What is democracy?

The world over, there are different ways of viewing, for want of a better expression, "people power". In some countries, this takes the form of a revolution every ten or so years, installing another dictator. In others, it is the complete opposite, where governments cannot so much as change the VAT rate without a referendum. Extremes in the crazy systems governing this planet. What is clear though is that, with a couple of seriously wacky exceptions, in all countries of the world, the system is bigger than any individual.

What, though, is the most bizarre thing, is the sheer number of organisations, corporations, state-owned bodies and self-governing regions that bypass any form of public scrutiny. There's the Bilderberg group, the City of London Corporation, OPEC, any number of multi-billion-dollar company, media outlet or bank to name but a few. These organisations generally accept the widely-held opinion that politicians in democracies (at least those who make it) are malleable, popularity-hungry, attention-seeking, shallow petty criminals, loan sharks and dangerously crooked property owners in need of a place to legitimise, consolidate and widen their shady dealings through networking and rubbing shoulders with other like-minded individuals. A kind of LinkedIn for criminals who want to do everything officially.

These organisations also know that there are those who genuinely come into politics wishing to change the world. Visionaries, fresh-minded academics, talented individuals with imagination and a steely eye on the goals they wish to achieve. Of course, when they come up against the might of the machine, they also find their dreams dashed, their hopes halved and their ambitions annulled, either through being told that the thought is a valiant one but totally impractical, or by being ridiculed, scandalised or hounded out of office by the more sinister factions of politics, and their media buddies. This of course depends on how close to the bone the visionary entrant comes when airing his or her new ideas.

So the large firms single out the right politicians for their dirty work: they give them special deals, assure them of seats on their boards of directors and pushing their candidacies for posts where they can be of use to them after their political careers are over. This is why nothing truly pleasing to the people ever gets done; because it's not in anyone's interest. It's not in the politicians' interests, because they would be putting themselves out of use; it's not in the corporations' interests because they'd not have anyone to represent their shady interests at international level, and it's not in the people's interests because it would make us all jumpy, to think that everything was going so swimmingly well. We'd think there was a catch and start petty paranoid skirmishes with traditional foes.

Leaders in the democratic world these days are so uninspirational, so faceless, so full of themselves, that we cannot really blame the Chinese for viewing democracy with suspicion, when they see how the Greeks behaved. How can you respect a politician who, in order to secure another term in power, promises to reduce taxes, or the retirement age by a year, or unemployment by hiring another few thousand people to do meaningless tasks that could be handled by half a dozen job students? How can you respect a politician who fakes his own country's economic situation in order to join a currency union his country has no hope of keeping up with?
I'll tell you how.

Let's take each country as being a person, and the Eurozone a little like marriage. So before the Eurozone was set up, when each country was in the singles market, so to say, they put on their best outfits for summits and kept the smiles going long into the evening, a little like singles have done for decades. Once they get married, of course, the partners start noticing little niggling habits that irritate them, like too many referenda (Ireland, Denmark) or inability to save money (Ireland gain, Italy, Greece). In the end, what happens to most married people? They let themselves go. They get unfit, lazy, start putting on weight and neglecting their personal hygiene. The same has happened in the euro marriage. Now they're tied together in an eternal bond of "till death us do part" those newlyweds feel that they'll be saved by the others if things go wrong. And then the mid-life crisis sets in, where the man decides to get a Porsche convertible and go trekking in the Arctic. The woman (Germany in this case) stays at home, horrified. No wonder she (Merkel) wants to limit the manoeuvrability of the Greek economy.

Now, returning to the original question - what is democracy? For me, you can' t let the people decide everything, because we'd reintroduce hanging and expel anyone with an accent. That's unfortunately how it goes, because those with opinions, principles or views are usually a lot louder than those who just get on with their lives worry-free, and are more likely to bother to vote in any referendum, which is why David Cameron refuses to give the UK a referendum of staying in the EU. On the other hand, you can't let politicians carry on governing forever, or they get too big for their boots. They get to know the system too well. So well, in fact, they do things like rein in the national media (Italy, Hungary), reduce freedom of speech (UK, France) or change the constitution to make it harder to remove them, or to indict them for any wrogdoing during or after their terms of service (Italy again). This was not planned when democracy was conceived. It was not the main idea.

