The Inclusive Democracy Project-A rejoinder TAKIS FOTOPOULOS DEMOCRACY & NATURE: The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol.9, no.3, (November 2003)

The fact that Castoriadis never associated autonomy, in both its senses, with non direct-democratic forms of organisation or with evolutionism is obvious by the following:

First, he repeatedly stresses, making no distinction between broad and narrow senses of autonomy, that autonomy is identified with democracy: ‘If I accept the idea of autonomy as such…then the existence of an indefinite plurality of individuals belonging to society entails immediately the idea of democracy defined as the effective possibility of equal participation of all in instituting activities as well as in explicit power’[21]. And, again, even more explicitly, ‘the first condition for the existence of an autonomous society —of a democratic society— is that the public/public sphere become effectively public, become an ecclesia’.[22] No wonder therefore that he called present representative democracies as “liberal oligarchies.”[23]

Second, I think that the attempt to assign an evolutionist dimension to the concept of a project (‘autonomy is something aimed at and achieved by degrees’) is a serious misreading of the meaning of this concept in Castoriadis’ work, which is completely alien to his thought. For Castoriadis autonomy (and inclusive democracy for me) is a project in the sense that it is an aim rather than a ‘programme’, a set of concrete measures,[24] and, as such, it expresses subjectivity which is also ‘a social-historical project’.[25] The emergence of autonomy for him is:

This non-evolutionary understanding of the concept of project could also explain his statement “that there is an essential plurality, synchronic and diachronic of societies (which) means just that: there is an instituting imaginary.[27]” It is in the same non-evolutionist sense of a project that he talks about the ‘vanishing’ of the project of autonomy for a long period[28] and then its rediscovery and reinvention (in the form of direct democracy).[29] All these statements become meaningless if we do not see the emergence/vanishing/re-emergence of autonomy and direct democracy as something that represents a rupture with the past rather than as something ‘achieved by degrees’. This is made even more explicit when he states that ‘democracy and philosophy are the twin expressions of a social-historical rupture, creating the project of (social and individual) autonomy’[30], and, similarly, ‘Democracy and philosophy… are themselves creations, and they entail a radical break with the previously instituted state of affairs. Both are aspects of the project of autonomy’.[31] Not accidentally, the view of Castoriadis as some kind of evolutionist is also rejected by his closest political associate, David Ames Curtis who, in an exchange with me, stated that ‘Castoriadis is constantly challenging those reformists who believe that socialism or an "autonomous society" can be achieved… by means of incremental changes and without a thorough revolutionizing of existing social, political, economic, and psychical conditions’.[32]

However, if one assumes that autonomy is a rupture with the past, as Castoriadis does, the clear implication is that despite the possibility of development within the autonomy and heteronomy traditions and of an interaction between them, still, no development between them may be established. Therefore, although it is true that the emancipation of philosophy and art from religion in the eighteenth century, and I would add of science itself, was an aspect of autonomy this in no way implies that a kind of evolutionist development between the two traditions occurred in the ‘modern period (1750-1950), as Gare implies. In fact, as Castoriadis stresses, this period ‘is best defined by the conflict but also the mutual contamination and entanglement, of two imaginary significations: autonomy, on the one hand, unlimited expansion of “rational mastery” (i.e. the capitalist embodiment of the heteronomy tradition), on the other’.[33] It is also significant that, although he recognises the significance of the contaminations between the two traditions, he emphasises that ‘despite these mutual contaminations, the essential character of this epoch is the opposition and the tension between these two core significations’[34].

Finally, there is no doubt in my mind that both liberalism and statist socialism (to which Marxism-Leninism as well as socialist statism belong) are parts of the heteronomy tradition, despite the fact that one could find in them some aspects close to the autonomy tradition. Thus, although liberalism adopts a negative conception of freedom which implies a close relationship to individual autonomy the fact that this movement explicitly takes for granted the state and the market economy —the two institutions on which heteronomy is founded— firmly classifies it in the heteronomy tradition. Similarly, although statist socialim adopts a positive conception of freedom which implies collective autonomy, still, the socialdemocratic wing of it also takes for granted the institutions on which heteronomy is founded, whereas for the Marxist-Leninist wing, as I attempted to show in TID (pp 197-8), a non-statist conception of democracy is inconceivable both at the transitional stage leading to communism and at the higher stage of communist society. It is for these reasons that I adopted a definition of freedom in terms of the Castoriadian conception of individual and collective autonomy which, to my mind, transcends both liberalism and socialist statism, individualism and collectivism (TID pp 177-180). The above clearly imply that Castoriadis, for similar reasons, would also have classified liberalism and statist socialism in the heteronomy tradition, although explicitly he only referred to the “radical inadequacy, to say the least” of both liberalism and Marxist-Leninist ‘socialism’ as embodiments of the project of autonomy, on the grounds that both these two movements shared the imaginary of Progress i.e. the heteronomy ideology of unlimited expansion of ‘rational mastery’.[35]

Therefore, although it is true, as Gare argues, that I characterise all activity associated with the institutions of the state as part of the tradition of heteronomy this is only the necessary by-product of adopting the same definition of autonomy as Castoriadis does who, in turn, adopts the classical meaning of the word according to which autonomy means to give to oneself one’s laws[36] —a definition which implies that only direct democracy could secure both individual and social autonomy. In this sense, statist socialism, in both its forms as Marxism-Leninism and social democracy, does not belong to the autonomy tradition. This is because statist socialism —unlike the libertarian wing of socialism— sees the move to an autonomous society not through the abolition of the division of state from society but, instead, through the use of the state by an elite for the emancipation of society, either through representative ‘democracy’ and gradual reforms (social democrats), or through a soviet system (Marxists-Leninists).

Next, Gare, after shrewdly pointing out that the ID project’s analysis of history of the market economy uses a very different problematique than the usual radical analyses, as it becomes clear by the fact that it focuses on the struggles of people against the market and its elites rather than on objectivist elements, he points out that some ambiguity is created by the fact that :

In fact, however, my acceptance of the triumph of neo-liberalism over social democracy as inevitable does not simply derive from an overestimation of the effects of objective circumstances and of the power and role of the market elites. As I stressed in the French edition of TID, it is always the interaction between equally important ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ factors which condition historical development. The crucial issue is always what is possible to be achieved by the ‘subjective’ factors (social praxis) within the existing ‘objective’ conditions. Thus, within the framework established by the objective conditions prevailing in statist modernity, pressure from within (mainly the labour movement) and from without (the very existence of the soviet bloc) could force and did force the ruling elites in the West to introduce, within the socialdemocratic consensus framework, various reforms involving the development of the welfare state, the drastic expansion of the role of the state in controlling the level of economic activity and employment, taking steps to secure better distribution of income etc. Vice versa, the objective conditions created by neoliberal modernity and particularly the opening of markets (mainly from below, through the growing internationalisation of the market economy) but also the shrinking of the working class (because of technological changes) have allowed the ruling elites, within the neoliberal consensus framework, to reverse by and large those reforms. It is therefore again the interplay of the changes in the objective and subjective conditions, rather than the increasing managerialism and corruption of socialdemocrats, which established the neoliberal consensus.

Therefore, far from overestimating the power of the market elites, my thesis is based on the reasons why the working class movement has decayed in the era of neoliberal modernity, as a result not just of corruption of its leadership but of technological and economic changes which led to the present ‘service economy’ and the consequent dramatic decline of the size of the working class –if we define it, following Marx, both ‘subjectively’ and ‘objectively.[37] So, it is this decay of the working class rather than any ‘overestimation’ of the power of the market elites that can explain my stand.

