, had its origin in classic Greece. The peak period of this success was in Athens in the fifth century BC. As we know from the writings of Aristotle and the research done by him and his students at the Lyceum, there were many city states in Greece and its colonies that had some form of democracy. At the same time there were no other human communities in the world which had a modern political system which could be called a democracy. And of all examples of Greek democracy, Athens was the best.

It should be noted that at this time the political system of Greek communities was nothing like our current system of territorial states. There were many Greek city states, but no territorial states as we know them today. The city states typically included an urban centre, a surrounding rural area of farmland and local towns, as well as colonies, which stretched from Sicily across the Agean Sea to Persia and the Black Sea. Athens and the other similar political formations had not yet developed a bureaucratic state structure with a professional army, police, a penal system and a civil service. Those  urban formations were found in Mesopotamia, societies with kings and landed aristocracies.

The Greeks gave us the very term “democracy”--demos, the people, and kratein, to rule. Aristotle defined democracy as “the rule of the poor.” He wrote in Politics that extreme democracy, which he defined as the rule of the poor for the poor was “bad government.” “It would be unreasonable,” he wrote, “to give the highest offices to the Many.” Both Aristotle and his teacher Plato declared democracy to be “the worst form of government.” 

NOTE: This is the first part of a longer paper looking at the origin of democracy as a political system and why it is not found today among our political states. The rest of the paper will appear on this blog site over the next few weeks.

 

What is Terrorism? It depends on whose ox is gored

As we watch Stephen Harper's Conservative government push through new "anti-terrorism" legislation, a few dissenters like myself would like to ask:  "Who is a terrorist? What is terrorism?" The comment below is published as an appendix in my book, Creating a Failed State: The US and Canada in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan there are the locals who detonate bombs in public places resulting in the deaths of many innocent people. Most people would agree that these people are "terrorists." But it also seems to me that when the NATO forces bomb and shell villages in the rural areas, also killing many innocent people, these are also acts of terrorism. In more recent years, this would include the use of predator drones as well.

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My Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1961) defines terror as a “State or instance of extreme fear.” Terrorism is defined as an “Act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; specifically, a mode of governing, or of opposing government, by intimidation.” It is common to identify this with the Reign of Terror in France (1793-4). This definition makes it clear that terror is used by both governments and those opposed to a particular government. Individual or group activities (like bombing a subway) are crimes and not acts of war. 

This definition was created before President Ronald Reagan declared his “war on international terrorism” while launching the Contra war of terrorism against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. It was made before the U.S. government and its NATO allies were fighting wars in countries that we used to call `Third World.`

George Orwell argued that governments use the power of language as a weapon. He concluded in 1946 that “In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” In his novel 1984 Orwell argued that “war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is to keep the structure of society intact.”

This brings back memories of the Vietnam War. When the National Liberation Front killed local government officials appointed by the U.S.-backed military regime in Saigon, they were described as ``terrorists.`` But when B-52 bombers flew in the night and carpet bombed areas under the control of the NLF, this was called “pacification.”

The U.S. law on international terrorism includes activities which are designed to “(1) intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (2) influence the policy of government by intimidation or coercion; or (3) affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.”  Elsewhere it is defined as “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious or ideological in nature through intimidation, coercion or instilling fear.” The post-9/11 Canadian law is similar.
 

Pacification

The United Nations can`t define terrorism
The United Nations has not been able to agree on a definition of terrorism. In 1999 one UN resolution proposed that terrorism consisted of “criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public.” Many questions were raised in the debate. Is it legitimate for individuals and groups to attack military forces which occupy their own country?  Is it not legitimate to use whatever force is available to resist colonial domination? Cannot individuals and groups use violence to try to remove a criminal dictatorship? The closest the debate came to consensus was the general agreement that the targets of terrorism are usually civilians.

Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez point out that there was no agreement at the United Nations because of ideological and regional differences of opinion. There were three basic positions on terrorism:
 
(1) Terrorism is defined by criminal acts by individuals and groups against existing governments. This was the general position taken by the advanced industrialized governments and some Latin American dictatorships.
(2) Terrorism should be defined by acts, so that actions by governments could be included. This was the position taken by the African governments.
(3) Terrorism should be identified by the motivation of the actor and the context in which it takes place. 

Under the narrow definition proposed by the advanced industrialized countries, actions by national liberation movements against imperialism and colonialism would be labeled terrorism. This argument was made by many governments from less developed countries.

Edward Peck has recalled his experience on the White House Task Force on Terrorism in 1985, under President Ronald Reagan. Asked to come up with a definition of terrorism “we produced about six, and in each and every case they were rejected because careful reading would indicate that our own country had been involved in some of those activities.” The Congress defined international terrorism as “activities that appear to be intended to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping.” Peck concluded that “you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours in one of them. Israel is another. And so, the terrorist, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.”

