Article: Urbanity, Class and Post-democracy in Thailand

Jim Glassman, "'The Provinces Elect Governments, Bangkok Overthrows Them': Urbanity, Class and Post-democracy in Thailand" ("Urban Studies", 47 [6], May 2010: pp. 1301-23):

http://usj.sagepub.com/content/47/6/1301

Abstract: "Urban social movements are often associated with what are considered 'progressive' causes and most activists involved in such movements are inclined to describe themselves in such terms. The Thai coup of September 2006 poses problems for any such easy identification. Although executed by the military, on behalf of royalist interests, the coup was supported by an array of primarily Bangkok-based and middle-class groups, many of them associated with organisations such as NGOs and state enterprise unions. Although some of these groups claimed anti-neo-liberal political orientations, their support for the coup effectively placed them on the side of forces opposed to quasi-Keynesian policies and in favour of specific forms of neo-liberalism – at least for Thai villagers. This paper explores this development by focusing on the Bangkok/upcountry and urban/rural divisions in Thai politics, which, although socially constructed, have taken on political substance, in part because of their grounding in regionally differentiated class structures."

Excerpts: "I argue that the coup of 2006 and its sequelae represent a slide towards 'post-democracy' – a condition where democratic political forms achieved through previous social struggles (for example, a multiparty parliament) are subverted by both differential structural power (for example, the wealth and influence of royalist institutions) and overt attempts to reign in popular influence (for example, attempts to make much of the parliament appointed, rather than elected). This slide is driven in part by the interests of an embattled middle class, stronger in Bangkok than elsewhere in the country, which cannot consistently get all that it wants out of conventional parliamentary politics. [...]

"Confronted by the contradiction between a putative commitment to democracy and the reality of enormous social privileges which they attempt to maintain, many Bangkok groups – including some 'progressive' activists – have increasingly looked to conservative forces, chiefly the monarchy, to protect their interests and impose forms of development and social order. This tendency was already apparent before the 2006 coup, but became especially evident at that point. [...] Thailand seems to have entered a period of 'post-democracy', a situation in which there is still a functioning multiparty parliament but in which governments elected by the majority cannot effectively function or carry out policies because of Bangkok-based and royalist opposition. [...]

"Bangkok-based social movements and pro-coup middle classes have emerged on the side of 'post-democracy', utilising their disproportionate political power and media exposure to overturn these political decisions. In short, Bangkok is not a site of the most progressive democratic sentiment, while the countryside is neither a site of purely corrupt patronage systems nor of the romantic rural idyll. [...] [I]n the context of on-going divergence between the prospects of the Bangkok middle classes and other Thai social groups, Thailand seems for now to have entered a 'post-democratic' period in which Bangkok political activists and opinion leaders will continue their attempts to derail the political challenges emanating from outside the capital."

The article contains an extensive bibliography of relevant literature.

Jim Glassman is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia.

Article: An alternative to the new wave of ecofascism

Micah White, a US activist and contributing editor at the Canada-based anti-consumerist magazine "Adbusters", is the author of an op-ed article titled "An alternative to the new wave of ecofascism", published on 16 September 2010 on the website of the British "Guardian" newspaper.

The full text of the article can be read free of charge here:

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/sep/16/authoritarianism-ecofascism-alternative

Excerpts: "It is time to acknowledge that mainstream environmentalism has failed to prevent climate catastrophe. Its refusal to call for an immediate consumption reduction has backfired and its demise has opened the way for a wave of fascist environmentalists who reject democratic freedom. One well-known example of the authoritarian turn in environmentalism is James Lovelock, the first scientist to discover the presence of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. Earlier this year he told the Guardian that democracies are incapable of adequately addressing climate change. [...] His words may be disturbing, but other ecologists have gone much further. Take for example Pentti Linkola, a Finnish fisherman and ecological philosopher. Whereas Lovelock puts his faith in advanced technology, Linkola proposes a turn to fascistic primitivism. Their only point of agreement is on the need to suspend democracy.

"Linkola has built an environmentalist following by calling for an authoritarian, ecological regime that ruthlessly suppresses consumers. Largely unknown outside of Finland until the first English translation of his work was published last year, Linkola represents environmentalism pushed to its totalitarian extreme. [...] His bold political programme includes [...] 're-education' in eco-gulags [...]. In Linkola's dystopian vision, the resources of the state are mobilised to clamp down on individual liberty. But there is no need to suspend democracy if it is returned to the people. Democratic, anti-fascist environmentalism means marshalling the strength of humanity to suppress corporations. Only by silencing the consumerist forces will both climate catastrophe and ecological tyranny be averted."

