EDITOR’S NOTE:The root cause of today’s social problems everywhere in the world is the domination – political, economic, ideological and military – over every corner of the world by global monopoly financial capital. All other, non-monopoly forms of capital – national and local, industrial, small and medium-sized -- are victimized, as well as are all laboring people, by the all-powerful monopoly forces, though at the same time the former are also striving for favor from monopolies and victimizing the laborers under their own domination. Therefore, though capital’s domination over labor in general has been the ultimate root cause of monopolies’ formation and growth under the jungle law prevalent in capitalist social economic relations, in spite of this, it is the world monopoly financial forces together with their economical, political and ideological agents throughout the globe that should be the major target for resistance by the laboring 99% at the present stage of human history. This, however, should not prevent people from developing business associations based on labor-capital equality, such as worker-owned co-operatives and businesses run jointly by capital and labor on an equal footing as the foundation for true democracy on the macro-social level.
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V. Democracy Should Start from within Business Associations
The French political thinkerTocqueville stresses in his book Democracy in America the significance of social associations to the overcoming of citizens’ apathy towards public affairs, i.e., significance to the development of political democracy. And, of all kinds of associations, business establishments should be considered (though not by liberalist theorists) as the most important ones for all citizens, as business associations, or workplaces, are of vital importance to most people for making a living (for oneself and one’s family) and for seeking self-fulfilment through work. Usually, people spend most of their waking lives in such workplaces. Compared to the macro society, micro-level business associations provide more ‘‘direct’’ and more ‘‘assuring’’ experiences necessary for the effective operation of political democracy, because in such small-size establishments, people get directly acquainted with each other and can see, hear, and feel directly what is going on with regard to the common affairs related to the vital interests of everybody in the business. Therefore, political democracy should start from within business establishments, for at least the following three reasons :
a) In such associations, given their special social context, it is much easier to see through all deceptive propaganda, hypocritic remarks and actions, and double-faced politicians.
b) What is more important, in such associations the members can see and feel more directly, more tangibly and, therefore, more assuredly their own interests, other individuals’ interests, and common interests, and whether and how these diverse interests are contradictory or/and complementary to each other. Hence, the social context of such micro-level associations are more propitious, somewhat like training schools, to the nurturing and development of people’s sense of responsibility and morality as dutiful citizens, the nurturing and development of their conscious disposition and ability to reconcile one’s own interests with those of others and with common interests of the whole group, as this disposition and ability are necessary qualifications on the part of all citizens for real democracy on both the micro- and macro-social levels, that is, democracy in line with principles of social justice, not peudo democracy serving only the interests of capital, especially big capital.
c) Business establishments, because of their smaller size, are better suited for direct democracy than the macro society and can, therefore, serve as the primary base, besides as training schools as said above, for indirect, representative democracy on the macro-social level. As we know, representative democracy is not the best form of democracy for its inadequacy: If the representives are not selected through a democratic process starting from within each and every grassroot business associations, the small number of selected politicans who will take part in the ‘‘democratic’’ process on the macro level supposedly as representatives of the grassroots majority will most likely only represent the will and special interests of those privileged few in those business organizations due to the latter’s money power. Such politicians will certainly not work for the common interests of the society’s working majority. And this, to be sure, is not democracy in its real sense.
In other words, shop floor democracy within business organizations is essential for macro-social democracy in the following three ways :
a) Without direct democracy within grassroots business units as cornerstones, macro-social democracy would be groundless. In other words, not any associations, or NGOs, can serve as such foundations. They must be democratic economically and politically within themselves to serve that purpose.
b) Not all kinds of associations, even if all governed by a democratic process within themselves, have equal significance for macro-social democracy. Only business organizations, in which workers, menial and mental (technical and managerial) as well, spend most of their waking hours to earn their livelihood and, hence, which has the most fundamental importance to their life, play the most crucial part in determining whether the formally democratic process on the macro-social level will really work. Tocqueville rightly puts emphasis in his book on the importance of township autonomy to democracy because, as he himself pointed out, citizens have a stake in township politics. Nowadays, business organizations, where most working people ‘‘have a stake’’, have of course surpassed townships in their importance to citizens in this sense. Therefore, shop floor democracy should replace township autonomy as the primary prerequisite for macro-social democracy.
c) Another reason Tocqueville mentioned for the importance for democracy of township autonomy in the U.S. New England area is that people can learn within one’s field of vision about social management... about balance of power so as to finally build up clear and practical conceptions about the nature of one’s obligations and the limits of one’s rights. What is specially worth noting is the phrase ‘‘within one’s field of vision’’ , because true understanding of social life is always obtained through a step-by-step process starting from what is within one’s vision, is on a micro level and is more tangible to what is beyond one’s vision, is on a macro level and is more intangible. Only true knowledge built up on such a solid foundation could lead to proper choice of action.