State terrorism certainly did not start with the Reign of Terror in France. A few years ago I did some research on Irish history. In their attempt to pacify the Irish rebel movements demanding independence, the English Tudors regularly carried out a systematic “war of terror,” and they called it that. This included the routine burning of crops, homes and villages, killing of all the cattle, destroying food resources, and killing all men, women and children in certain cases. There was a bounty paid for Irish heads. Under orders from Queen Elizabeth, Francis Drake massacred the entire population of Rathlin Island to teach the Scots not to support their Celtic allies. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, head of the English forces, had the heads of the Irish killed during the day piled up near his camp for the Irish to see. He argued that this “policy of terror” would convince the Irish to give up their rebellion and shorten the war.

Stohl and Lopez try to distinguish between the different kinds of violence used by a state. They define oppression, where “social and economic privileges are denied to whole classes of people regardless of whether they oppose the authorities.” Repression is used by the state, “coercion or threat of coercion against opponents or potential opponents in order to prevent or weaken their capability to oppose the authorities and their policies.” Many examples are used from Latin America to illustrate these positions. They argue that in this differentiation of state power, terrorism is “the purposeful act or threat of violence to create fear and/or compliant behaviour in a victim and/or audience of the act or threat.” The goal of an act of state terror is the creation of fear in an audience, to change behaviour or potential behaviour. They cite a Chinese proverb to illustrate their point: “Kill one, frighten ten thousand.”

See Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, eds. The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, Congressional Information Service, 1984.

Moving to a Post-neoliberal Democracy

Is there an alternative to the neoliberal political economy model that is so dominant in all the advanced industrialized countries? There used to be an alternative – one which was committed to the expansion of democracy and the creation of a universal welfare state. This was the role of the social democratic and labour parties. In the USA this progressive element was found in the Democratic Party and in Canada in the Liberal Party.

The big change came in the 1990s, when the social democratic and liberal parties shifted to the political right. The key here was their decision to give strong support to the various free trade agreements promoted by the organizations representing big business. The treaties were designed to prevent governments from returning to the activist Keynesian policies that had been the norm from the end of World War II to 1975. We know this only too well in Canada.

With the free trade agreements came the package of neoliberal policies, often referred to as The Washington Consensus:  privatization of state assets, the deregulation of the economy and finance, the contracting out of government services, the introduction of regressive taxation systems, the cuts to social programs, and the broad attack on trade unions. Transnational corporations won the right to produce anywhere in the world, sell their products and services anywhere, repatriate their profits without any government interference, and to hide their capital in the numerous off-shore tax havens.

Latin America has been the testing ground
The struggle to create an alternative to the politics of neoliberalism in Latin America is recounted by Emir Sader in his recent  book: The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left. (London: Verso, 2011). Sader is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Sao Paolo and author of a well known book on Lula and the Workers Party in Brazil. As he points out, Latin America was where the neoliberal model was first applied. But it is also the region where political movements and parties are creating the first post-neoliberal political parties and governments.

Sader stresses the need for political movements and political theorists to carefully ground their analysis in concrete reality. The models that were first tried in Latin America were from outside the area, where conditions were quite different. The Communist Parties, which were very important in building the trade union movement, had a model that was based on the experience of the Soviet Union. The Maoist peasant revolution in China, supported by some elements on the left, could not be repeated in Latin America. The Trotskyst analysis did not fit a region where the large majority of the people were in the informal economy and not employed by anyone. The guerrilla strategy worked in Cuba in 1959, but in the era of large armies with virtually unlimited support from the USA, it quickly failed to be a viable alternative.

The key is understanding the fundamental characteristics of the Latin American region. It was a colonized less developed area. After independence, the local bourgeois class was based in resource extraction and large scale agribusiness production, both for export to the offshore industrial centres. Politically, these interests were based in the Liberal parties with close ties to the U.S. government and transnational corporations.

The dominant political reality for the Latin American left has for a long time been the hegemony of the United States, seen most directly in its support for ugly dictatorships. Today the unipolar world of the US domination is based on its unchallenged military power, the economic and political power of finance capital and its support system, and the control of the international mass media with its portrayal of the “North American Way of Life,”middle class affluence.

Creating a new alternative
In the 1990s there was an attempt to revive the social democratic parties in Latin America.. Sader argues that they made a comeback “as the standard-bearer of globalization,” especially in their support for free trade agreements. However, the social democrats have not had a significant political impact because they lack the class base found in the advanced industrialized countries.

The World Social Forum had its start in Latin America as defenders and promoters of local resistance movements. But this attempt at change was doomed to fail. As Sader argues, “as long as the social movements limited themselves to the social sphere, they remained on the defensive, unable to create the instruments needed to fight for political hegemony.” Only new structures of power could possibly create “the other possible world.”

The shift against the dominant neoliberal agenda began in 1998 with the election of Hugo Chavez as President in Venezuela. Most important was the defeat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, pushed by the U.S. government and big business. Instead, Chavez and other progressive governments undertook the development of an important alternative: Latin American economic co-operation. This began with Mercosur and moved to the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra America (ALBA), the Bank of the South, the continental gas pipeline, and the Union of South American Nations. Venezuela’s oil, shared on a socialist basis, has been important to this development.