Today, it is more than ever true what I tried to show in TID, i.e. that there is no chance at all for a return of statist socialism in general and social democracy in particular[38] or that , as I predicted there, ‘in the competition between the USA/UK model of liberalization and the Rhineland social market model, it is the former that is the clear winner’. In fact, the confirmation of my prediction on Germany became even more clear in the last few months. The German socialdemocratic government, struggling with stagnation and mounting unemployment (which according to the TID analysis is due to the fact that statist socialism is merely lingering on in Germany, with negative implications on its ranking in the competitive league) has adopted in August a set of reforms described by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as the most significant social reforms ever in Germany. These reforms, following other similar reforms taken earlier, in effect, lead to the dismantlement of the Rhineland social model. On this, the German socialdemocrats simply followed the advice of Wolfgang Wiegard, (a member of the ruling German Social Democratic Party for over 30 years and of the public employees union, as well as a "'60s radical") who last year was nominated by the Social Democratic/Green government to the Expert Council — a group of 5 economists that commissions reports on the economy for the government. In his yearly report last November, Wiegard stated "we need more social inequality in order to get more employment.” The report recommended wage/ salary cuts, limits to unemployment benefits, cuts in social security, and a growth in the low-wage sector.[39] Most of these recommendations have already been adopted by the German government, such as limits to unemployment benefits, cuts in taxes that are mostly benefiting the rich, cuts in the welfare state (e.g. health), encouragement of the low-wage sector (temporary employment, part-time jobs etc). Clearly, the socialdemocratic about turn in Germany, following similar reversals of socialdemocratic policies all over the world, are not the outcome of some corruption taking epidemic proportions but simply of the fact that growth and employment are hardly compatible with socialist statism in an environment of open markets. This is the reason why the ID project, as Gare notes, denies that any other path to the future is conceivable, apart from a continuation of neoliberal globalisation or the development of a new democratic globalisation based on confederal inclusive democracies.

Next, Gare argues that my ambiguous attitude towards the achievements of the social-democratic consensus and the role of the workers’ movements in this process appears to be influenced by my characterization of all activity associated with the institutions of the state as part of the tradition of heteronomy, which, as such, has nothing to do with the tradition aspiring to autonomy. For Gare, the problematic nature of this characterization of the social-democratic consensus becomes clearer in the light of Castoriadis’ broader notion of autonomy, specifically in relation to the working class. Thus, according to Gare, Castoriadis supposedly included far more in the autonomous tradition than I do, as it becomes evident by his characterization of the working class and its historical role. However, I have no reason to disagree with Castoriadis that the self-organizing activity of English workers, which preceded Marx, was ‘the logical continuation of a democratic movement.’[40] Even less so I would disagree with Castoriadis’ conclusion that it was the same movement that was primarily responsible for the ‘social-democratic consensus’ and that it was when this autonomous movement was captured by the capitalist imaginary through Marxism (or I would say through statist socialism to differentiate it from libertarian socialism and the independent working class movement) that workers ceased being autonomous agents and became militant activists indoctrinated into the teachings of a gospel.

Yet, I would disagree with the conclusion Gare draws from all this that what had emerged from the quest for autonomy was a new form of heteronomy in the guise of the quest for autonomy which (as he rightly points out) is something different from being part of the tradition of heteronomy. Likewise, I would disagree with the related conclusion he draws that:

To my mind, the above statement is in direct contradiction to Castoriadis’ reading of the history of the working class movement. When Castoriadis mentioned the struggle of this movement to make capitalism more tolerable he referred to the independent workers’ movement and he explicitly excluded the struggles of workers controlled by socialist and labour parties, as well as by trade union bureaucracies. This is why he mentioned this movement only with reference to the era before socialist statism, describing their struggle as a continuation of the democratic movement that culminated in the French revolution, the Paris sections of 1790s etc. On the other hand, when Castoriadis refers to the workers’ struggles during the socialdemocratic consensus he draws a clear line between independent workers’ struggles and those under the guidance of socialist statists. Thus, in his major essay ‘Modern Capitalism and Revolution’, workers during the socialdemocratic era could only be thought as struggling –very indirectly even then — for some kind of self-management only when they were struggling independently of political parties and trade unions (usually controlled by Marxists and/or socialdemocrats). This is why he adopts only the ‘unofficial’ activity of workers’ which has been organised from below (wildcat strikes etc) rather than the activity initiated by bureaucratic parties and unions. As the extract below makes clear, the worker’s struggle around reformist demands is completely incompatible to the tradition aspiring to autonomy and emancipation:

Furthermore, given that unofficial workers’ activity on working conditions was a phenomenon which only lasted for less than a decade or so (end of 1960s-mid 1970s) and was not widely spread geographically but mainly appeared in countries like Britain and Italy and much less so in countries like the USA and Japan, it is obvious that the workers’ activity which qualifies according to Castoriadis as aspiring to autonomy was very small in proportion to the activity which was definitely ruled out by him (i.e. the activity for higher wages organized by bureaucratic unions, Marxist and socialdemocratic parties etc) –all this even before the rise of neoliberal globalization.

So, neither Castoriadis, nor myself, have ever dismissed the achievements of past struggles, either these struggles where motivated by movements for autonomy, or by Marxist and socialdemocratic movements. The point is however that all these achievements (to the extent they still characterise today’s societies and have not already been reversed, as it is the case with most of the socialdemocratic achievements) have only effected developments within the heteronomous tradition. As long as the fundamental division between society and the state and the economy remain, we still talk about heteronomous societies and therefore the changes that have been effected by those struggles and the consequent achievements in no sense imply that we have gradually moved closer to an autonomous society. Even if these achievements were not reversible (and the present neoliberal globalisation has clearly shown how much they were!) the adoption of the view that gradually, over time, we have moved towards an autonomous society would bring us back to the idea of Progress, which few people accept today, and which factually cannot stand anymore, as I attempted to show in ch 8 of TID.

Therefore, on the basis of the above problematique, I would not agree with Gare’s statement that :

However, the division of the modern political world into two, totally separate traditions is also a characteristic element of Castoriadis thought, as for instance when he states that ‘the very history of the Greco-Western world can be viewed as the history of the struggle between autonomy and heteronomy’,[42] or when he describes the historical dominance of heteronomy: ‘in heteronomous societies, that is to say, in the overwhelming majority of societies that have existed up to the present time —almost all of them’.[43] For him, most of the people, for most of the time, adopt significations of heteronomy. It is only on some rare historical moments that large parts of society adopt —as a kind of rupture with the past— significations of autonomy. The working class movement initially had indeed adopted autonomous significations and, at that point, constituted part of the autonomy tradition. However, once the majority in it (we should not forget the minority in the form of the libertarian tradition, e.g. anarcho-syndicalism) adopted the significations of Marxism or of social democracy (which embodied crucial significations of heteronomy) it clearly ceased to play this role.

Therefore, the move of the majority of the working class from the original significations of autonomy to Marxism-Leninism and social democracy clearly represents a gestalt-switch in the Kuhnian sense, a shift from one paradigm (the autonomous one) to another one (heteronomous) and not a development within the same tradition (the autonomous one), as Gare’s analysis implies. Furthermore, although Castoriadis recognises that both the liberal republic and Marxism-Leninism have been seen by large sections of the working class movement and other social groups as embodying the autonomy project, he is clear in rejecting this view. This is evident when he characterises for instance Marxism-Leninism’s claims to liberation, i.e. autonomy, as an ‘unprecedented historical fraud’[44] and concludes that ‘the monstrous history of Marxism-Leninism shows what an emancipatory movement cannot and should not be.[45]

Next, Gare raises the issue of compatibility of social democracy with the ID project. His starting point is that :

However, the fact that autonomy and inclusive democracy on the one hand and social democracy on the other constitute projects (in the sense defined above), and a gradualist process respectively, signifies fundamental differences between them. This is because the former presuppose a rupture or break with the past (not necessarily achieved through a violent revolution), aiming at the building of alternative institutions to the market economy and representative ‘democracy’ whereas the latter is supposed to be an evolutionist process aiming at the improvement of the existing institutions. No wonder that post modernists like Mouffe[46], Laclau and others, moving a step further than Gare, propose a ‘radical democracy’ defined in terms of ‘extending and deepening” the present ‘liberal oligarchy’ (which is christened democracy) rather than in terms of the institutional preconditions for a genuine democracy, and, unlike Gare, even rule out such a genuine democracy because of a supposed “unresolvable tension between the principles of equality and liberty.” In other words, Laclau and Mouffe, ignoring the fundamental fact that this tension is the inevitable outcome of the unequal distribution of political, economic and social power and that consequently the issue is how to create the necessary (but not the sufficient) institutional conditions for eliminating the tension between equality and liberty, take this tension for granted, as a kind of God-given curse on humanity! To sum up, it is one thing to talk about an improvement of autonomy institutions of the past, whenever social praxis allows for it, and quite another to talk about gradualist improvements in heteronomy institutions, with the hope of transforming them eventually into autonomy institutions (Gare) or, more realistically, with no hope at all for such a transformation (Laclau, Mouffe).

