Liberal
Democracy is a term that is wrought with many connotations to the credit of the
Bourgeois economists and philosophers who coined the nomenclature in the first
place. Liberalism itself is a terminology that must be understood as a concept of
Political Economy and considering its Historical concept.
Liberalism
is an economic concept and not a social one. Liberalism must be misunderstood
as “being a Liberal about issues” or “progressiveness.” Liberalism has distinct
phases in its development. The earliest form is Classical Liberalism of the
Adam Smith and Ricardo epoch. Subsequent economic periods including Keynesian
forms gave rise to the Liberalism forms of the post-WW2 years until the advent
of the Chicago and Vienna school of thought that brought forth the more obscene
forms of Liberalism in what we call today as Neoliberalism. In essence,
Liberalism is synonymous with Capitalism and its evolution in Economics.
Capitalism
as an economic paradigm was a concept that was invented in Europe, the seat of
the industrial revolution, after the slow demise of Feudalism. It was a
dialectical shift in economics where Labour became free from its bonds from the
ruling elite Feudal lords into selling labour in the market instead. This was
an important transition as the ability of the worker to control his labour power
ensured that Capitalists and not the Aristocracy now wielded economic power.
The Aristocracy then faced the inevitable decline in economic supremacy and
eventually extinction. This was not the only advantage of Capitalism,
Capitalism changed the method of production from the fields to the factory.
This was crucial as it ushered in mass urbanisation and the industrial
revolution. With the new religion of Capitalism becoming profit, Technology was
embraced to further increase profitability, Science was the new religion that ended
the vice like grip of the church upon the state. Capitalism in its Classical
form however, did all this without actually benefiting the workers and labour.
Marx’s works and critique of Capitalism illustrate this vividly. Capitalism
further faced problems when it had exhausted its home country’s ability to
increase production and consumption. Hence, countries embarked upon the
Colonial adventures to new markets for labour and resources, which were for all
useful purposes – slave labour.
The advent
of Marx, however, had introduced the seeds of discord in European society and
WW1 brought about the rumblings of Revolutionary movements to the fore once
again in Europe but this time the Revolutions were to bring the masses of the
Working Class to the seat of power. This was successfully done in Russia in
1917. WW2 brought about the worst case study in the decay of Capitalism to
light with the Nazi regime in Germany. Fascism was the reaction to the collapse
in Capitalism in Europe that found its outlet in the Right Wing, reactionary
expression. It is to be noted that Fascists used the failings of the Liberal,
centrist govt of the Weimar Republic in Germany to come to power as a populist
movement that ultimately created the template for Neoliberal thought of the
Corporate-Militarised state.
The end of
Nazism and Fascism in Europe and especially the role of the USSR in the war prompted
Liberal Democracies of Europe to shift their economic gears to Social
Democratic forms of Govt where the emphasis became uplifting the working
classes and masses out of their erstwhile misery to avoid them going
reactionary. This coupled with the Global growth after World War 2 spurred
prosperity for many in Liberal Democracies to the point of even covering up the
inevitable 10 year failure cycles of Capitalism. However, the stage was now set for the Cold
war between USSR and the USA. It was in essence, the Corporate world of the
West that fought every Revolutionary movement in the World and did everything
in its power to ensure that Workers would not gain power in Government.
The
Capitalist world finally achieved a body blow against Socialist movements with
the ultimate success of their efforts in destabilising the USSR and its break
up and reversal back to Russia. It was opined by Liberal philosophers that
there would be no more revolutions, that history had come to an end, that
Liberal Democracy was the only form of Govt that would exist. Liberalism had in
this time morphed into the new form of economic thought called Neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism
is a concept that is used to refer to the economics espoused by the Chicago and
Vienna school of Economics, popularised in govt by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald
Reagan, etc. The essential difference between Classical Liberalism and
Neoliberalism lies in the fact that where previously Govt was required to stay out
of the role of trade and economics, neoliberalism postulated that Govt must in
fact take an active role in facilitating profit maximisation by individuals and
the state. The macabre writings and intellectual musings of Ayn Rand typify the
philosophy of Neoliberals as one where the selfishness, greed, and economic
genocide of those less fortunate were considered commandments of the new order.
It seemed that the World had forgot about the lessons of why Fascism came to
the fore in the first place. But this would not bother many beyond the Left as
the world had not yet gone into Neoliberalism’s next project Globalisation.
Globalisation
was the peak of Imperialism for the Capitalist world. The expansion of Western
hegemony in industry and finance into the Third World. The third world was now
tapped into using methods like the Global Trade agreements, embargoes, regime
changes to ensure that the Third World markets were opened to American
corporations. This was a project of Corporate Colonialism as domestic industries
died from a lack of demand and labour now being lapped up by higher paymasters.
