On the EU strategy to face the new theories against democracy

After defeating absolute monarchies and overcoming the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, democracy is now under attack from all sides.

It is criticised, first and foremost, for giving power to an incompetent majority at the expense of the educated elite. Plato had already formulated this criticism, which has now been taken up by the ideologues of the Neo-Reactionary movement, who would like to replace democracy with a government run by tech CEOs, who they believe are best placed to open up new horizons for humankind.

This revived criticism of democracy aims to make decision-making the unique preserve of a small clique who may confuse the general interest with their own interests.

The second criticism levelled at democracy is that it promotes special interests at the expense of the general interest.

Democracy is so oblivious to this danger that it cannot conceive of itself without parties, associations or trade unions capable of negotiating the necessary trade-offs between particular interests in the name of the common interest.

The third criticism levelled at democracy is that its checks and balances on power and multiple decision-making centres prevent it from dealing with emergencies.

This criticism disregards the emergency powers provided for in all democracies and the fact that it was democracies that defeated both forms of totalitarianism.

The fourth criticism levelled at democracy is that it weakens societies by depriving them of their cultural or religious homogeneity.

This criticism has always been levelled by those who have lost the ideological battles made possible by democracy, but should we lament that women have won the right to vote, that the idea of pensions has become accepted, or that one faith can no longer impose its laws on everyone? And is it not a country that has experienced multiple waves of immigration that has become the world’s leading power?

The fifth criticism of democracy is that it would permit excessive freedoms that lead to anarchy and that international laws and conventions protecting freedoms would come into conflict with the will of citizens to prioritise order and authority.

This overlooks the fact that the most pernicious form of disorder is arbitrariness, and that order requires institutions and laws to protect our societies from the passions of the moment, even if the emotion of a single day gives them majority support.

Today, as in the past, critics of democracy advocate the establishment of strong powers. Nick Land, author of ‘The Dark Enlightenment’, even calls for the replacement of states with structures similar to companies, in which only the largest shareholders would have a say. The power of the wealthiest – a plutocracy – would thus take the place of democracy, which is the power of a people made up of citizens who are equal before the law.

It is hard to believe that so many people can defend such ideas, but we are living in a time when the US Secretary of Homeland Security has given the following definition of Habeas Corpus when speaking to the Senate: ‘Habeas Corpus is a constitutional right that the President has to be able to remove people from this country’.

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This challenge to democracy is the culmination of the questioning of the post-war Western consensus, the other pillar of which, social protection, began to be shaken in the early 1970s.

During those years, oil-producing countries colluded to raise their prices, while Japan’s emergence as an industrial power foreshadowed the rise of the smaller Asian Tigers and of China. Western pre-eminence was under threat, and it was this danger that enabled Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and the economists of the Chicago school to successfully advocate a break with the Keynesianism of the New Deal and the post-war period.

‘The state,’ they said, ‘is not the solution, but the problem.’ ‘Taxes kill taxes,’ they added, and by the 1980s, as the ‘conservative revolution’ had begun to take hold around the world after triumphing in the United States, social protection and redistributive taxation were increasingly condemned for holding back the West’s ability to compete internationally.

In the following decade, offshoring paved the way for the deindustrialisation of Europe and the United States. The resulting unemployment allowed Western industries to impose a new balance of power on their employees, which was soon accompanied by an equally profound change in the political landscape.

Since the end of the Second World War, the major Western political forces had all claimed to be social democracies, welfare states or social market economies, but now they all had to accept – and often accelerate – this socio-economic sea change.

In doing so, they lost their identities. and with it vast swathes of voters who swung towards the far right and Trumpism, themselves driven by the speed, scale and diversity of the upheavals in the world.

In just 50 years – less than a single lifetime – Western peoples have seen their heavy industry and jobs move to other continents; Western pre-eminence is being challenged by the emergence of China and other new powers; Islam is asserting itself on the international stage; the sexual revolution is changing time-honoured social conventions; and the United States is distancing itself from its role as global policeman, with no one else stepping in to take its place.

Westerners now live in a state of uncertainty that generates nostalgia for a mythologised past and a desire for strong leadership.

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It is this aspiration to return to the certainties of yesteryear that Donald Trump has seized upon and summed up in four words: ‘Make America Great Again’. To honour his promise to return to the certainties of a lost superpower, this president is reverting to the ancient law of ‘might makes right’ and breaking free from multilateralism and the checks and balances on which American democracy is founded.

The mid-term elections could derail this process, but a cultural counter-revolution is under way in the United States, because the more the rights of women and minorities have progressed, the more a sense of discontent has spread in other parts of society.

Blue-collar and white-collar workers do not welcome the pressure on wages exerted by deindustrialisation, immigration and female employment. Alongside traditionalist Christians, the most conservative circles do not accept gender equality, gay marriage or the right to abortion.

Trumpism and the reactionary international as a whole may thus have ushered in a long period in which the Enlightenment and democracy are called into question.

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The danger to democracy is immense, but the Union can rise to this historic challenge since, however long the list of our weaknesses may be, it is not as long as the list of our strengths – we have the richest market in the world, a population with unrivalled cultural and scientific achievements, and a society strong in its solidarity and social safety nets.

When we look at ourselves, there is every reason to despair. However, when we compare ourselves to others, there is every reason to be cheerful.

China has re-emerged from centuries of obscurity, but its demographics, lack of a middle class and industrial overproduction mean that it is ill-equipped for the decades to come.

The United States is trying to consolidate its threatened dominance, but it has never been so divided since the Civil War, while we Europeans, if you look at a map, have never been so united – even more so than under Charlemagne.

Like the founding fathers, we must now be determined and visionary: think big.