(By Ville-Veikko Hirvela with help from Thomas Wallgren)

1. In democracy all who are affected should be equally able to effect to the affecting laws and decisions by their own intentions about those affecting laws and decisions so that different intentions of all affected people could participate to define commonly with each other those laws and decisions.

But can all cultures and ways of life and thought be equally and universally represented by power or governance ? Or how can they be universally represented by their own kind of decision-making ?

As long as we think of the crisis we face today primarily as a crisis of governance we will not be able to see that the call for governance and the call for democracy are ultimately two entirely different cultural models. Democracy can be reduced also into a tool we use to weigh some legitimate irreducibly individual interests and needs against each other in order to accomplish fair (re)distribution. We will then be prone to engage in a politics for global democracy with an agenda so narrow that it risks becoming, inadvertently, the unlikely ally of imperial, belligerent capitalism (promising infinite increase of wealth and might to the already rich and mighty).

Demands of fair and democratic rules and control are often shifted to a rules-based global system of control with some added formal features of democracy such as interest agglomeration by free and fair elections, formally legislative decisions by the elected and exercise of power by governments accountable to elected parliaments. Power seems to become democratic when there is first set tasks to rubber-stamp laws, and then peoples are allowed to elect persons to these tasks, (given the name “parliament” such as in the EU).

These visions of democracy have 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 can not 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.).

It is a big challenge in the era of globalisation and the cultural crisis of modernity (also of the EU and WTO), that people can exercise democratic rights and participate effectively only if political process are understandable and have structures, time and spaces for accountable communication for all.

But is clear accountable communication the best intention of all “languages” and are all what we are used to call “languages” only means of “communication”… or is communication rather only one limited function of some languages which constitute communities ?

Are all cultures universally, primarily and equally decision-making cultures of governance (or of law) or even of “communication” ? And if not, can it be democratic to establish a community of “communication” between all peoples, cultures or languages to decide about their life ? 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. And even if all would have access to media, we should think is it culturally neutral to be "logical" for all to "make decisions" or even “to communicate” ? What kind of community of communication and law could define and set universal equality of (rights of having) power ?

2. Given the asymmetry in communicative and administrative, we can have democracy worth its name only between people who can effectively communicate with each other.

But if this should be easy to communicate in an effectively understandable way - at least for those who can not communicate effectively or understandably with each other (as it is intended just for their relation) -, it can mean :

"Communication" as formation of "community" for people to make "common" positions and decisions, means a way of formation of common powers for peoples as communities (such as nations) to make their "own" decisions about what is proper in the world for their intentions (of their communities).

As that what is formed in/for a communication community - as common subjects for decisions - effects to other communities of peoples, these other peoples are affected without possibilities to effectively communicate about these foreign positions of subjects or to effect to these decisions on the subjects, which affect them.

As there is no democratic control (not even effective communication or criteria) regarding that how decisions between people who can effectively communicate with each other are allowed to effect and determine life of other peoples through extremely asymmetrical international structures, how can there be any democratic national or local decisions in the world ?

“By receiving English education we have enslaved the nation… Is it not a painful thing that, if I want to go to the court of justice, I must employ the English language as a medium, that when I become a barrister, I may not speak my mother tongue and that someone else should translate to me from my own language? Is this not absolutely absurd ? Is it not a sign of slavery ?… It is we, the English-knowing Indians, that have enslaved India. (Hindi Swaraj, p. 78-79)

The courts and lawyers of the modern civilization are paid “to advance quarrels instead of repressing them” (Hindi Swaraj, p. 48), but under ancient Indian Swaraj, “the ordinary rule was to avoid courts” and the practiced "justice was tolerably fair" serving people to renounce from quarrels. (p.53-54). “If people were to settle their own quarrels, a third party would not be able to exercise any authority over them”. But currently we use to “imagine that a stranger, by taking our money, gives us justice”. “Those who want to perpetuate their power do so through the courts”, which work as means of colonization and “the English could not do without Indian judges and Indian pleaders”. Lawyer's "duty is to side with their clients and to find out ways and arguments in favour of the clients, to which they (the clients) are often strangers". (Hindi Swaraj, p. 48-50).

3. It is not good to call "justice" or "democratic" such powers or decisions of law which are allowed to effect and determine peoples´ lives without possibilities of these peoples to effect to these powers and decisions - or even without possibilities to communicate effectively to the decision makers how people are affected by the decisions, which are subjecting peoples' intentions.

But when a democratic decision or law would require a common subject, intentionality subjected to collect common predication onto itself to get determined on a judgement, which forms a sentence - as law and as (latin) grammar- , this is the basis for languages of any nation - state of universality of right as colonization of intentions ; the properness of all what is in-quesition literally by interrogation to become sentenced.

For Gandhi the modern education “simply means a knowledge of letters” and “more harm has been done by it than good” “to give millions a knowledge of English is to enslave them”. (Hindi Swaraj, p. 76 and 78-79). “We consider your schools and law courts to be useless. We want our own ancient schools and courts to be restored” (same, p 86)

Given the ideology of the cultural neutrality of science, technology and modern Western consumer standards as the properness of sensible realization (by marketable values), it was natural as well that industrial affluence of the Western type became a goal and its furtherance a source of cultural and political legitimacy for the powerful across the planet.. “They hold whatever dominions they have for the sake of their commerce… money is their God… we keep the English in India for our base self-interest. We like their commerce”. “They whish to convert the whole world into a vast market for their goods”. (Hindi Swaraj, p 35- 36). In the present world "the American Dream" of getting a ticket to Consumer Paradise, is structuring peoples´ minds, their means of observation and communication across the globe.