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Title: Beyond Democracy Author: Roi Ferreiro Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: democracy, history, populism Source: Retrieved on 10th December 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/beyond-democracy-roi-ferreiro Notes: Written between March 18 and May 23, 2009. Translated from the Spanish original at: http://cai.xtreemhost.com/cica/indice.htm
Modernity looks back upon Greece and Rome as the primal references for
its political culture. They were the first class societies in the modern
sense, characterized by the rise of the State and of commerceâto the
detriment of pre-political forms that were still based on religion,
where political power and the priesthood were closely linked. It is on
the basis of these two fundamental characteristics that the rise and
development of democratic political forms in Athenian Greece and the
Roman Republic can be explained.
If the supporters of modern democracy have refreshed themselves from
these two springs, they have done so without critically examining their
socio-historical roots, despite the fact that the latter have been
understood since antiquity. As we shall see below, the reason for this
is obvious. Without an understanding of these socio-historical roots it
is not possible to grasp precisely the immanent limits of democratic
forms which, from an abstract form in principle, have led to the modern
formulation of the concept of anarchy as the dissolution or suppression
of political power.
Following the historian Arthur Rosenberg, we could say that democracy
âin itselfâ, as an abstract form, does not exist. It always assumes the
form of a particular socio-political movement, with a corresponding
class composition. But even this is not completely correct. In my
opinion there is indeed a generic relation between the democratic
political form âin itselfâ and societyâs class composition, beyond the
variations of the political composition due to class struggles and the
impetus of social development, and even beyond variations in the forms
of production. This is essentially due to the fact that the social basis
and prototype of democratic forms is commodity exchange, which has been
historically developed by way of diverse forms of production. By making
this claim I do not intend to overlook or disregard the major
differences between political regimes or, to put it another way, the
major differences with regard to the degree of effective democracy that
can be realized on the basis of particular forms of production.
The idea of political equality, which is the functional basis of
democracy, is thus historically derived from the praxis of civil
equality. But it is derived from a civil equality within class
societies, in which such an equality only exists empirically on the
basis of property. And property is the origin of law, and particularly
of the status of the citizenry. Equal rights, consequently, although
only existing as a formal reality, develops on the basis of a society of
owners who freely carry out their economic activity, and whose products
are exchanged as a function of value. In political regimes this social
composition and its degree of development are expressed in the
distribution of power. A distribution in proportion to economic wealth
represents the interests of the big property-owners. An egalitarian
distribution represents the general interests of the smaller
property-owners and traders and, up to a certain point, of the
proletariat.
The military defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War meant
that the Athenian democratic regime was discredited and the Spartan
oligarchy enjoyed greater prestige. For Plato, this was combined with
the fact that it was the Athenian regime that had condemned his teacher
Socrates to death. Thus, first Plato, and then to a lesser extent his
disciple Aristotle, adopted a critical attitude towards democracy,
favoring an aristocratic form of government and a more restricted
democracy that would overcome the problem of demagogy, respectively.
For Plato, democracy was a degenerate form of the Republican form of
government. For Aristotle, democracy was a good form of government, but
one that had to be protected from demagogy by aristocratic formulas. The
Roman historian Polybius called this degenerated form of democracy
âochlocracyâ.
âA fifth form of democracy, in other respects the same, is that in
which, not the law, but the multitude, have the supreme power, and
supersede the law by their decrees. This is a state of affairs brought
about by the demagogues. For in democracies which are subject to the law
the best citizens hold the first place, and there are no demagogues; but
where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up. For the
people becomes a monarch, and is many in one; and the many have the
power in their hands, not as individuals, but collectively. Homer says
that âit is not good to have a rule of many,â but whether he means this
corporate rule, or the rule of many individuals, is uncertain. At all
events this sort of democracy, which is now a monarch, and no longer
under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows
into a despot; the flatterer is held in honor; this sort of democracy
being relatively to other democracies what tyranny is to other forms of
monarchy. The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a
despotic rule over the better citizens. The decrees of the demos
correspond to the edicts of the tyrant; and the demagogue is to the one
what the flatterer is to the other. Both have great power; the flatterer
with the tyrant, the demagogue with democracies of the kind which we are
describing. The demagogues make the decrees of the people override the
laws, by referring all things to the popular assembly. And therefore
they grow great, because the people have an things in their hands, and
they hold in their hands the votes of the people, who are too ready to
listen to them. Further, those who have any complaint to bring against
the magistrates say, âLet the people be judgesâ; the people are too
happy to accept the invitation; and so the authority of every office is
undermined. Such a democracy is fairly open to the objection that it is
not a constitution at all; for where the laws have no authority, there
is no constitution. The law ought to be supreme over all, and the
magistracies should judge of particulars, and only this should be
considered a constitution. So that if democracy be a real form of
government, the sort of system in which all things are regulated by
decrees is clearly not even a democracy in the true sense of the word,
for decrees relate only to particulars.â (Aristotle, Politics, Book 4,
Part 4.) (See:
)
The annalists and thinkers like Plato and Aristotle insisted upon
contrasting the most centralized political forms with the most
decentralized forms, where the distribution of power is more
egalitarian. This even applies to the case of democracy, as can be seen
in the passage quoted above. This is a result, as we shall see below, of
the fact that democracy originally had a very restricted meaning, which
has slipped into the background in our time.
In my view, this kind of position reflected the growth of ideological
mystification with respect to the historical process involving the
increasing autonomy of political power separate from the social mass
that went hand in hand with the expansion and concentration of
accumulated mercantile wealth. For a class regime, it is logical that
anything that destroys its very constitution would be considered to be
degeneration. Thus, in Plato, Aristotle or Polybius, degeneration is
also discussed in the opposite sense. That is, not with reference to a
relative regression of the centralization of political power, in favor
of the masses, but rather with reference to an excess of centralization,
or an arbitrary shift in the distribution of power within the ruling
class, one that could very well imply a distribution of power that does
not correspond with the distribution of wealth (the degeneration of
monarchy into tyranny, or aristocracy into oligarchy).
It seems obvious that these ideological views from antiquity play a
significant role in the configuration of modern democracy. Thus, the
modern model of representative democracy was originally inspired by the
limited forms whose theoretical dimension was based on Aristotle and
whose example had much more to do with the Roman Republic than with
Athenian democracy. A partial exception that went beyond this concept,
the French Revolution, was inspired more by the Athenian ideal. But by
adopting in practice a representative form that contradicted that ideal,
it created favorable conditions for the counterrevolutionary reversal of
Thermidor. The French Revolution was therefore the practical
manifestation on a grand scale of the fundamental contradiction of
modern democracy, between the sovereignty of the citizenry and the
representative system. As is also true of capital, however, this
contradiction is inherent to and functional for the modern democratic
system, it is its source of vitality and, as long as one operates within
its categories, it cannot be transcended.
