Nasser Paydar, February 2013
Democracy, even the highest form of democracy, is the embodiment of a type of social and political order of capital. It is not a question of terminology and the historical roots of concepts. The discussion is about the content of specific civil and political contracts with which democracy is associated as a specific type of conventional governmental and social order. Parliamentarism, universal suffrage, freedom of speech and the press, assembly and association, freedom of private property and the like constitute the entire wealth and poverty of democracy and its set of agreements and contracts. Freedoms, rights and contracts that are by nature sufficiently general and interpretable and cannot be understood without paying attention to their material bases or economic and social contexts and without a clear understanding of the goals and expectations of the specific tendency or class that proposes them. Different social classes or different tendencies within each class speak of democracy with different or deeply different perceptions and expectations. Meanwhile, the working class, whether in the past or today, has also raised demands, rights, reforms or changes and developments in the political and civil order in the name of democracy and under the banner of democratization, but this does not mean that democracy, even the highest form of democracy, has any similarity with the soviets and socialist society of the working class. In leftist literature, concepts such as “workers’ democracy,” “proletarian-oriented democracy,” or phrases such as “the proletariat is the only class that supports democracy to the end” have been discussed. Regardless of the occasions on which these expressions have been used or misused, or by which individuals and movements, one thing is clear. Democracy is not the solution to the socialist tendency of the working class for the civil and political order of society. Democracy has no special status for the proletariat. In any case, the discussion of democracy is a discussion of a type of governance and how to exercise sovereignty in society. The discussion of civil rights and political freedoms of individuals is within the framework of establishing a class-based economic and social order. The story of legality, contract, and social contracts is for the preservation and perpetuation of a society based on the existence of exploitation and classes. The debate over democracy is a story of arguing over the regulation of human relations within a society that, by virtue of its economic and productive infrastructure, has made any kind of equality and equal rights for humans impossible. Democracy is a story of the tense and tense debates between different classes and social tendencies about the type of government and how to govern. The working class not only does not attach any importance to these decisions and legislation, but it also demands the complete dismantling of the relations that have made these conflicts, wars, and disputes necessary.
Capital and democracy
We must see what democracy is in the real world, outside of the interpretations that each tendency or social class imposes on it. It must come out of the realm of playing with words in the style of a professional pen. Where democracy was born and what history it has gone through can only be relevant as a lesson in a series of lessons in history. What is currently at stake for the proletariat, as a daily debate, is the correct understanding of the reality of existing democracy and the interpretation of this issue by various social tendencies. Parliamentarism, free elections and universal suffrage, equality of people before the law, and freedom of expression and association are the winning cards of democracy. If we want to examine the content of each of these issues correctly, we have only one more way to go. We must see with what social content the dominant economic system associates these legal, legal, and civil contracts or formats. It is full of politics and economics. It is natural that the opposing tendencies or classes within society will struggle over the content and manner of accumulating these forms. But this will only be a dispute over how to live under the control of the prevailing economic system. When the relationship of buying and selling labour power is accepted, democracy cannot go beyond what is necessary for the reproduction and self-expansion of capital. It is not democracy, civilization, secularism, human rights, and the political structure that adapt the economic relations and the mode of production of society to itself; on the contrary, it is the latter that determines the former and makes it homogeneous with itself. The discussion of civil society without starting from the relations of production and the conditions of work and life of humans is a false and demagoguery discussion. The anatomy of civil society must be sought in political economy. In this regard, the critique of democracy based on a specific interpretation of democracy, for example, a critique of “bourgeois democracy” based on “workers’ democracy” or a social democratic critique of liberal democracy, and the like, brings nothing but illusion and deception of the working masses. The political and social gains of none of these forms of democracy undermine the capitalist order of production. This is the most fundamental problem of “modernity” and democracy, and at the same time the spectrum of democratic critics of modernism, democracy, and bourgeois socialism. Modernity and democracy suffer from exactly the same contradiction as their economic foundation, that is, capitalist production, and the postmodern critique of modernity, democracy, and bourgeois socialism suffers from exactly the same contradiction. The clamour and the exaggeration of the misinterpretation of democracy or the incorrect implementation of democracy are, on the one hand, pure illusions, and on the other hand, conscious or unconscious demagoguery aimed at disguising the rotten nature of the economic foundation of democracy. Free elections and universal suffrage in their objective interpretation mean the legal and free acceptance of wage slavery by the broad masses of the working class, i.e. the submission of the working and subordinate people to the rule of the capitalist class, i.e. the fact that the workers, from time to time, in response to the call of the rulers of capital, with the heavy burden of illusion and political ignorance, participate very freely!! and voluntarily!! in the campaign for the division of power between the bourgeois parties. Very democratically and without any electoral fraud, with their free vote, they should allow political representatives to plan the capitalist production and political order with all their skill and competence. They should formulate policies on how to impose this inhuman order on the working masses, agree on the purchase of labour power as cheaply and cheaply as possible, and guarantee capital’s ever-increasing profits. They should give the defenders of capitalism the right to spend a huge part of the product of the workers’ labour on creating an army, prisons, and lawless courts, and with the help of these same instruments of terror and repression, defend the capitalist order and the democratic rights of citizens!! They should allow the social capital of every society and the entire world capital to turn the product of the workers’ labour and the sellers of labour power into an arsenal of weapons and chemical weapons and ruin the world for the workers.
