If, conceptually, human beings rights and duties are equal, then democratic societies should be able to ensure this core evidence. If we (many among us) can see that the democratic regime has not evolved enough to improve this situation or even eliminate crystallized ways of keeping rudimentary power relations contrary to the universal concept of human being, in which some are enlightened and occupy management positions and others are doomed to settle for an apathy that reproduces unfamiliar models, perhaps we will find in this strategy one of the possible reasons why democracy, as a system, has not evolved as much as would be expected since it appeared. There are at least two reasons for this. The first reason is a problem of will and of maintaining a tight power structure, that is, if democracy opens the power to all citizens, by being stagnant it can maintain that privileged and atavistic power, under the disguise of democracy – based on the law of the strongest, on belonging to a certain case, or on other forms of legitimacy. The second reason somehow intersects with the first reason, in that it claims that man and humanity have not evolved. If man does not change, the modes of power remain unchanged and, in that sense, the concept of democracy is contrary to the ancestral nature of power ^i.

Democracy is in crisis in the hearts and minds of man. The firm belief that equality of citizens before the law, as a conquest of the developed western world, is probably more of a rhetorical-legal- political formalism than what is actually embraced in the experiences of human societies. Contemporary transformations are, therefore, presented uncritically shaped compared to values that in the past regarded political action as an ideal, because they did discriminate according to social class or economic wealth. In this context, all actions contrary to this assumption were considered unacceptable in a society that was meant to be fair and in which each man on its own claims his dignity and social and political rights.

Democracy seems to collapse before the many contaminations that distort it. As a people’s government system, whose phenomenology highlighted the importance of its majority will (and defined the principle of popular sovereignty), democracy does not really exist because it is not rooted in the anthropological and political realities of societies, even if it is recognized that as a phenomenon democracy is the expression of the will of the peopleⁱⁱ:

Ultimate power does not belong to any dynasty (…). It lives within the people or nation (as a community that transforms a people into a historical and political subject). This principle is crucial to break away with all archaic concepts, including those that considered the “social contract” as an agreement between the people and the dynasty that governed them. The people (organized number of citizens), which is not to be confused with crowd (a chaotic number of individuals), are the genetic entity of all political order. The people concentrate the demiurgic forces of construction, reconstruction and reform of political regimes (Soromenho-Marques, 2014: 282-283).

The concept of power in its relation with other concepts associated thereto, or those that have been associated to it due to historical, social and economic circumstances, still assumes that some human beings deserve to exert power over others (the majority)ⁱⁱⁱ. It is under this disguise, and on the grounds of operational difficulties of a direct democracy, that the democratic regime based on representativeness is offered to us (with its known success). But the idea of representativeness can be fragile. First, because it is the reshaped heir of the monarchical/dynastic system: the king embodied the wishes of the nation and of the people; he was its legitimate representative. Second, because, as a phenomenon, representativeness is none other than the transfer of the subject to another subject who speaks on my behalf, who conveys my will, so that what I am can only be stated by mediation of the other^iv. In this sense, each self is always hostage of what the other decides to do or defend. Being, through the other, can ontologically cancel out the self^v..

Representative democracy was often used as a bourgeois strategy to maintain and legitimize power, ensuring the same relations of dominance between classes and assuming that some are fit to decide while others are not. A full society is the one in which everyone is involved in politics, in which the same subjects decide on the issues that concern us. Incidentally, the idea behind this position is not to omit the difficulties behind a democracy exercised on a first-person perspective:

Libertarians cannot accept power to be delegated to politicians. For them, this is abourgeois alienation. The revolutionary hope of emancipation of society allowing everyone to take part in decisions is very beautiful. But this vision of “bourgeois democracy”, giving way to a “democracy of councils”, where a large number of factory, neighborhood or school councils flourish, is utopian. Most people are not willing to enter into politics permanently, they would rather delegate and control. Consequently, this makes politics a profession (Cohn-Bendit, 1999, p. 26).

If we do accept this position, however realistic it may seem to us, then not only will the totalitarian systems always be legitimized a priori, but also will all the concepts of perfect political and human stances be compromised. We create utopias based on the assumptions that the world can work in a better, fair and respectable way. There is one mobilizing feature of utopias that we cannot overlook, which in turn results from the non-conformist attitude of the utopian task. Although representative democracy is, indeed, a step forward, a transitory moment, it has also suffered from inertia because some men have used to continue to enforce despotic rule under the illusion of the best political system possible.

