Reflections on the defense of democracy – Two crises of democracy
From Rainer Forst
For a long time, people doubted whether it was appropriate to talk about a crisis of democracy, as the crisis is the moment when life or death is decided. In recent years, we have often heard that things are not quite so bad yet, but now the wind has changed. The crisis phenomena are culminating in Germany – the takeover of power in the east by the AfD can only be averted for the time being by fragile mega-coalitions, and the new government is facing an unprecedented disintegration of the international order, while Trump and his people in the USA are demonstrating how to reshape the oldest democracy in an authoritarian manner.
But what exactly is the crisis of democracy that we are seeing here? Where does it come from? I argue that we are actually facing two crises. I call the first a crisis of justification. In short, it consists of the fact that we are losing the concepts we need to orient ourselves politically and normatively. What’s more, the actual meaning of these terms is not simply overlooked or forgotten, but actively fought against – by invoking them ideologically. This is the hallmark of normative regression. Massive efforts are being made to “revalue all values”, and we do not know what will remain of concepts such as democracy, freedom or justice when this work is done. We are therefore dealing with a veritable identity crisis of democracy, in which its self-image is melting away.
The second crisis is of a structural nature. All the major political challenges of our time – war and peace, the transnational economic disorder that brings increasing wealth here and dependency and poverty there, climate change, migration – are global in nature. But not only are the institutions to respond to them of a nation-state nature or, if international, weakly developed or under regressive attack; even more, the political imagination in practically all states of the world is nationally polarized.
As a result, either comprehensive, progressive structural policies are no longer targeted at all, but the battle for the best national place under the global sun is waged, or the policies that are preparing to respond productively to some of these challenges, at least at national level, are punished because they have a reputation for placing an undue burden on their own population. The fate of climate policy is a clear example of this. At best, it seems that corrections can still be made to the worst effects of the situation (minimum wage), but these are also suspected of being too expensive and damaging international competitiveness. This profound structural crisis leads to a self-blockade of democracy: those who understand the challenges of the time do not have the means of power at their disposal that are necessary to overcome them. There is a common bad, but no institutional place for the discussion and creation of a common good.
This structural crisis has had a paralyzing effect on the political self-image in all countries, not just democratic ones, since the 1990s and increasingly so after the 2008 financial crisis. Many reacted fatalistically, others with the call for transnational politics, which, however, faded away. However, quite a few people became convinced during this time that there was a group of profiteers who were quite comfortable in this world and were not really willing to change anything.
It is one of the perversions of our time that this accusation nowadays applies less to economic elites than to left-wing ecological positions, but one must take this political paralysis and these reservations into account in order to understand the force with which some (and more and more) right-wing authoritarians are now trying to break out of this political-economic prison. Perhaps, they say to themselves, these global framework restrictions did not exist, perhaps nationalist politics will succeed after all. This is the tipping point at which we find ourselves today. The long-perceived political impotence is being discharged in the aggressive and regressive delusion of nationalist political omnipotence: Take back control!
The dual crisis is evident in many areas, especially when it comes to migration. Civil wars, poverty and climate change are the causes of major migration movements, but comprehensive structural responses that address their causes and seek transnationally legitimate solutions are lacking. Western societies are increasingly reacting to this by talking about “illegal” migration, so that migrants are generally seen as a threat. What is more, they become the embodiment of a threatening globalism that must be averted.
The issue occupies the political agenda, which inspires xenophobic and nationalist parties. Xenophobic resentment is becoming socially acceptable, as people only want to restore “law and order”. In times of regression, the anger of those who feel left out turns against the most defenceless in society – an old insight of the Frankfurt School.
Secondly, and more importantly, the attacks from the right, including the wave spilling over from the USA, have pushed those who oppose them into a political corner that only seeks to defend “democracy”, which to some ears sounds like the maintenance of the status quo, including the privileges that the defenders there supposedly (or really) have.