The day after free and legal elections, the same workers, the same equal voters who have elected their legal representatives with their free votes, are forced to wage war and struggle to maintain their minimum wage or to protect the so-called existing political freedoms!! Against the same legal representatives who have been elected with the free, equal and democratic vote of these workers. A battle and struggle of extreme inequality, where on one side are the same legal representatives and democratic parliament lined up with their army, police, prisons and lawless courts, and on the other side is the vast mass of workers who have very democratically and freely voted for that parliament and the existence of that police, army, prison and lawless courts!! Democracy, even in its best interpretations so far, has been and is nothing other than a comic and tragic repetition of this political game.
Democracy means that the workers are free to give the bourgeois and the intellectual and political representatives of capital the right to run the affairs of society on the basis of the purchase and sale of labour power, the exploitation of workers, the production of surplus value, and the requirements of capital’s self-expansion. That is, the workers, at best, can protest at times, to the point of being annihilated, and in return, the capitalist class has the right to ignore their protests!! In addition, the capitalists have the right to enter the field against the workers’ struggles with the help of the police and the army, prisons, and extrajudicial killings. Democracy means the right to organize for the workers, but within the framework of the legality and sanctity of the capitalist order!! Within the framework of loyalty and a political oath to the perpetuation of wage labour!! All of these are continuous and inseparable components of democracy. Democracy in its material and earthly reality cannot be anything more than this. We say more than this because within the framework of accepting capitalism, there is no possibility of any further intervention in social affairs by the wage earners and the lower classes of society. Moreover, the civilization, modernism, law, democracy and human rights of capitalism do not even have any obligation to observe these limits and restrictions. The “law of value” does not tolerate any incompatible human, legal, or moral value. It is the productive and governmental order of capital or the requirements of the process of accumulation and valorisation of social capital that determines, for example, the democratic nature or absence of syndicalist rights. If these rights jeopardize the process of establishing that order or the presence of those requirements, then syndicalist rights will be very undemocratic!! Neoliberalism argues exactly this way and lets us not forget that neoliberalism is also a very serious defender of democracy. Just as some other parties of the extreme right spectrum of the bourgeoisie are all sworn and serious supporters of democracy!! The dialogue of democracy with “government of the people”! begins and ends with a struggle and debate over the objective interpretation of this very phrase. Democracy extracts the word people from the capitalist dictionary as far as modernism and contemporary history are concerned. Everyone is a person. The owners of the largest cartels and financial and industrial monopolies in the countries are people. The shack dwellers in southern Susa or the workers with a monthly wage of $2 in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand are also people. Hundreds of millions of hungry people are captives in the death grip of capitalism, managers with official annual salaries of 50 million dollars and unofficial salaries of hundreds of millions of dollars are also people. All of these are equal in the customs of democracy!! Because each one has only one “vote”!! All of these are free, the owners of the largest monopolies and trusts are free to buy and consume the labour power of millions of wage workers every day, with completely democratic exploitation!! These workers, by converting their unpaid labour into capital and again capital in a democratic way, achieve a completely godlike and of course democratic power!! Workers are also people by the standard of democracy and by virtue of being people they enjoy all democratic freedoms and rights!! They can sell their labour power as the capitalists want freely!! And if capital does not want them, they are still free not to sell!! And in that case, they can starve to death very freely and democratically!! Both types of people are people in the democratic tradition, each has one vote, and each can, by virtue of this vote, interfere in the removal and installation of governments and the determination of their own destiny!! It is the democratic right of workers to form unions, just as capitalists, in addition to the government, army, police, prisons, and the extensive social organizations they have, form the most powerful trade unions. The capitalists, of course, have the right to attack the organization of workers as a violation of democracy and a violation of civil rights. This is precisely a democratic right!! Because the union, while fettering the entire struggle potential of the workers in the framework of submission to the capitalist system, nevertheless brings together the scattered workers to bargain over the price of selling their labour power. Democracy gives the capitalist the right to evaluate even this potentially disturbing collective pressure as an undemocratic act!! Neoliberalism does this and precisely in defence of democracy, it opposes the democratic right of the existence of unions that serve capital but demand a pittance in order to convince the workers to accept slavery.
