Democracy Today.indb - Universidade do Minho

230
DEMOCRACY TODAY
observation: history is a cemetery of aristocracies. And while sharing
in many senses the criticism of formal democracy by aristocratically
(qualitatively) minded thinkers, resolving that contradiction is possible
only in the direction of further democratization.
That direction could be designated by Barber’s apt turn of phrase:
‘An aristocracy of everyone’ [Barber, 1994]. In the preceding historical
times the development of one person (monarchy) or that of a narrow
circle of persons (aristocracy/oligarchy) was possible due to slave labor
and ignorance of peasants and artisans, who were considered by ‘noble
and educated’ circles first as common and lowdown people, and later as
depersonalized masses, while opposing them to the intelligent human
personality. However ‘the revolt of the masses’ of our days does not
have its goal in the death of personality, quite the opposite: the death of
historical blind ‘mass’, its own transformation into community of developed
personalities is required here, and that’s what indicates the course
of future development. Using the proposed terminology set, that idea
for the future development of democracy could be named ‘democracypanarchy’
meaning that each human person should be entitled not just
with formal status of bearer of power, but with real power-exercising
ability as well. As Lenin used to explain, any human being, with no
exception, regardless of personal wealth, occupation and gender, has to
carry his/her share of burden on governing the state. One could think
that such a vision is rather utopian, but let us remember ancient poleis
where every citizen did have similar responsibilities, and members of
democratic city councils – βουλαί – were chosen by lot annually. In other
words, any person out of the number of ‘political people’ could govern
the state, – and the major difference between that historical example
and the current situation is just the already noted augmentation of
‘the people’ notion.
That means that the denoted direction of democratic development
implies the change of the democracy’s subject and scale as well. Until
today, the major actor of democratic power and the main space for
democracy’s outer development and expansion was the state – more
precisely, ‘nation-state’ of the Modern Age, which under globalization
represents a rather archaic institute on historical arena, not coping with
its tasks and trying to disguise its helplessness and even uselessness.
Identification of democracy with structures related to state organization,