Growing Beyond Growth for True Democracy

[marmar]

from YES! Magazine:



Growing Beyond Growth for True Democracy
When democracy is not determined by economic power, it is possible to imagine alternatives to “growth” and “austerity.”

by J.A. Myerson
posted Jul 03, 2012


“Growth” is, once again, the buzzword of the moment among Europe’s politicians, thanks to Francois Hollande, the milquetoast Socialist recently elected to succeed Nicolas Sarkozy as President of France. “My mission now,” Hollande told supporters on the night of his electoral victory, “is to give European construction a growth dimension.” President Obama praised Holland at Camp David, telling reporters he would urge “other G8 leaders” to adopt a “strong growth agenda.” The previous buzzword, “austerity,” is meanwhile in decline.

Considering this shift a victory for the anti-austerity movements occupying Europe’s historic plazas over the course of the last two years mistakes both what the elites mean when they say “growth” and what the dissidents want instead of austerity. It is similar to the way liberal commentators in the United States reliably recite the official line that Occupy Wall Street “changed the conversation” on “income inequality” (which we grown-ups will take care of now from our D.C. office buildings, so please shut up now).

The dissidents do express antipathy toward austerity, of course, but that doesn’t imply a desire for what Hollande means when he says “growth.” Both “austerity” and “growth” are cognates of capitalism—“growth” is the Keynesian form, “austerity” the Hayekian—and the dissident movements have by and large rejected the confines of this debate, challenging us to imagine alternatives to either. “Another world,” as they say, “is possible.”

In Madrid, the organizing banner held that, “We are not merchandise in the hands of bankers and politicians.” In Athens, the first vote of the people’s assembly of Syntagma Square declared, “We are here because we know that the solutions to our problems can only be provided by us.” In New York, the Declaration of the Occupation insisted “no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.” The indignados and the aganaktismenoi and Wall Street occupiers did not merely pick a side in the capitalists’ ideological tiff. Rather, they have expressly rejected the underlying assumptions and mechanisms of capitalism—the primacy of the profit motive, a perverse incentive on corruption and fraud, the capture of ostensible democracy by the interests of wealth, its tendency toward state monopoly, environmental appropriation, and global conquest, and so forth. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/a-new-europe-is-possible-so-why-go-back-to-the-old-one

[ladjf]

1. Either develop some kinds of strategies that will take political power away from the criminals or

we will continue to suffer in our "pseudo Democracy" which is actually straight fascism. nt