The democratic fervour of a section of capitalists goes even further. They even find workers’ membership in unions in contradiction with the democratic rights of the workers themselves!! Because, according to democracy, every worker is free only in his individuality!! And to preserve his freedom and individual rights, he must always be individual!! And in his individuality, he decides to sell his labour power and agree on the price of this only commodity. From the point of view of liberal democracy, even the power of capitalist unions is the burial place of the class struggle power of the workers in conflict with the independence and freedom of the individual and his democratic rights and on this basis is completely undemocratic!! All the conventions and concepts with which democracy is associated are equally empty and void. What is important is the real origin of these contradictory interpretations, or rather, the main origin of the invalidity of democracy. Proponents of democracy, especially if they are consistent in their views, insist with all their might and fervour on the “will of the people” as the source of power in determining the social system and the diversity of democracy itself. The basis here is that “the people” can agree on a kind of civil, political order in society, independent of the actual course of their lives, work, and social place!! This is the ugliest kind of demagoguery in history. Trying to establish a good understanding between the exploiter and the exploited, between the owner of the capital and the seller of labour, between those who were elected on the basis of the free vote of the people!! And they decide with those who voted freely!! And now they have to adjust their life, work, protest and expectation with the policies and plans of the policymakers. It is definitely the most blatant demagoguery, and democracy bears the heavy burden of this demagoguery. What democracy sits on its platform is not the “will of the people”, which is exactly the will of capital. For this very simple reason that the will of the people of Ansan, which is proposed by democracy, basically has no external and earthly existence. Exploited and exploiter are not equal human beings with the same rights to choose a common destiny for themselves by virtue of equal vote in a free election!! The vote of the capitalist and the worker can only be agreed upon in two ways. First, the worker does not understand the depth of the conflict between himself and the capitalist under the pressure of his ignorance, delusion and reformist mentality, and secondly, the force of the gun and the risk of execution or torture and imprisonment prevent the worker from expressing his protest.
The discussion of the consensus of interests of the exploiters and the exploited has been a common deception of the ruling social classes in all different periods of history. It is the nature and custom of the ruling class of every era to dress up its own special class interests as common interests!! To introduce itself as the representative of these common interests, to proclaim its class government as the government of all society, to draw a line under the existence of classes and to deceive around the common interests of the ruling and oppressed classes. The ruling class of every period has used this weapon sufficiently to establish, establish and maintain its power. Democracy plays the role of this weapon.
The entire categories, decrees or principles of democracy can become precisely anti-democratic, even in the political culture of democracy itself. We have mentioned the example of contradictory interpretations of democracy regarding the right to form workers’ unions. This contradiction applies to all areas and territories of democratic power. What is happening today in Chile, Mexico and other South or Central American countries is both approved and criticized from the point of view of democracy. The working and subordinate people, who benefit from this democracy in no other way than hunger, lack of rights, poverty, corruption, addiction and prostitution, naturally call it undemocratic, while for international capital and domestic capitalists it is the same as democracy. In Western and Northern Europe, the historical models of modernity and democracy, all the protests and counter-protests of recent years around the reduction of welfare facilities and social insurance and the living standards of workers have both attached themselves to democracy. Liberalism considers various forms of state intervention in the affairs of the communes and the state control or acquisition of educational and medical institutions and childcare as violations of democracy and an invasion of the privacy of private property!! While the less extreme tendencies of the bourgeoisie assess this control as a necessary and appropriate continuation!! necessary for the survival of democracy.