The political milestone of the French Revolution boils down to the fact
that it nonetheless presupposed the establishment of Athenian democracy
as an ideal model, as the most coherent formulation of the democratic
regime. With the development of capitalism, and the regulation of the
latter by means of an institutionally moderated class struggle,
democracy would be provided with a relatively stable and coherent
socio-economic and cultural basis, which assumed the representative form
was an unavoidable necessity; it was a simple matter to use the Athenian
example to legitimate and perfect the modern, Roman-style democracies.
Modern democracy thus became a form of government specially adapted to
the contemporary class struggle, while its own effective foundationâthe
freedom of property and exchangeâwas progressively eliminated by the
historical development of the concentration and centralization of
capital.
Now we shall take a closer look at the deeper meaning of the polemics of
antiquity, which requires that we first study the etymology of democracy
and ochlocracy.
The famous prefix âdemoâ of the word democracy [1] did not originally
mean, and did not figure in the practice of Greek democracy in this
sense, âthe peopleâ, as it is often interpreted today. The âdemosâ was a
small-scale territorial political form, similar to the commune. It is
true that it presupposed an assembly (the agora) in which the citizenry
directly participated; but the majority of the populationâwomen, slaves,
metics (foreign merchants and craftsmen), debtors of the city and those
whose rights had been revoked, and of course childrenâwere practically
excluded from the enjoyment of the rights of citizenship. This may seem
merely anecdotal if Greek society is viewed from the perspective of its
formal similarities with its modern counterpart so as to emphasize its
functional virtues.
From the historical materialist point of view, however, we must
acknowledge the fact that the economic foundation characteristic of
Hellenistic and Roman grandeur was composed of slavery and war. It was
this foundation that made Athenian democracy possible. This is why I do
not think it was by chance that direct citizensâ democracy grew in
tandem with the expansion of slavery. I think this can be understood as
a form of class collaboration, with imperialist expansion as an
additional source of wealth, which would obviously have the effect of
reducing the friction between the various layers or classes of Athenian
democracy. This also allows us to trace the outlines of another kind of
parallel with modern democracy.
From the formal point of view, what stands out is the fact that the
individual is only recognized politically as a citizen. Thus, his
participation is a vehicle for the ruling interests in the polis. By way
of the category of citizenship, the individual was subjected to an
institutional system and a constitution that were functions of a
particular form of the distribution of wealth. The individual as such
was only a political subject under these conditions, as is also the case
in todayâs democracies. Immigrants, for example, did not have the status
of citizens and were therefore not political subjects.
It is therefore clear that democracy, from its very beginnings, never
had anything to do with the everyday notion of âpopular sovereigntyâ:
âMost of those whose object it has been to instruct us methodically
concerning such matters, distinguish three kinds of constitutions, which
they call kingship, aristocracy, and democracy. Now we should, I think,
be quite justified in asking them to enlighten us as to whether they
represent these three to be the sole varieties or rather to be the best;
for in either case my opinion is that they are wrong. For it is evident
that we must regard as the best constitution a combination of all these
three varieties, since we have had proof of this not only theoretically
but by actual experience, Lycurgus having been the first to draw up a
constitution â that of Sparta â on this principle. Nor on the other hand
can we admit that these are the only three varieties; for we have
witnessed monarchical and tyrannical governments, which while they
differ very widely from kingship, yet bear a certain resemblance to it,
this being the reason why monarchs in general falsely assume and use, as
far as they can, the regal title. There have also been several
oligarchical constitutions which seem to bear some likeness to
aristocratic ones, though the divergence is, generally, as wide as
possible. The same holds good about democracies. The truth of what I say
is evident from the following considerations. It is by no means every
monarchy which we can call straight off a kingship, but only that which
is voluntarily accepted by the subjects and where they are governed
rather by an appeal to their reason than by fear and force. Nor again
can we style every oligarchy an aristocracy, but only that where the
government is in the hands of a selected body of the justest and wisest
men. Similarly that is no true democracy in which the whole crowd of
citizens is free to do whatever they wish or purpose, but when, in a
community where it is traditional and customary to reverence the gods,
to honour our parents, to respect our elders, and to obey the laws, the
will of the greater number prevails, this is to be called a democracy.
We should therefore assert that there are six kinds of governments, the
three above mentioned which are in everyoneâs mouth and the three which
are naturally allied to them, I mean monarchy, oligarchy, and mob-rule.
Now the first of these to come into being is monarchy, its growth being
natural and unaided; and next arises kingship derived from monarchy by
the aid of art and by the correction of defects. Monarchy first changes
into its vicious allied form, tyranny; and next, the abolishment of both
gives birth to aristocracy. Aristocracy by its very nature degenerates
into oligarchy; and when the commons inflamed by anger take vengeance on
this government for its unjust rule, democracy comes into being; and in
due course the licence and lawlessness of this form of government
produces mob-rule to complete the series. The truth of what I have just
said will be quite clear to anyone who pays due attention to such
beginnings, origins, and changes as are in each case natural. For he
alone who has seen how each form naturally arises and develops, will be
able to see when, how, and where the growth, perfection, change, and end
of each are likely to occur again.â (Polybius, The Histories, Book 6,
Chapter 2.) (See:
)
The word ochlocracy [2] is derived from âochlosâ, which means crowd or
mass of people. That is, it conveys the sense, as is evident in
Polybius, of the assumption of power by the masses as a whole, or of the
conversion of the disorganized masses into an effective political power.
This is why the intellectuals of the ruling class mystify the term
ochlocracy, defining it as the result of demagogic influence over the
masses and politically proscribing it, with the argument that the
pressure of the masses distorted true or ideal democracy, so that the
âgeneral willâ was destroyed by the particular wills imposed from below.
This association of the term ochlocracy with demagogy and manipulation
in the sense of populism can only constitute a particular historical
case, which in reality contradicts the very concept of ochlocracy. If
the masses are effectively sovereign then demagogy is not possible.
Thus, we see that the concept of ochlocracy in classical literature
presents two contradictions:
1) masses without the capacity for self-organization and, consequently,
without the capacity for self-constitution as a political subject,
cannot exercise power;
2) masses that are manipulated, that exercise their power on behalf of a
minority, do not themselves exercise power.