So, how has this shrinking of democratic values occurred in historically democratic countries where politicians are traditionally accept their fates every four or five years at the ballot box? In Europe, this has happened because the EU has made it necessary. On one hand, the European Council of Ministers has replaced many of the features of national government because a great deal of decisions take place at European level, and are implemented nationally under the pretext that they were actually decided by the national politicians. And on the other, because of the turbulence they knew they were about to unleash on everyone. Don't tell me that five years ago, or even ten, those politicians had no idea of the storm they were kicking up when they introduced the euro, allowing Greece, Portugal and other such ClubMed nations into the club. I cannot believe for one moment that after so many errors of judgement on the way, so many wrong moves, so many contrived agreements and forced referendum decisions in the last decade, that there is no alternative agenda. You cannot tell people "you will have democracy, but only if you vote our way". Democracy has to mean something, and it has to be binding.

On the other hand, what is it like living in a country without democracy? In a country like the People's Republic of Korea, it's probably a living nightmare. I would not wish to spend 24 hours in that country. I think the same about Myanmar and Zimbabwe. But in Belarus or pre-election Azerbaijan or Bhutan, I could imagine living, despite not having much in the way of freedom of speech. It poses the questions, "is democracy over-rated?" and "is democracy something for everyone?" When you look at China or Russia, two vast countries, are either of them capable of further democratising without keeping a firm grip on the people for fear of independence movements springing up everywhere? Would the Chinese people really know what to with full voting rights? Do they really need it? I think they are doing very well with their systems as they are now.

Let us look at something simple: if a little village in, say, Nigeria applies to the EU for funding of a bridge over a dangerous river, the European Commission will firstly send it to a committee, who will then decide whether it is viable or not. Within months, they will dispatch a surveyor, an engineer and a budget analyst to the location to draw up plans and make an offer to the Nigerians. Once this has been approved, it will go back to Brussels for ratification, and within the next budgetary outlay, funds will be made available. Months later, the bridge will be built using ethically sourced materials and properly paid skilled workers, but the whole process will take about 2 to 3 years. Then there's the Chinese. They'll just turn up in the village, ask where they'd like the bridge and get to work. The material for the bridge might not be so stable or Kosher, and the builders might be less capable, but the whole thing would take 3 months, maximum. That is the difference between an ethical democratic process and a one-party state: the bridge might take a lot shorter to build, and the shorter waiting time will mean fewer will be killed whilst the Europeans are still discussing the proposal, and there will be

So, could the slow eradication of democracy in Europe be a necessity, clandestinely being introduced to be able to compete with China and Russia in the long term? Could the lack of transparency at European level be something to do with politicians' need to hide something far more worrying from us? I doubt it. But there's still a little thought cloud in my head which does not rule it out entirely. What I think is most likely, is that the current crop of politicians is grasping at any way at all to distance themselves from the mess they made of the last 10 years.

To finish, when asking what democracy is, we cannot put a finger on it because everywhere is different. In the politically disengaged countries of western Europe, democracy has been compromised. It has shifted from parliament to talent shows, from local government to online polls and customer satisfaction surveys. Panem et Circenses is the motto of our civilisation. With the coming of the Occupy movement and the sudden unpopularity of the European Union and what it stands for, I think the day is coming where people power, in whatever form is most suited to each country, will take back control. But in the end, it's the power-hungry that corrupt the system causing an endless cycle of bad governance. That makes no difference if in Asia, Africa or Europe, dictatorships or democracies: the sharpest elbows win.

One thing the 99% needs to understand - we're all guilty

Those people all over the world protesting about the current greed and monumental corruption at the heart of the failed capitalist system have many stories to tell: the graduate from Milwaukee who, four years ago, was promised a gold-plated job when she got her degree and now has to work for tips in a downtown diner, the promises all but broken, the prospects all but dried up; the builder from Missouri, who was given a loan to take on a few new employees and broaden the business, and now has to lay them off because nobody can afford houses any more and so there is no work for them; the 57-year-old metalworker from Portland who has just discovered his company has been taken over by an Asian firm and he has been told he is no longer employable because he is too old despite his 35-year experience and the new company has changed the pension rules overnight under its own country's laws, not those of the US, and the office worker from Boston, who discovers that his house may be repossessed whilst he has been on a two-day sick leave because despite being told he was financially capable of maintaining the monthly repayments, two of the four companies he has to work for over his seven-day week to pay for his lifestyle have had to lay off staff, starting with those who have cost the companies money through social security or lost hours.