Next, Gare raises the issue whether the aspirations of those fighting for emancipation and autonomy within nation states (like himself) are likely to be frustrated by the size of these societies. On that, he invokes, like Levin, Robert Michels’ ‘iron law of oligarchy’ which overtakes all large-scale organizations, including those of radical political parties.[47] This ‘law’ –according to which, even when people aspire to greater autonomy in large territories, they must aim to inferior forms of democracy (i.e. representative democracy) compared to those who aspire to democracy in smaller communities— is blamed for having reoriented the organizations developed by the working class away from the quest for autonomy to developing the means of production. However, as I tried to show in TID, the quest for developing the means of production is a by-product of the dynamic of the market economy and its ideology, as the latter developed after the Enlightenment’s identification of Progress with the development of productive forces — an ideology adopted later on by the statist socialist movement (both Marxist and socialdemocratic). Given that statist socialism in its two forms was dominant all over the world in the era of socialdemocratic modernity, it is no wonder that the growth ideology was adopted universally since both liberals (fervent supporters of the market economy) and socialists (who identified Progress with the development of productive forces) embraced it. It is not therefore population and territory size that could explain oligarchy (although an inclusive democracy does require —for different reasons— a radical decentralisation which however may be, initially, administrative) but the form of social organisation and the ideology used to legitimise it.

This brings Gare to what he considers a different problem in my work. He argues that a confederal ID is plausible, so long as each community is conceived in isolation from its relation from other communities and societies and that the confederal proposals, according to which such communities could relate to each other in confederations, share necessary resources and organize to confront and defeat existing states, is far less convincing because, as he puts it:

this is a major problem when one thinks of small-scale communities in the past, including those in ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy. These were perpetually in conflict with each other, and as a consequence, were able to be subjugated by larger, more powerful societies. This problem is accentuated in the present by the power of existing states (...) The whole movement for direct democracy is dissolving under pressure from these institutions. Given the incredible power and brutality of the new liberal fascist regimes led by USA, and considering realistically the prospects of reining in such rogue states, this defect in Fotopoulos’ thinking could lead to the dismissal of all his proposals. To avoid this it is necessary to re-examine efforts by social democrats to transform the institutions of the nation-state to bring the economy under democratic control. Castoriadis’ broader notion of autonomy facilitates this.

However, the reference to the inter-conflict of classical poleis is contradictory because one of the basic reasons for which a confederal inclusive democracy is proposed, instead of a community-based one, is exactly to avoid this sort of competition among direct democracies. Also, as regards the argument about today’s tremendous power of the transnational elite, it is clear that this argument equally applies to socialdemocratic efforts that could threaten its power (Allende’s example is indicative). Therefore, the counterforce to this power could only be built from below, in the form of an international movement for a genuine democracy that would undermine the power base of the transnational elite. So, although a confederal inclusive democracy could initially be established in a single country, it is clear that such an experiment will be doomed unless it is followed soon by the establishment of confederal inclusive democracies at the regional, continental and, eventually, global level.

Having said that, Gare proceeds next to support his case for complemetarity between the ID project and social democracy. Thus, he points out that, instead of seeing the struggle to reform social democracy and the development of inclusive democracy as rival programs, they could be seen as complementary projects separated more by the corrupt state of social democratic movements that had led to a massive concentration of power than by the social democratic project as such.

However, corruption and decay of socialdemocratic and trade union movements can explain neither their bureaucratization denounced by Castoriadis, nor their adoption of the growth ideology, let alone the concentration of power. Corruption and bureaucratization are not independent variables but could well be explained by structural factors (e.g. their hierarchical organization), as well as by historical factors on which I cannot expand here. Furthermore, no political party which does not challenge the market economy itself is able to challenge the growth ideology since it is growth which is the motor of the market economy and any effective measures to challenge the power of multinationals will directly affect the dynamic of the market economy leading to more unemployment and a worsening of the economic crisis, and, consequently, to a further eroding of the electoral base of socialdemocrats. Finally, it is not decadence that prevents socialdemocrats from abandoning the capitalist imaginary, uphold autonomy as their main goal and then mobilize against global markets. What prevents them from doing so is that in the era of neoliberal globalisation economic growth depends crucially on world markets as the main agent of this growth is transnational corporations. Only therefore the return to the semi-closed economies of the socialdemocratic era would make possible the re-regulation of markets — something that is not feasible anymore within the institutional framework of the market economy.

It is not accidental anyway that even those in the reformist Left who criticize socialdemocrats (e.g. those participating in the World Social Forum), in their proposals for an ‘alternative globalisation’, take for granted the present open markets and restrict themselves to proposals that would curb the power of transnational corporations at the global level and allow the effective protection of labour and the environment. However, such proposals are much more utopian than the proposal for an inclusive democracy, not only because the built-in power structures of the internationalized market economy will never allow any effective measures in this direction to be taken and effectively implemented, but also because, even if this was possible, the effect of such measures would have been a further worsening of the economic crisis, given that open markets require also de-regulated markets, for competitiveness to be maximized. No wonder that not only the social democrats in Germany, as we saw above, but also those in the Swedish bastion of social democracy had to adopt measures which, far from indicating any kind of rethinking their attitudes towards economic growth, as Gare asserts, in fact seriously undermine the past achievements of social democracy (privatisations of social services like the postal service, private-public mix in health care etc)[48]. This was not due to the decadence of Swedish social democrats but simply the inevitable choice they, as well as German socialdemocrats, had to make, given that foreign and local capitalists, both in Germany and Sweden, could easily move —some actually began moving— to places with fewer restrictions to their activities, further deteriorating the precarious state of the corresponding economies.

Finally, although I very much appreciate Gare’s intention to make the ID proposals ‘more relevant to the present and more likely to be taken up in the immediate future’ I am afraid I will not be able to agree with his main conclusion that perhaps the only possible solution to the present problems is to attempt synthesizing radical social democracy and inclusive democracy. This implies that social democrats should work towards creating the kind of inclusive democracies proposed by the ID project, “with the aim not to overthrow the state but to transform it into an institution for producing and sustaining the environment within which inclusive democracies could flourish, while at the same time serving to mediate their relations to each other, to the rest of society and, collectively, to other societies while, in parallel, to radically re-regulate markets, particularly of trade and finance, towards the long-term goal of replacing the market economy completely by inclusive democracies”.