In the first case what we have is a projection of the ruling class. The
âdisorganized massesâ, the mob (or, in Rome, the plebs) in the
pejorative sense of the word as it is used by the ruling classes, is
âdisorganizedâ only with respect to the prevailing standards of
organization or to the existing legal norms. This assumes, then as well
as now, that spontaneous autonomous organization does not or cannot
exist; therefore, all action on the part of the âdisorganized massesâ is
dangerous in and of itself and is incapable of leading to anything good,
or it is even incapable of developing a clear awareness of its goals and
of consistent action to achieve said goals. [3]
âWhen a state has weathered many great perils and subsequently attains
to supremacy and uncontested sovereignty, it is evident that under the
influence of long established prosperity, life will become more
extravagant and the citizens more fierce in their rivalry regarding
office and other objects than they ought to be. As these defects go on
increasing, the beginning of the change for the worse will be due to
love of office and the disgrace entailed by obscurity, as well as to
extravagance and purse-proud display; and for this change the populace
will be responsible when on the one hand they think they have a
grievance against certain people who have shown themselves grasping, and
when, on the other hand, they are puffed up by the flattery of others
who aspire to office. For now, stirred to fury and swayed by passion in
all their counsels, they will no longer consent to obey or even to be
the equals of the ruling caste, but will demand the lionâs share for
themselves. When this happens, the state will change its name to the
finest sounding of all, freedom and democracy, but will change its
nature to the worst thing of all, mob-rule.â (Polybius, The Histories,
Book 6, Chapter 57.) (Ibid.)
In the second case, what we have is a veiled form of tyranny. For the
purposes of the democrats, however, who represent class society, the
tyranny of the âuneducatedâ majority and the tyranny of an educated
minority are the same, because both abolish their allocation of
political power. Thus, from the democratic point of view in the
strictest sense of the term, and if we want to speak accurately, all
mass revolutionary processes in their political dimension constitute a
form of ochlocracy. If this concept is so unknown or sounds so strange
today, this should not cause us to reject its use but to discover to
what extent we are ourselves still completely immersed in class culture
and particularly bourgeois class culture.
The Roman political regime also presents etymological parallels with the
Greek case. The plebs was distinguished from the people (populus), with
regard to the rights of citizenship as well. The term that can be
translated as rabble (vulgus) was also used, which meant common people,
to refer to the plebs. Plebs therefore has the same meaning as the Greek
ochlos: the masses in general, disorganized, lacking rights or outside
the system of the ruling hierarchy.
The context of the struggle between plebians and patricians in Rome was
also that of an expanding slave society. The plebians comprised a
heterogeneous class, since, although it was initially defined by its
difference from the patricians, it included both landowners (adsidui) as
well as the landless (proletarii), among those who were free men. Their
struggle for equal rights was therefore a mixture of interests and this
category cannot be defined as a social class determined by landownership
or propertylessness, but by antiquated political rights which entered
into conflict with the new mercantilist economic base. The patricians,
as the name indicates, were defined by their membership in large family
units under a pater familiae, who initially possessed enormous power.
These family units were based upon a common and inalienable patrimony of
land (terra patria) and slaves. They thus constituted a concentrated
economic and political power, which governed the whole society through
its representatives.
At first, plebians were exempt from military service and taxation. But
this changed with Roman territorial expansion, which obliged the State
to resort to the plebians for revenue and soldiers. The plebians began
to fight for their rights, thereby threatening the Republicâs defensive
capabilities. As a result, first civil equality was obtained, then
political equality. This led to the basic formulation of Roman law,
which was previously limited to the customary interpretations of the
patricians, and the official institution of the tribunate as a form of
egalitarian representation for the plebs. With the passage of time,
however, as the wealthy plebians participated in the military assembly,
this favored the formation of a patrician-plebian aristocracy
(nobilitas) set against the urban proletariat, because service in
political office was not remunerated. Political rule thus remained, even
during times of instability, in the hands of the wealthy class.
The Roman Republic never became a direct democracy, or even a
representative democracy, so that the problem of demagogy as the source
of a turn towards ochlocracy was not so great a threat there as it was
in Greece. But this had another aspect: if popular rebellion was held in
check by a more consistently autonomous power structure, at the same
time it was necessary to curb its autonomy from society, by way of
society itself. The reasons for this were expressed quite well by
Polybius in the passage quoted above, where he says:
âWhen a state has weathered many great perils and subsequently attains
to supremacy and uncontested sovereignty, it is evident that under the
influence of long established prosperity, life will become more
extravagant and the citizens more fierce in their rivalry regarding
office and other objects than they ought to be. As these defects go on
increasing, the beginning of the change for the worse....â (Polybius,
The Histories, Book 6, Chapter 57.)
But before we continue to examine the problem of political forms, we
must pause for another etymological investigation.
According to Mariano Grondona [4] there are two concepts of power among
the Greeks. The first is arkhein, which means to âinitiateâ and to
âdispatchââwhence are derived arkhĂ© (origin) and arkhos (chief). Thus,
the original power is that of the chief, which leads Grondona to posit a
despotic genesis of power. On the other hand, the actual word power is
derived from the Indo-European poti (chief), whence the Greek posis
(husband) and despotes (owner) are derived. According to Grondona, it
was from this original meaning that the meaning of the word power was
extended to signify âthe generic capacity for doing somethingâ.
This etymological origin in arkhein thus assumes archaic forms of
society, where power is transmitted from chief to chief in obedience to
an ancestral custom or tradition. This characteristic, and not its
alleged character as âdespotic commandâ as Grondona argues, is in my
opinion what explains the fact that concepts like âmonarchyâ (the power
of one) or âoligarchyâ (the power of a few) have retained the root word
arkhos (chief), while in other concepts the latter was replaced by
kratos, which means a power that is voluntarily establishedâwhich is
also translated as âgovernmentâ.
We thus arrive at the other part of the word democracy. The latter
should therefore be translated, literally, as âgovernment by the demosâ
or more generally âgovernment by the citizenryâ. But the most important
thing is that, as we have seen, the original meaning of democracy refers
to a type of political system in which power is separated from its
traditional bonds to custom, religion, etc. The concept of democracy
therefore had nothing to do with that of âsovereigntyââa power that is
âabove allâ the others.
The concept of sovereignty as such emerges after the classical era.
According to Georg Jellinek, it first arose during the Middle Ages, as a
result of the struggle between the Church, the Imperial power and the
great lords and municipal guilds:
âThe Church, which wanted to place the State in its service; the Roman
empire which did not want to concede to the various States any more
importance than that of provinces; and the powerful nobles and municipal
guilds, which felt that they were powers that were independent of the
State and opposed to it.â (The General Theory of the State, 1900.)
