by Samir Amin
I am going to speak here of democratization, not of democracy. The latter, reduced as it is to formulas imposed by the dominant powers, is a farce [...] The electoral farce produces an impotent pseudo-parliament and a government responsible only to the IMF and the WTO, the instruments of the imperialist triad’s monopolies. The democratic farce is then capped off with a “human-rightsish” discourse on the right to protest—on condition that protest never gets close to mounting a real challenge to the supreme power of the monopolies. Beyond that line it is to be labeled “terrorism” and criminalized.
1. The Democratic Fraud Challenges Us to Invent Tomorrow’s Democracy
Universal suffrage is a recent conquest, beginning with workers’
struggles in a few European countries (England, France, Holland, and
Belgium) and then progressively extending throughout the world. Today,
everywhere on the planet, it goes without saying that the demand for
delegating supreme power to an honestly elected, multiparty assembly
defines the democratic aspiration and guarantees its realization—or so
it is claimed.