To this effect, the advent of Global neoliberalism on emerging markets of the
third world, especially in South Asia, ensured an attack of unprecedented
proportions on the erstwhile Feudal ruling classes that survived Mixed Economy
capitalism. The effects of neoliberalism were not confined to the third world
as the Western world started seeing jobs and industries moving into these
emerging markets. With this, corporations moved tax centres away from their
erstwhile homes as well. The Western world was now in a death spiral. To add to
this slow burn, myriad financial crashes, most notably the 2008 financial
crisis, further highlighted the dangerous nature of neoliberalism for the first
world.
It is
curious to note that Neoliberalism which provided rich dividends to the Western
world during the Thatcherite and Reagan administrations, turned into a nightmare
for their working classes, while the working classes of the third world
benefitted. However, with the current stage of Neoliberalism, the working
classes of both the third and first world are collectively suffering financial
ruin, stagnating and regressing wages and standards of living.
The world
as we know it today is facing a resurgent fascism much as the Weimar Republic
did in Germany. And the question comes back to haunt us…. When is the next
Revolution due?
As Marx had
correctly opined that Society doesn’t exist to further Economy but that Society
is itself a result of Economy and method of production, it is important to
realise the changing mindsets of humanity through the various epochs of
Liberalism.
The end of
the Feudal Economic system in Europe was the first in Revolutionary uprisings.
Previous economic systems like primitive Communism and Slavery were rarely
destroyed by working class uprisings or a slave revolt. The seminal moment of
the end of Feudal system was the French Revolution. The three dreaded words to
every ruling class hegemon, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, became staples to
every democratic constitution from this Revolutionary even. The French
Revolution also saw an explosion of Political thought into the mainstream like
Anarchism, Syndicalism, Communism, Socialism, Libertarianism, etc. Most of the
thought that blossomed in the new atmosphere were of course Leftist forms as
they were against the establishment ruling elites and the ruling class. Left
didn’t even necessarily mean Marxist or Socialist just yet but rather popular
uprising. But the most important point to note was that the working classes and
the masses dared to dream of power and they got it as well.
World War 1
was another moment for Europe, which by now was the cradle of political change.
Being one of the bloodiest wars the world had seen to that point, the war was
epitomised as one where the Working Classes were fighting battles for Kings and
Imperialists. It was this realisation and articulation of the nature and
purpose of this war that gave Marxists of all persuasions their legs to rise.
Lenin had perfectly articulated this in calling for the proletarian masses to
stop fighting each other and instead initiate revolutions against their ruling
classes instead. The end of this Great War saw the end of many monarchic rules
in Europe and the transition to Liberal Democracies. It was at this time that
the Russian Revolution took place and the transition from Monarchy to Socialism
was affected. This was a daring experiment for humanity and a life or death situation
for the ruling classes of every other country, as the once unwashed, labouring
masses dared to take political power. It was impudent, insolent and dangerous
to the Rich. Despite many attempts of the Liberal Democracies and leftover
monarchies of the time to destabilise the Revolutionary Govt, the new Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics transformed from the backwater of Europe to becoming
an industrial superpower. The insolence of the Working Classes led by the
Communists didn’t stop there. Communism was now an acceptable form of thought
that transcended borders, threatening the rule of the rich bourgeoisie. The
people had moved on from daring to dream of freedom to being the ruling class
and being better, more efficient rulers that the erstwhile Feudal and
capitalist class.
The
destruction of World War 2 and the spread of the Working Class ideology led to
the next phase of humanity. China, Vietnam, Korea, Eastern Europe, Africa,
South Asia, South East Asia, Latin America, and the World in general was now
captivated by the need for change from the old order of erstwhile aristocrats
and the bourgeoisie cornering power. Communist movements were now ambitious to
the point of militarising to seize power and the world from the 50s to the 70s
saw half the world turning Red in various flavors, fascism was discredited and
inhuman, blatant Capitalism had been exposed and turned to Social Democracy to
survive the onslaught.
However, the
end of the War had another effect in another part of the world which over time
would cause the end of the working class ideology as the Utopian ideal. In
America, by the end of the World War, there was a thriving Communist movement.
This movement was already emboldened by the Soviet Revolution and had already questioned
the ruling elites there and threatened Revolution. Such was the power of
Communists, Unionists and Socialists of the US that Social Security there was
born of the threat of popular revolt. But after the War, the mood had changed
and with the demise of fascism, the ruling elites returned to their aim of
destabilising the Soviet revolution. Communism became a dangerous and violent
ideology that was outlawed by the US and many Capitalist dictatorial regimes,
intelligence agencies put all kinds of Leftist under watch, leaders were
assassinated and in the US witch hunts followed. Any form of Leftism in the US
was purged. The US Govt also indulged in imperialist wars in Asia to
unsuccessfully stop the spread of Communism. These wars were brutal and never
ended till the late 90s. This was the Cold War. It was anti-Soviet but more
importantly anti-Communist.