The idea of sovereignty thus arose in order to express âthe opposition
of State power to the other powersâ and attained maturity with the
process of the centralization of political power that led us to the
modern era. [5] It was not by chance that this process was driven
forward by the primitive accumulation of capital, which was so carefully
examined by Marx. This is why the bourgeois idea of sovereignty refers
to the State, postulating the citizenry as sovereign only through the
State. The âpeopleâ is sovereign only insofar as it constitutes the
State and by means of the latter, even though, in theory, the former is
the source of political power and, on the other hand, the established
power is supposed to be its emanation or the alienation of the immanent
power of the âpeopleâ (Rousseau). Bourgeois political theories thus came
to justify the subordination of centralized state power, formed under
the old regime, to the new rising class, the bourgeoisie, which also
needed the support of the popular masses to rise to power (and therefore
needed the support of democracy). Sovereignty as the effective power of
the people is a different concept, which is clearly connected with the
struggles directed against bourgeois state power. As we have seen,
however, the use of the concept of sovereignty to refer to the power of
the masses in general is inadequate, since it is still inscribed within
the limits of democracy.
We shall now continue with our etymological investigation.
The development towards democracy, in the Athenian case, began according
to Grondona with the emergence of a distinction between natural laws and
the laws of the city (nomos). This means that power was no longer only
commanded, but also legislated. This assumes the government is based on
norms that can be changed at will and, at the same time, are inscribed
in a definite framework: the politeia. The possibility thus arises that
the subject of this political will can also be voluntarily determined.
This created the context appropriate for the formation of the deme or
demos, those constituencies where individuals resided, which thus became
polites (political).
In another vein, I cannot agree with Grondona when he interprets the
evolution of the notion of âpowerâ so that it means âthe generic
capacity for doing somethingâ.
From what we discussed above it follows that traditional power or
arkhos, and institutional power or kratos, have quite specific
denotations. As for poti, the source of the Latin word potere, it
connotes the sense of possession which is accentuated in the Greek posis
and, at the same time, also in the sense of command in despotes, which
is similar to the Greek kratos. But all these terms equally share the
reference to social or collective forms of power, so that they do not
just define power as an individual generic capacity. This underlying
duality can be explained by the development of the alienation of social
power from individual power, between the political organization of
society and the capacity of the individual for action, which is
manifested by way of group struggles and yields to distinct forms of
government.
We can understand this problem better through a consideration of the
case of Rome.
The word designating the capacity of the individual for action in Latin
was virtus and in Greek andreiaâwhose meaning was identical. [6] Both
derived from an Indo-European root word (vir/aner) that means man (the
masculine) and which was also the source for the word virile. [7] There
is, however, a similar Indo-European root word, vis, which means force.
Which is why it can be said that in antiquity these root words vir and
vis were indistinguishable. Vis means vital force, which includes
violence. Thus, both root words appear to be complementary and allow us
to arrive at a basic shared meaning: man defined by his immanent force,
which is externalized by his vital activity in society. This basic
shared meaning is also shown by its evolution into virtus, vita (life)
or vitium (defect or vice).
Virtus, for its part, is composed of the suffix -tut, which means
condition or quality. But virtus does not refer to an external condition
or quality, but to an internal one. In this respect one can clearly
discern its relation to life or vital force. But this is even more
explicit in its primary Latin meaning, worth or courage.
What is of interest here is that the term virtus underwent a complex
evolution until it came to possess the full meaning of the word virtue.
By this I mean to say that this evolution had to result from complex
socio-historical transformations (among which, as late as the modern
era, we must include the general tendency towards the abstraction of the
human and the latterâs subordination to technics, which is quite visible
in the termâs current state of disuse, or in its use as an
adjectiveââvirtuosoââto refer to particular technical abilities).
In Roman society, where the basic values were masculinity, militarism
and morality, the concept of virtus was practically indispensable in
judging individual behavior. Thus, Lucilius said that: âVirtus ... is to
be able to pay in full a true price for things in which we participate,
and in which we live ... it is to know what is right, what is useful,
and what is honorable for a man, what is good and likewise, what is bad,
what is useless, shameful ... to put the interest of fatherland first,
of parents next, and third and last, our own.â (Lucilius, Satires. See:
Myles Anthony McDonnell, Roman Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic,
Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, pp. 124â125.) Unlike the
Greeks, the Romans had a pragmatic mentality, which implicitly
presupposed an emphasis on virtus as a practical quality, distinct from
mere intellectual knowledge, whose separation from practice they
considered to be one of the defects of the Greeks. Thus the idea of the
virtutes came to include all the âgood qualitiesâ.
Virtus was associated with a worldly or divine reward, especially with
military glory, which was also understood as something hereditary, for
which reason one had to compete in order to equal or surpass the virtus
of oneâs predecessors. This also posed the problem, however, of
competition for worldly glory in the form of dignitasâpolitical power
and wealth. Particular interests were opposed to general interests,
which is why Cicero proclaimed that politics should be understood as a
way of life and conduct. At the same time, socio-historical conditions
caused virtus to be an ideal that was initially linked to nobilitas. But
with the expansion of the Republic, the ostentatious wealth of that
upper class produced a generalized deviation of the conceptâs meaning,
which was detached from the traditions of the forefathers in order to
establish the social ethos as its true axis. With this development the
individualâs capabilities and conduct were emphasized as the roots of
virtus. In this way, these two factors, political and economic
respectively, determined the promotion of virtus to an ethical quality
which, as an individual responsibility, was simultaneously objectively
social and allowed one to refer individual actions to the collective
interest. We thus arrive at a definition of the Roman ideal of the
social individual.
As a preliminary conclusion to our etymological and historical study, I
believe that the generalization of the concept of power as the âgeneric
capacity to do somethingâ can be explained by a phenomenon of alienating
transposition, in which one term becomes assimilated to its opposite.
But since nothing, alienation included, is absolute, the concept of
virtue has not been completely assimilated to that of power.
Power always retains the meaning of an instrumental capacity, while
virtue retains the meaning of a vital or immanent capacity. âTo live
wellâ is virtuous. âTo do something wellâ refers us to a mode of
technical activity, to the manipulation of objects. Even when we say, âI
can moveâ, we are unconsciously referring to our bodies as objects, upon
which we can exercise our will power, which is in this instance
conceived as an autonomized force of the body or imagined as external to
its organic function.
The separation between potere and virtus, considering the alienation of
the latter in the former, must therefore be considered as the symbolic
expression of a particular socio-historical reality, not as an
accidental contrast or superimposition. Linguistic differences are
always cognitive representations of practical differences, and the
preservation of terms whose meaning has been assimilated by without
being completely identified with other terms (thus becoming partial
synonyms) presupposes that said practical differentiations have an
enduring and antagonistic socio-historical basis.
