E is for Estates and Escape

E is for Estates and Escape

Obama is the first ever black President elected in the United States. And as an astute American told me, "Obama is the President of the world!" Of this we should be grateful. Obama is a world-changing historical figure that comes around every few hundred years. He is a man of great vision and intellectual acumen. He reaches out to friends and foes alike. He fires all of us that come from minority backgrounds with great hope for a better world based on merit, racial equality, and fairness. Despite rising anti-American sentiments after Afghanistan and Iraq, almost all the world is in love with him.

Yet, most of the world, including Europe, would be incapable of electing a black minority figure like Obama because most people conceive of their nations in homogeneous terms. So bravo to Obama for shattering the veil and giving a positive model to blacks in the United States and minority groups around the planet! May the demonstration effect spread throughout the world!

In spite of the election of Obama, I want to take a contrary position today. I want to suggest that the old feudal estates of the Middle Ages have been recreated in new guises. And the result is that escapism is the rule of the everyday in modern liberal democracies. Our clergy, nobility, and commoners are still with us in the 21th century. We still have monarchs or autocrats, including most of the Muslim world, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and large chunks of Africa. And even in liberal democracies we increasingly have anti-democratic tendencies in the context of the "war on terror," the centralization of power among presidents and prime ministers, and what Vilfredo Pareto would have dubbed a "graveyard of aristocracies".

Of course, liberal democracies are more egalitarian and just than the authoritarian tendencies cited. More people are allowed to participate in the political system and reflect the will of the people. Or demos in the ancient Greek conception of direct democracy. But we should not be self-congratulatory. We ought to be vigilant if we are to protect democracy. Civilized Europe, with a few exceptions, abandoned democracy en masse in the inter-war years. If we are not careful, we can take a similar path. So we must enhance direct democracy in the West. We must undermine representative democracy, the democracy of politicians, political parties, and bureaucratic centralization.

If we fail to involve ordinary people in the political process, we cede the political terrain to the professional politicians. We escape from our political duties as citizens in a liberal democracy. The good thing about the Obama campaign in 2008 is that it energized young people to join the political process. Young people that would have stayed home and merely watched television. When we join the political process to help our communities, regions, and nations, we do not "escape from freedom." Politics can be an act of great emancipation, popular participation, and meaningful change.

Now we no longer have our kings or queens in most of the West, except for ceremonial heads of state in places like Canada and Britain. We do not have rigid estates where birth, Church hierarchy, and property are the ultimate determinants of political life. We have the American Revolution (1776) and French Revolution (1789) to thank for these advancements in mass popular participation and democracy.

However, we still have great barriers to political participation, upward mobility, and direct democracy in many Western countries. And even more profound barriers in places such as Iran, Russia, and Sudan. Institutions can act as gatekeepers, keeping out ideas and people that do not reflect the spirit of the institutions. Global capitalist institutions from the North American Free Trade Agreement to International Monetary Fund ultimately undermine national sovereignty, parliaments, and direct democracy. When corporations transcend national borders and are capable of greater wealth than nation-states, we see the power of institutions. When a North African immigrant citizen of France (despite his or her honest efforts) faces grave institutional racism at the hands of employers or the state, then we see the power of institutions. When regions, cities, or villages are held hostage by agri-businesses, oil companies, or national state authorities, then we see the power of institutions.

We are at a great crossroads in human history. Obama is a part of a changing global consciousness; a politics of mass hope. The period of estates, in older and newer guises, is long gone. Sandwiched between environmental and nuclear annihilation, we can longer afford to escape. Our economic models need serious re-evaluation. It is time for a new generation to give us hope, direct democracy, and popular participation.

Tamir Bar-On