The use of
propaganda on the working masses was at its peak that labelled the US Cold Wars
against the USSR as that of one of “Freedom against Oppression.” Communist
countries that espoused a Proletarian democracy were labelled as dictatorships,
regimes painted as murderous – despite the fact that America had already killed
more people by this time than Hitler did. Government propaganda on one side,
pop culture on the other, and then came the Liberal intellectual onslaught of
the post-modernist movement a cultural art movement that was sponsored and
nurtured by the Liberal Democratic governments to paint the Intellectualism of
the Left as passe and old school, thus poisoning the youth one generation at a
time. It is not as if the Communist world did not make its own mistakes during
this time as well. Mao’s Great Leap Forward was a botched implementation of a mass
industrialisation program, the Pol Pot regime’s excesses, and the revisionist
Govt policies of the post-Stalin administrations in the USSR diluted Communism’s
strength at its roots. What is perhaps the most successful tactic that Liberalism
used is the notion that Capitalism is freedom is democracy narrative. Many of
these propaganda pieces are now debunked today and could not survive the
passage of time and rigorous rebuttal.
While much
has been written and understood about the manifestos of the Left and Right,
there is precious little that can be found as a definitive guide for How to be
a Liberal. There is a specific reason for this and that is because of the fact
that Liberalism is not an ideology for the Working Classes and masses. This is
exactly why Liberalism as a thought process has had to be invented through the
machinations of post-modernist authors, anti-communist ideologues and cannibalised
from Right Wing novelists and filmmakers.
Liberalism
in its essence as an ideology is Capitalism and capitalism can only be
practiced by a Capitalist. But this is not to say that there is no part for the
Working Classes to play in theatre of Liberalism. The good proletariat in Liberalism
are first taught that any movement to the Right or Left are basically indulging
in the study of dictatorial and tyrannical regimes. According to Liberalism,
Liberal Democracy is the true and only form of democracy that can be practiced.
Building upon this, the Liberal proletariat is taught that the fundamental
objective in life is wealth and consumption – or consumerism. Consumerism
itself is a corollary of classical liberalism that has spewn forth out of
Keynesian economic principles when the US was going through a recession and
John Maynard Keynes had propagated economic growth by sending money into the
population to spur growth further up the food chain.
The next
tactic of Liberal thought is to create hierarchies among the working class so
that there is no collective and common solidarity that can ever happen. This is
the creation of the Middle Class. It is worth noting that until a 70 years ago,
there was no class called the Middle Class. There was only the Rich and Labouring
masses. The creation of a Middle Class is to extend on the notion of the
Marxian Labour Aristocracy – a class that has to sell labour for a wage but its
labour is to protect the interest and property of the Rich Capitalist class by
attacking the lower echelons of the proletariat. In the modern context, you see
this played out as the Manager at work, the CEO, etc who fundamentally work for
a wage but only serve the interests of the Board of a company who are the
actual owners of business.
In the
realm of arts and culture, the methods of Liberal media are myriad. From the
use of popular entertainment to portray any Leftism as a being Hippie, Unionism
as thuggery, Management as aspirational, and Entrepreneurship as halcyon.
Popular arts are also encouraged to pander to human emotions that are as far
from an intellectual pursuit as possible. A simple test of this can be check
which Pop song talks of an intellectual pursuit instead of being about romance,
getting a mate, getting rich or getting drunk.
Inequality
is celebrated as merit. This is an extension of the consumerist ideal, where
how much you spend defines your worth as a human being. Thus, this means that
those who might be of inherited wealth are more celebrated and hold a higher
place in society than those who might be more intellectually inclined from the
lower income strata. Inequality can also extend into the non-monetary but
monetizable talents. Educational inequality is another celebrated aspect in
Liberalism with the creation of artificial silos of talent. Take the example of
the MBA qualification. Three decades ago, the qualification barely existed and
it was created and commodified simply to create an artificial barrier in
education and the workplace.
Post-modernism,
social justice warriors, identity politics. Post-modernism is a movement that
came out of the French universities as a movement as a art movement that
attacked the notion of highly utility centric modernism. The thought extended
to cinema, literature, etc and the crux of the movement became the active
pursuit of hedonism, nihilism, and anti-intellectualism for the sake of it. The
focus on individualism over the collective. The advent of the internet has
pushed a lot of tertiary leftist movements like women’s liberation and black
rights movements into the realm of identity politics. Identity Politics movements
are individual movements that essentially ask for Reforms within the liberal
establishment to specific identity groups for more equality or parity. On the
face of it, identity politics would see to be the more progressive of liberal
movements in their nature, but they can never attain true power because they do
not challenge power from a collective Class perspective and are usually
movements of the more elite sections of society. Feminism is a Liberal movement
that was derived from the Women’s liberation movement in Socialism and its aims
are thus restricted to more equality rather than absolute takeover of power.
