As long as the economy remains outside the realm of democratic control, democracy is intertwined with a destructive, colonial economic system that threatens our existence on this planet. In his contribution to the “Deep Democracy” series, Lukas Warning argues, that no socio-ecological transformation can occur unless the restructuring of the economy is subject to collective control. A plea for realizing democracy through socialization.
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Trapped in the cockpit of a massive, blazing rocket, we hurtle toward an ominous wall. With each passing second, we get closer to it. The speed is terrifying; we are on a collision course. The rocket’s enormous propulsive energy is drawing us away from what we need to live. We are gradually burning up everything we hold dear, and this is making us go faster and faster. To make matters worse, we are forced to spend most of our time on repairs and maintenance. During a short break, we anxiously turn our attention to the control panel. There are so many levers, switches, and lights. We press a button, and the ceiling lights change color. We decide what to have for dinner and who will go without dessert today. But all the while, a feeling of powerlessness remains. No matter how much we adjust, what we are looking for seems to be beyond our control. The rocket is racing toward its end, and we cannot steer it. Its speed takes our breath away, yet we cannot slow it down. Our supplies are running low, and the air in the cockpit is getting worse, yet we have no way to stop the destruction. I feel panic rising within me. Drenched in sweat, I wake up from my nightmare.
We live in a democracy. Nevertheless, many people seem to think that it’s normal for a select few to determine how we conduct business. It’s as if it’s perfectly ‘natural’ for factories, companies, banks, supermarkets, apartment buildings, and even many hospitals and local transportation companies to be owned by a select few who decide what our world and our everyday lives look like.
We live in a capitalist system. The means of production and capital belong to a select few: the capitalists. The rest of us, the vast majority, have no choice but to sell our labor to them. However, capitalists only pay for part of the value of our labor. They keep the rest as profit, and accumulating as much as possible is the compass by which capital, and thus our economy, is guided.
Organizing our society’s supply in this way is profoundly undemocratic. Rather than governing ourselves collectively, a few people make essential decisions. This system presupposes inequality between capital owners and everyone else. This inequality grows every day as surplus value is skimmed off our labor and flows to the few as profit. Today, many people see this system as normal, legitimate, and even ‘natural’ and irrevocable. Yet, capitalism did not emerge that long ago, and nothing about its implementation was ‘natural’ or necessary. History is contingent; things could have turned out differently. The implementation of capitalism as the supposed norm was and is associated with enormous effort and massive violence.
The emergence of capitalism
History is not deliberately controlled by individuals or small groups. The development of human societies is too complex to be explained by simple or clear causalities. Nevertheless, it’s clear that a system in which social production and supply are geared toward the private interests of a select few could not have developed automatically. Capitalism did not become the ‘best system.’ In fact, it has met and continues to meet resistance everywhere, partly because this form of organization is interwoven with other forms of domination.
For the few to benefit from the work of the many, the many must be unable to reject wage labor. Their ability to provide for themselves collectively must therefore be destroyed. The theft of common goods through enclosure, as well as the suppression of women, their knowledge, and their role in community self-organization – for example, through ‘witch hunts’ – should be understood not as the culmination of the ‘dark Middle Ages,’ but as the beginning of the capitalist modern era.
The stability of the economic system depends on capitalists fighting each other ruthlessly for ever higher profits. This necessitates – and simultaneously results in – endless growth, regardless of the usefulness of production. Endless growth requires endless resources and presupposes the separation of humans from their environment, as well as the subsequent subjugation and exploitation of nature.
Endless growth requires the ongoing creation and subjugation of an outside world from which resources and labor can be drawn and to which surplus production and waste can be transferred. The invention of ‘human races,’ the devaluation, enslavement, and extermination of millions of people, and colonialism arose in interaction with and as a condition for the success of capitalism. The colonial system continues to this day, and its continued existence is a necessary condition for the functioning of capitalism.
