måndag 9 augusti 2010

the illusory threesome: representative democracy - liberalism - capitalism

"Through the invention of supra-State institutions which are not States, which are not accountable to any people, they realize the immanent ends of their very practice: depoliticize political matters, reserve them for places that are non-places, places that leave no space for the democratic invention of polemic. So the State and their experts can quietly agree amongst themselves. The 'European Constitution' befallen by it's well known misfortunes illustrates the logic well.* One of the parties in favour of adopting it thought it had found the right slogan: 'Liberalism', it gloated, 'has no need of constitutions.' Unfortunately for it, it was telling the truth: 'liberalism', that is to say - to call things by their name - capitalism, does not make any such claim. In order to function, it has no need for any constitutional order to declare for 'deregulated competition'**, that is, the free and limitless circulation of capital. It requires only that the latter be permitted to function. The mystical honeymoon between capital and the common good are needless for capital. It serves only the ends pursued by oligarchs of State***: the constitution of interstate spaces liberated from the need for popular and national legitimacy."

Jacques Rancière, p.81-82 "Hatred of Democracy"


KASS notes:
* Another example I come to think of is: the IMF
** i.e. capitalism does not need the states to declare that they will not interfere with business, only that they do not do it...
*** That is, the rulers in 'representative democracy'****
**** Representative democracy is today seen as a pleonasm, but it is an oxymoron

kAss :D

1 kommentar:

  1. this is very well shown by Saskia Sassen in "territory, authority, rights. from medieval to global assemblages" -2006

    SvaraRadera