All of this only points out one obvious thing. That the discussion of democracy in the existing world is in any case a discussion of how the political and productive order of capital is being broken. All those who begin and end their conversation with democracy, modernism, and postmodernism, even those who do not benefit from this democracy, are in any case talking about the order and orbits of a kind of life and civilization in the scaffolding of wage slavery. The defenders of the passionate and controversial discourses of civil society and modernity, the critics of postmodernity and modernism, and the democratic critics of the previous forms of socialism!! If they speak consciously, they are very deceiving the masses. Otherwise, they are delusional people who are throwing all their expectations and utopias into the wind. It is not the law, the contractually, the institutionalism, and the legal or cultural structures of each period that determine the basis of relations between human beings. Furthermore, it is not the thoughts, ideologies, and moral and cultural beliefs that determine the content of laws and contracts or the content of the work of social institutions. All of these are intellectual and legal overtones and thoughtful expressions of the capital relationship, the relationship of buying and selling labour power, a relationship that has created two classes of workers and capitalists at the concrete level of its social development. The fundamental question before humanity in this era is only one thing. Should the working and living conditions of humans be based on the existence of the wage labour relationship, or on the contrary, should it be based on the actual elimination and elimination of this relationship? Without an answer to this fundamental question of the era, any kind of discussion about civilization, modernism, democracy, and human rights is, if not a lie, then certainly an illusion and a simplistic approach.
Capitalism is a form of production, work, and life in which billions of workers in the world workday and night, without having any involvement in determining the fate of the product of their labour, and democracy is a weapon to impose this situation on the working class. Democracy is at the same time a mechanism for inducing this situation and arranging it as a vessel for people to interfere in determining their own destiny!! Democracy reveals the internal connection of existing political, civil, legal, and governmental structures with capital, and introduces law, legality, and civilization based on capitalist property and the relationship of surplus value production as a vessel for the equal expression of human beings!! In addition to all this, let us not forget one more point. This point that when we discuss capitalism, the ever-present war between the two basic classes of society and its effects and consequences on the entire relationship between these classes must also be taken into account. The retreats of the bourgeoisie in the face of the power of the working-class struggle should not be considered as a civilized, legalistic, and traditional way of governing this class. Democracy is a form of planning for the political, civil, and social order of capitalism. However, if in the mortar and materials of this very vessel of bourgeois rule, one can see traces of human rights, one should not be deceived. This is definitely not the trace of capital and the bourgeoisie. On the contrary, it is the labour movement that has left this mark or marks as a legacy in its glorious assault on capital. The fact is that what is still talked about under the name of Western democracy, just as what was once admired under the name of social welfare, is nothing more than the humble scope of the bourgeoisie’s emergency retreat in a period of history in the face of the glorious and epic campaigns of the European proletariat, in the face of the Paris Commune, the First International, and the thunderous rise of the Russian proletariat in the years preceding the catastrophic defeat of the October Revolution.
Capital and naked dictatorship
An important question is that if democracy is a type of political and civil order of capitalism, then why does the majority of the capitalist world not submit to this same democratic legality and civility? Why do the majority of bourgeois states resort to naked dictatorship and generally to the harshest and most brutal form of dictatorship? The answer is not difficult. The submission of the capitalist system to democracy or its resort to naked dictatorship follows certain components. Brutal and unbridled exploitation of labour requires the denial of all political and social freedoms and rights of the exploited. Societies that are under the control of naked dictatorship, regardless of whether their governments are religious, secular, military, fascist, bureaucratic, republican or monarchical, have some common features. Their place in the global division of labour of capital is determined by the sphere of super-cheap labour, the expansion of the sector of production of means of consumption in comparison with the sector of production of means of production, the lower average organic composition of social capital, the lower competitiveness in the world market in comparison with the great industrial poles, etc. These indicators indicate the fact that parts of the social capital of these countries do not realize all the surplus value resulting from the exploitation of the working masses of their advance sphere. They lose a share of this surplus value in the scope of the functioning of the rate of profit to the benefit of other sections of capital, especially the large international trusts. This feature, in turn, is the material basis for the recourse of the social capital of these countries to a number of economic, political and social mechanisms to compensate for the losses. In order to achieve the desired profit and compensate for what it has lost, the bourgeoisie of these countries imposes the deadliest conditions of work and exploitation on the masses of the working class. It lowers the price of labour power to the lowest possible level. It deprives the workers of all welfare facilities, services and social insurance. It barbarically slaughters the living standards of the workers. In order to impose these terrible conditions on the working masses, the social capital of these societies deprives them of the right to any protest and criticism. It prevents any kind of organization, gathering and collective activity of the workers. It nips their strikes, protests and struggles in the bud. It criminalizes the talk of political freedoms, the right to freedom of expression, free elections, and democracy, and sentences those who demand them to torture and execution. It dismisses “human rights,” “the will of the people,” and the like, with all their caricatures and tricks, and it operates on people’s minds and expectations.