White calls for "the criminalisation of advertising" and "the possibility of death penalties for corporations". While he claims that this would be done "voluntarily and joyously", it is hard to see just how the measures he proposes are more democratic than those of the ecofascists. He too appears to be seeking to mobilize the resources of the (democratic) state to clamp down on consumerism.

Linkola, the son of a former Rector of the University of Helsinki and grandson of a former Chancellor of that same university, has had a "Fansite" dedicated to him:

www.penttilinkola.com/pentti_linkola/ecofascism/

On that site, he is quoted as saying (presumably originally in Finnish): "Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent dictator, [sic] that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth." / "A minority can never have any other effective means to influence the course of matters but through the use of violence." / "We will have to ... learn from the history of revolutionary movements – the [N]ational [S]ocialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades – and forget our narcissistic selves." / "[D]emocracy and parliamentary system [...] are the most mindless and desperate experiments of the mankind ... [sic]"

The links on the website to other ecofascist resources and groups appear not to be working.

Book: Political Institutions under Dictatorship

Jennifer Gandhi, "Political Institutions under Dictatorship" (Cambridge University Press, September 2008):

www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521897952

Publisher's description: "Often dismissed as window-dressing, nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties, play an important role in non-democratic regimes. In a comprehensive cross-national study of all non-democratic states from 1946 to 2002 that examines the political uses of these institutions by dictators, Gandhi finds that legislative and partisan institutions are an important component in the operation and survival of authoritarian regimes. She examines how and why these institutions are useful to dictatorships in maintaining power, analyzing the way dictators utilize institutions as a forum in which to organize political concessions to potential opposition in an effort to neutralize threats to their power and to solicit cooperation from groups outside of the ruling elite. The use of legislatures and parties to co-opt opposition results in significant institutional effects on policies and outcomes under dictatorship."

Endorsements: "This book represents a major contribution to the resurgent study of non-democratic regimes. It is one of the first substantial pieces of modern social scientific analysis of the phenomenon, skillfully combining formal and quantitative cross-national analysis with country case studies. It will have a major impact in the study of modern authoritarian regimes." (Miriam A. Golden, UCLA)

"Her three kinds of dictatorship and two kinds of institutions produce a rich and informative empirical analysis in which she explains variation in the longevity, policy and performance of non-democratic governments." (William R. Keech, Carnegie Mellon University)

In 2009, the book won the triennial Award for Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Politics granted by the Research Committee on Concepts and Methods of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) and the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Mexico City.

Jennifer Gandhi is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Emory University.

Book: Democracy: A Religion!

Abu Muhammad 'Aasim (also: Asem/Asim) al-Maqdisi is named as the author of an undated (recent) booklet titled "Democracy: A Religion!"
(translated from Arabic by Abu Muhammad al-Maleki and revised by Abu Sayf Muwahhid). Apparently, this is a pseudonym assumed by the Palestinian writer Isam Mohammad (or: Muhammad/Mohammed) Tahir (or: Taher) al-Barqawi, a cleric and one-time spiritual mentor of the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Al-Maqdisi has been called "the most influential living Jihadi [t]heorist" and "the key contemporary ideologue in the Jihadi intellectual universe". He currently seems to be imprisoned in Jordan.

The full text of the booklet can (currently) be read free of charge here:

http://muslimsagainstvoting.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/democracyreligion.pdf

Excerpts: "They distort the Truth with Falsehood, and mix [...] the Polytheism of democracy with the Monotheism of Islam. But we, with the help of Allah, replied to all of these fallacies, and showed that democracy is a religion. But it is not Allah's religion. It is not the religion of monotheism, and its parliamentary councils are just places of polytheism, and safe havens for paganistic beliefs. [...] We must destroy those who follow democracy, and we must take their followers as enemies – hate them and wage a great Jihad against them. [...]
[O]bedience in legislation is a form of worship, and must not be for any one except for Allah, since Allah is the only One who can provide legislation. Therefore, anyone who seeks to implement a legislation created by someone other than Allah, is in fact a polytheist. [...] If anyone transgresses the limits and does that, he makes himself a legislator, and he will be enacting the role of a deity. [...] Therefore, the legislators became gods to every one who obeyed and followed them, or agreed with them in this disbelief and polytheism [....]