However, apart from the fact that, as I attempted to show above, the goal of radically re-regulating markets today is not feasible, the state, by definition, could not be transformed to the kind of institution proposed by Gare since its very existence —as a separate institution from society— means that the political and economic elites which control it will do everything in their power to undermine inclusive democracies. This is why, as I put it in TID, the aim of a democratic movement could only be “to transform and democratize city governments, to root them in popular assemblies, to knit them along confederal lines, to appropriate a regional economy along confederal and municipal lines, in other words, the goal is to develop “a public sphere —and in the Athenian meaning of the term, a politics— that grows in tension and ultimately in a decisive conflict with the state”. Having said that it is now clear that any kind of alliance between mainstream socialdemocrats and supporters of the ID project would not only be utterly utopian but also extremely undesirable given the active or passive support of the former for the criminal wars of the transnational elite in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Finally, Gare raises the all important issue of the role of determinism versus creativity and voluntarism in History. First, he attempts to draw a line, yet again, between TID and Castoriadis on the issue of my ‘dualistic’ thinking as regards autonomy and heteronomy and also on the issue of creativity and its relationship to the past. In fact, however, such a dividing line is non-existent since Castoriadis, as I attempted to show above, was absolutely clear on the matter as he also saw History as creation and the entire Western history as a conflict between the autonomy and heteronomy traditions. In this context, I will argue that Gare inadvertently simplifies my position on the matter when he presents it as a voluntaristic one and he points out that:

However, as I stressed in TID (p 181), it is a historical fact that individuals are not absolutely free to create their world, nor does the world just create the individual. As long as individuals live in a society, they are not merely individuals but social individuals, subject to a process which socialises them into internalising the existing institutional framework and the dominant social paradigm. In this sense, they are not just free to create their world but are conditioned by History, tradition and culture. Still, this socialisation process is broken, at almost all times —as far as a minority of the population is concerned— and in exceptional historical circumstances even with respect to the majority itself. In the latter case, a process is set in motion that usually ends with a change of the institutional structure of society and of the corresponding social paradigm. In other words, since freedom itself is defined in TID in terms of autonomy, I take it for granted that there have always been and will always be individuals in every society which will not take for granted the institutions of heteronomy and the dominant social paradigm to which they are socialized.

At the same time, Gare notes that my voluntarism —where the possibility of creating direct democracies is concerned— is accompanied by what appears to be ‘an excessively deterministic understanding of the evolution of the market and the actions of its elites in recent history’ and construing the advance of the market as inexorable. However, in my analysis, the economic crisis of the market economy is endemic within the system and this is why I devoted an entire chapter to the generalised systemic crisis (ch 4). In other words, in my problematic, the crisis does not refer only to the neoliberal ‘model’, as Gare presents it, since a similar crisis led to the end of the socialdemocratic consensus in the early 70s, for the reasons explained in the book. For me, the crisis is a systemic one caused by the inherent contradictions of the market system itself, which is the worst system of allocating resources when purchasing power is unequally distributed (see my criticism of the market system on pp 248-250). It is this fundamental structural defect that is causing the growing concentration of power, which is the ultimate cause of the present multidimensional crisis. In this context, the advance of the market has indeed been inexorable since its emergence, two hundred years or so ago, and the advent of socialist statism was only a temporary aberration that lasted less than fifty years –except in USSR where it survived another twenty years or so.

Still, this does not mean that the position adopted by the ID project is either a deterministic or a voluntaristic one. The following extract from the French edition of TID (Seuil, 2002) hopefully makes clear the ID stand, as regards the relation between ‘determinism’ and ‘voluntarism’ and the essentially indeterminate nature of the outcome of the social struggle on the crucial issue of autonomy versus heteronomy:

Finally, It is clear that Gare gives a much narrower meaning to the outcome of social struggle which includes even changes within the heteronomy tradition, as changes supposedly leading to a potential rupture with it. Thus, Gare argues that “an alternative to Fotopoulos’ opposition between creativity and a deterministic account of the evolution of the market is to recognize that evolutionary processes, including the evolution of social forms, are not deterministic and can allow for different directions to be taken and also that there can be radical emergence with creative imagination playing a central role in this” —something that he thinks provides a better grasp of the place of creativity and agency in history. He continues that “from this perspective, however, it is only when there are major crises that radically new forms, natural or social, are likely to emerge, and it is only when there are pre-existing projects that choice becomes a major influence on outcomes”. His point of reference here is the Great Depression, which precipitated a crisis the outcome of which was ‘the triumph of a weak form of the welfare state in USA, Nazism in Germany and social democracy in Sweden’, followed by a far less severe crisis in the 1970s that led to the rise and dominance of neo-liberalism, whereas a new major crisis is looming today which, according to Gare, could open a whole new set of possibilities, ranging from a further development of the liberal fascism being pursued by USA and Australia and to some extent in Britain to efforts to create radically new forms of democracy.

However, the kind of crises he mentions —as the very historical examples he brings up make clear— has never led to a systemic change. This is not accidental. In the ID problematique a crisis —however severe— will never lead to a systemic change by itself, unless the subjective conditions for such a change have been created. These conditions involve, as I briefly explained above, the development of antisystemic consciousness not simply through the struggle against the system, (i.e. the usual strategy of the traditional antisystemic Left), but also through the struggle to begin building ‘from below’ alternative democratic institutions, well before the actual transition to an Inclusive Democracy takes place. If these conditions have not been created at the moment the crisis erupts then the inevitable outcome will be either some kind of totalitarian regime of the Right or the Left, or an easily reversible reform like the welfare state mentioned by Gare.

Today, however, the objective conditions do not create even the conditions for a significant ‘endo-systemic’ change —like the one assumed by Gare— let alone a systemic change. This can be seen if we compare today’s conditions with the conditions which led to the rise of the welfare state. To my mind, the main reason which could explain the rise of the welfare state refers to the existence of such subjective conditions as a strong socialist movement, which had already cut off Russia from the capitalist market economy, as well as the aspirations of the most in the West who have fought the war for a better post-war society with no unemployment and poverty, as promised by their elites. Today, however, not only similar subjective conditions are not seen in the horizon but also the objective conditions that allowed for the rise of the welfare state (semi-closed economies whose growth depends on the internal market) are absent. It is on account of this problematique that I concluded in TID that only the building of a mass movement for a new form of society based on inclusive democracy could provide a permanent way out of the present multidimensional crisis, through the struggle against the system and through the parallel building of alternative democratic institutions. This is because, in the ID problematique, even a significant change within the heteronomy tradition, let alone a change between the heteronomy and autonomy traditions, is impossible in neoliberal modernity, unless it is accompanied by a change in the objective conditions themselves (i.e. a systemic change) . Alternatively, we have to enter a dream world in which capitalists and the states controlled by them abandon economic growth, transnational corporations and open markets and come back to the socialdemocratic paradise of the 1950-1970s or some variant of it!

David Freeman, in a brilliant analysis of TID, asks a series of crucial questions, which he cleverly stages as a kind of an exchange between the author and three different constituencies expressing the main trends in the political spectrum: antisystemic, prosystemic and reformist. Although sometimes his predicted answers are off the mark —either because they represent wild guesses of the author’s possible response who, in the time since publication of TID, has already provided his own answers to these questions, or because of errors in guessing the author’s attitude on certain matters— Freeman, generally, manages to create a very insightful imaginary exchange on the issues involved. Particularly so since he shrewdly perceives (this constitutes the main theme of his review) that the main contribution of TID is that it attempts to fill what he perceives at the major gap in most of contemporary antisystemic critique : to propose an alternative type of social organisation rather than exhaust itself with the usual critique of the present system. This is a particularly crucial issue, not only for anarchism —which never managed to go beyond some moral generalities about the future society— but for every kind of radical movement, as we saw above with respect to the World Social Forum. Still, to my mind, after the collapse, in the last decade, of the only real alternative to the present system, i.e. socialist statism in the form of soviet socialism and social democracy, this is the main question which critics of the existing system have to answer if they wish their critique to have any credibility value .

I will not deal here with the questions asked by Freeman, which have already received a reply in other parts of this rejoinder. This particularly applies to his questions about the transition to an ID and comments like the following one: “If asking a polity to embark on a new road, one will be required to demonstrate well before-the-fact that this road cannot possibly be the harbinger of disaster. Otherwise, the public response will surely be "better the devil you know"”. But, I hope it is clear from the above, that this sort of problem does not arise with respect to the ID project in which the transition to an inclusive democracy involves the majority of the population in building the alternative institutions proposed by the ID project and acquiring in the process the experience of living with them. The democratic consciousness that this experience will create is anyway the only guarantee that people will be willing and able to defend their new institutions from the inevitable attack of the elites, from within, or without.