The social capital of these countries, considering these characteristics, organizes the political superstructure in accordance with the process of its reproduction in the form of a naked, rabid dictatorship and a bloodbath. But the matter does not end there. The process of capitalist development of these societies, under the eroding pressure of the above characteristics and in accordance with the functioning of the political order corresponding to its production order, severely prevents the formation and development of many civil structures. Society distances itself from the normal process of institutionalization of these structures. No so-called democratic organization, no civil institution, party or even a dissolved labour union is able to function within the capitalist order. Within these societies, the old medieval institutions continue to survive with great difficulty. In order for religion, superstition, patriarchy, old feudal culture, personality cult, values, traditions, and rigid moral standards to be eliminated from human life, there must be freedom of expression, association, and political activity. The less freedom, the rarer the possibility of collective organization and activities, the lower the level of literacy and social knowledge or the less the clash of opinions and ideas, the more stubborn will be the religion, superstitions, and old beliefs. The process of capitalist development of the societies in question and the ongoing requirements of the process of reproduction of social capital in these countries, first of all, due to the important economic characteristics that we have mentioned earlier, makes naked dictatorship a routine part of the political order of society, and then, in the context of this same process, prevents the formation of civil institutions and conventional structures of civilization. This dictatorship and lack of rights is basically imposed on the working class, and its existential philosophy is to impose the worst type of exploitation and deprivation on the working class, but in some cases, it also covers layers or approaches of the bourgeoisie itself. In order for the working masses to be deprived of all civil rights and political freedoms, and the right to strike, organize, and engage in political activity, the shadow of this injustice and dictatorship must inevitably weigh heavily on the entire society. In other words, its smoke and fumes must reach the eyes of the opposition within the ruling class. This in turn deals another blow to the formation of an independent class front of the workers because, on the one hand, it fuels the illusion of the working masses of common interests with the reactionary anti-worker oppositions and, on the other hand, it provides these oppositions with the necessary means to delude the workers and mislead their struggles. Various reformist circles, from the bourgeois right to reformism within the labour movement, find the opportunity to draw the working masses along under the banner of secularism, civil society, or even the most reactionary political alternatives such as theocracy and nationalist fascism. What has happened in recent decades in many Asian and African countries, even in the heart of Europe, are clear examples of this phenomenon. In all these cases, the rule of dictatorship and oppression, the lack of the political space necessary for the development of the class struggle and the suppression of all sides of social movements, have contributed to the political, cultural and intellectual confusion of the working class with the bourgeois opposition. Something that the victimization of the labour movement and the workers falling from pit to pit has been the inevitable result of. Let us also recall this point that some social tendencies, especially the ardent lovers of the democratic growth of capitalism!! They attribute the lack of development of civilization, modernism and democratic institutions to the lack of industrial development, the resistance of old forms of production and the insufficient growth of capitalism!! This attitude is deeply reactionary and extremely misleading. What has prevented workers and the lower classes from achieving the minimum political freedoms and social rights in these societies is simply capital itself and not the underdevelopment of capitalism. A simple look at the countries that are today considered among the most industrialized countries, but where any kind of freedom of expression, association, strike and demonstration is prohibited, exempts us from engaging in a discussion to expose these distortions. Thus, the answer to the question that if democracy is the embodiment of a type of civilization and capitalist political order, why are the majority of capitalist societies governed by bureaucratic or military and religious dictatorships and why are these countries devoid of civil institutions and modernity is very clear. The conclusion is that both the different forms of democracy and the different states of dictatorship are both vessels for the political and civil expression of capital. Which one capital resorts to or submits to is a matter that depends on the above factors and, of course, above all, on the level of struggle between the basic classes of society and the way their current structures are arranged.
