1. Hello everyone, Happy New Year. I’m back from a lovely time, though now stricken by a nasty bug. Right, back to it: In my catch-up reading, there are several articles about the “collapse of democracy”. Was 2024 the year in which it began to die? But NONE of them seeks to define democracy. 🧵 2. Their common assumption is that “democracy” is a system in which adults are permitted to vote in a general election once every four or five years. Yes, this could be seen as one element of a potentially democratic system. But it covers about 5% of what’s required to qualify. 3. As we have seen again and again, you can have systems in which we vote in broadly free and fair elections, but in which a tiny number of people continue to wield inordinate power, regardless of the outcome. 4. They translate their vast wealth into vast power. Decision-making shifts from parliaments and congresses into inaccessible places. What DID happen in 2024 is a further dissolution of the barrier between private and public power. Economic democracy is a crucial component of democracy. 5. A system in which free and fair elections take place can also be highly repressive in other respects, as many peaceful protesters in the UK now know to their cost. 6. It can also be starkly unrepresentative. Here, as elsewhere, to get what almost everyone wants (good and secure jobs, which use and reward our skills; a functional health system; clean rivers; a habitable planet …), you have to fight almost everyone in power. Regardless of their affiliation. 7. Why? Because capital is more powerful than voters. We can have everything we want, as long as capital approves. But what capital wants is generally the opposite of what citizens want. Capital approves almost none of the reforms we need, and demands disastrous “reforms” of its own. 8. In many nations, the right of almost all adults to vote is a fairly recent development, tacked onto a system that was never designed for democracy. That system was designed to sustain elite power regardless of social change. Allowing us to vote was a concession whose purpose was to preserve it. 9. No wonder people are disillusioned with “democracy”. Disillusionment is the only sane response to something that has never been what it claims to be. Democracy is a word that is supposed to end all arguments. But in crucial respects, it is currently just a word. 10. True democracy requires systemic reform. It demands the redistribution of both political power and wealth. It demands a complete transformation of the way decisions are made, permitting continuous engagement in the process by citizens, through deliberative and participatory politics. 11. Our systems need to shift power from centralised, distant and concentrated structures towards the smallest possible units of decision-making. 12. Not all decisions can be made at the local level. We also need the democratisation of national and global governance. But wherever decisions can be made locally, they should be made locally, with full participation. 13. Was 2024 the year democracy began to die? No. It wasn’t alive in the first place. We should aim to make 2025 the year in which democracy is born. The thread on one page: skywriter.blue
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