"Be careful not to limit the word 'religion' just to Christianity, or Judaism and so on, because you may follow the other void religions and go astray. It includes every religion, method, judgment system, and law that the creatures follow and adhere to. All of these false religions must be left, and avoided. [...] This may include Communism, Socialism, Secularism, and other such innovated methods, and principles, which men invented with their own minds, and then satisfied these ideas to be their own religions [sic]. One of these religions is democracy. [...] The people in a democracy select representatives and each group or tribe will select a god of these disparate gods, to legislate according to their desires and whims, but according to the constitution's texts. Some of them select their god (their legislator), according to their ideology, or way of thinking, so there will be a god for this party and another one for that. Some of them select him according to the tribe, so there will be a god for this tribe and another for that tribe. And some select a religious god, as they claim, or a bearded god, or an unbearded one, and so on. [...] These representatives, in fact, are erected, engraved images and worshipped idols, and claimed gods that are set up and fixed in their temples, at their heathen sanctuaries (the parliaments). [...]

"Some ignorant people [...] called their putrid democracy a consultation (i.e. they are saying that democracy is the same as a Shura' – the Islamic method of consultation) – to show and imbue a legitimate religious tinge upon this fake religion – to approve it and to make it permitted. [...] The comparison of the democracy of polytheist people with the monotheists['] consultation (i.e. Shura), and the similitude of the consultation council, with the disbeliever's, sinful, disobedient [sic] councils is a vile similitude and false comparison. [...] The consultation is from Allah's decree, His religion, but democracy is a disbelief in Allah's decree and His religion. [...] The consultation must be in the matter that has no judgement, but when we have a text, an evidence, or a judgement, then there will be no consultation. [...] [I]n a consultation, people, or the majority is that who is under the obligation, commissioned to obey Allah and His Prophet (saw) than to the Muslims' leader [sic]. And the leader is not forced to accept the majority's opinion, or Judgement. The majority is forced to obey the leader even if he is wrong, unless he calls to the disobedience of Allah." (first italics originally bold)

Article: Capital and Democracy

In 2006, the Hungarian anarchist "Barricade Collective" wrote an introduction and commentary, titled "Capital and Democracy", to a 1969 text by French communist theorist Jacques Camatte ("La mystification démocratique").

Both an undated English translation of the original text by Camatte, "The Democratic Mystification", and the more recent introduction and commentary (which may or may not have been written in Hungarian initially) can be read free of charge here:

www.anarkismo.net/article/4454

Excerpts from the introduction: "The dead labour's independence [as value] and its dominance over living productive activity – this necrophilia of capital – yields the present disgusting relationship between individuals and the loathsome ideology which adheres to it: the practice and the theory of bourgeois democracy. [...] Democracy assumes different forms according to the forms of productive labour and the extension of commodity production. Ancient democracy was an internal affair of the ruling class, because only free citizens were commodity owners (namely owners of the land, the slaves and their products). In modern bourgeois democracy everybody is a commodity owner, and the key commodity for the bourgeoisie – labour force – is put on the market by the working class. Hence, democracy is total now. [...] Political parties – i.e. the parties of the bourgeoisie, including the social democratic parties – have never represented more than the alternatives of the development of capital, in other words the interests of some ruling class groups. The democratic (parliamentary) principle was the guarantee that the political management would not separate from the interests of aggregate capital. [...]

"When capital comes to a profound crisis, it seems to break with the democratic principle. During the crisis, a huge mass of constant capital loses its value and is unable to function further as capital, to produce surplus value by absorbing variable capital. So the crisis of constant capital is also the crisis of variable capital, which manifests itself in the fall of (real) wages and massive unemployment. Capitalism is unable to handle such crises through the usual reconciliation of interests between capitals (parliamentarism) and the reconciliation of interests between capital and the working class (trade unionism). In such cases, the strongest representative of capital undertakes the task of capitalism's re-structuring, for capital's survival. The main elements of this are the destruction of those capitals which have lost their value and the destruction of the unnecessary labour force – open or hidden war. [...] Facing this phenomenon, leftists shout: 'Capitalism betrays democracy! Capital is capable of sacrificing democracy for its own interests!' Some go so far as to try to prove theoretically that capitalism can never be democratic.

