Voting does not express democracy. On the contrary, it is an expression of its failure, of its inability to establish a common ground where everyone can find their place. Not to mention the ease with which established oligarchies, the “establishment,” with their power of money and military force, to sway the results in their favor—the manufacture of consent—how can we accept that a simple majority can impose on the rest of the population ways of life and laws that this population feels are deeply contrary to its beliefs, going against all its tastes and desires?
Far from producing any kind of social justice, the majority rule feeds societies that are sick at heart, where resentment, discontent, dissatisfaction, separation, and refusal to participate fester to varying degrees. It simply does not work, or works very poorly, and everyone can see this at their own level when they do not indulge in the sad pleasure, born of resentment, of enjoying coercing others.
The “right to vote,” which was vehemently demanded by the non-property owners who were long excluded from it, and then by women, who saw it as a condition for their access to equality, has over time revealed itself to be what must be described as a sinister swindle.
If the capitalist system ended up taking credit for this “progress,” it is obviously because experience has shown that it is completely harmless to it; business could continue as usual, and this pseudo-democracy, which contributes to widespread separation, could only serve its interests. Pitting populations against each other has always been a sine qua non condition for its permanent renewal. It was therefore necessary to expressly construct a democratic fiction that would, in practice, allow the people to continue to be nothing.
How did we come to believe that by voting we would be able to change anything fundamentally? This is indeed a question worth asking, given the current state of the world and the accelerated loss of life.
The identification of majority voting as the central expression of democracy, its acceptance as such, is merely the consequence of the fact that this practice has become established within the framework of state centralization, which, by its very nature, is opposed to any real democracy. The state has ultimately revealed itself to be nothing more than the guarantor, the armed wing, of the form of society that has emerged from capitalist ideology, regardless of the name of the regime that holds the reins. It cannot be otherwise, for where else would the state and its various agents find the resources to maintain themselves in power? The state and capitalism are therefore inseparable, representing the two sides of the Janus face of domination.
But then what could truly give meaning to the word democracy by allowing the establishment of a certain social harmony where we would not be constantly at war, latent or open, with one another? The question of the territorial framework that allows democracy to truly function is essential here, and the fiction of national belonging, maintained by force by those who prove to be the main enemies of the implementation of effective democracy, is a perfect illustration of this. The effective exercise of democracy can only originally find its place at the grassroots level, at the heart of populations that literally share common horizons and environments; territories that then become directly involved in this democracy and will therefore participate in defining its modalities.
Aware of this obvious fact, the ruling powers, which are obviously opposed to the emergence of any real democracy, have done everything in their power to dissolve the visibility of territories by subjecting them to purely administrative subdivisions that are as far removed as possible from the populations, who then find themselves strangers in their own homes. Communities of municipalities with no links between them and completely opaque policies, regions broken up into areas with no common geographical or cultural correlation and where no one can identify themselves—examples of this kind abound under the totalitarian control of state management.
This display of deliberate and organized chaos makes it easier to understand why majority voting has become completely meaningless, its purpose being precisely to oppose and stifle any emergence of a grassroots democracy based on lived experience and sharing, in symbiosis with the local area, where everyone can find an identity and a reason for being.
Rebounds :