Crisis, Then, but Perhaps Not Unsurmountable: For Now
Rereading what I have written so far, I feel the need to make clearer in these closing remarks what marks my analysis out from that of the authors mentioned in the opening lines.
Underlying the difference there is, in the first place, a different intellectual attitude, more as a realistic observer than political philosopher, more descriptive than normative, which leads me to appraise (and appreciate) democracy as it is (and as it has been at its best) more than as one might wish it to be in an ideal world. If this approach is coupled with a cultural background as an economist (together with studies in history, political science and international relations, all disciplines favoring a realistic more than normative attitude), I believe that my stress on the output side—the more limited capacity of today’s democratic states to guarantee good government for their citizens—can readily be understood.6As for the limitation of representative democracy solely to governments of nationstates where the conditions of “fraternity” suffice for acceptance of sovereign democratic decisions, and the difficulties encountered in extending these conditions on a larger scale, we need only look back over history to observe that this has always been the case, even in the past. And history shows us equally clearly that there have always been limitations to the sovereignty of nation-states, even if we confine our attention to the two centuries that saw forms of representative democracy in some of the more economically developed countries. As globalization and British hegemony advanced between the mid-nineteenth century and World War I, the financial system then prevailing at the international level, the gold standard, was no less binding and restrictive for the sovereignty of the single nation-states than the system in force today The only exception seems to have been in the boom years with the Bretton Woods system, which created conditions for that extraordinary phase of growth and social inclusion that the developed capitalist countries went through after World War II.
But was it really an exception?Certainly not, at least in terms of the constraints on sovereignty that single countries had to undergo within an international financial and economic regime—even the Bretton Woods system entailed strong constraints. The exception was that these constraints followed an intelligent and long-sighted design, made possible by the extraordinary hegemony the United States found itself exercising after the war, and by the political and economic conceptions then prevailing among the Anglo-Saxon elites. And this has little to do with representative democracy or democratic government in the single states: power politics was in play, agreements and clashes occurred between states and political-ideological viewpoints and the economic convictions embraced by the international elites were Keynesian rather than neoliberal. These exceptional international conditions met with equally favorable economic conditions within the single states: many of them were on the threshold of an extraordinary technological transformation, which would ease transference to the mass Fordist-Taylorist industrialization of Europe and Japan that was already underway in the United States.7 With hindsight, we can see that neither those internal economic conditions nor the geopolitical and ideological conditions prevailing after the war exist today The countries that benefited in the boom years are now mature economies, the United States no longer enjoys the sort of hegemony it had in the postwar years and the ideas then prevalent among the leading international figures have been swept away by the neoliberal restoration that occurred at the end of the 1970s and led to the state of globalization in which we find ourselves today.
Today the shortcomings of democracy on the input side—in terms of the quality of democracy in the single nation-states—make themselves felt mainly in the difficulties experienced by the traditional parties faced with populistic-type reactions to the international economic regime now dominant, together with various (and usually more readily addressed) national causes.
It is hard to predict future developments with the new patterns of representation already evolving in response to the social, cultural and technological influences mentioned above. However, comparison with the other great period of globalization, between the end of the nineteenth century and World War I, not to mention the period between the two wars, does not, I believe, suggest particularly dramatic outcomes. Dramatic consequences did ensue upon the crisis of democracy at the turn of the twentieth century and after World War I: today's democracy may be “disfigured,” but it is not discredited as it was then. And today the populistic forces themselves are not explicitly pursuing demolition of parliamentary democracy but rather a form of parliamentary democracy they judge to be better. Moreover, at the geopolitical and cultural level the situation is more favorable. Despite the difficulties the EU is coming up against, it still constitutes extraordinary evidence of the possibility of building relations between states on foundations decidedly more peaceful, regulated and civil than had ever been the case in the past. This can also be said of the design of international economic and financial relations developed at Bretton Woods, upon which the conditions of well-being and social inclusion of the following 40 years were based. The design has since been erased, but the memory of it remains among all those involved in international relations today as a reminder that an intelligent long-sighted architecture for international economic-financial relations is in fact possible—memory that can prompt attempts at reconstruction on different bases.Of course, the endemic and inevitable conflict between capitalism and democracy persists, often intensified in the phases of globalization and international expansion of capitalism.8 Such conflict is inevitable because capitalism is at the same time a cause of crisis of democracy and a necessary condition for the very existence of representative liberal governments, as I have argued in various writings.9 The conflict can, however, be moderated and regulated at both the level of the single democratic states and of the international relations between states.
Am I being too optimistic and idealistic? I do not think so. My viewpoint is based on the conviction that there is still room for reform at the level of the single national democracies, the EU and the world economic-financial and political system, and that it is useless turning to desperate remedies before desperate ills strike. But it is also based on the conviction that desperate ills may indeed strike and that—not yet, but in a not- too-distant future—democracy may be facing such trials as to threaten its very survival. Here I am thinking above all of the ecological disasters, demographic explosion and conflict over water and energy resources that threaten our planet.10 Nevertheless, as long as Behemoth and Leviathan, the monsters of anarchy and absolute authority, can be kept at bay, I believe that democratic reformism is the best way to fight them off. This is the lesson I have learned from my master, Paolo Sylos Labini, and from his best pupil, Alessandro Roncaglia.11