What I said above is not meant to bypass the problem of everyday usage,
which also has a practical basis in todayâs society. In my view the key
is to reclaim the concept of virtue and reinvest it with its full
meaning, in order to provide a foundation and complement for power as
the instrumental capacity for action.
When it opposes established power, virtue is the self-power of the
individual in the face of the autonomized power of institutions. Thus,
if in the concept of ochlocracy we discover the arkhé (the beginning or
original source) of collective self-power, in the concept of virtus we
discover the arkhé of individual self-power. The complementary and
harmonious development of ochlocracy and virtus would only be possible
if there were to be no distinction between community power and
government power, or between everyday life and political life. It would
mean, in short, the achievement of anarchy, for which we are now capable
of providing a more profound definition: the suppression of all forms of
autonomized power that opposes individuals, whether of law or tradition,
and their replacement with a new form of power that, as the term itself
says, âlacks a beginningâ or âlacks commandâ, because its source is
timeless and immanent to human beings. This power is the direct
expression of their humanity via cooperation. But anarchy as a political
regime requires a humanity that has developed the quality of
self-government: its social virtue. This characteristic only started to
become a concrete possibility for humanity thanks to the development of
psychological and social self-consciousness on the one hand, and the
development of human cooperation towards increasingly complex forms, on
the other.
We may also note the contrast between power and virtue on the
psychological plane.
Power is the instrumental use of vital force, in order to set in motion
or to direct. It constitutes the essential quality of ego psychology, as
the ego is the autonomized self-concept as opposed to the complete
psycho-physical being. The activity of the ego presupposes an
instrumental relation to psychical energies and drives, whose
objectification it determines by means of the fixation of goalsâwhich
requires the previous abstraction of functional data from the sensory
world, on the basis of which it builds representations with which the
beingâs needs are identified, and finally on this basis it establishes
relations of hierarchy or priority internally among the drives and
externally among the forms of action, some of which remain fixed as
habits of behavior or thought, and some of which are more ephemeral. In
this way, the ego relates to reality as a whole only in the form of an
instrumental object, and thus the meaning of power (appropriation,
possession, control) is an essential aspect of all of the egoâs
behavior, including its intellectual behavior. [8]
Virtue, meanwhile, is the use of vital force in order to do something
that corresponds to our nature, which means self-realizationâthe
fullness, the good and the beautiful for humans. It therefore
presupposes a psychological and psychosomatic integration in general,
and an overcoming of the egoâs autonomization in particular. To the
extent that this is achieved, the interior state ceases to shift between
continuous conflicts and the self-organizational capacity immanent to
the psyche, it becomes conscious, it allows a self-determination without
all the mechanical mediations that characterize the ego, but without
leading to a blind, spontaneous mode of activity.
As I have said, however, the historical preconditions for anarchy are
not yet fully developed. They must nonetheless be fully developed on the
basis of, and in a radical and integral break with, life today in its
entirety. This is why the above reflections do not imply that an
immediate supersession of democracy is possible, which leads us to the
problem of transitional political forms.
Despite all the differences between democracy and ochlocracy as systems
of political organization, ochlocracy may nonetheless still be
understood as a form of direct democracy, although it is actually more
than that. It is a âdemocracyâ with regard to its internal functioning,
but not with regard to its constitution:
Focusing on the concept of ochlocracy is of particular interest today
because, in the search for new concepts to describe political forms,
such terms as âholocracyâ, âplurarchyâ, and âdemarchyâ have arisen ...
Holocracy is a term used to describe a world government as a solution
for all the problems afflicting todayâs society. It is not necessary to
point out that, with regard to its real effects, holocracy would
essentially change nothing in social relations, and by itself is not a
necessary factor for bringing about such change. Plurarchy is defined as
a system in which decision-making is not binary (yes/no); those who
support one side or another may act on their own account without
external sanction and the common will is established only by consensus.
The first aspect does not necessarily conflict with either democracy or
ochlocracy. But the second aspect, in reality, poses a risk, because it
assumes that the will of the various factions cannot be limited by the
will of all, which is a projection of bourgeois individualism. The
factions can only exist as formations of the whole, although the latter
does not present itself in that way in the stage of the constituent
emergence of movements or communities, when it divides from the
dispersion. Even so, these factions are emanations of the social whole
and can only emerge simultaneously thanks the relative homogeneity of
the whole. Demarchy is an intermediate concept between democracy and
ochlocracy. It means that the organized people is the basis of political
power, that the people is the âbeginningâ of that power, but in this
sense it is only another form of direct democracy and preserves the
formal characteristics of democracy.
By way of conclusion, we may say that democracy exists wherever it is
not the community which directly self-organizes it, but where a formal
structure exists which mediates the effective constitution of the social
community as political community and conditions it. This occurs in all
permanent organizations, which presuppose a structure, rules, program,
habits, etc. At the same time, these organizations, within capitalism,
presuppose the general separation between political power and everyday
life, units of life and organizational units of powerâone cannot leap
over the global structure of capitalist society. Participation in them
and therefore the power of the individuals who are its members, is
delimited by adherence to these patterns and divisions. The external
individuals have no direct power over these stable organizations.
For these three reasons, permanent proletarian organizations within
capitalism are always democratic in form, in the strict sense that we
have outlined above. The ochlocracy of the proletariat can only arise as
the political expression of the revolutionary process in such a way that
it will be the appropriate name for the unlimited democracy that the
radical revolutionaries want as the form of the revolutionary power of
the masses, and whose structure in the past was exemplified by the model
of the soviet or council system. Acracy would be one more step forward,
since it presupposes the complete disappearance of political power with
the suppression of the remnants of inequality produced by class society,
together with their corresponding forms of subjectivity.
Recent discussions concerning political forms have shifted towards more
concrete forms.
For example, the concept of âdistributive networksâ has been proposed in
opposition to the typical concept of networks as decentralized entities,
but in which in practice some nodes are dominant or central. All
decentralization is always relative and, therefore, the key question is
never formal decentralization, but effective decentralization. Real
decentralization of power must mean that power is âdistributedâ, in our
case equally, among the nodes (which in the cyberpunk movement are the
individuals themselves; the blogger movement on the internet, for
example).
Direct democracy always implies formal decentralization, of course, but
it usually does not address the problem of effective decentralization.
In this context what we mean by formal decentralization is the
decentralization of decision-making. The effective participation of
individuals in the preparation, development and implementation of the
political will remains on a secondary plane, as a derivative rather than
an organic element. There is no effective connection between decision
and implementation, because the decision-making body is not identical
with the executive body. The individual who has the right to participate
in decision-making does not thereby also acquire the duty to implement
the decisions. In this way, in a few words, it is taken for granted that
direct democracy in the decision-making process is equivalent to the
establishment of a regime of freedom. The content is assimilated to the
form.