There are hundreds of thousands of more examples like this - some you feel more sorry for than others; some you want to box their ears for being so gullible. What I find most alarming is the serene aloofness we witness from the politicians. They seem to feel that they are part of a different world. And in some ways, however falsely, they are. They come on the television and give rousing interviews that they are right and everyone else is wrong, or like in the UK, they dismiss the whole thing as being the wrong way to show their feelings (what should they do? Write a letter to their local radio station?). This week, politicians of many countries and persuasions will meet somewhere to "discuss" the "turmoil" in the markets and to flagellate Greece a little bit more than the week before. They will stay in top-notch hotels with excellent facilities and eat first-class food served by the area's best chefs. There will be little in the way to suggest that they are even remotely aware of the events in Madrid, New York, London and Rome. Or that they even care. They believe the silent majority will be there at the end to maintain the status quo. That silent majority, who so stoically say "tsk-tsk" at both the politicians and the protesters for being so (violent / unresponsive / reactionary / incompetent - delete as appropriate) and who have been too easily spoiled by wealth to concern themselves with mundane things like the world in 2020.

It is a perfectly balanced conundrum, and as it stands, there is no chance of revolution. I think, in our heart of hearts, we do not want a revolution on the scale of Robespierre's France or Lenin's Russia, just a sense that we're living within our means once again and we're not being lied to by big business and their political stooges. One thing I noticed in the recent Liam Fox scandal engulfing the Conservative Party in the UK government is that the donors to the Conservative Party are angry because he misused their money to take himself and his mate Adam Werritty off on VIP trips to visit various politicians around the world. This is shocking. Firstly, that he misused their money, but secondly, and most importantly, that we are supposed to feel sorry for the donors because Fox and Werritty spent the money they were supposed to be using to promote the clandestine agendas of those corporate enterprises, on pampering themselves in 5-star hotels.

When we start focusing purely on the politicians for being corrupt and fail to notice that in fact the donors are the ones we should be most concerned about, despite it being in the headlines in 2-inch-high letters, we know we've been had in one monumental cover-up. It's there for us to see, yet the politician takes the blame on behalf of his corporate masters. How dare the corporates think they can run roughshod over democracy by buying off politicians? And how dare the politicians allow themselves to be used as pawns by big business? We are being tricked by the men in suits. But we allow it. And they paint all the protesters as anarchists, because they are the most visible ones on television despite there being an overwhelming majority of peaceful protesters, all victims of the lies and incompetence of the money men. They are lying to all of us by re-arranging the truth into a convenient illusion through dressing the corporate kleptomania, moving to a less expensive part of the world and sinister tie-up deals as "responsible" business practice and being "responsible" to their shareholders, when in fact it is ruthless expansionism and sharp-elbowed profiteering to the detriment of the very people they rely upon for profit. Why is it, that in many Western countries, house prices going up in price is good news? We are told that. But it is just another way for big business to get a larger slice of the pie from us. And the silent majority just say "tsk-tsk".

Don't get me wrong - I'm not a conspiracy theorist, nor have I ever voted for a party with red in its logo. I am just looking through my own eyes. We allow this to happen, because we just say "tsk-tsk" at everything and expect those who got us into this mess to get us out again. Until we realise that there is much, much more to do than whistle through our teeth over our morning coffee and watch satirical shows for the latest spin on the week's events, the politicians will carry on covering their tracks and big business will carry on excreting on the rest of us.

Thinking about conspiracy theories, I remember back 15 to 20 years ago, when the fledgling Internet was a burble of vague messages between similar groups of academics and the crazed fantasies of paranoid conspiracy theorists - yet now, remembering back, many of those witterings are not far from the truth, despite the less-than-erudite manner in which they went about conveying their messages. I remember a very early one, which said the economies of Western Europe would collapse because they would converge currencies without thinking of the consequences of monetary union without political union. It was written in the style of a crazed American academic who had been fired for having a vision that nobody wanted to believe. That feeling of being vindicated will not be sweet at all, considering the gravity of the events surrounding it.

Finally, it needs to be said that the press and media need to be careful of the words they use to describe the protesters, as although there are anarchists mixed in, there are a great number of ordinary people. And although I truly admire anyone for sitting in the cold, damp squares of Western cities for weeks on end for a political and social message they truly believe in conveying to the lords and masters of this world, the reptilian coldness and stoic business-as-usual attitude of those sitting in the VIP suites of the world's most expensive hotels can only remain whilst we the silent majority do nothing about it other than say, "tsk-tsk".