Setting therefore aside questions concerning the feasibility of ID and the transition to it which I considered above, I will now focus instead on a set of significant questions raised by Freeman concerning the desirability of ID in general and I will continue next with questions concerning the desirability of direct democracy in particular . Freeman points out first that many may regard the state as a buffer against the ‘problem of evil’ and that state absence could generate a vacuum, providing malevolence/human nature especial opportunity without accountability or state-administered recourse. Similarly, he argues, Pareto’s suggestion that élites are likely to emerge in any form of social organisation, even in those committed to the absence of elites, has to rebuffed, for the ID project to look credible. “Fotopoulos” he stresses “needs to respond to intimations, notably from Freud, totalitarianism, pogroms and popular wars, that collectivities and not only élites can support murderousness; this goes directly to why people might seek the rule of law with state-as-enforcer”. He then goes on to ask questions about safeguards against the possibility that a cabal might undertake (the stateless equivalent of) a coup, seizing the voucher repository, distributing vouchers to enjoin any with weapons or substantial musculature to their cause, and banishing all democratic practice. “Fotopoulos needs to satisfy as to how internal and external aggression is prevented or resolved;” Finally, he raises the well rehearsed argument about private property ‘as a buffer for the individual and not simply a mechanism of domination’ —something that requires to show that demotic ownership could not prove demonic.

So, let us consider briefly the issues raised by these questions. First, as regards the state as a ‘buffer’ against the problem of evil, the real issue of course is whether the state’s role is in fact exausted to this function or whether instead an even more important function of it is to maintain and reproduce the system of concentration of political and economic power at the hands of the elites, which control the state mechanism. Radical theory and History itself unquestionably confirm the latter. Furthermore, the absence of state does not mean the absence of social organisation and law, as some primitive views of anarchism suggest. An ID simply implies a different sort of social organisation and laws approved by the demotic assemblies and implemented by delegates chosen by them, i.e. by the people themselves rather than by minorities ‘representing’ the people and ‘acting on its behalf’. Second, as regards Pareto’s suggestion that élites are likely to emerge in any form of social organisation, the real issue is whether the institutional framework creates the necessary conditions for the emergence of elites and there is no doubt that the market economy and representative ‘democracy’ do create, almost by definition, such conditions. On the other hand, the institutional framework of an ID does create the necessary conditions for the non-emergence of elites. This is of course no guarantee that elites will never emerge, even in such a system, but, whereas in the present system this is the effect of the normal functioning of the system itself, in an ID this could only be the outcome of its abuse and will only be possible in the absence of the sufficient conditions for a genuine democracy, i.e. in the absence of a level of democratic consciousness that people are expected to acquire through paideia and the living experience of genuine democracy itself. Third, as regards the safeguards against internal and external aggression —safeguards that of course have never been provided by the present system which excels at the moment in organising aggressions all over the world and in undermining even basic human rights at home—again, the ultimate safeguard could only be the level of democratic consciousness achieved by the people itself, through living democracy and paideia. On top of this however, although demotic assemblies may indeed make errors of judgement –as many mistakes have always been made by elites—an error by the elites is worse than a thousand errors made by the people, given that the elites’ decisions by definition express particular interests. Finally, as regards private property, one may imagine various ways to reproduce its benefits, in terms of offering a buffer for the individual, without forcing society to suffer its serious drawbacks, in terms of creating an unequal distribution of income and wealth. Thus, there is little doubt that ownership and control of the means of production and distribution has to be collective, given that production and distribution are social processes affecting every member of society. However, as regards housing, demotic assemblies could maintain, for instance, the ownership of the entire housing stock and then distribute to citizens long-term leases for residential properties, on the basis of objective criteria expressing the citizens’ needs (number of rooms per person etc).set by the assemblies themselves.

Next, Freeman questions whether the ID model will be culturally attractive to people who do not share its values, like for instance many in the middle classes who presumably have adopted the values of the present consumer society. However, the feeling of life emptiness that the consumer society creates was one of the main reasons for the massive movement against it, which developed all over the West in the late sixties. It is the same feeling which has pushed many people today to the various forms of irrationalism, from official religions up to the various sects that are rampant particularly in the USA —the citadel of consumer society— New Age, Zen, Tao etc.[49] On the other hand, a massive movement for an Inclusive Democracy could function as a catalyst for the development of new values based on democratic ethics,[50] expressing the need to organise individual and collective life on a rational basis. Also, it should not be forgotten that the freedom of choice that is an integral element of the ID economic proposals, is a sufficient guarantee against any trend towards the kind of ‘dour monasticism’ that Freeman is worried about. Furthermore, this will be a freedom of choice that, being socially controlled, could not lead to the kind of growth economy prevailing today, which has led us to the edge of an ecological catastrophe. Finally, as regards the argument that capitalism, in its very search for more expansion and profits, could be ‘greened’, this is only partially true and is mainly valid with respect to the secondary ecological problems (e.g. pollution) rather than as far as the primary ecological problems is concerned like the greenhouse effect. In the latter case, it is clear that the benefits from the continuation of the status quo, which are being gained by some of the most powerful multinationals like those in the oil industry, far outweigh the disadvantages to others (e.g. insurance industry) —something that could well explain the reason why even the adoption of the mild Kyoto proposals (which in no way could stop the present catastrophic climatic change) finally proved impossible![51]

Freeman then argues that only two of the crises TID identifies as part of the present multi-dimensional crisis are indisputable: ecological and North-South. Still, I think few would dispute the existence of a political crisis, as expressed by the huge abstention rates in the electoral process and the lack of participation in general, as far as party politics is concerned. Even fewer would dispute the size of the present social crisis, as shown by mounting crime, massive drug abuse and the like, which have resulted in the growing development of luxury ghettos for the affluent middle classes. Finally, the fact that the Great Depression, or any other of the crises through which capitalism went through, did not lead to the end of it is not, as the ideologues of the system suggest, a result so much of the system’s capacity to reinvent itself but rather of the lack of a credible alternative. In other words, in the ID problematique, no crisis, however grave, will lead to the end of the present system, unless a credible alternative adopted by a significant part of the population has already emerged.

Next, Freeman raises the question whether most really desire extensive participation, as direct democracy assumes. I think however that this question presupposes the kind of mentality that has inevitably been created in the present pseudo public space, in which most people have never come in contact with a real public space and have therefore justifiably withdrawn from what passes as politics today —as the political crisis mentioned above illustrates. The very fact that many people have been brain washed by the system to believe that participation in politics is a kind of vocation to be assigned to the specialists is the clearest illustration of the abysmal failure of what passes as politics today. Politics, in the sense of direct participation of people in public affairs (as it was the classical conception of the term) is an expression of autonomy, i.e. of freedom itself and I cannot imagine that in a free society, in which everybody will be able to take part in the decision-process, some will consciously select heteronomy, namely, to assign to others the right to decide for them. Particularly so since the decision-taking process does not have to be unnecessarily time-consuming and interfering with the citizens’ private lives. Thus, a degree of flexibility may easily be introduced in the decision-taking process, so that citizens are required to attend only the discussion of issues judged as important by a committee of delegates chosen by lot to prepare the agenda for the next assembly, whereas attendance to less important meetings could be optional, and so on. The fact anyway that the minimum amount of work requested from each citizen, so that basic needs are met, will be much smaller than the present average workload will ensure that attending assemblies’ meetings will not be a significant burden on citizens’ free time.

