TEÓDULO LÓPEZ MELÉNDEZ, Writer and Journalist - Caracas, Venezuela
The democracy is an invention of Athens, the same as the tragedy. If we see Greece well it was tragic beyond the beautiful literary texts that created the word tragedy. Even this way, it is not for it that we can define to the democracy like tragic. It is it because we have defended it for opposition to totalitarianism. One is the freedom, the other thing their retrenchment. One is the free will, the other thing the imposition. This way, we have wanted the democracy because we don't want the dictatorship.
Robert Legros has formulated a small but significant equation that almost leaves of a reminder perogrullesco but vital. In the antiquity it was not necessarily civic, the citizenship could be a prize, a gift or a recompense. Today in day not, today one is simply born citizen to belong to the mankind. Citizenship and humanity go meetings.
Of there Alain Finkielkraut has extracted a clear conclusion: the sovereignty doesn't reside in the town. This way, if one has knowledge of the most modern political philosophy, it is not own to speak of “I populate sovereign”. The sovereignty resides in the man, that is to say, in the citizen that in fact has that condition for human. This way, if most viola the rights of a citizen would be making a crime and being majority doesn't endow it of impunity.
In other words, that old concept of endowing to the town of sovereignty is what has opened the doors of the dictatorships. Now then, who does exercise the sovereignty? It exercises it the town on behalf of the humanity. It is good to remember that the tyrannies of most can be crueller than those of a tyrant in solitary, although, truly, none that has not said exists that it exercises the power on behalf of an immense majority that supports it, from Stalin until Milosevich or Fujimori. The tragic democracy allows it, the democracy is a constant he doubts, while the tyrannies don't have none. As Finkielkraut it assures it “you cannot confer to the town the power of making any thing.”
If most sinks in an incompatible address with the democratic essence the democracy it has consummated their tragedy. The “popular sovereignty” it becomes a sacrificed ideological slogan and worthless. In other words, the popular will well cannot be democratic. That happens, according to the filósofa Hanna Arend, because the towns sometimes become mob and they make it for a simple reason, the death of the culture. Let us see well that there is not suspicious régime that loves the culture, although he is filled the mouth with her.
The democracy is tragic because he has elections and the true question that every time it is formulated that is summoned to the town to the urns it is if he wants to continue living in democracy. The tyrants summon plebiscites faked to ask if one wants to continue under their control. In the democracy, the “I populate sovereign” well he can decide that he wants to live in dictatorship, for diverse and varied reasons, because in the democracy he/she has not found security, neither effectiveness neither resolution of the conflict.
If we remember the bases of this tragic system a little, we will be able to see that democracy is an administration of the opposing interests. The democracy is mediation and when one doesn't mediate, when the rules are not respected that allow the healthy administration of the contradictions, because begins you to call to that régime like be, but not democratic. This way, in strict sense, it cannot have a “democratic revolution”, what doesn't pass of being another populist sentence, since it is a democracy or of a revolution, antithetic terms. One can read all the big thinkers on the topic, from Tocqueville until the contemporary Finkielkraut and not another conclusion can take out of the political sciences.
A lot it has been written about the deception of the democracy that you/they suffer the towns for their supposed inability to solve the problems, in our part of the world the eternal ones, the poverty, the education lack or the insecurity. Some sustain that it is necessary to reinvent the democracy and to fill it with adjectives, while others think that he/she is requesting to the democracy what is not of their essence or competition. In other words, the democracy is simply a formal political system, that is to say, one where one lives in freedom, where the sovereignty exercises it the town on behalf of the humanity, where the power is divided and control mechanisms exist to avoid the excesses. The effectiveness or inefficacy are not able to, this way, to be attributed to a specific political system.
They should be attributed to those that the town has chosen to administer. Another thing is the improvement of the freedom and liberate expression that is nucleus of the democracy. The abuse of the partidocracias can be controlled, to establish clear rules for the electoral financing, to establish election norms unaware to the manipulations of all type, in sum, to perfect the mechanisms in that the democracy is exercised. The democracy would be, from this point of view, unaware to the inefficacy of who you/they embody it from the power.
Who embody it they are chosen by the town. Contrary to some unhappy expression, the towns have a sharp tendency to make a mistake and also, of course, they are manipulated, but the manipulations (reads you abuse of the media, populism, verbal indulgences) they can also be controlled. The essence of the democracy is the contradiction and its more dangerous weakness is the culture lack. Let us say that democracy and dictatorship don't compete in terms of effectiveness, one is not more effective than the other one. The democracy is freedom and the totalitarianism is oppression. The democracy you full with content, of answers, of achievements, depending of who they exercise it. This way, the matter of the culture reappears in all its magnitude.
Let us value, it is necessary to accept it, to the democracy without the relating one alternative of the dictatorship. The democracy is tragic because it can be attempted by towns without culture. The thesis that those towns should not have it drives us to it to the “democratic Caesarism” or to some modern thinkers that sustain that it is necessary to deprive and to kill because the fundamental thing is the economic growth and the elimination of the poverty. It is preferable to still live the tragedy characteristic of the democracy running the risk that most becomes antidemocrat. The paper of the intellectuals is fundamental. They should persevere in the defense of the only climate possible to the creation, that of the freedom, constantly pointing out all deviation. There will always be some that spend to the contrary decree.
Constantly I bring up like some of the most brilliant European heads between the end of the XIX century and beginnings of the XX one the corrupt monarchies combatted and they requested the republic it stops then to be disappointed of the republic and to direct all their invectives against the majorities, giving, this way, I develop the Fascist germ. This last one is also engendered, because, in the tragic democracy. To go back to the aristocracy of the thought is not the exit.
We should, to these heights, to learn the lesson: the democracy is risk. In their search in government's ways the man continues reasoning. Although the ideologies died, he has not made it the political science. The sovereignty resides in the man and the town exercises it on its behalf. The democracy is administration of the contradictions, another thing it is tyranny.
The intellectuals should learn that a thing is the exercise of the power and other the reflection about the humanity's essential values, the included freedom. The cultural revolution is, because, it works of who think, not of the governments, because when a government proclaims a “cultural revolution” what wants is to destroy the references. When the references get lost those “sovereign towns” made drowsy they love the peace of sepulcher of the dictatorships.
The word “intellectual” (and the concept, clearing is) it is of French production, for what I request excuses for the exabrupto of saying that Plato was the first “intellectual” that thought on the politics. From then on it is remembered that to govern is already to direct for the one on the way to the meekness to a flock meek, as well Peter reminds it Sloterdijk in his wrongly famous booklet Norms for the human park.
Intellectuals' infinity has been devoted to think as governing the men and, in spite of the immense variations that it has suffered the politología, renewable as anyone, it continues effective the ruler's platonic idea as weaver, that is to say, the one that interweaves in the best way the properties of the men that are more favorable to the public interests. To sow doubts on the ideas and envelope who produce it is to unweave, to make that opposed to the public interest. The tragic democracy should, because, to constantly face the degenerations that assault her.
