Statement of Purpose for Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam Finland

We, the people, parties, groups, movements, trade unions and other political organisations of the centre-left have a simple task. We need to break the neo-liberal hegemony. This requires strength both in pragmatic day-to-day political reform and at the level of visions and values.

Creative work for transnational political reform has a role to play in our overall strategy, but if we are to overcome ‘the Great Divide’, we need to be more clear than we have been of late about this part of our programme. Quarrelling over the right EU or WTO politics will be endless and unproductive unless we see both tasks in a broad and long-term perspective. Let me refer briefly to two basic conditions for democracy that the centre-left needs to, but has often have failed to, take into account. (Both conditions are shrugged off as irrelevant by neo-liberals. Keeping them in view helps, I think, in making clear the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the neo-liberal right.)

First: democracy is not interest agglomeration. According to a popular but limited version of liberal democratic thought, people enter society with interests and needs which only the individual herself can know. Democracy, on this account, is a tool we use to weigh these legitimate irreducibly individual interests and needs against each other in order to accomplish fair (re)distribution. This view is based on an atomistic notion of society (as constituted by isolated individuals or ‘atoms’) and it implies a mechanistic notion of democracy. Global democracy, we might think on this basis, is essentially achievable by having a world parliament elected through adult franchise and assisted by an effective staff of experts to take care of global problems. Regional parliaments will do the job at the regional level, national at the national level and so on. This vision of democracy as essentially comprising three components, free and fair elections, democratic legislation by the elected and the exercise of power by governments accountable to elected parliaments has only limited merit if already for the following reason: It overlooks the extent to which needs and interests are constantly defined and redefined through communication. (I cannot know what is good for me unless I know how my assessment is received by others I care for and about, and unless I know how these others assess my assessment and can learn from them, and unless the others can learn from me, and unless I know that they know how I understand their assessment, and so on and so on: The levels and kinds of reciprocal reflection, care and learning that play a role in democratic communication are quite many and complex.) For this reason alone, we can have democracy worth its name only between people who can effectively communicate with each other. And, for this reason alone, many well-intended proposals for global and transnational democratic reform that are in vogue today bear the mark of naivety.

Second: democratic communication is not easily achieved. We must, of course, be fascinated by the prospects opened up by new media and so-called global civil society. Both open up important new possibilities. But we must be clear that new media are no more neutral tools for democracy than are old media, such as the ‘free’ commercial press and TV. And ‘civil society’ is all too often founded on dreams of mass participation while its real outreach and mobilisation remains extremely weak. Of course, my point is not that we should leave internet and international conferencing to our opponents. But the fact is that even when at their best, as in the Socialist International, the International Coalition of Free Trade Unions, the World Social Forum, global movement networks such as People’s Global Action or Jubilee 2000 or in INGOs (International Non-Governmental Organisations) such as Friends of the Earth or Attac, international communication structures in the age of the net and ‘global civil society’ remain extremely asymmetrical. Language barriers, gendered technologies and economic and technological disparities continue to give fantastic privilege to the educated male elites and middle classes in all parts of the globe. This is not only true in business, high politics and the academic world but in left-centre politics of all varieties as well. And the problem is often even more acute on the transnational and global level than on regional, national and local levels of organisation.

With these observations in mind, let me single out three strategic challenges to centre-left politics in the era of globalisation and the cultural crisis of modernity. (It should be obvious from the discussion above that I intend the challenges I highlight as complementary to, not as replacements for, some more obvious and well-known tasks such as stopping imperialist warfare and curbing corporate power.)

First, the challenge of comprehensibility: people can exercise democratic rights and participate effectively only if political processes are understandable. Often the currently most decisive political issues, such as EU or WTO-reform, present quite serious difficulties in this regard.

Second, the challenge of creating the right structures of communication and to strengthen, and if needed create, corresponding democratic processes and institutions. We must face, not least, the fact that in the era of the internet and global air travel, and as more nations than ever before conduct multi-party elections with universal suffrage, the democratic accountability of elected and non-elected political leaders seems to have weakened rather than strengthened. Why is this and what are the remedies?

Third, the challenge of limiting the political tasks. The current level of integration and interdependence in world affairs threatens to make meaningful, reasoned political participation a full-time task. But not all people want to be full-time activists and not all people can. This (and other considerations only hinted at here) opens up the prospect that modern technology and the modes of organisation it necessitates are incompatible with comprehensive democracy. And that reminds us of the need in the centre-left to take seriously again the discussion about the right balance between the local, the national and the transnational in our political and economic strategies.

It seems to me that no democratic politics today can hope to be realistic without a view of transnational or global democratisation. But it is equally true that a democratic politics that focuses too much on the global or transnational level will have little chance of responding to the challenges I mentioned.

It is because of the need I see for the centre-left to unite and to address the challenges I have mentioned that I welcome the comprehensive perspective on democracy that lies at the core of Democracy Forum Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.

In discussions of this perspective, friends of the initiative have often talked about dimensions of democracy. Dimensions that have been mentioned include political, ecological, cultural, gender, social, economic and knowledge democracy.

One could say that this discussion of the dimensions of democracy is informed by a horizontal view of the challenges for a comprehensive politics for democratisation.

I welcome it for many reasons. At the level of our theoretical understanding, the analysis of the various dimensions of democracy reminds us that democratic politics is a richer and perhaps more demanding art than is often observed. (Democratic politics is not only about economics and governance, even though it must be about these too.) At the level of pragmatic day-to-day work, the same analysis promises to be an energising and enriching tool. I would like to emphasise one particularly promising aspect. When we speak of the many dimensions of democracy, we will be reminded of what the political movements have always intuitively known: a political movement is successful when cultural, social, epistemic and other efforts work without competition between them towards common goals. Emma Goldman was right: A movement that does not have its own dances will not be successful. Hence, there is a place and need in democratic politics for people of many other types than those who enjoy the classical political themes of state-power and economic regulation. One way in which Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam has the potential to contribute to a resurgence of centre-left politics is by serving as a forum that inspires a broadening of the centre-left self-understanding, participation and political agenda.

I would, however, like to add a ‘vertical’ perspective to the horizontal perspective on democracy. Whichever ‘dimension’ of democracy we consider, it involves challenges at different vertical levels of human interaction. The mechanisms and tools for democracy will not all be the same at the family level, the community level, the national level, the regional level, the transnational level and the global level. (If we recognise this, we can also recognise that the quarrel over direct vs. representative democracy is often spurious.)

All vertical levels of democracy in all horizontal dimensions are interdependent. If we have no democracy in our families or our companies, our schools or our local communities, we will not have individuals with the capacity to engage democratically in transnational politics. But, also, unless transnational democratic structures protect local democracies of e.g. gender and the economy against the onslaught of capitalist aggression, the latter will be facing hard times. And so on.

Democratic politics, then, is a truly comprehensive task. Democracy Forum Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam serves a role already in reminding us that this is the case. Nevertheless, it is not an initiative designed only to propel dreams.

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