Beyond Democracy

Author: Karl Nesic, Gilles Dauve

Today, we live in a world where conservatives, republicans, nationalists and even socialists are "democrats". In this world, "choosing" is blessed, not "acting". Democracy, immune from all criticism, validates itself by its flaw: that it has never been completed. While it is said that the sins of totalitarian regimes stem from their being totalitarian, the flaw of democracies is that they are not "democratic enough". While history is read only from the axis of democratization, politics is reduced to the debate between totalitarianism and democracy.

When "democratization" or "totalitarianism" becomes the only political agenda, governments as well as the opposition explain their actions with a self-styled "principle of democracy". Gilles Dauvé and Karl Nesic, on the other hand, argue that democracy is not the same as liberation, opposing the distinction between the ruler and the ruled, or the relations of domination, and that, moreover, this sanctification of political freedom, knowing good and evil entirely from politics, actually means making peace with capitalism, which divides people into two as citizens and individuals, and political politics. They show that their aim is to absolutize power. Thus, they reveal the dilemmas of the left, which accepts society in its current state, embracing the concept of democracy and its "democrat" identity. They focus on human and social freedom, not political freedom, and ponder how a freedom based on action and realization, not choice, can be achieved.



Number of Pages: 168

Year of Printing: 2012


Language: Turkish
Publisher: Sel Publishing

First Printing Year: 2012

Number of Pages: 168

Language Turkish