In 48 countries simultaneously,
there are very large demonstrations challenging the political regime of the
state. The supremacy of the democratic model, accepted by almost everyone at
the end of the 20th century, is now being called into question. For Thierry
Meyssan, no constitutional
system will solve today’s problems, which are primarily the consequence of
values and behaviour.
On
several continents, 48 peoples are currently rising up against their
governments. A movement of such magnitude has never been observed on a
planetary scale. After the period of financial globalization, we are witnessing
a contestation of political systems and are imagining the emergence of new
forms of government.
The “supremacy” of democracy
The
nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw both the triumph of the use of elections
and the enlargement of the electoral bodies (free men, the poor, women, ethnic
minorities, etc.).
The development of the middle
classes gave more people time to take an interest in politics. It has
encouraged debate and helped to soften social mores.
The
nascent means of communication gave the opportunity to participate in public
life to those who wanted to do so. Presidents are not elected in response to
social struggles, but because they can be elected today. In the past, automatic
successions were favoured, usually hereditary, but not always. It was in fact
impossible for everyone to be informed of public affairs and to give their
opinion quickly.
Stupidly
we have assimilated the sociological transformation of societies and this
technical progress to a choice of regime: democracy. Now, democracy is not a
law, but a state of mind, an ideal: “the government of the People, by the
People and for the People,” as Abraham Lincoln put it.
We
soon realized that democratic institutions are no better than others. They
enlarge the number of the privileged, but in the end, they allow a majority to
exploit a minority. So we designed all kinds of laws to improve that system. We
equated the separation of powers with the protection of minorities.
However,
the democratic model no longer works. Many citizens find that their opinions
are no longer taken into account. This is not due to the institutions, which
have changed little in terms of substance, but to the way they are used.
Furthermore,
after we have convinced ourselves, with Winston Churchill, that “Democracy is a
bad system, but it is the least bad of all systems”, we realize that each
political regime must respond to the concerns of people who are different
according to their history, their culture; that what is good here will not be
good there or at another time.
We
must be wary of vocabulary in politics. The meaning of words changes over time.
They are often introduced with good intentions and misused with bad ones. We
confuse our ideas with the words we use to express them, but which others use
to betray them. I will therefore clarify in this text what I mean by the most
important ones.
We
need to re-examine the question of our governance. Not in the fashion of
Emmanuel Macron, who contrasts “democracy” and “dictatorship” in order to end
the debate before it has begun. These two words cover realities of a different
order. Democracy refers to a regime in which the greatest number of people
participate. It is opposed to oligarchy, where power is exercised by a few. On
the contrary, if we no longer talk about the number of people involved in the
decision, but about how the decision is made, dictatorship refers to a regime
where the leader, a military commander, may have to make his decision without
being able to debate it. It is opposed to parliamentarianism.
The legitimacy of the Republic
First
and foremost, we must ask the question of legitimacy, that is, why do we
recognize the government, and then the state, as being so useful that we accept
their authority?
We
are obeying a government that we believe is serving our interests. This is the
idea of a “republic” in the Roman sense. Thus, the kings of France patiently
constructed the idea of “general interest” to which the Anglo-Saxons were
opposed from the 17th century onwards and from the experience of Oliver
Cromwell. Today, the United Kingdom and the United States are the only
countries where it is claimed that there is no general interest, but only a sum
– as high as possible – of disparate and contradictory interests.
The British suspect a priori that anyone who speaks of the general interest
wants to restore Oliver Cromwell’s bloody Republican regime. The United States
wants every federal state to be republican (i.e. serving the interests of the
local population), but they do not want the federal state – which they distrust
– to be republican (because, they believe, it cannot serve the interests of all
the components of this immigrant nation). This is why a candidate in the USA
does not present a programme setting out his vision of society as in the rest
of the world, but a list of interest groups that support him.
The
Anglo-Saxon thinking seems strange to me, but it is theirs. I will continue my
reflections with those peoples who accept the idea of the general interest. For
them, all political regimes are acceptable, as long as they serve the general
interest, which unfortunately is no longer generally the case in our
democracies. The problem is that no constitution can guarantee this service. It
is a practice, nothing more.
Republican virtue
The
question then arises as to the qualities necessary for the proper functioning
of a political regime, whether democratic or not. As early as the 16th century,
Machiavelli had answered this question by stating the principle of “virtue”. By
virtue, one should not in any way understand a moral of any kind, but a form of
disinterestedness that allows one to take care of the general interest without
seeking personal profit; a quality that almost all Western political personnel
seem to lack today.
Machiavelli
is often cited as the thinker of trickery in politics and described as a
manipulator. Certainly, he was not a naive man, but a man who taught both the
prince how to use his power to triumph over his enemies and how not to abuse
his power.
We do not know how to develop
virtue, but we know what made it disappear: we no longer have any respect for
those who have money, we no longer have any respect for those who devote
themselves to the general interest. Worse still, when we find someone who
devotes himself to the general interest, we think a priori that he is rich. However, if we remember
virtuous politicians, we know that they were only rich if they had inherited a
fortune or earned money before entering politics, so they were generally not.
Gene
Sharp’s work and the experience of colourful revolutions show us that, whatever
political regime governs us, we always have the leaders we deserve. No regime
can last without the support of its people.
Therefore,
we are collectively responsible for the lack of virtue of our leaders. Even
more than changing our institutions, we must therefore change ourselves and no
longer consider others according to the thickness of their wallets, but first
and foremost according to their virtue.
Revolutionary Brotherhood
To virtue, the French
Revolution added brotherhood. Again, this was not a moral or religious matter,
nor was it a matter of any social welfare, but the brotherhood of arms of the
soldiers of the second year. They had volunteered to save the country from the
Prussian invasion, in the face of a professional army. Among themselves, they
no longer differentiated between the aristocracy and the Third State, realizing
their ideal of equality. And they were victorious.
Their anthem, La Marseillaise, became the anthem of the French
Republic as well as that of the Soviet Revolution in its early days (before the
Gulag). Its refrain is misunderstood today:
To arms, citizens,
Form your battalions,
Let’s march, let’s march!
That impure blood
Water our furrows!
To arms, citizens,
Form your battalions,
Let’s march, let’s march!
That impure blood
Water our furrows!
It is
wrongly interpreted as if we were going to water our furrows with the blood of
our enemies. But the blood of the tyrant’s soldiers can only poison our land.
In the imagination of the time, the “impure blood” of the People is opposed to
the “blue blood” of the officers of the Prussian Empire. It is the exaltation
of the supreme sacrifice that founds the brotherhood of arms of the
Revolutionaries.
The
brotherhood of arms of the People corresponds to the virtue of the rulers. The
two answer each other.
What’s next?
Today
we are living in a period not unlike that of the French Revolution: society is
once again divided into orders. On the one hand, there are leaders chosen from
birth, then clerics dispensing their social morality through the media, and
finally a third state that is being pushed back with tear gas and rubber
bullets. But there is no reason at the moment to die for the fatherland in the
face of the interests represented by the thousand business leaders meeting in
Davos.
In any case, people everywhere are
looking for new forms of governance, in line with their history and
aspirations.
French
intellectual, founder and chairman of Voltaire Network and the Axis for Peace
Conference. His columns specializing in international relations feature in
daily newspapers and weekly magazines in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last
two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
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