Who should exercise power? Some will say that it is those who know how to! Those who have prepared themselves to wisely manage public matters! This Platonic sophocracy has come together with the even more exclusive and divisive view presented by Aristotle: not everyone can rule for the simple fact that, although we are all humans, some were born to rule and some to obey. We can, therefore, almost anticipate what genetics today seeks to transmit: what we are, bio-psycho-socially is hostage to the information inscribed in everyone’s distinct genes.

A natural slave is anyone who may belong to another (and this is the reason why it belongs to it) and also anyone who participates in the reasoning enough to learn without, however, having it; the animals different from man are not even capable of participating in the sensitive form of reason; they only obey passively to impressions. As to utility, slaves and animals are similar; they both help the body according to our needs (Aristoteles, 1998, L. I, 1255a, p. 65).

When we recognize, leniently and with a limitation of perfection, that the democratic regime is the best of imperfect systems, our reference is still the idealized principles, what should be, and not what conditions us as humans. These circumstances overcome our visions and our concrete situation in society^vi.

Consequently, by persuading us through idealizations that are meant to form a reality under construction, democracy subjects us to conditions which, in another context, would be seen as unworthy of man and often incompatible with the exercise of citizenship. This servile society, which is also promoted by democracy, is the consequence of the balance between what is perfect and what is imperfect, between the real and the utopian, between human imperfection and divine perfection.

If we want to build a truly democratic society, if we want to overcome the theroretical and practical constraints of historical and philosophical assumptions of concepts it is not enough to critically dig up the past. Moreover, it is imperative that we address what we really want from a democratic society of the future, and of a future democratic society^vii. The answer should be able to overcome the commitments, the individual interests, the pains. In other words, we should be able to think critically beyond … reasonably. One possible method is based on our ability to rationally deviate, of a learned ignorance that not only predisposes us to the real research, but also puts us primarily in an epistemological position founded on a universal and, therefore, impartial rationality:

The principles of justice are chosen from behind a veil of ignorance, ensuring that no-one is helped or harmed the choice of those principles by the results of natural chance or by the contingency of social circumstances. (…) Given the circumstances of the original position, the symmetry of relations established between everyone, this initial situation puts the subjects, seen as moral entities, that is, as rational beings with their own purpose and (…) capable of a sense of justice, in an equal footing (Rawls, 2001: 34).

If we are able to transpose Rawls’s ethical concept of justice, applied to politics, to an original position, we will ensure impartiality and universality of equity: “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty with a similar liberty for others” (Idem, ibidem, p. 68).

Our heritage – in particular the modern one – has sought to answer these questions through enlightened proposals that have regained the trust in a reason which had hitherto been sidelined. The ideals of the French Revolution or of the American Declaration of Independence showed the motivation to overcome the rigid power structure that belittled most citizens and ensured the status quo and perpetuation of a minority caste:

Democracy does not rely on democratic institutions alone: it also depends on a rich and complex civic and political life. Otherwise, votes lose their meaning, assemblies are manipulated, politics focus on the parties’ staff, elitesin power cease to be controlled. In short, democracy has not reached its end or its finished formula. (…) We are not in a time of democratic endings, rather of beginnings (Morin, 1988, p. 167).

The right to freedom and dignity become universal ideals (or supposedly universal), equality being the foundation conditions of beinghuman. Everything seemed to be going in the right direction, but it wasn’t. The desire for power is one of the most intense instincts of living organisms. The history of power notes the attempts to satisfy that impulse as an incomplete teleology which are evident in behaviors, strategies and institutions. According to this history, two conditions and efforts collide: of power, as an attempt to expand endlessly, and of the individuals who react to that expansion (cf. Marina, 2009, p. 122)^viii.

Little by little this power instinct creeps in again and settles back in, reshaped, and immerses itself in apparently tolerable idiosyncrasies. In this sense, we believe that all political systems that in some way distort, in phenomenological terms, the relations of the concepts intrinsic to democracy conceal totalitarian intentions. More than their justified functionality, all indirect democracies aim to protect the difference between who should rule and who should submit to another’s ruling. Democracy can, therefore, be merely instrumental, in that it is used as a means to legitimize the impulse of domination^ix.

Power, participation, totalitarianism, globalization, flexibility, submission, dignity, utopia, minorities, crisis, public, private, freedom and democracy are some of the concepts closely related to the interests and directions of research on the systems of governance. However, because the mechanisms of power have always depended on context (cf. Nye, 2012, p.15), the salience, or not, of how each of these concepts is manifested in each historical period is not surprising.

All the attempts to understand the phenomenon of political power can benefit more from the deconstructions and disagreements than from justifications of how power is expressed (where consensus is practically widespread). The essence of democracy does not reside in unanimous positions or in the lack of discussion. Quite the opposite, it lies in ideological confrontation^x.