The political form we need must start from a totally different approach.
What in the political form does not have to be organic, what has to be
instrumental, is not effective participation, considered in its quantity
and quality (space) as well as in continuity and endurance (time). The
instrumental [9] must be the purely political moment, deliberation and
decision-making, with its modalities. One thing is that this moment has
to adopt a form that corresponds to the kind of participation that is
sought. This is obvious: means and ends have to be coordinated. But it
is entirely another matter to think that the form of decision-making can
produce, in itself, a corresponding type of participation. It is a
purely practical matter: most collective activity does not consist in
decision-making, but in preparing for decision-making or implementing
the decisions, which is why the dynamic of execution is what determines
the dynamic of collective life.
In this sense, the very concept of democracy is insufficient, however it
is qualified. Instead, the concept of ochlocracy fills the breach
completely. Because it refers to the fact that the political subject is
not a formal structure (demos) or a mass of individuals connected to
that structure: it is the collectivity as such, for itself. That is,
ochlocracy implies a type of participation that is not determinedâor, is
neither driven by nor limitedâby a formal structure or by an individual
connection with such a structure, but by subjectivity itself and the
form of activity that characterizes the masses. In other words, it is a
mass of people that consciously transforms its individual self-powers
into a social power, which permanently acts as both constituent and
institutional power at the same time. Without this vital premise,
ochlocracy is impossible, but so is what is commonly called direct
workers democracy, since then the latter would be vacated of the
participation or the content that it needs to be a living form (or else
that participation or content will simply not last). Only the privilege
of the decision-making and deliberative moments, by granting them
permanent forms (assemblies, etc.), allows the preservation of the
illusion that direct democracy can possess some value in itself, or that
it can exist at the margins of the effective and concrete participation
of individuals.
We now enter the more functional concrete plane. That the decisions are
made following procedures that are crafted to conform to a compensated
collective willâor put another way, procedures designed to avoid
attacking or scorning the freedom of minorities, but which do not
elevate them above the majorities, eitherâis not the most important
issue. What matters is that decisions are made through the conscious
participation of all the individuals involved in their preparation and
implementation. On this plane, democracy only has to exist as a
procedural form, not as a rigid institutional system. The error of the
traditional anarchist view is its fixation above all on the form of the
procedure and its losing sight of what we discussed above: the problem
of effective participation.
The procedural problem is not what is most important: whether decisions
are made by consensus or by majority vote, for example. What is
important is whether the individual who participates in the
decision-making process must acquire, together with this right, the duty
of participating in the preparation and implementation of these
decisions, in accordance with the motto of the statutes of the first
IWA: âno rights without duties, no duties without rights.â
In practice, the subordination of majorities to consensus with
minorities is no less authoritarian than majority decision. The
âvoluntaryâ submission to consensus does not abolish authoritarianism,
but internalizes it. In this way a reification of the collective power
is created in the form of a dominant abstract entityâthe assembly as
political community. Each individual or group is obliged to submit to
this institution if it wants to continue to participate in the real
community. As a result, they do not possess real autonomy, but an
autonomy that is alienated and crystallized as the property of the
assembly as a formal structure.
It is the presence of rigidities of this kind that has made democracy,
even direct democracy, a political system. Therefore, we must reduce
them as much as possible, as insurrectionalist anarchism has correctly
advocatedâwhich is a step in the right direction, although I think that
its solutions are inadequate.
The solution to the problem of bureaucracy is not to turn the committees
into structures subordinated to the assemblies. The solution is to
create, following the approach of Marx and Engels, conditions where the
committees cannot become autonomous, [10] for the purposes of which the
formal convoking of assemblies is insufficientâeven if they are convened
on their own impulse.
Similarly, the solution to the problem of authoritarianism is not to
prevent one person from imposing his will upon another. The solution is
to bring about conditions where anyone can fight effectively against the
authority that he or she rejects. Since the problem of authoritarianism
is rooted in the direct relations between individuals, it cannot be
overcome by way of âanti-authoritarianâ rules, which do not go to the
root, but only ameliorate the problem. And as I have explained above, by
themselves formal measures favor a mystifying democratic formalism,
which becomes an obstacle to the understanding of the problem of the
development of individual autonomy and its indispensability for the full
development of collective autonomy.
Democracy reduced to a procedural form, in order to develop a permanent
debate and total participation of individuals, besides being for the
purpose of deciding their concrete actions, overcomes the formalist
rigidity without falling into its oppositeâan informalist rigidityâand
concentrates its attention on the most important thing: the development
of free and equal cooperation and its extension. This means that
democracy is no longer stable as such, that it is in the process of
transition towards ochlocracy. Perhaps the concept of âdemarchyâ could
be applicable to describe this transitional form, in which democratic
forms persist in the matter of procedure, but have become subordinated
as an instrumental element to the direct will of the self-aware and
self-motivated individualsââit beginsâ (arkhĂ©) in them and returns to
themâwhich is the basis of ochlocracy.
The ruling class definition of ochlocracy attributes to this term a
character that is perverse in itself, while it considers democracy and
other forms of government as âpureâ. This has resulted in the fact that
even today the concept is utilized to criticize, for example, the
populist governments in Latin America, especially when they use mass
mobilization to their advantage. In some cases the concept is explicitly
used, but for the most part the old refrain of demagogy is repeated,
which has come to be used as a synonym.
The association between demagogyâand more generally the absence of
self-aware popular actionâand political programs that are supposedly
âsocialistâ-oriented is therefore reinforced: an obviously right wing
approach, which is nothing but the obverse of the leftist populism to
which it is opposed.
The argumentâs plausibility is based principally on the image of
populist leaders or parties, which, whether or not they use the explicit
lie to manipulate the masses, provide plenty of examples of how they
accentuate the discretional use of information in order to bring about a
reaction on the part of the masses that is favorable for their interests
or programs. This is an inherent feature of all populist bourgeois
politicsâor all bourgeois politics that includes the active search for
mass supportâand does not especially depend on which party or leaders
hold State power. In any case, their political position can either
enhance or reduce their propensity to demagogy and their influence over
the masses.
It so happens that, generally, in capitalist society to speak the truth
is not politically profitable. This is not necessarily because there are
interests that must be concealed. It is rather because the masses
themselves do not want to know the truth. They only endure and accept
their alienating existence by clinging to expectations associated with
capitalist progress, and their very existence causes them to feel
powerless before the general trend of historical development, incapable
of establishing another social system. This is why they are predisposed
to pay more attention to the discourse that they want to hear than to
the one that appeals to and seeks to provide a true explanation of the
facts. They prefer the discourse that nourishes their illusions to the
one that refutes them.