Social Democracy and the Greek Disaster

February 13, 2012

On Sunday night, February 12, the Greek Parliament passed the new austerity measures demanded by the Troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. It is widely agreed that the draconian program will drive the Greek economy even deeper into recession. Very few believe that Greece will avoid defaulting on their debt.

The new “restraint” package includes a 22% reduction in the minimum wage, cuts to pensions and the national pharmaceutical drug program, wage cuts, the elimination of 150,000 government jobs, and the privatization of more government businesses and programs. Companies will now be able to unilaterally reduce wages and break contracts with trade unions.

Public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of Greeks are opposed to the economic measures being imposed on them. The present government is an alliance between the social democratic party,  PASOK, and the conservative New Democracy, presided over by Lucas Papademos, an unelected prime minister and former banker. The latest poll shows 79% opposed to the bailout package, which is designed to try to protect the international banks and their investments in Greek government bonds.

The two major trade union confederations have been holding general strikes across Greece for over a year now. They are formally linked to PASOK, Greece’s version of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP). In the 2009 election for the Greek parliament PASOK received 44% of the vote and formed a minority government. In the most recent public opinion poll, their support among potential voters has fallen to 9%. New Democracy is holding at 31%, just slightly less than they received in 2009.

Greeks support general strike

The Greek crisis has shifted public opinion away from the neoliberal social democrats and towards the parties of the left. Support for he Communist Party (PKK), which has played an important role in the general strikes, stands at 13%. The Coalition of the Radical Left, a left green party, is at 12%. The Democratic Left, a socialist party created in 2010, stands at 18%.

When voters were asked who would be the best leader for Greece at this time, the results show the general shift to the left:

Fotis Kouvelis of the Democratic Left – 56%
Alexis Tsipras of the Coalition of the Radical left – 41%
Antonis Samaras of New Democracy - 31%.

The International Community

January 23, 2012

So what or who is “The International Community?” We hear it all the time from certain political leaders. For example, Hilary Clinton, President Barrack Obama’s Secretary of State, uses the term all the time.“We will take the issue of Iran’s nuclear program [certainly not ours!] to The International Community.” Is this the United Nations? Not exactly. It is:

I. The Sheriff.

The government of the United States of America. There are five U.S. Central Commands which cover the entire world, which is the U.S. sphere of influence. They are linked to 750 public bases in 38 countries plus other secret bases. The U.S. Navy has 12 aircraft carrier strike groups which operate in all international waters and are equipped with nuclear weapons. The U.S. Air Force has 94 B-52, 21 B-2 and 67 B-1 bombers which can be loaded with a wide range of bunker bombs as well as nuclear weapons. To back this up there are 500 nuclear-armed Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles ready to go from their bases in the USA. One third of all U.S. aircraft today are unmanned drones, directed to bomb targets all around the world from bases in the USA. There are also 18 ballistic missile submarines, which are also decked out with nuclear weapons. At the bottom are around 1.4 million rank and file military personnel, backed by the private mercenary armies provided by corporations like Blackwater and DynCorp.

In support of this phalanx of military power there is by far the largest intelligence and surveillance operation the world has ever seen. This includes the Central Intelligence Agency, The National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, all working closely with Lockheed Martin Corporation. Together they do their best to monitor all telephone calls, who uses the Internet and for what purposes, read everyone’s e-mails and even monitor the books you get out of the public library. Suspects are red flagged in their data bases. This shows up on the agent’s screen when you cross an international border.

Individuals may not know they are being monitored. In the buildup of mass popular opposition to the U.S. attack on Iraq, members of the Green Party of the USA were banned from using commercial aircraft to attend and speak at peace rallies.

With this kind of raw power, it is not surprising that since the demise of the Soviet bloc, the U.S. government has been able to capture and use the United Nations. The U.S. government names the Secretary General, controls the Security Council and dominates all the official international aid agencies. But this is not enough.

II. The Deputy Sheriffs.

These are Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. With the Sheriff, they form the Anglo American Alliance to Control the World, a power structure based on white settler colonialism. These countries worked closely together to develop the first nuclear weapons, which the US government dropped on Japan. They have an exclusive treaty for the development and production of chemical and biological weapons, which were used widely in the Vietnam war. More recently they formed the UKUSA Signals Intelligence Alliance, which operates the Echelon program and its 120 spy satellites. Because of their special cultural relationship, these governments have agreed on the right to spy on each other with no advance permission required. Now that is solidarity!

The Deputy Sheriffs all have their Special Forces which work together in the field. They were first developed after World War II to specialize in counter insurgency warfare, where national liberation movements in the colonized world were trying to end European domination. The U.S. Special Forces were fine tuned during the Vietnam War. Under the Phoenix Program they were charged with disrupting civilian support for the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. The U.S. government admits that the Army Special Forces and the Navy SEALS “neutralized” 81,740 suspects and assassinated 26,369.