An aspect of democracy that is singularly lacking in the western powers is that of the openness and transparency that they all call upon others to demonstrate. Corporations, as seen above are decidedly non-transparent, as are their military liaisons and their governmental cohorts. Corporate secrets, government secrets, are subject to tests under the Freedom of Information Laws extent in most democracies, yet it is increasingly more and more difficult to access full information without denial through classification or redaction.
It can be argued that the reasons for this secrecy have very little to do with intellectual property rights, or that the information is "too sensitive" to be dealt with by the public, or that the security of the country will be compromised. Governments and businesses keep secrets not for the protection of the business, the government and the state in face of dangers from abroad - except that, ironically that is exactly what it is for, because in a true democracy, if the people had all the information that they wanted through truly free requests, the revelations of government incompetence, culpability in various crimes (national and international), obeisance to various lobbying groups (think AIPAC), and disregard for people, their cultures, and the environments they live in would be glaringly obvious. Secrecy is not to protect the country, but to protect the people in power from the wrath of the citizens that they are manipulating.
So what becomes democracy?
The democratic ideal is difficult to achieve. Anything that is remotely related to a social democracy comes under the gun - literally - of the U.S. military. Most of South and Central America have experienced the interventions of the U.S. military in one form or another, either direct invasion, or covert operations, or not so covert support of the right wing business elites of the countries. From the "banana republics" of Central America - so called because of the dominance of United Fruit and its offspring, Chiquita, and Standard Fruit and its offspring Dole in co-opting much of the agricultural landscape - through to the southern state of Chile and the overthrow of the Allende government to be replaced by the militaristic Pinochet dictatorship, the Americas have suffered under the non-democratic and internationally criminal actions of the United States.
Further away, in Iran - with the overthrow of the Mossadegh social democracy, through to the invasion and massacre of millions of south-east Asians in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, to similar massacres of so-called communists in the Philippines and Indonesia - the U.S. record is consistently the denial of democracy when it comes in the form of a social democracy, wherein the people actually have or want to have some say in the government and its application of rules and regulations.
A associated directly with all this are the multinational corporations that harvest the wealth of the countries on the receiving end of these military adjustments. Combined, the two are, in spite of all their wonderful rhetoric of democracy and freedom, only interested in wealth accumulation with no interest in the people or the environment.
A social democracy attempts to protect its resources and use them for the well being of its own people, through carefully managing sales and extraction, by protecting the environment, protecting the health and well-being of the people, by supporting health, welfare, and educational systems for the betterment of all, and finally to protect the environment and culture of the cultural and geographical systems of the country.
Would not most people of the world, given the chance to vote on it, tell their governments to provide health, education and welfare for all, to protect the environment, to provide for the aged, sick, and disabled? Would they not vote for clean water - the right to water which has been denied them in national and international rights? Would they not vote for local agriculture supplemented by fair trade for other agricultural products, at the same time maintaining the integrity and sustainability of the agricultural landscape by avoiding monocrop genetically modified agriculture supported by a few big businesses? Would they not vote to tell occupying forces, or any military foreign forces to go home and leave them in peace? Would they not vote to constrain the rights of corporations, to keep them responsible for environmental as well as personal damages and apply responsibilities and liabilities to the owners and managers?
Unless heavily inculcated with the dogma and rhetoric of military glory and economic survival through debt riddled consumerism, an educated public (remember the meritocracy argument?) would more than likely make choices that protect the cultural community as well as the agricultural and geographical resources. An informed public, informed through a critical media, informed by truly free access to government and corporate information, would certainly rule the nations differently than our current crop of secretive elites.
Sum
All these arguments are of course short versions of what could become chapters, books, on the various topics quickly over viewed. A true democracy would be ideal, but that ideal will not be realized until the armies of the world are constrained, until the corporations of the world are put back under control of the nations, until the nations are allowed to choose their own destinies through unhindered noninterfered-with truly free elections. True democracy, true people power, is a long way off in much of the world. It is to realize that and to understand all its permutations that will help bring it about as a reality, through the long slow process of education, protestation, agitation, and resistance.
[1] These quotes are widely cited in a variety of sources active against the deservedly deceased MAI. Also quoted in Chomsky, Noam. "Hordes of Vigilantes", Profit Over People Neoliberalism and Global Order. Seven Stories Press, N.Y. 1999. p. 163.
[2] Ramzy Baroud. "The Hypocrisy of Al-Demoqratia," December 12, 2009. Palestine Chronicle. click here=15605
[3] three useful recent works:
Eamon Fingleton. In the Jaws of the Dragon. Thomas Dunne Books, New York. 2008.
- a readily accessible read, a more "dramatic' read than the others, but allies with Jacques' book.
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