Given this vicious circle, the very existence of the masses is
encapsulated in a lie. And it is this lie itself that makes their
existence endurable. All the social lies in the era of capitalism are
based on the axiom that the social development of commerce, guided
correctly, will resolve todayâs sufferings and limitations, or at least
gradually reduce them. It cannot be denied that this axiom has a very
precise subjective foundation, which is the source of the powerful
resistance of the masses to all revolutionary discourse or action. It is
a form of subjectivity that projects its needs into the appropriation of
objects; which is ready to convert its being, its life, into a means for
having and therefore it is completely functional for the development of
commodity production. This is true even when, to achieve this goal, it
finds itself in opposition to the bourgeoisie. In fact, the masses only
rebel against capitalism because the latter has disappointed this kind
of expectation to what they thought was their due, not because they have
overcome their spiritual self-alienation. In other words, it represents
the interests of variable capital rather than the interests of the
liberation of humanity. If in order to achieve this kind of goal the
proletariat constitutes itself as a class, and acts as a class, it
nonetheless only attains this objective on the formal level; it does not
effectively become a class-for-itself in the Marxian sense, but in fact
remains a class-for-capital. And then the class rebellions or struggles
are transformed into a spur for the further development or improvement
of capitalism.
Typical forms of social behavior continue to prevail, which can be
simply differentiated by degrees of passivity/activity with relation to
capitalist development: some sit back and wait, others put their
shoulders to the wheel. But all share the same expectations, they
project the same goals into their praxis, which brings some meaning into
their miserable lives. More precisely, the belief inherent to the
dominant form of subjectivity, according to which the complex psychic
dynamic that characterizes human life can be gradually expanded and
realized in the future, so that capitalism provides a form of
realization for all impulses.
But this conformist expectation is not fulfilled. Neither by the
development of consumer society, which clashes with the limits of
capital, nor by access to a higher level and greater diversity of this
consumption. Thus, by definition, the psychic or vital human dynamic can
only be satisfactorily realized by way of an unlimited self-activity,
through the free unfolding of all its needs and capacities. And this is
impossible in todayâs society not only because of the limits of
capitalist production, but because all material production is
economically, technologically and ecologically finite. If this were not
enough, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the growth of the level
of consumption does not in and of itself contribute to either happiness
or the development of the human faculties. This phenomenon has very deep
roots. Existence is activity. Human nature is essentially self-directed
activity and thus it is only in self-directed activity that one can find
self-realization. Possessing, having, is a form of retention or
reduction of self-directed activity as such, besides restricting or
subordinating self-directed activity in general to this particular
modality. This is why it can never produce a happy life or favor the
development of the human faculties. To the contrary, it produces a
feeling of emptiness and impotence, because possession is an alienated
form, instead of being just another function, of self-directed activity
as such. One lives to possess, instead of possessing in order to live,
and existence is sacrificed to possession. In this way, material
production instead of serving to enrich and amplify self-directed
activity, life, impoverishes it in alienated consumption as much as in
alienated labor. And one cannot just stop doing this, because that form
of labor is its effective basis and, in itself, already contains the
principle of the subordination of life to possession: in the general
form of the subordination of living labor to accumulated labor, and in
the particular form of the transformation of the life of the worker into
a mere means to earn a wage.
On this psycho-social basis, capitalism has come to completely subsume
subjectivity as desire and as creation, perfecting the cycle of capital.
This achievement completes the subjection of the entire dynamic of
society, both in the material and the spiritual senses, as a function of
the cycle of capital. Proletarians can no longer live except as elements
of this all-embracing process of capital, which includes production,
circulation and consumption and reconfigures the fabric of everyday
social relations as a functional whole to serve its needs.
But let us now return to the problem of populism.
It is evident that, upon the above-described social foundation, all
populism almost inevitably acquires a certain flavor of the political
strongman. This may be more pronounced in some cases than in others. If
we consider this from the point of view of classical antiquity, this
kind of authoritarian politics based on populist demagogy is, from the
perspective of the forms of government or political systems, an activity
characteristic of tyranny. [11] In these cases popular support, however
active it may be, is instrumental and alienated. It is therefore not a
question here of a democracy that has degenerated, but of a democracy
that has been violated in such a manner that it has allowed an
illegitimate ruling class to obtain power. What is presented to a sector
of the ruling class as a degeneration of democracy, is in reality merely
a transformation from oligarchy to tyranny.
This shows how, in general, bourgeois politics is profoundly demagogic
when it refers to history to back up its arguments. The concept of
democracy itself is used demagogically: good democracy is always
formally constituted in accordance with the class-based structure of
society and its development; the democracy that the âmobâ believes in is
always a perverted democracy. When examples arise showing how this is
not necessarily true, where the masses demonstrate a revolutionary
self-organizational capacity and are not just conservative, then resort
is had to the false identity <popular rule=mob rule>, and to the
following syllogism: given A (popular rule is mob rule), and B (mob rule
is perverse, irrational, dominated by falsehoods, etc.), then C (popular
rule is perverseâand its origin lies in the power of the people, as is
implicit in A). This fulfills a dual function: on the one hand, as an
argument of the bourgeois factions against popular rule, but above all
as a mystifying argument regarding this capacity of the masses. In the
case of Venezuela this can be clearly seen. The faction of the
bourgeoisie opposed to Chavism knows perfectly well that the latterâs
power depends more on the self-directed activity of the proletarian
masses, as limited as this may be, than on the bourgeois sectors that
support Chavez.
The syllogism referred to above is, however, tremendously âpopularâ,
precisely in the pejorative sense that the classical thinkers conferred
upon the ârabbleâ, the âplebsâ or the âmobâ as political subjects. The
conclusion of the syllogism, âCâ, has become a more or less unconscious
premise of all variety of prisoners of the democratic-liberal mentality,
including many anarchists who criticize these governments for being
authoritarian and do not go beyond this. The most important result is
that the populist governments are questioned in terms of bourgeois
politics, as agents contrary to individual freedom, to legitimate
interests, etc. Even when they engage in socialist demagogy, they are
condemned for their incoherence, rather than being denounced for their
capitalist character from the very beginning.
It is not too hard to see that the real question concerns the interests
to which populist politics respond, and which normally comprise their
consistent contents, despite variations in the concrete governmental
policies. This aspect does not interest, of course, bourgeois political
forces. Because it brings to the forefront concrete class interests and,
where there is a combination of distinct class interests, or even
contradictory ones, it logically leads us to evaluate their respective
influences on the determination of government policies.
