From the Concentration of Wealth and Decisional Power to Full Democracies
IN FOCUS, 26 Nov 2018
The Editors | Opinion Sur – TRANSCEND Media Service
21 Nov 2018 – Humanity is going through a destructive phase of unbridled concentration of wealth and decisional power; its results have been widely identified and denounced. Even though spaces for resistance and transformation desires germinate, it still remains to be seen how large majorities organize to establish new courses and ways of functioning. Contemporary trajectory is social and environmentally unsustainable; the economies must be subordinated to the general wellbeing and protection of the environment, giving way to political processes that lead in peace, equity, transparency and justice. We need a referential utopia that guides and harmonizes such large diversity of actors, tensions, interests and needs, open to nuances and adaptations according to histories and circumstances that characterize each situation and territory.
Will the notion of full democracy be useful?
A democracy that dismantles the engines of wealth concentration in favor of equity and distributive justice; that transforms the productive matrix to eliminate harmful bottlenecks of the external sector and the irrational localization of activities; that eliminates the oligopolistic conditions of value chains which, with market-power abuse, generate social inequity, economic inefficiency, and environmental destruction. A democracy that clarifies and facilitates popular organization; that guaranties media plurality, political parties’ equitable financing, non-trivialized electoral processes to fully understand the different proposals. A democracy that opens the debate about the ownership of legislative seats, the role and control of intelligence services and security forces, the selection of judges and prosecutors. Not a few the dimensions to review; it is necessary to include critical aspects in health, education, security, housing, environmental sanitation and many others that each reader can certainly identify.
It has cost so much to develop our imperfect democracies that would not make sense to destroy them as it is proposed by the opportunistic and siren calls. It is true that our democracies have been totally or partially captured by the economic power and its accomplices in politics, the media, and the judiciary. However, the answer is not to eradicate them. The challenge is much more complex but also promising: free them from the subjection and subduing that oppress wills and asphyxiate creativity. Full democracies or how we might call a fairer and more sustainable phase of global and national governance.
Greetings with a necessary clarification: referential utopia is not an illusion but rather it serves as a guide towards which orientate efforts and as a compass to which we could adjust trajectories along the way.
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