In a word, if the principle of democracy can be adopted in buisiness enterprises, where both capital and labor ‘‘have a stake’’ ‘‘within the field of vision’’, then such enterprises are ideal schools for learning and practicing democracy. And they should be such schools.
But the fact of the matter under the capitalist system is that the laboring majority do not have democratic rights in the workplaces where they spend most of their lifetime. According to the above analysis, one can imagine how ineffective the democratic rights they nominally enjoy on the macro social level could be.
No wonder, citizens’ apathy towards public affairs in today’s U.S.A., what Tocqueville once worried about, is already so widespread that about half of elligible voters do not care to cast a vote when they are supposed to. Though not going to vote does not necessarily means apathy towards politics in general or lack of sense of responsibility, for some of those people, out of deep disappointment, deliberately choose to ‘‘vote’’ against the current political process as not trustworthy just by not going to vote, and some others are participating in public politics and performing their duty as a citizen in some other ways, while still others found it too hard to decide who/what to vote for or against. Just imagine, since in the workplaces, where they have a more tangible stake and also can see and judge things more tangibly within the range of vision and thus have more confidence about their judgments, yet they cannot have their say on issues affecting their immediate and vital interests, how can one expect them, doing drudge work everyday for mere livelihood and having little time and other resources for learning and serious thinking, to have sound views on macro social affairs, with their stakes not so directly and clearly manifest beyond the vision of their naked eye and with truth hidden or distorted by big capital-controlled media? As a matter of fact, most of the voters have been acting merely as blind or conscious followers and instruments for the 1% privileged interest groups.
In the final analysis, without workplace democracy as the foundation, social democracy is only like a castle in the air, or a mirage, or a political show, or, even worse, a camouflage used to cover up the reality, i.e. the development of a police state, the undemocratic imposition of an imperialist world order on all other countries politically, economically, ideologically and militarily. Now that the general crisis of capitalism is ever deepening, it is time to see through the true nature of capitalist democracy.
VI. Afterword：Can the Equality Principle in Political Discourse Rectify Actual Inequality in Economic Power?
The above five sections of this essay has pointed out the glaring inconsistencies between the prevalent despotism existing in almost all grassroots economic cells as well as on all social economic levels and formal democracy on the macro-social political level. The author does not mean to deny that, even if under a private ownership system, certain democratic institutions, such as allowing workers’ organized resistance, multi-party politics, a universal voting system, limited freedom of expression and association, the few instances of capital-labor co-governance and worker-owned co-operatives, can in a limited way improve economic and political relations and alleviate some people’s hardships for the time being. However, history and reality have revealed that Western capitalist democracies have all the time built up their prosperity at the expense of the laboring majority at home and especially of other nations and peoples of the world and that, though criticism of and resistance against capitalist, imperialist, and hegemonist politics, economics and ideology by the world’s peoples, including morally sensitive Western thinkers and scholars, have never stopped, the current democratic institutions in the West, especially the U.S. two-party system, have never allowed such critical and resistant forces proper room for survival and competition on an equal footing. A typical example is the rutine absence of the Green Party and other indepentent parties at the presidential debates during every campaign. The conclusion cannot be anything but this: Such a political process on the whole should not be called ‘‘democracy’’ but rather ‘‘oligarchy’’ or ‘‘plutocracy’’, not much different from political despotism in essence.
Some people, including the author in a degree, may still hope that the existing form of Western democracy have the potentiality for self-renewal, or to reform and adjust itself so as to meet the demands of history, i.e., to bring about revolutionary changes, hopefully in a basically peaceful way, in social economic and political relations without large-scale bloody violence neither at home nor abroad, neither in the form of armed revolution nor through degeneration into fascism. And this is yet to be tested by history. The above-said ‘‘potentiality for self-renewal’’ should show itself first of all in a self-examination of the inconsistencies in its theory and practice and also in learning from the traditions and current practices of other civilizations. If Western democracy cannot fulfil this but continue to impose its inconsistent dogma and design on the world, then it will not be able to pass the test of history but only end in being replaced by a truely democratic, i.e., a morally just new system sooner or later. Let us strive for the best to avoid the worst.
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