Daily Times

Akin to the tempest, which inundates soil, and is cultivated by sweat, tears and toil, the ides of November (Blôtmônað, literally “blood-month”) have ended up ruffling the very fabric of the American society, leaving behind cleavages and deep scars. A vivid expression of unfathomable polarisation, this traumatic experience is bound to linger long, leaving behind a bleeding wound of evident class conflict.

Few exceptions apart, the choice of the candidates offered to the people had never been breezy. Yet the mass media strived hard to hammer their own version of suitability in people’s cortexes, identifying the contest as a one-dimensional affair. The Trojan horse, a marionette, whose loyalty to the establishment was beyond any doubt, was supposedly the one to attain the highest pedestal. The destiny of the other was none but the pillory yet the objective conditions favoured the latter. An upset in the election was hardly an upset for the deep state. For the latter, the success of a racist, sexist and an equally grotesque candidate was not a matter of grief or even concern. It was an expression of a deep-seated resentment among the people, the measure of which had already been gauged.

The monopoly capitalism has engineered the human thought in such a way that even the minimal suspicion of freedom in this faculty is meticulously weeded out. In the modern democracy, the only job people are entitled to perform is to endorse what the masters have determined for them. The human being follows the rationality of his masters as an eternal consumer and an object of media even if this rationality — in its irrational mode — offers a choice that condescends to two evenly vivid vulgarities.

Was the electoral victory of the billionaire Republican, a pariah in his own party, based on chance? Certainly not. This was the outcome of years of distraught, frustration and deprivation; a reward of persistent exploitation in a class-based system and non-mitigating/unparalleled opportunism in a state, clichéd as a land of opportunities.

“Chance”, says Horkheimer, “itself is planned: not in the sense that it will affect this or that particular individual but that people believe in its control”. It provides an opportunity to the masters to create an impression or an alibi as if the spontaneity in the human relation, though remote and slim, was still a possibility in this era of mechanical existence.

Marcuse is succinct that “elections of masters do not change either master or slave… they testify to the control,” yet they do not happen in a void. At a certain stage of human development, the consciousness begins to discover the reality behind every jugglery, no matter how intricate and complex it may appear to be. These moments of consciousness were the triggering force behind the French and the Bolshevik revolutions. If a faint glimmer of this consciousness can activate a movement for democratic socialism in the US today, why rule out a possibility of a proletarian revolution tomorrow?

For the American ruling class, a fascist counter-revolution would be a natural preference over a socialist revolution, especially when ‘race and state’ are the zeitgeist of the president-elect. In the presence of a convenient multitude of hunting preys, such as the Muslims, blacks, Latinos and immigrants, the anger of a wide stratum of a devastated middle class can conveniently be diverted. These ‘others’ are the ‘parasites’ who akin to spectres have come to haunt the Americans, and, hence, must be exorcised. On this pretence, Hitler successfully united the Germans, and so why would the leaders of the “free world”, overawed by the recession, hesitate to lag behind.

At the turn of history, people in the US are not only waking up to the reality of this farce (familiar as democracy) but are marching on the streets to protest against the system. Would the case have been different had the other candidate mastered the ring? The answer could be in the affirmative; the lull might have delayed the inevitable, but the simmering lava would have eventually erupted. The catatonic stupor, the paralysing trance cannot sustain forever.

It is the first stage of consciousness. People are learning to discern between the two alternative theories of democracy. A theory of mandate, which is close to the classical form of democracy, where through elections the electorate imposes a clear-cut set of directives upon its representative who comply with these directives. The other more rife theory is ‘electoral’ one where people are supposed to choose their masters, hence to reproduce the system that is responsible for their misery. The latter is in vogue. This democracy, or lack of it, has become the most effective system of domination.

If the outcome is contrary to their designs, the dominant interests have the means at their disposal to thwart this farce of manipulative consent as well. The ‘lesser evil’ for whose electoral success people are indoctrinated to endorse is not necessarily certain to win the highest pedestal. His/her success remains subject to the nod of a hierarchal structure standing over and above the people but within the law since the law is tailored to suit the interests of a select few. The omnipotence of capital exerts its right and people quietly obey.

Nearly a century ago, Rosa Luxemburg warned the workers about the ultimate lynching of democracy by the tyrannical rule of monopoly capitalism. Reinhold Niebuhr states: “a dying capitalism is under the necessity of abolishing or circumscribing democracy, not only to rob its foes of a weapon but to save itself from its own anarchy”. Death or survival whatever is the fate of capitalism, its realisation through military-industrial complex has forced the democracy to retreat, gradually into oblivion.

The history of democracy is the history of the transition from the feudal mode of production to the capitalistic mode. The slogans of liberty, equality and fraternity were the necessity of this transitional period. “Democratic state”, says Gramsci, “is not the product of a kind heart or liberal education: it is the necessity of life for large-scale production, for busy exchange, for the concentration of population in modern capitalistic cities”.

The moment the interests of capital are threatened, democracy becomes the first casualty. All the rhyming bells which chime the chorus of liberalism give in to the harsh peroration of a charismatic leader. Instead of liberty, fear and security become the bywords. Through democracy totalitarianism takes the reigns from democracy, only to form a bulwark to secure the vested interests of a handful of haves.

Rosa could not live to see the filth of fascism, yet she smelled its stench; hence asked the workers to defend their democratic rights. “If democracy is, for the bourgeoisie, partly valueless, and partly even an obstacle for the working class”, she says, “it is necessary and indispensable… because that functions as beginning and foundations for the popular class in its transformation of bourgeois society… [and] is essential because only in it, in the fight for democracy, in the practice of its rights, the proletariat can reach the real knowledge of its interests of the class and its historical assignments”.

The US elections have yet again proved that human freedom cannot be built in existing societies. As Marcuse rightly says, for revolutionary emancipation, the proletariat needs “a second alienation that from the alienated society.”

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com