On the other hand, these same bourgeois forces are interested in merging
the heterogeneous mass mobilization with the autonomous actions of the
masses. For if one takes âpopular powerâ for granted, then the latter is
only confirmed to the extent that it effectively directs social
development and determines concrete governmental policies, which is
almost never the case. The right wing forces are very careful to bring
this contradiction of populism to the attention of the masses in these
terms. But it is otherwise with regard to the left wing of capital, in
so far as it participates in the development of populism (for example,
many Leninist parties). In this case they cannot attack the
mystification of the power of the masses without also attacking their
own positions, and this is why any support for populism ultimately leads
to capitulation, first programmatically and then theoretically.
The case of Bolshevism is paradigmatic in this regard. It very well
illustrates how populist logic is capable of integrating the opposition
and thus establishing a mystified history of the revolutionary actions
of the masses. On the assumption that the government supported by the
people is equivalent to the real political hegemony of the people, all
opposition to this government is illegitimate. On the assumption that
this government represents progress, all opposition is also reactionary.
On the other hand, the actions of the masses who support this government
are legitimate and progressive, while the actions of those who rebel
against it are the fruit of manipulations. Thus, even today a large part
of the âMarxistâ left believes in the mystified history that the
epigones of Leninism have propagated for ninety years, especially in its
âcriticalâ anti-Stalinist version. They do not acknowledge the
counterrevolutionary character of Bolshevism with respect to proletarian
actions since its origins, nor do they admit the mystification of the
Bolshevik government as an expression of the proletariat, or its
politics and ideology as a mystification of Marxian thought. And, as I
pointed out above, there are those among this leftist majority who, on
the basis of anarchism, have reduced the problem of Bolshevism to the
problem of authoritarianismâunderstood as a problem of subjectivity, of
a perversion for and through powerâand have consistently considered the
origins of the Bolshevik government to be legitimate, since the latter
was endorsed by the masses during the first few years of the
revolutionâorigins that were perverted by the application of
authoritarian ideas, of course. [12]
Unqualified antiauthoritarianism is always based on a fetishism of
formal organization, and for this reason shares with populism an
abstract view of the activity of the masses. For both, a popular or
proletarian action is an action carried out by the masses of the people
or of the proletariat. Thus, if this action should result in some form
of despotism, this is attributed to the will (conscious or manipulated)
of these same masses. For some, this will is directly attributed to the
authoritarian mentality of the masses. For others, it is attributed to
the influence of the authoritarian mentality of their leaders. From the
historical-materialist point of view, however, a popular or proletarian
action is one that, besides being carried out by the corresponding
subject, tends to lead to the type of social interests that the material
organization of society and the overall historical conditions determine
for these subjects. In other words, âaction by the proletariansâ (form)
and âaction with a proletarian characterâ (content) are not the same nor
do they necessarily imply one another. [13] At the cutting edge of the
concrete, the action of the proletarians is only consistent with its
socio-historical determinations insofar as it leads to a movement of
self-liberation, of disalienation. But where it expresses an acceptance
of their existence in self-alienation and only attempts to formally
modify it, by the restriction of its struggle, for example, to raising
wages or supporting social welfare policies, the proletariat is only
acting as a class-for-capital.
[1]
(Greece). (Spanish-language Wikipedia reference. The corresponding
English language Wikipedia entryâs section on etymology does not refer
to the original territorial meaning of the term âDemosâ, as of July
2011.)
[2]
[3] Polybius himself, however, left some indications of another kind of
mob: âThe mob, enraged by this action, was no longer content to complain
in private and in secret, but some went abroad by night and posted
placards in the public places, while others congregated in small groups
during the day and publicly vented their hatred for the chiefs.â
[4] Mariano Grondona, Historia de la democracia, September 2000. See:
[5] See:
/
[6] Catalina Balmaceda, Virtus romana en el siglo I a.C., 2007. From
this point forward I will take use this work as a source for information
regarding the development of the concept of virtus, although I will
focus on different aspects of this development. (For an English-language
treatment of the same topic, see: Myles Anthony McDonnell, Roman
Manliness: Virtus and the Roman Republic, Cambridge University Press,
New York, 2006 (Translatorâs note).)
[7] But not the word âvarĂłnâ [a Spanish word that means âmaleâ], which
appears to have resulted from a variant spelling of the word âbarĂłnâ [in
English, âbaronâ], probably related to the Germanic baro (a man who is
fit for warfare, a warrior) and the Scandinavian boriask (to fight). It
was introduced during the 13^(th) century so it has nothing to do with
vir. [Bracketed interpolations by translator.]
[8] From this point of view, Marxâs thesis that it is not understanding
the world that is most important, but changing it (Theses on Feuerbach,
1845), also has a psychological application. If we adhere to our ideas
of the world, and the world is becoming, our intellectual attitude will
inevitably come into conflict with the goal of changing the world. The
correct attitude is therefore that of disinterested attention in order
to grasp concrete reality, and then the subordination of our
intellectual activity to the general practical goalâwithout succumbing
to a psychic fixation on particular interpretations of this goal, since
our intellect is also subject to becoming. It is a matter of living in a
state of creative flow, instead of one characterized by ideological
security.
[9] Please note that here I am speaking of political forms. From the
point of view of effective praxis, of concrete human activity,
decision-making is not instrumental, but is organically bound to that
activity, which is a dynamic unity of being and consciousness. What we
are discussing here are the formal guidelines that define the
institutional dynamic and its effects. Within the framework of social
activity, the atomization of decision-making with a view to practical
realization is only possible by way of a division of labor.
[10] âThe reality which communism creates is precisely the true basis
for rendering it impossible that anything should exist independently of
individuals, insofar as reality is nevertheless only a product of the
preceding intercourse of individuals.â (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
The German Ideology, Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York, 1998, p. 90.)
[11] â... a tyrant is chosen from the people to be their protector
against the notables, and in order to prevent them from being injured.
History shows that almost all tyrants have been demagogues who gained
the favor of the people by their accusation of the notables.â
(Aristotle, Politics, Book 5, Part 10.) See:
[12] Others have insisted that the Bolshevik regime was established by
means of a coup dâĂ©tat, rather than as a direct result of mass action or
the development of the soviet system. This does not, however, obviate
the fact that the Bolshevik regime could count on the broad support of
the proletariat during the first few years of its existence.
[13] I shall not venture here to comment upon the ambiguity and
contradictory nature of the category, âthe peopleâ, which is itself one
of the ideological mainstays of populism.