Liberalism
doesn’t stop there. It also encourages the members of the working class to
support its political stands, even if that stand is fundamentally against the interests
of the Working Class itself. A typical example of this is in the propagation of
the philosophy that welfare expenditure is a waste and is being lapped up by
freeloaders and the undeserving. The projection that any welfare expenditure by
the Govt is inefficient and prone to corruption but the same service when done
privately is absent of the same ills is another tactic used by the Liberal
Ruling Elites to remove the working class from Govt and accessing its benefits.
To this end, the most successful propaganda tool of the Liberal Elites and
Propagandists has been that Privatisation is good and Govt is bad. It is also
on of the foundations of neoliberal economic plans.
The
disenchantment with Leftist ideologies among the working classes has had a
profound effect on the post-Soviet generations that can be grouped under the
demographic of Millennials. One of the most stark characteristics of this
generation is a Nihilistic tendency towards political thought, a Fatalistic
approach towards dealing with the problems of society at large be it
inequality, sustainability, or any such issue, and as a result of consuming
information from Liberal media, an inability to envision systemic change as a
possibility leave alone as an inevitability. In summation, one can say that the
sustained effort of Liberalism to crush all Leftism and the working class has
ensured that when Liberalism fails, the Right Wing and Fascist ideals are what
the working class get inevitably drawn to.
The
mechanics of this tendency towards Reactionary sentiment is something that
always escapes Liberalists because, as mentioned earlier, Liberalism is not a
formative social ideology of the masses. However, the creation of a
proto-fascist atmosphere, while it might be the doing of Liberal politics also
has its growth stimulus in the absence or inability of the Left movements to
stem Reactionary tendency among the proletariat. There can be many reasons for
this from an absolute absence of a Leftist movement like in America, to the
ideological inability to define primary and secondary contradictions in the
material conditions of a certain society like in India, to the inability of the
Communist vanguard to militarise and lead the Unions in the face of Fascist
attack as was the case in pre-Nazi Germany.
It is very
important to therefore understand the difference between proto-fascism and
fascism for the Left. Proto-fascism is a distinct state in which the Right Wing
has gained enough power and support from a critical mass of the proletariat
that it can start to legitimise its ideological narratives. The critical mass
giving legitimacy to an abstract idea which might have no logical or empirical
grounding is the only basis for Right Wing ideology spreading. A case in point
being the hatred of Jews in Nazi Germany or the superiority of the Aryan race.
This Nazi narrative would have had no scientific basis and would be based
simply on anecdotal, gossip or rumours. These appeal to the baser senses of
people to react to a threat and also to make the threat one that might is
numerically inferior so that it can be attacked without consequences. This is
one of the fundamentals of any fascist or right wing thought. It must make
another community or collective the enemy to grow. Where the Left makes an idea
and its supporters the class enemy – namely Capitalism and the Bourgeoisie, the
Right Wing makes the Jew, the Muslim or the migrant the enemy. It is thus
easier for the lumpen to target the physical enemy rather than the ideological
one.
Once
proto-fascism finds its target, it then clubs its other enemy – the Left – as a
supporter of the primary target. This has been done in the past where Jews
being part time Bolsheviks was a popular Nazi refrain, in anti-Muslim
proto-fascism, Communists are clubbed with Muslims as their protectors. This
eliminates two enemies of the Right Wing and the bigger enemy of the Right wing
are the Communists because of their common support base and ability to
militarise.
The next
stage of proto-fascism requires getting greater and greater power and
acceptance among the lumpen proletariat and eventually gain political power through
any means possible. Once in the seat of power, the objective of the
proto-fascists is to remove all legal hurdles and ensure that the Security
establishment is firmly under its control. This is important as in the event of
a democratic challenge to the authority, the security establishment is
necessary to force Governance.
Once the
Army is firmly under the control of the Right Wing, there is no further need
for a democratic farce and Fascist rule can be implemented. Core industries can
then be handed over to the Private sector business houses that can run on slave
labour provided by the Govt, imperialist wars and conquest can subsequently follow
as well. However, to avoid a revolutionary backlash and longevity during the
suspension of democracy, the Fascists will continue the tactic of enforcing Racial
or Religious purity, othering another race on and on till it runs out of
enemies until finally it reduces the working class to a minority so fractured
and miniscule that it cannot revolt and is enslaved. The ultimate aim of
fascism is then realised in the re-establishment of a monarchic state or of a dictatorship
of the pure blooded.