State and democracy
The implementation and continued existence of capitalism would be difficult to imagine without the simultaneous emergence of the construct of the nation state. The state provides permanently available wage labor, protects the property of capital owners, and implements the standardization and market-based reorganization of social relations, all at enormous expense. The nation-state also distracts from the inherent conflict of interests between the many and the few that capitalism creates. By constructing an imaginary, essentially racist community, coexistence ‘as a nation’ in global competition becomes more probable and conceivable – and thus potentially more attractive– than the common survival and liberation of the many in the face of capital and its destructive power.
Democracy in these states was bitterly fought for. We must defend it! However, in doing so, we must not fall into the trap of defending the antagonism between states and the life-threatening economic system in the name of democracy as it exists today. Although liberal democracy is deprived of the economic sphere as a field of action, it nevertheless plays a decisive role in maintaining the status quo of this economic sphere. Disputes over the negative consequences of the undemocratic economic system can be channeled into orderly paths in liberal democracy, and the ‘worst excesses’ of capitalism can be mitigated. Liberal democracy must counteract ever-increasing inequality to maintain the system’s legitimacy. In this way, it provides security for capital. The state, especially a democratic one, provides essential services that capitalism cannot provide itself. A democratic welfare state plays an important role in training and maintaining a ‘productive’ workforce. At the same time, however, it must push people into wage labor because it depends on the success of capitalism.
Although liberal democracies need, support, and enable capitalism for their stability, they are simultaneously threatened by this omnivorous system that devours its own sources of life. Capitalism consumes malleable spaces, i.e., political spaces, and subjects them to its own rules by first making these spaces quantifiable and then exploitable. Thus, a healthcare system that follows the logic of money is worse, more inefficient, and more inhumane. In such a system, everything must be billed down to the minute. Every operation and every day of recovery in the hospital must be justified in business terms. Some hospitals make profits for the few, while others must pretend to do so. This financialized healthcare system is also more undemocratic. Where capital enters the mind and property, democracy dies.
We must defend democracy – not as it is, but by completing it. As long as the economy remains outside the realm of democratic control, democracy will be intertwined with a destructive, colonial economic system that threatens our existence. As long as the restructuring of the economy is not subject to collective control, there can be no socio-ecological transformation.
Change what we can
In the Federal Republic of Germany, Article 15 of the Basic Law gives us a tool that could transform democracy itself. It stipulates that “land, natural resources, and means of production shall be transferred to public ownership or other forms of public enterprise for the purpose of socialization.” Socialization involves a shift in the power of disposal from private to common ownership, a transformation of the mode of disposal from market mechanisms to democratic structures, and an appropriation of the purpose of disposal from profit to needs orientation. It transforms the nature of companies or economic sectors, shifting them from a private market economy to a democratic public economy that follows different logics and goals.
However, Article 15 is more than just a tool for transforming parts of the economy. It transforms democracy itself. It changes the game we play. By incorporating socialization into our democratic practices, we can change more. We can expand our democratic ‘everything’ and start changing everything together.
Let’s dare to have true democracy together and change the world. Let’s expand the democratic ‘we’ that organizes our common provisioning. Since the economy is global, economic democracy must also be global. Could this modest article from the Basic Law shake the foundations of the nation-state itself? Let’s find out.
I doze off on the couch and find myself back in the cockpit. The mood has changed, though. It is now determined, combative, and communal. We discover a new lever on the control panel. It is dusty, and the lettering is barely legible. Has it always been there? In any case, we have never used it before. Some of the older folks say it was installed to switch off the rocket’s autopilot and take control ourselves. Others interrupt abruptly, saying that they have been recommending for years that the lever be removed. After all, who knows what would happen if we suddenly took control of the rocket? Can we even do that? Doesn’t the rocket itself know best how to fly?
But more and more of us have had enough. Things can’t go on like this! Everything is at stake. Finally, we’re taking matters into our own hands. When we try to activate the lever, it initially sticks, and the entire rocket jerks as if trying to prevent us from taking action. But we succeed in the end! We can slow down the rocket, steer away from the wall, stop the engine, and convert it. Someone suggests taking the rocket apart and reassembling the usable parts. We could build something useful that benefits everyone and harms no one. A bicycle, for example.