"In contrast to this, it is extremely important to emphasize that the 'anti-democratism' of capital during crises is an absolutely democratic phenomenon. The case is exactly that it tries to maintain the commodity-owner individuals, private property. Capital is obliged to infringe the political rights proclaimed by capital itself (freedom of press, assembly and speech) if they hinder the process of capital's reproduction (production, circulation or both), and democracy between the people is the first precondition for this reproduction. A revolutionary situation is the peak of capitalism's crisis. [...] Revolutionaries who want to fight consistently against capitalism cannot make any compromise with democracy. Democracy is the form of existence of those who have been alienated from the human community, 'of those who have lost their original organic unity with the community'
(Camatte). Therefore the communist revolution which means the creation of human community cannot be victorious without the total destruction of this way of existence." (italics removed)

Book chapter: The Criticism of Democracy and the Illustration of Its Reality

"The Criticism of Democracy and the Illustration of Its Reality" is an Islamist booklet circulating on the Internet. It appears to be the English translation of a section of a book written in Arabic by Abdul Qadir bin Abdul Aziz ("Al-Jame'a Fi Talab El-Ilm-Esh-Sharif", 1994; volume 1, pp. 146-55).

Abdul Qadir bin Abdul Aziz (also spelled Abd-el-Qadir Ibn-'Abdel-'Aziz or Abd Al-Qader Bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz) is the pen name of one "Dr Fadl", born as Sayyed Imam Al-Sharif/Sayyid Imam 'Abdel-Aziz el-Sherif, an Egyptian currently serving a life prison sentence in his native country. He is the author of three books, among them the above (alternatively spelled al-Jami' fi Talab al-'Ilm al-Sharif' and translated as "A Compendium for the Search of Noble Knowledge"/"The Compendium of the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge") and a one-time close confidant of al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, like him a surgeon by training and his successor as Emir (commander) of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement (now merged with al-Qaeda). Dr Fadl, who is reported to have been one of the earliest members of al-Qaeda's top Shura Council and whose works are used as training manuals in terrorist camps, is thought to be "perhaps the most important modern thinker responsible for shaping the violent Islamic Jihadi movement" (although his latest book, written in prison, possibly under government pressure calls for an end to jihadist violence both in the West and at home).

The booklet thus can be taken to present an authoritative statement on democracy from a radical Islamist perspective. Currently, it is available at this link:

http://mujahidblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/the_criticism_of_democracy.pdf

As is in the nature of Islamist websites, that blog (started only in December 2009) – and thus the booklet – may get taken down at some point. Should the link above not work anymore, please let me know. I can also send you a PDF copy of the booklet.

Excerpts: "We conclude from this that democracy ascribes the attribute of Uluhia (Godhead) to man, by granting him the absolute right to legislate. Owing to this, it has made him an Ilah (God) beside Allah and a partner to him concerning the right of legislating for the creation. This is no doubt a Kufr Akbar (i.e. a Kufr [disbelief] that takes a person outside the fold of Islam). To put it more precisely, the new God in democracy is the desire of man, who legislates what he fancies and desires, without being restricted by anything. [...] This makes democracy a self-established religion in which the mastership is for the people. In contrast, in the religion of Islam the mastership belongs to Allah [....]

"[P]arliaments are based on the disbelief in the verses of Allah, because their prime task is to legislate beside Him, Praise and Glory be to Him. Therefore, whoever sits with them is like them in Kufr. [...] [A]ll the kufr which the government practises – such as ruling by manmade laws and following the secularist method – the non-religious one – in both external and internal politics, in education, media, economy, or else – is decided upon by the MPs [members of parliament], who grant license to the governments to implement them. [...] As for those amongst the people who vote for them (MPs), they are committing kufr as well, because according to the parliamentary democracy, the voters are in reality delegating them so as to practice the mastership of shirk [idolatry/polytheism] – legislating beside Allah – on their behalf. Thus the voters give the MPs the right to implement shirk, and set them up – through their voting – as legislating lords beside Allah. [...]

"The result of the parliamentary elections are nothing but falsities and delusions, [...] democracy, with its parliaments and elections, is nothing but a deception [....] Therefore, it is not permissible to enter into the Houses (of Parliaments) [as MP] or participate in electing their members." (Originally bold text here italicized)

Article: Bruce Gilley on anti-democratic thought

Bruce Gilley (Assistant Professor of Political Science, Portland State University), the author of the article "The New Antidemocrats" ("Orbis" 50, spring 2006: pp. 259-71), has made a further contribution to the commencing debate on anti-democratic thought.