Democracy and the pressure of class struggle
The content and governing form of any political order, including democracy, cannot be understood without referring to the factor of class struggle. The structure of the capitalist political and civil order, while being the superstructures, instruments of power and embankments of resistance of this system, also bears the effects and consequences of the ongoing class struggle within society. Democracy is the most trouble-free way of exercising the rule of capital in certain circumstances, and this is when, firstly, the capitalist class of the country in question has a high share in the process of forming the rate of profits and distributing the surplus values resulting from the exploitation of the world working class. A huge share that can, thanks to it, allow it to accept some forced retreats from the working class in the event of an emergency; secondly, the bourgeoisie finds itself in a situation where it considers paying bribes to the working masses or sections of this class as a condition for its survival and a necessity for consolidating its domestic and global position; thirdly, the labour movement is, on the one hand, the heir to past conquests, and on the other hand, crucified on the cross of union reformism and ready to replace class struggle with compromise. It is in such a situation that a tendency or tendencies of the post-peace bourgeoisie take up arms and lean on the platform of democracy. In the absence of these components, some kind of dictatorship, police and bureaucratic, military and fascist, secular or religious, modern or medieval, will be the appropriate political structure for the capitalist order. In the first situation, democracy temporarily solves some of the problems of the bourgeoisie.
The development of democratic institutions and what is commonly understood as civil society in the capitalist tradition, especially in the absence of a socialist movement of the working class, has the capacity to give wings to reformism within the labour movement and generally to reformist tendencies within society, and in this respect to protect the capitalist system from the revolutionary onslaught of the workers. Democracy and civil society here take on many of the functions of the naked dictatorship of capital. They fuel and consolidate the political conflict between the working class and the bourgeoisie. They replace the class struggle between labour and capital with parliamentarism and class compromise. They instil anti-communism and counter-revolution into the current of thought, culture, and political beliefs of the workers. A very clear example of capital’s exploitation of democracy can be clearly seen in the record of social democracy. In this case, especially in those places where social democracy has succeeded in advancing its policies, the scope of illusion, appeasement, coexistence and dissolution of the working class in the structure of the capitalist order is wider than anywhere else. The effort of social democracy has been aimed at making the protests, demands, goals and life horizon of the working-class dependent on the requirements of the reproduction of social capital. Trade unions should be developed; these unions should try to include all workers in their membership and in this way make syndicalism and union reformism an alternative to the anti-capitalist movement of the working class. They should organize associations, clubs and various communities in all areas and at all levels of society and direct the criticisms and protests of the workers against capitalism into channels subordinate to the political and economic order of capital. Social democracy seeks its social strength and electoral competitiveness in this type of organization of mass movements and, with the help of all these institutions, on the one hand, realizes some of the reformist demands of the working class, and on the other hand, teaches workers to submit to the permanence of the capitalist system. The development of democracy and the civil institution of capitalism is one of the most effective tools of capital to prevent social revolution and the growth of the socialist movement of the working masses. From within these institutions, reformism organizes workers around the economic and political reforms possible for capital, in order to simultaneously maximize their dispersion in the struggle against capitalist exploitation. From within this civil order, it instils in the workers that their interests depend on the ever-increasing profitability of capital. With the help of this order, it distributes the burden of economic crises of capital to the working class. What has happened in recent years in Europe, America and other regions speaks volumes in these areas. A detailed discussion of the issue is not the intention here. In short, democracy and modernity are, on the one hand, the product of working-class pressure on the bourgeoisie, and, on the other hand, in the context of the decline of the workers’ anti-wage labour movement, a means of containing the struggles of the working masses. The bourgeoisie is unwilling to even accept the costs of maintaining this false shrine of democracy, but under the conditions whose components we mentioned above, it uses it as the best weapon to slaughter communism, the abolition of wage labour, or any real anti-capitalist movement of the working class.