As already indicated, this is where we come up against the core of the hatred that is directed at left-wing and left-liberal parties and institutions (such as universities in the USA). There is no other explanation for the Trump phenomenon. He has managed to turn the smouldering resentment against progressives, who supposedly look down from their high moral and economic horse on those who have little cultural and economic capital.
The momentum to make forward-looking, transformative policy proposals is thus, and this is crucial, moving from the left to the right – in the direction of those who believe they can reshape the world in a nationalist-libertarian furor. And they are doing so, in chainsaw mode. In this ideological light, however, progressive politics loses its projects; it only has a defensive effect and, above all, preserves vested interests. Sheer regression becomes pseudo-progression, the reactionary becomes action. At the extreme, this creates a policy that simply denies global problems such as climate change or pandemic viruses. The festival of power that is celebrated here takes reality head-on.
Thirdly, this intensifies the perversion of concepts, what I call the justification crisis. The political self-image of a democratic republic presupposes that concepts such as democracy, freedom, justice and human rights are understood correctly. However, if freedom only means selfish ruthlessness (a legacy of the pandemic), if freedom of expression is reduced to the unhindered development of power in social media, for example, which stirs up the mud that covers everything and enables billions in profits for a few, if democracy is supposed to mean that majorities can empower autocrats to abolish fundamental rights and democratic institutions, if human rights are merely ideological ciphers that can be used or abandoned for power politics (see asylum or migration), then we have finally arrived in a political space that only knows self-assertion.
Then a policy of justice turns into one of revenge: tit for tat, the rule of law only gets in the way. Then, under the pretext of “fairness”, the fight against material equality policies that are intended to benefit disadvantaged social groups can be taken up. In this normative night, anti-Semites end up acting as a bulwark against anti-Semitism. But where there is danger, there could also be salvation, or at least we have to look for it. This begins with an understanding of principles. Here are a few keywords.
1 Progressive, truly democratic politics must be based on universalist principles, not on culturalist “values” that are defended. It cannot be about defending or propagating a “way of life of the West”, but about realizing principles that can and should apply equally to all, since they are based on the rational idea of autonomy, that no one has the right to subject others to an order that cannot be justified to all as free and equal.
2 Secondly, this means that the “defense” of democracy cannot be about defending structures that brought about the crisis in the first place. And it requires that the concept of democracy itself is understood correctly. Against the widespread tendency to conceptually separate the fundamental rights of discriminated groups and democracy, it must be insisted that an “illiberal democracy” in this sense is not one. Democracy has come into the modern age as a form of political rule that is intended to overcome and ban arbitrariness, and therefore it must not degenerate into a majoritarian-autocratic arbitrary rule.
3. the global structural policy crisis that national communities have reached does not mean that they cannot and should not make much greater efforts to improve the lot of people on low incomes. Those who do not see the poison that seeps into societies through growing social inequality and lack of freedom, even when the average population is relatively well off, do not understand the success of the right-wingers who declare themselves the advocates of the “left behind”. Today, the super-rich are already asking for them to be taxed more (and remain unheard); this is the time for effective, courageous social policy, including in the form of tax reform.
4) The point about the universalism of the foundations of a liberal, democratic republic refers to the imperative to stabilize and establish an international order of law and, beyond that, of politics that sets and enforces the law fairly. Those who see international politics merely as a means to dominate their own interests have already betrayed these foundations. The way in which international law is being aggressively attacked today is unacceptable.
5. a suitable answer must be found to the question posed by J.D. Vance in Munich as to which democracy the Europeans are actually defending, and it can include not only a European defense community, but primarily a political project that undertakes measures to reduce economic dependencies and international relations of exploitation – including limiting the power of digital oligarchies. So it is not Fortress Europe, but a truly democratic project of a republic of republics.
Rainer Forst, born in Wiesbaden in 1964, studied philosophy, political science and American studies in Frankfurt, New York and at Harvard University. Forst is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy and Director of the Research Centre Normative Orders at Frankfurt’s Goethe University.