In the January 2009 issue of the (pro-democracy) "Journal of Democracy" (pp. 113-27) he had an article published under the title "Is Democracy Possible?". The article can be read free of charge at:

www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/gratis/Gilley-20-1.pdf

Gilley writes that "in recent years, a slowly accelerating wave of skeptical and at times even hostile thought has arisen to challenge democracy's claim to be the best form of government [...], it is a carefully argued, social-scientific, and respectable critique of democracy that has been developed largely by Western scholars. Almost unbeknownst to the legions of democracy-builders or to the nearly four billion democratic citizens worldwide, the belief in democracy has begun to crumble inside some of the world's finest minds and institutions."

In particular, Gilley is concerned with the age-old, yet recently renewed and substantiated claims "that citizens are too ignorant, irrational, or both to rule themselves". While the article summarizes the relative arguments only superficially, it offers a bibliography for further reading. Most of the literature, though, is North America-centred and may thus not be of as much value to scholars (or activists) living, for example, in those countries the United States seeks to "democratize", unlike what Gilley seems to suggest.

At a more fundamental level, most countries do not have the kind of direct democracy practised most famously in Switzerland. In countries with a representative democratic system any public ignorance (or irrationality or misinformation) argument becomes somewhat (although not completely) irrelevant. The policies a parliament will enact are seldom those that individual parliamentary candidates campaigned on. Once elected, parliamentarians have to take into account the interests of different (and differing) parties and politicians, whether or not they form a coalition government. Only in a direct democracy will people get to vote on political issues themselves and only then public ignorance really matters.

If one took the public ignorance argument as seriously as Gilley does one would have to exclude the "public" (that is, everyone) from many more spheres of life. It is unrealistic to assume that people are generally better informed about most non-political issues. For example, public ignorance contributed significantly to the current crisis of the capitalist economy. It has proven true that the market is a mirror of democracy. As in democratic politics, people get to participate in the economy even if they do not understand how it works. In consequence, the market has failed (though mediated by managers and stockbrokers, it is the people who elected to make use of subprime mortgages, etc.) – and, I argue, so will democracy (blame it on democratic politicians' desire, or need, to give the people what the people want, if you will).

Public ignorance, irrationality or misinformation arguments are thus an unsophisticated form of critique of democracy. They can be no more than a starting point for the more serious anti-democratic thought called for in the twenty-first century. Once scholars begin to realize the public's ignorance, irrationality and general misinformation (as I did some ten years ago), they should get started thinking about more fundamental flaws of democracy (and the human nature) and come up with the spelled-out anti-democratic alternatives Gilley so rightly demands of us.

"Political non-voters" in Germany

A new type of non-voter grabbed the attention of the German media prior to last September's federal election: the conscientious, or political, non-voter.

Non-voting as a political stance against the shortcomings of parliamentary democracy appears to have been popularized by renowned journalists and writers like Gabor Steingart and Thomas Brussig. They and others of similar thinking participated not only in many pre-election talk shows, but published books and essays calling for voter abstinence.

Steingart's book, for example, is titled "Die gestohlene Demokratie" (Stolen Democracy; Piper, September 2009):

www.piper-verlag.de/taschenbuch/buch.php?id=15942&page=buchaz

Non-voting they identify as a mode of resistance to the "political class", the "cartel", and as objection to being treated like "cattle" led to the voting booth. They feel defrauded by the party state and the interchangeability of the programmes of political parties that may have become obsolete and overextended, but cling to power. Parties, they argue, are no longer representative of the people they rule. German democracy thus has become dull and tired. It is a "democracy from above" and politics is made without the people.

In the May 2009 issue of the "magazine for political culture", "Cicero", Brussig, a former inhabitant of the German Democratic Republic, wrote: "Every generation deserves its revolution. There was 1968, and there was 1989. From that timing, something is bound to happen soon". With a view to the current economic crisis: "A system that has positioned itself for eternity can collapse all of a sudden. It happens very fast and with a dreamlike ease. Moreover, it is wondrously beautiful" (my translation).

There is no shame in not voting, so their message. If you don't vote, you still set a political sign. Non-voting is the "enlightened" thing to do.

Participation in last year's German elections was indeed the lowest since the end of the Second World War.