Serge Latouche offers a wide-ranging analysis of the ID project which helps the reader enormously to form a complete image of its problematique, its aims and the means to achieve them. As usual, instead of describing the aspects of Latouche’s insightful analysis which find me in broad agreement , I will attempt in the following to discuss the main issues/ reservations raised by the reviewer, which, to my mind, express a viewpoint favouring the ‘deepening’ of representative ‘democracy’—an approach close to the one adopted by supporters of the ‘radical democracy’ approach (Laclau, Mouffe et. Al.) that I considered above.

At the outset, Latouche doubts the desirability of direct democracy and invokes Aristotle who noted that “as for the poor, they are ready to keep quiet, even when excluded from office, provided they are not subjected to violence or to confiscation of their property”[52] on the assumption that “the masses take no great offence of being excluded from office, (on the contrary, they may even be glad of this opportunity to look after their private affairs)”.[53] However, even the extracts that Latouche refers to make clear that the reason why participation by the masses to the democratic proceedings was not perfect was not their lack of interest but the very fact that, for many citizens, the loss of income resulting from participation was significant. This is made clear by another passage from Politics in which Aristotle stresses that “in time of war, for example, the poor generally begrudge their services if they are not granted a subsistence allowance to save them from destitution”.[54] As I pointed out in TID, the distribution of free time —on which the objective ability to exercise civic rights depends— was very unequal in classical Athens, following the unequal distribution of income and wealth. This is why, as I stressed, given that ‘slave-ownership depended on the distribution of income and wealth, the rich, who owned many more slaves than the poor, had much more time at their disposal to exercise their civic rights’ (p 192). In other words, the reason why the rate of participation in the democratic procedures was not equally distributed among classes was the very existence of classes, i.e. the fact that, as I noted in TID, classical Athenian democracy was only a partial democracy. This was so, not only because Athenian democracy was not a full political democracy in which all residents could take part in the proceedings but also because it was not complemented by an economic democracy as well. Despite the fact that the significance of income distribution as regards participation was recognised and compensation for the exercise of civic rights was introduced by Pericles (judicial salary for jury duty, assembly salary for participation in the ecclesia, salary for deputies, soldiers, etc.), still, the amount of compensation was just enough to induce the very poor to take part but surely not adequate to cover fully the income loss that participation in the proceedings implied for many Athenians. The conclusion is that there is no historical example on the basis of which we may assess the desirability or otherwise of an inclusive democracy, simply because there has never been in History a full democracy of a similar kind. But, if this is so, the implication is that out of partial forms of democracy one can only make partial assessments on the desirability of full democracy.

Next, Latouche argues that the proceedings of direct democracy were not particularly desirable to the masses as shown by the ‘fact’ that “in Athens, 9 citizens out of 10 were more often than not absent from the debates, and, in spite of the fees paid for being there, public officers had a lot of trouble dragging the crowd from agora to ecclesia”, as a result of which, in the Athenian democracy, decisions were finally taken “by less than 400 out of 200,000 inhabitants of classical Attica.” I do not know Latouche’s source of information but Mogens Herman Hansen — who has published a relatively recent classic text on Athenian democracy — using the research results of several other writers on the matter, draws very different conclusions. As regards the number of citizens involved, he states that ‘the size of the population is unknown, but it can be deduced from the evidence that there were some 60,000 male citizens when Pericles was the leader of Athens in the fifth century and about 30,000 when Demosthenes was its leader.”[55] Finally, as regards the rate of participation, Hansen gives a very different picture than that of Latouche:

It seems therefore that, despite the fact that this was a partial democracy, as mentioned above, and many people could simply not afford the loss of income (which was not compensated fully by the city allowance) that resulted from attending the democratic proceedings, still, as Hansen stresses, “political activity was regarded as a worthy expenditure of time in its own right and not just as a dreary duty”.[57]

Latouche next stresses that ‘we probably have to agree with Tocqueville when he sees “the principle of popular sovereignty at the bottom of all governments and hidden under the less freedom-prone institutions”[58]. However, general representation (as opposed to specific delegation) inevitably is, as Castoriadis puts it, ‘in the concept , as well as in actual fact, alienation (in the legal sense of the term: transfer of ownership) of sovereignty, from the ‘represented’ toward the ‘representatives’.[59] Similarly, one could hardly agree with the argument that “in this context, radical rejection of representative “democracy” is somewhat excessive. It is now part of our tradition, whether we like it or not. And it isn’t necessarily the embodiment of evil’. But, this ‘tradition’ is only two centuries old or so, since the ‘Founding Fathers’ of the US constitution introduced representative ‘democracy’ in the last quarter of the 18^th century, as the political complement of the system of the market economy that was introduced at about the same time. Furthermore, when Latouche asks ‘all in all, is representation by elected officers less democratic than lazily or carelessly giving up the city’s affairs to notabilities and demagogues?’ he does not in fact compare likes with likes. This is because he compares, as I mentioned in a previous section, the abuse of the democratic system by notabilities and demagogues with the normal functioning of representative ‘democracy’.

Direct democracy presupposes a high level of democratic consciousness and could indeed lead to demagogue-cracy, in the absence of such consciousness. But, representative democracy deprives the vast majority of the population from exercising their political will —something that can only be done directly by the people itself— by definition, through its own institutions rather than because of a deficit in democratic consciousness or any other external factor. Therefore, when Latouche argues that ‘improved representation, with recallable officers and direct participation in some cases (e.g. the participative budget in Porto Alegre), may constitute a satisfactory compromise’ he seems not to realise that a representative ‘democracy’ is a completely different system from full democracy. A representation may indeed be ‘improved’ but surely this does not constitute democracy, which clearly is not a system that can be exercised a-la carte (as is the Porto Allegre case in which some decisions are delegated to democratic assemblies and others — which happen to condition the former — are left for representatives to take). Democracy, as Castoriadis[60] stressed, is not a set of procedures but a regime, which either exists or not. Finally, Latouche admits that the issue of the equal distribution of economic power is a key one and will indeed remain unsolved in the present system noting that ‘it is somewhat illusory to envision solving it at a stroke with the magic wand of direct democracy’. However, in the ID prtoblematique, it is not simply direct democracy that will solve the problem of the unequal distribution of economic power but economic democracy, as a basic component of the inclusive democracy. And economic democracy, as was made clear in TID, does not only mean the institutionalisation of economic processes of a democratic nature (assemblies to decide how basic needs will be met) but also the institutionalisation of economic structures embodying equal economic power relations, which implies that the means of production and distribution are collectively owned and controlled by the demos, the citizen body, directly.

To my mind, all of Latouche’s reservations have a common source which is revealed in his final comment:

I think the above statement makes clear that Latouche is motivated by the postmodernist aversion to any kind of universalist project — the same aversion which has led to the abandonment, by most of the Left, of any problematique for a radical social change, and to what Castoriadis rightly called ‘generalized conformism’.[61] Similarly, as I put it in my critique of postmodernism,”the postmodern emphasis on plurality and ‘difference’, in combination with the simultaneous rejection of every idea to develop a universal project for human emancipation, in effect, serves as an alibi for abandoning liberatory analysis and politics and conforming to the status quo.[62] As I tried to show in the same article, this is the type of ‘oppositional’ postmodern politics, which is advanced by Laclau and Mouffe, among others, and which, inevitably, ends up with a reformist politics (which does not challenge in any way the system of the market economy and representative ‘democracy’) defined as ‘radical democracy’. Furthermore, I think it is an exercise in double standards to talk about the ‘smell of Western ethnocentrism’ only with reference to liberatory projects based on democracy and autonomy and not seeing this ‘smell’ in the parody of democracy that is being exported all over the world today, which has also originated in the West! The same applies to the expressed ‘distrust of any universalist project’, conveniently ‘forgetting’ that the market economy system and its political complement in the form of representative ‘democracy’ does also represent the materialisation of a universalist project —something that implies that the overthrow of this system, obviously, would also require an alternative universalist project. Finally, to insinuate that a universalist project, like the ID, or the autonomy project, may ‘not be acquainted with some requirement of due consideration for dignity of individuals and attention to their will, is largely irrelevant to our egalitarian imaginary’, in fact, implies that to be consistent with our egalitarian imaginary we should assume that people do not wish autonomy i.e. freedom , but rather prefer the heteronomy of a representative ‘democracy’!

