>I really can't see liberal bourgeois democracies surviving; the question
>is only what will replace them.
You agree with Slavoj Zizek!
<http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Zizek.html>
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The first problem: the idea was, "Let's bring democracy to Iraq." A couple of simple facts have to be mentioned here. First, for simple geopolitical strategic interests, the U.S. cannot afford democracy in the Middle East now. And I'm not playing any Marxist games about the illusions of bourgeois democracy. I simply mean usual Western liberal democracy - multiparty elections. This would assure that sooner or later, some kind of, if not fundamentalist, then at least nationalist Arab regime would take over, and would at least play some anti-American games with the oil. So that's the first irony of the situation.
The second one is how open the game is becoming. William Kristol is blunt: it's not really about Iraq, it's about the absolutely hegemonic role of the U.S. And another point they are making clearly is best captured by the last book by Fareed Zakaria, who now openly whines about "overdemocratization." In the U.S. and the rest of the world democracy exploded too much, which disturbs the normal run of things. The countries that have performed well economically - Tawian, Chile, Singapore, Korea - a decade ago, all were military dictatorships. He argues the U.S. should not bring democracy; it should install a benevolent authoritarian regime under U.S. guidance. The U.S. will decide when it's ready for democracy.
Within the U.S., this lesson is the same. There is too much popular pressure. What we need is more power for experts. Zakaria is not designating a new trend; it's effectively already going on for years. We have democracy at this certain level of this false, for me, secondary choices. But key questions about monetary politics, globalization, trade agreements and so on - nobody votes about that. In the years to come, the system - the global capitalist system - will have to directly curtail democracy. What we take now for granted will be slowly taken from us. They'll say, "This is not a thing to be discussed, it's a neutral knowledge expert rule or it's a matter of security." What is going on now in the U.S. is typical: it's not simply an emergency state, it's at the same time an emergency state and a normal state. It's a strange state where at the same time we are at war and things go on as normal.
And I think that this is not necessarily a bad thing, in the sense that the system, if I may use this old-fashioned left term, will be more and more obliged to break its own rules. This will open up a space for some leftist conversation which will be able to catch the system at its own work, to measure it by its own standards.
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