The concluding
note of a realistic and critical essay cannot be the invocation of a utopia,
much less its description, postulation, or proposal, but quite the opposite:
the denial of utopia. Utopias are poorly written novels in times of crisis.
This book is an essay, not a novel, and cannot conclude as if it were a
literary fable, an Anglo-Saxon desire, or a rhetorical fiction. It is not a
work of philosophy either. I've already mentioned that philosophy is mere
self-hermeneutics: it devotes itself to interpreting itself, not reality.
Philosophers, in their constant interpretation of one another, have long
forgotten about reality.
I refuse to
elaborate on an idealistic program (realism is essential at this point) of
political acts or purposes that serve as an alternative to democracy as a
system or form of government, for two straightforward and entirely realistic
and materialistic reasons. Firstly, proposing an idealistic alternative would
entail falling into the rhetoric of utopia (that is already done by
philosophers). Secondly, that alternative is already constructed and
increasingly sophisticated: it's called globalization, managed by the friends
of commerce and has its complementary alternative, which is the People's
Republic of China. Thus, there's nothing for me to propose. This essay - as
we've stated from the beginning - presents an interpretation of the failure of
democracy and does not aim to lead any proposal or alternative to this failure
because, as I indicate, these supposed alternatives are already a well-visible
and operational reality. Only residents in a semantic third world, a
contemporary mirage, or an hallucination promoted by the press and mass media,
could ignore it.
In my view, democracy is the best system of government among all possible ones, as long as it functions as it should: a system in which human power is so precisely articulated that no individual - and no group of individuals, exclusive or excluding - that is part of it can monopolize its functioning. Democracy is at the antipodes of totalitarianism. Yet today, we feel the growing presence of a totalitarianism in everything we do, say, and ...