A disagreement is not a quarrel about personal interests or opinions. It is a political process that withstands legal disputes and opens a gap in the sensible order by confronting the imposed configurations of perception, of thought and of action with something “inadmissible”, i.e., with a political subject (Rancière, 2012: 91).

The authentic democratic process opens gaps, even if this may cause insecurity and controversy, but it is precisely from that point that democracy becomes an experience rather than a mere regime, supported by the sense and action of philosophy. The democratic process is achieved by coordinating the political and philosophical projects.

“Philosophy appears especially at times of abandonment (Hölderlin). During the thought experience, cognitive performance is not primarily at stake, rather the construction of knowledge by enriching our experience of the world, by the interest and provocation it raises. It means looking beyond whatever exists already, beyond what is there, beyond what we see and beyond what has already been thought, since thinking implies embracing a divide in our innermost self; a difference in relation to what we are and to what we know to affirm thought in articulation with the qualitative continuity of wanting: the alternative to think in a different way, the alternative to devise and imagine in a different way, disrupting the logologies we have inherited and those still to come (Pereira, 2011:98).

There were times when the political power outweighed economic and financial power, unlike today when the instrumentalization of power as a control mechanism has created osmosis between politics and the economy, the latter being more substantial^xi. This is why holding political and economic power is just a public show of a private power, almost secret, based on economic and financial surpluses that are distributed within a restricted group. In our time, economy has been uncovered as an ideology, as a resource strategy and as the implementation of the old feudal power, since in the political, ethical and civilizational spheres it is no longer justifiable. The values of this new economic liberalism – which imposes submission as a condition to a lesser evil, imposes fear (especially fear of the future) and takes hope away – are incompatible with the great values built and touted by western civilization. The dignity of the human being expressed in the safeguarding of isegoria (equal rights of speech), isonomy (political equality under the law) and isocracy (equal access to political positions). Against this antagonism, discourses continue to uphold those great values and, at the same time, practical and day- to-day life is still hostage to the impositions that belittle working citizens. It did not take long for a strategy to justify this. By defining austerity and impoverishment as being a moral value, the idea was to suggest the morality behind such austerity and impoverishment to save the people and the world as we have always known it^xii.

This conveys an idea that the promotion of ruptures is immoral because we stand as obstacles to those who want to save us. By obeying and being blind to power and politics we are engaging in the salvation of society, as in the case of those who become poorer can increase their wealth.

While to many of us, citizens of western democracies, slavery and exploitation of man by man are intolerable, evident feudalisms and democracies masked under the cloak of absolutism are nevertheless being relaunched. The absence of norms, stagnation, domestication, subjugation, impoverishment, democracy without Democracy are, therefore, the concepts that best define today’s society^xiii.

It might tentatively be said that the dignity and quality of life of men can be attacked if it is in any way an act of salvation, that is, if it guarantees the food of future humanity, or even of the hero generation, in the sense that we are told that the present generation must be inevitably sacrificed so that we can have a viable future. The idea behind this is that a savior generation becomes poorer and declines so that future generations can experience well-being.

This strategy can be found in economic and political globalization processes. This economic imperative, transversal to all human activities, not only deceives the ontological status of man, but also spreads the impression that it is the only means to save humanity. This idea of salvation of civilization has brought about a continuous instrumental dichotomy between lords and slaves, legitimizing the maintenance and exploitation of the latter as basic pillars of society, but nevertheless disposable because they are easily replaceable.

Mark Blyth describes the concrete focus of these strategies:

What begins as a banking crisis ends with a banking crisis, even if it goes through the states’ accounts. But there is a politics of making it appear to be the states’ fault such that those who made the bust don’t have to pay for it. Austerity is not just the price of saving the banks. It is the price that the banks want someone else to pay” (Blyth, 2013: 24)^xiv.

We must not forget that the ideology of the schools of economic thought is biased and almost always compromised. These schools aim to legitimize political interests under the wing of (pseudo) economic scientificity. Their first objective is to make a profit (the more the better), and the second one, depending on how they stand in a formal democracy, is to legitimize those profits when the majority of the population lives on the threshold of survival.

As Chrystia Freeland exposes:

The age of mass production required a mass market – as Henry Ford put it, he needed workers, including his own, to make enough money to buy his cars.

For the plutocrats, globalization may be reducing both this political incentive and this economic one to support inclusion. That’s because in today’s interconnected economy, Western democracies can import economic demand from the emerging markets, and the emerging markets can import democracy from the West. To put it another way, Western businesses are less dependent on a prosperous domestic middle class because they can now sell to the rising middle class of the emerging markets (2014: 370).