Yet, if Latouche has strong reservations on the feasibility and desirability of an Inclusive Democracy this is not the case for those outside the traditional French Left like Jean-Claude Richard who, reviewing the book for the libertarian journal Le Monde Libertaire , classifies the ID project ‘firmly within the libertarian ideal’. As the author rightly concludes in his insightful review,

Finally, I would particularly like to thank Jean-Claude Richard on this occasion, for his comment that in the book “the deliberately scientific or difficult jargon has been banished” and, as a result, the book “is absolutely accessible to everybody. The demonstrations there are clear, logical and coherent. A will to be understood by as many as possible is felt in each page”. Given that the aspiration to express abstract ideas in an accessible way was in fact one of the basic aims of the French edition, the fact that people like Jean-Claude Richard recognise this is a significant encouragement indeed.

Takis Nikolopoulos’s perceptive review of the Greek edition raises an important question with respect to the ID’s critique of the ‘civil society’ approach in effecting systemic change. He asks:

This question obviously arises from the basic thesis supported by TID that the civil society approach is both a-historical and utopian in the negative sense of the word in bringing about radical social change. Obviously, this conclusion does not deny the possibility that a relatively strong ‘civil society’ could bring about significant reforms for the ‘deepening’ and ‘widening’ of present representative ‘democracy’, as supporters of this approach suggest. However, such reforms, which become even less likely the greater the degree of globalisation of the market economy anyway, in the ID problematique, could never bring about a systemic change, i.e. the overthrow of the market economy and representative democracy which are the ultimate causes of the present multi-dimensional crisis. At most, they could result in some easily reversible improvements in both and perhaps in ameliorating the most extreme effects of the crisis.

Furthermore, the present civil society associations could hardly be the organic parts of a wider movement for an inclusive democracy. Although, ‘objectively’, this might be so, because it is indeed possible that some of the citizens taking part in these organisations might form part of the popular base for such a movement, ‘subjectively’, the radical democratic consciousness required for the creation of an antisystemic movement could not be created within reformist movements, like those constituting the civil sanitarian associations. As I attempted to show elsewhere,[63] the evidence of reformist struggles in the last century has clearly shown that reformist movements fighting for reformist demands could only lead to the creation of a reformist mentality. This is why the vast majority of those who supported social democracy in the past, in their effort to achieve radical social change through reforms rather than through antisystemic action, did not move to the antisystemic Left when the reforms adopted by socialdemocrats in the post war period were reversed in today’s era of neoliberal globalisation. Instead, they either followed the old socialdemocrats in their present conversion into social-liberals, or they even switched to more conservative movements! As far as I am concerned at least, I am not aware of any cases of reformist movements which, frustrated by the present reversal of social democratic achievements, moved on to the antisystemic Left. Instead, even parts of the Marxist Left, which have switched to postmodernism after the collapse of ‘actually existing socialism’, have presently embraced the present system!

Therefore, on the basis of the existing evidence, it seems more likely than not that, even if civil society organisations fail in their effort to reform the present system, they will not, as Nikolopoulos assumes, begin to fight the market system itself but, instead, they will probably attempt to find ways to accommodate themselves with it.

The reviewers of the Latin American edition are almost by definition, given their position at the very front of the neoliberal attack, in the best position to see the need for a new liberatory project, after the collapse of statist socialism in its soviet and social democratic forms. This is also the view expressed in various ways by Jorge Camil and particularly Rafael Sposito in his bright analysis of the rationale for a new liberatory project. The practical realisation of this theoretical insight was recently given by the Argentinian insurrection, brilliantly assessed by Guido Galafassi . Argentina, as the author shows, in the last twenty years or so, faithfully followed the path prescribed by the US ‘big brother’ neighbour for the entire Latin America area: replacing the military elites with the elites of professional politicians for the implementation of the free market principles required by neoliberal globalisation. The illusion of ‘democracy’ was judged by the transnational elite as the perfect means to control the Latin American populations (as against the bankrupt military regimes of the past) and avoid the social explosions which loomed in the horizon, as a result of the huge acceleration of concentration of power to which neoliberal globalisation inevitably led. The game however was particularly risky for the elites since any social explosion could eventually challenge not just one elite versus the other but the very system of concentrating political and economic power at the hands of the political and economic elites. And this is exactly what has happened in Argentina since the insurrection of December 2001.

Although the watchword "que se vayan todos" (leave you all) used in the popular protest of December 2001 originally might have expressed the naïve demand for a change in the political personnel, it soon led, as in many similar insurrectionary situations in the past, to the creation of popular assemblies. First, neighbourhood assemblies, as a practical implementation of the need for the equal distribution of political power. Second, workers’ assemblies —following the taking over of factories abandoned by their previous capitalist owners and their re-organisation on the basis of workers’ control— as a practical implementation of the need for the equal distribution of economic power. In this sense, the sperms of three of the main components of an inclusive democracy were already attempted in practice in Argentina: direct political democracy (which both Galafassi and Camil, wrongly identify with participatory democracy that, however, in the literature has been defined very differently, as a mix of direct and representative ‘democracy’), economic democracy, and democracy in the social realm. Furthermore, as Galafassi reports, it seems that issues relating to an ecological democracy have also been raised. It is for this reason that Galafassi rightly concludes that these movements represent the emergence of embryonic mechanisms of direct democracy which ‘even extend their demands towards a new integral vision of society, very close to the project of Inclusive Democracy’. This is particularly so, he continues, when the confederal element is not missing either since, as he put it, ‘a new form of confederal democracy is emerging based on nearby communities organised into a territorial network at a local and regional scale.’[64]

Of course, all this does not mean that an explicit attempt for an inclusive democracy has already been made in Argentina or that people were even aware of the ID project, or, for that matter, of any other alternative project out of those that were proposed in the last 10-15 years (libertarian municipalism, Parecon etc). What is significant however is the kind of alternative institutions that people attempt to set up —whenever the opportunity arises— as the only way out of the present multidimensional crisis. To my mind, the resemblance of the attempted institutions in Argentina to those that are required for an inclusive democracy is striking. This is of course not surprising because the Argentinian people simply followed the same old tradition that manifested itself in almost every insurrectionary period: from the Parisian sections of the early 1790s to May ’68. Everywhere, citizens’ assemblies (complemented sometimes with workers’ assemblies) emerged as the nuclei of the attempted alternative society.

However, it was not surprising that the present attempt in Argentina seems to be failing at the moment. As I attempted to show elsewhere[65], the transition to an ID could only be a long process motivated by a mass movement with a clear program and transitional strategy, which should start being implemented not just during a social explosion but long before, or after it. In other words, as I mentioned in section 3, an Inclusive Democracy can only be established after a long transition process of establishing institutions of political and economic democracy and in tension with the present institutions, (i.e. after the majority of the population have tasted what a genuine democracy is and are prepared to fight for it) rather than after a popular eruption in an insurrection. The reason is that only after such a long transition period could the subjective conditions (i.e. the massive democratic consciousness) for such a democracy be created at a massive scale. Otherwise, the traditional mainstream parties would redirect popular anger towards insignificant and easily reversible reforms, as is the case in today’s Argentina, or was in May 68, whereas the traditional left organisations would redirect it towards old Left politics which, as History amply has shown, will either end up to eventual marginalisation, or —in case of success— to new authoritarian regimes.

