Why attack democracy?

Day 3,534, 03:16 Published in Indonesia Indonesia by Kaum Kumuh

Democracy justifies itself based on certain principles that are no less false for having been repeated a thousand times as truths, and its justification is so internalized that even its opponents believe in its principles. Considering how ingrained and immobile the idea of this system’s fundamental goodness is in the people’s thinking, change seems impossible; nobody seems to be suggesting any other organizational forms these days, or even other ways of life.

We daughters of democracy have been told that this is the best of all regimes; our parents and grandmothers lived under a system where coercion and repression were more direct, and now that it has taken on a softer form, we are expected to accept it from birth. Why is it that we are going to be a poorer generation than the previous ones, without there even having been a war in between? The blame lies with the irreparable transformations imposed by their system.

The system claims to be based on “free association,” but it is not in fact free, since from birth we are forced to be part of this regime and have no possibility of choosing any other way of life. We do not “freely associate” with the educational institutions, since other ways of learning are prohibited. And there’s no “free association” involved at work, because we don’t control what we produce, decide our own working hours, or have the unfettered right to organize with our co-workers.

Universal suffrage, a concept that has been exalted throughout history as a great victory by ever broader segments of the population, in fact brings itself into question conceptually upon closer examination: it’s always been said that the vote is free, but in fact the choice is limited, because consciousness is not free, but subject to the propaganda of the ruling regime and the culture promoted by the groups that are in power. It is also freedom-denying insofar as it reduces us to merely giving our two cents, yes or no, or saying which party we think should rule us, which denies us the possibility of developing other possible ways of living together. And why is the ballot secret? Is there no true freedom of speech?