This is one of the signs of the times in which we live and which we need to learn how to read; the world is changing, what is common no longer belongs to men because being common implies that these very same men know what it is and the social purpose it aims to achieve. The end is no longer common, it is now limited to a teleonomical action in the hands of a group of techno-politicians or plutocrats.

In this respect, the common no longer exists because it is no longer the lieu in which the wills of men come together and intercross with other wills, where the visibility of some no longer guarantees the building of a fair society. Consequently, or because of it, the effectiveness of public manifestations is internalized with skepticism; no changes in direction are expected nor renewed hopes in the future, just a constant individual atonement collectivized by fear, especially the fear of the future.

The rhetoric of fear and danger has generated not only a “culture of fear” but also a “politics of fear”, that is, an anti-politics, since it erases politics so that it can exist.(…) Fear and danger are manufactured to justify abuses of power, uses of material and symbolic violence, and discursive and material constructions of terror that, in turn, promote the agenda of neoconservative authoritarianism. They seriously close the universe of politics and shrink public spaces, ultimately resulting in the creation of an anti-politics. (…) At the same time, fear and danger also legitimize and ratify measures, policies and practices that, ultimately, cater to the interests of a small group of the privileged hegemonic class (Gounari, 2009: 54- 58).

In this context, we can see that the day after goes by as if the previous day had never existed; what happened was just the atonement of the tragedy experience by citizens, because the future cannot be desired against a fear that is felt, internalized, where the uncritical acceptance of all changes people and their lives into a fatalist view of the future (cf. idem, ibidem, pp. 68-70).

All the negative reality produced by the globalization of the markets, controlled by the “liberalization of selfishness” confirms the need to claim the primacy of politics (and ethics); the construction of a concept of politics based on a sympathetic rationality that recovers and deepens the citizen’s protagonism and responsibility, insofar as citizenship should be regarded as the political relationship between the individual and the community, that is, in that the human being assumes itself as a fully-fledged member of the community, participating in the various decision-making levels of life and political power (Pereira, 2012 p.12).

REFERENCES

Aristóteles (1998). Política, Lisboa, Veja.

Bastos, Fernando Evangelista (2012). Arqueologia(s) do Poder – Espaço Público: Um Projecto Político, Antropológico e Poético, Porto, Edições Afrontamento.

Baumier, Matthieu (2007). A democracia Totalitária – Pensar a Modernidade Pós-Democrática, Mem Martins, Publicações Europa-América.

Blith, Mark (2013). Austeridade – A História de Uma Ideia Perigosa. Lisboa, Quetzal.

Cohn-Bendit, Daniel (1999). O Prazer da Política, Lisboa, Editorial Notícias.

Farouki, Nayla (2005). Os Dois Ocidentes, Lisboa, Instituto Piaget.

Freeland, Chrystia (2014). Plutocratas – A ascensão dos novos super-ricos globais e a queda de todos os outros, Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores.

Fromm, Erich (1981). O Medo à Liberdade, 13ª ed., Rio de Janeiro, Zahar Editores.

Gounari, Panayota (2009). A Democracia na Nova Era Tecnológica, Mangualde, Edições Pedago.

Innerarity, Daniel (2005). A Transformação da Política, Lisboa, Editorial Teorema.

Lourenço, Eduardo (2007). O Esplendor do Caos, Lisboa, Gradiva.

Marina, José Antonio (2009). A Paixão do Poder, Lisboa, A Esfera dos Livros.

Morin, Edgar (1988). Pensar a Europa, Mem Martins, Publicações Europa-América.

Nye, Joseph S. (2012). O Futuro do Poder, Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores.

Onfray, Michel (1999). A Política do Rebelde, Lisboa, Instituto Piaget.

Pereira, Paula Cristina (2011). Condição humana e condição urbana, Porto, Afrontamento.

Pereira, Paula Cristina (org.) (2012). Espaço público. Variações críticas sobre a urbanidade, Porto, Afrontamento.

Rancière, Jacques (2012). La méthode de l’égalité, Entretien avec Laurent Jeanpierre et Dork Zabunyan, Bayard Editions.

Rawls, John (2001). Uma teoria da justiça, Lisboa, Editorial Presença.

Sandel, Michel (2012). Justiça, qual a coisa certa a fazer?Rio de Janeiro, Civilização Brasileira.

Soromenho-Marques, Viriato (2014). Portugal na Queda da Europa, Lisboa, Círculo de Leitores.

Notes