Still, the signs are encouraging. Not only in Argentina but in Brazil, Venezuela and elsewhere forms of direct democracy are emerging at a massive social scale lately. Although in the cases of Brazil and Venezuela, unlike Argentina, the original initiative came ‘from above’, sometimes the original initiative was transcended by action ‘from below’. This is, for instance, the case of Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez’s government encouraged limited forms of local democracy, with the obvious aim to enhance the governments’ electoral base so that it could face a concerted attack (including an attempted coup!) by the American elite and its local support. However, the movement soon spread beyond the original government plans. Thus, on top of the government-sponsored neighborhood groups responsible for fixing deficient water supply systems, organising volunteer efforts at local schools, launching recycling campaigns and the like, many self-convoked 'citizen assemblies' have emerged in the poor barrios of Venezuela “to talk about everything from neighborhood problems to national politics and to create local planning councils where municipal authorities will be required to share decision-making with community representatives”.[66] The popular aims with respect to these assemblies were made clear by Carlos Carles, co-founder of Radio Perola, a community station that has become an axis of local activism in the barrio of Caricuao: ''We don't want a government, we want to govern. We want to decide what is done, when it's done and how it's done in our communities.[67]”

This is perhaps the best justification of the demand for a systemic change like the one proposed by the ID project!

[1] See Takis Fotopoulos, “Globalisation, the reformist Left and the anti-globalisation «movement»”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No. 2 (July 2001), pp. 233-280.

[2] See Takis Fotopoulos “A Response to Michael Levin’s Review Article”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5, No. 2 (July 1999), pp. 383-394.

[3] Cornelius Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 107.

[4] see e.g. Jonathan Cook, “A Jew among 25,000 Muslims”, The Guardian (27/8/2003).

[5] For a classic description of the medieval free cities, see Petr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (London, 1902) CBS. V & V.

[6] It should be noted here that my recognition that Pericles had an understanding of ‘the merely formal character of political rights when they are not accompanied by social and economic rights’ could hardly be taken as implying that a demand for an inclusive democracy had already been made by Pericles, as Levin asserts.

[7] April Carter, Authority and Democracy, (Routledge, 1979) p. 13.

[8] see Takis Fotopoulos, “Towards a democratic conception of science and technology”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 4, No. 1 (1998), pp. 54-86.

[9] See T. Fotopoulos, “The Global «war» of the transnational elite”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 201-240.

[10] Takis Fotopoulos, “Transitional strategies and the Inclusive Democracy project”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 8, No. 1 (March 2002), pp. 17-62.

[11] See Fotopoulos, “The End of Traditional Antisystemic Movements”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No. 3 (November 2001), pp. 415-456.

[12] See, Fotopoulos, “Class divisions today-the ID approach”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 6, No. 2 (July 2000), pp. 211-251.

[13] Murray Bookchin, Post-scarcity anarchism, (London: Wildwood House, 1974), p. 191.

[14] C. Castoriadis’ introductory interview in The Castoriadis Reader, edited by David Ames Curtis, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) pp.26-27.

[15] Fotopoulos, “Globalisation, the reformist Left and the anti-globalisation ‘movement’”.

[16] Castoriadis’ definition of autonomy in Philosophy, Politics Autonomy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 164 as autos-nomos: (to give to) oneself one’s laws, is identical with my definition of it TID p. 179.

[17] see my exchange with David Ames Curtis on the differences between the Castoriadian project of autonomy and the ID project, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 1999), pp. 163-188.

[18] Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics Autonomy, p. 174.

[19] David Ames Curtis (ed), The Castoriadis Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 30.

[20] ibid. p. 21.

[21] ibid. p. 168.

[22] David Ames Curtis (ed.) The Castoriadis Reader, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) p. 407.

[23] ibid. p.406

[24] ibid. p. 29

[25] Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics Autonomy, p, 144

[26] ibid. p. 163.

[27] Ibid. p. 153.

[28] ibid. p. 25.

[29] ibid. p. 107.

[30] Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics Autonomy, p. 31.

[31] ibid. p. 36.

[32] see his exchange with me, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5, No. 1 (March 1999).

[33] Cornelius Castoriadis, World in Fragments, trans. and ed. David Ames Curtis, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), p.37.

[34] ibid. p. 39.

[35] Castoriadis, Philosophy, Politics Autonomy, pp. 37-39.

[36] ibid. p.164.

[37] see also my article on classes in D&N vol. 6, no. 2.

[38] Even Meghnad Desai, a life-long socialdemocrat with Marxist inclination (and a Labour member of the House of Lords!), has recently recognised the end of statist socialism in a forthcoming book under the meaningful title Marx’s revenge, The resurgence of capitalism and the death of statist socialism (London: Verso, 2004) .

[39] Ulrich Rippert, “Top German official demands «more inequality»”, World Socialist Web Site (22 November 2002).

[40] World in Fragments, p. 61.

[41] “Modern Capitalism & Revolution” in Castoriadis, Political and Social Writings, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988) vol. 2, p. 293.

[42] Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy, p. 88.

[43] ibid. p. 133.

[44] World in Fragments, p. 59.

[45] ibid. p. 68.

[46] see C.Mouffe, “Democratic Politics Today” in C. Mouffe (ed.) Dimensions of Radical Democracy, (London: Verso, 1995 & 1992).

[47] Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul, (New York: the Free Press, 1962).

[48] See e.g. Audrey Gillan, “Public backing for Sweden's private success”, The Guardian (29/5/2001) and Denis MacShane, “Europe's left only wins when it rejects the state”, The Guardian (17/9/2002).

[49] see T. Fotopoulos, “The rise of new irrationalism and its incompatibility with Inclusive Democracy”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 4, Nos. 2/3, (1998) pp. 1-49 and also, Religion, Autonomy, Democracy: the rise of new irrationalism, (in Greek), (Athens: Eleytheros Typos, 2000)

[50] see T. Fotopoulos, “Towards a democratic liberatory ethics”, Democracy & Nature , Vol. 8, No. 3 (Nov. 2002), pp. 361-396.

[51] See Takis Fotopoulos, “Globalisation, the reformist Left and the anti-globalisation ‘movement’”.

[52] Aristotle, Politics, IV, 13, 1297 b 5.

[53] ibid. V, 8, 1308 b 30.

[54] ibid. IV, 13, 1297 b 10.

[55] Mogens Herman Hansen, The Athenian Democracy in the age of Demosthenes, (Oxford: Blackwell,1991), p. 55.

[56] ibid. p. 60.

[57] ibid.

[58] Alexis de Tocqueville, Souvenirs, (1942 edition), p. 220.

[59] David Ames Curtis (ed) The Castoriadis Reader, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 408.

[60] see Cornelius Castoriadis, “La démocratie comme procédure et comme régime” in La montée de l’ insignifiance (Seuil, Paris, 1996), pp. 221-241.

[61] See Cornelius Castoriadis, “The retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as generalised conformism” in World in Fragments (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) pp. 32-45.

[62] Takis Fotopoulos, “The Myth of postmodernity”, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 7, No. 1 (March 2001), pp. 27-76.

[63] See T. Fotopoulos, “Transitional Strategies and the Inclusive Democracy Project”.

[64] It was entertaining indeed to see an interview being staged recently in the Znet empire in which an applauder of Parecon was interviewed by Michael Albert, in an obvious effort to demonstrate that the Argentinian assemblies supposedly represent ‘early forms of workers and consumers councils’ —the cornerstone of the Parecon model, (see Michael Albert and Ezequiel Adamovsky, “Argentina and Parecon. Michael Albert Interviews Ezequiel Adamovsky” (August 04, 2003), http://www.zmag.org/ZNETTOPnoanimation.html). Thus, the neighborhood assemblies, which in fact discussed general problems affecting citizens —the clearest example of ID’s demotic assemblies— were found by Adamosvsky to have elements of Albert’s ‘consumers councils’ (!) whereas the factory assemblies were resembled to ‘workers’ councils’, so that they could both fit the Procrustean bed of the Parecon model!

[65] See T. Fotopoulos, “Transitional Strategies and the Inclusive Democracy Project”.

[66] Reed Lindsay, “Venezuela's slum army takes over”, The Observer (August 10, 2003).

[67] ibid.