The current global geopolitical situation revives the search for meaning for our system of social and political coexistence that we call democracy. Contrary to what was stated at the beginning of the 1990s, theorists Fr neoconservative liberalism, such as Francis Fukuyama, Today, it is very clear that we have not even come close to the “end of history”, consecrating liberal democracy and “American-style” capitalism as final and perfect forms of social evolution. (I use “American” here to refer to the United States, which was shaped by Americans themselves and copied by European countries in their nineteenth-century colonial speech.)
Unfortunately under management he recalled George Bush Sr.with the fall of the Berlin Wall and expressions of global unipolarity demonstrated by the invasion of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989) followed by bloody victories in Iran, against Hussein, and in Libya, against Gaddafi, legends Sweetened by the victory of good over evil (Hussein, 2006; Gadaffi, 2011; Bin Laden, 2011), they seemed to show that the order was one and well founded. Busch could snap at the Kremlin, “We’ve prevailed,” and Victoria Nuland could bluntly tell her allies: “Fuck the European Union!” (The Guardian, 2014). The global order was well established and if threatened by someone who went astray, it could be “pissed off” by any means necessary.
It is paradoxical to note that exactly where everything seemed to end, at the borders of Eastern Europe, everything would have to be dismantled, demolished, razed to the ground. Ignoring the advice of the diplomatic elite from Washington (including the shrewd and lucid Henry Kissinger) and strategists more insight into the pentagon, successive US administrations (from Busch Sr. to Biden) would extend the “aggressive” borders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to Ukraine. It doesn’t matter that for this it was necessary to overthrow the elected president in Kiev itself – the mother of all Russia -, to put in his place a comedian who today is sold to us as a fighter for the cause Democracy in the world. How has the great American democracy already reached these extremes? How are democratic governments European Union showed the utmost submissiveness to their national interests and the dream of Europe as a global player? What explains, beyond the bed of interests, the degeneration of Western democracies? Could it be delirious imperial dreams, a hangover from the hegemony of a unipolar world after the implosion of the Soviet Union? Could it be the latent hatred of the Orthodox-Slavic world in the form of a clash of civilizations? Or is there something degenerate about American-style democracy, the one that began with the revolution between 1776 and 1781 and the first liberal-republican constitution passed in 1787?
Three prominent political and economic theorists suggest that capitalist democracy itself has within it elements of its own degeneration. The first of them, perhaps the most visionary – because of the depth, maturity and insight of his reflections – suggests some keys that are worth considering. Alexis de Tocqueville, At the age of 30, he went on a 9-month trip to investigate “in situ” the secret of the success of democracy in the northeast of the North American coast and its moving border. In an exercise in proto-sociology that is ahead of its time, he compares the facts and elucidates the hypotheses he posits in two powerful volumes that his editor calls “Democracy in America” (vol. I, 1835: vol. II, 1840) As a corollary to his thoughts, Tocqueville will tell us that democracy results from the action in history of two principles: equality and freedom. The equality of citizens and the choice between peers appears as a force that seems to forge destiny It dates back to the Protestant Reformation and will culminate in the English democratic revolutions, North American and French, since North America is the most favorable because of the radical nature of its foundations and the strength of its operations aimed at the individualism and material interests of citizens, which Tocqueville will tell us – before Marx and Weber – which imposes instrumental rationality in political life and is based on the rational principle of identity. On the other hand, the second element of the couple, freedom, is more avoided, it is a “feeling”, a mood for living together, irreducible to a permanent formula. He will tell us later Vicomte de Tocqueville, that the supremacy of equality is irresistible at liberty it degenerates democracy and corrupts its noble aims, turning it into a new despotism. Key role: control of the media that create and shape public opinion.
A little more than a century later, in 1942, a The Austro-American economist, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, faced the first phenomenon of the great financial crisis and the penetration of the Soviet world, he resorted to the study of economic cycles and, digging deeper, wondered about the future of the binomial capitalism-liberal democracy and socialism. will arrive in a pessimistic conclusion, similar to Tocqueville’s, indicating that the lords of industry who succeeded in bringing capitalism to its peak will gradually degenerate into cartels that will stifle the creative innovations that Schumpeter conceptualized the very essence of capitalism in its knightly phase and spoilage democracy in plutocracy (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1943).
In recent times, a young failure South Korean metallurgist Byung-Chul Han moved to Germany dedicate himself to literature, and whoever ends up with a doctorate in philosophy in Freiburg, will launch a series of works that reflect on the state of capitalist democracy in the digital age. In two of his works, especially (Psychopolitika, 2014; and Infokracija, 2022), Han would sternly warn if he did Big data and artificial intelligence, exploiting the use of data or dataism, they can achieve the power of control over citizens by appealing to seduction rather than violence, forcing workers to self-exploit in unimaginable and arbitrary ways.
The assumptions of the philosophy of history on which Tocqueville’s vision rests, Schumpeter’s pessimistic analysis of the final results of creative destruction in capitalism and Han’s reflections on the state of digital capitalism are undoubtedly part of the explanation of the current crisis of conflict between American plutocracy and Russian and state capitalism. The Chinese in this phase of modern history that has put us at the door Nuclear Armageddon as the biggest environmental disaster also sharp.
Source: Panama America
I am David Miller, a highly experienced news reporter and author for 24 Instant News. I specialize in opinion pieces and have written extensively on current events, politics, social issues, and more. My writing has been featured in major publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and BBC News. I strive to be fair-minded while also producing thought-provoking content that encourages readers to engage with the topics I discuss.
