Democracy is a word that designates a system of government—nothing more, nothing less. Only when that system of government materializes and acts as such, that is, only when democracy acquires political content and realization, can we then say what type of democracy we are talking about and what the execution of that system of government called "democracy" consists of.
Every system of government among human beings, whether democratic or not, is a political system. Politics is the organization of power, meaning the administration of freedom, within a state, among the members of that state, and in relation to other states.
In our time, in most of the West, this organization of political power, this administration of freedom within the state and among other states, is called "democratic." But things are not just as they are named, and they are not merely a matter of language, philology, or linguistics. Things require more than just words for their understanding and use. And democracy is not merely a matter of words. Can democracy survive the disappearance of states throughout this 21st century?
In the West, the organization of the political power of the state, which we currently call "democracy," is influenced by a decisive content today that acts as a genuine solvent of democracy itself. This content is called postmodernity, and it also includes very specific and powerful components, which I will address below in this book, Essay on the Historical Failure of Democracy in the 21st Century. The contents of postmodernity are the main solvents and emulsifiers of so-called democratic systems of government. They are its cancer. In other words, the objectives of postmodernity are the main destabilizers of modern and democratic states, established since the European Renaissance, from the 15th and 16th centuries.
This is equivalent to stating that the permeability and tolerance that democracy shows towards postmodernity lead to the decomposition and destruction of modern and democratic states. Democracy, as a political framework, destroys itself by becoming saturated with anti-democratic content.
The process is slow but certain and irreversible because today, democracy, thanks to postmodernity, finds itself at a dead end from which nothing and no one will undoubtedly extract it—neither through the way it entered (as history does not allow for retracing steps; it is always irreversible) nor peacefully (as political changes are violent, even though violence is never, like Justice, the same for everyone).
Jesús G. Maestro
Is democracy currently in a maze or at a dead end?
