Paper presented at the International Conference on World Philosophy Day 2010 of the Iranian Institute of Philosophy (IRIP), National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, 23 November 2010 (originally Ninth World Philosophy Day Congress of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, until UNESCO dissociated days before the event following an international academic and political boycott) Twenty-First Century Anti-Democracy: Theory and Practice in the World By Erich Kofmel Managing Director / Research Professor of Political Theory, Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS), Geneva, Switzerland E-mail: erichkofmel@gmail.com Abstract Contemporary political philosophy in the West is the philosophy of democracy, is democratic theory. Philosophy under democracy has become complacent. Even the recent reaffirmation of communism by influential philosophers such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek failed to inspire a significant following. There has been no radical philosophical reaction to the near-collapse of the capitalist economic system, mainly because any criticism of capitalism would imply a criticism of democracy ("the best possible political shell for capitalism", as Lenin said). Techno-philosophical alternatives to democracy, such as anarcho-capitalist "seasteading", and calls for the suspension of democracy to cure climate change are originating outside academic departments of philosophy. Is there still philosophy if everyone agrees? Is philosophy still philosophy if discontent with the-oneand-only-truth can only be voiced from outside the academy? Or does political philosophy more 2 and more resemble Plato's cave? This paper will venture outside the cave, outside the comfort zone of western academic philosophy as always-already-democratic. Only in this way can it seek to engage in a meaningful dialogue with non-western worldviews. Only by stepping into the light will we illuminate why still, in the twenty-first century, scholars may be justified in studying not democracy, but anti-democracy. Where are the niches of anti-democratic thought that may yet save us from the destruction wrought upon the world by the failing capitalist-democratic complex? What are the political trends against democracy we miss at our peril and what are their philosophical implications, worldwide? What are the new alternatives to democracy that emerge in our day? Free of self-imposed prejudice, this paper rejects the boycott of thought that does not comply with western inhibitions, and refuses to shy away from the encounter of philosophical positions emanating from non-democratic political practices. Philosophy is not blind, it does not condone any ideologies uncritically, and philosophy does not equal democracy. Introduction My work is interdisciplinary in nature, transdisciplinary, even. I may today be speaking to an audience of philosophers, but at other times I equally participate in conferences on political science, development studies, international relations, theology, and so on. This permits me to take a view across narrow disciplinary boundaries. The boundaries political philosophers have been setting themselves are narrow, indeed. Unlike, for example, in the field of political science, where the study of authoritarianism and non-democratic modes of government has been experiencing renewed interest and scholarly attention over the past few years, political philosophy has relegated the study of anti-democratic thought and practice to the subfield of intellectual history or the history of political thought. 3 Contemporary political philosophy in the West is the philosophy of democracy, is democratic theory. Philosophy under democracy has become complacent. Even the recent reaffirmation of communism by influential philosophers such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek (see Brumlik, 2010; Sharpe and Boucher, 2010) failed to inspire a significant following. There has been no radical philosophical reaction to the near-collapse of the capitalist economic system, mainly because any criticism of capitalism would imply a criticism of democracy ("the best possible political shell for capitalism", as Lenin said [1975: 17]). Techno-philosophical alternatives to democracy, such as anarcho-capitalist "seasteading", and calls for the suspension of democracy to cure climate change are originating outside academic departments of philosophy. Is there still philosophy if everyone agrees? Is philosophy still philosophy if discontent with the-one-and-only-truth can only be voiced from outside the academy? Or does political philosophy more and more resemble Plato's cave? This paper will venture outside the cave, outside the comfort zone of western academic philosophy as always-already-democratic. Only in this way can it seek to engage in a meaningful dialogue with non-western worldviews. Only by stepping into the light will we illuminate why still, in the twenty-first century, scholars may be justified in studying not democracy, but anti-democracy. Where are the niches of anti-democratic thought that may yet save us from the destruction wrought upon the world by the failing capitalist-democratic complex? What are the political trends against democracy we miss at our peril and what are their philosophical implications, worldwide? What are the new alternatives to democracy that emerge in our day? Free of self-imposed prejudice, this paper rejects the boycott of thought that does not comply with western inhibitions, and refuses to shy away from the encounter of philosophical positions emanating from non-democratic political practices. Philosophy is not blind, it does not condone any ideologies uncritically, and philosophy does not equal democracy. 4 On "seasteading" and competitive government The world is at sea. Something has ended, something still is ending, we are sinking, and we don't know yet what or how or why, how to react, how to swim or how to drown. We are lost at sea. We struggle, we try to keep abreast, keep our heads above water, keep the waters at bay. We try to make the sea habitable. Contrary to popular belief – and wishful thinking or propaganda on the part of democracy promoters the world over –, the time of anti-democratic thought and practice has not passed. Making this point, we will for once not retreat to the debates and discourses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – we may leave this to the archivists of intellectual history and political thought. Making this point, we should also not focus our attention exclusively on non-western political contexts, as philosophers are wont to do. Making this point, then, let's rather do the unexpected, and start off by examining two discourses directed against democracy that are originating from the West today, in the twenty-first century, to tackle the problems of our time. For one, there is the idea of "seasteading", a contemporary extension of both the North American frontier mythology of "homesteading" in the prairies and European libertarian and anarcho-capitalist economic-philosophical thought. The California-based Seasteading Institute, founded in 2008, describes its mission as "[t]o further the establishment and growth of permanent, autonomous ocean communities, enabling innovation with new political and social systems" (www.seasteading.org). In a prime example of smear journalism posing as "investigative", the American writer Mark Ames contended earlier this year: The super-wealthy are already building their first floating castle, a billion-dollar-plus luxury liner that offers permanent multimillion-dollar housing with the best protection of all: moats made of oceans, keeping the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance. The first such floating castle has been christened the 'Utopia' – the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale – which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot 'estates.' The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, 5 and sells for $160 million. [...] The floating castle is a longtime dream of libertarian oligarchs – a place where they can live their lives in peace free from the teeming masses of starving losers and indebted parasites and their tax demands. Since they've grown so rich off of America, they have enough spare change to fund projects like the Seasteading Institute, run by [Nobel Prize-winning economist] Milton Friedman's grandson, Patri Friedman, and financed by the bizarre right-wing PayPal founder, Peter Thiel. [...] Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy – last year, Thiel wrote 'I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible' at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, 'Democracy is not the answer.' Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules (Ames, 2010: par. 2-3, 5-6). Whatever one may think of libertarian billionaires or seasteading, on a more philosophical note, the motivation for seasteading is the age-old dream of competitive government (see Brock and Hodkinson, 2000). Until recently, the term "competitive government" has been used to refer to competing policies with regard to democratic institutional arrangements and to the (neo-liberal) introduction of (market-)competitive elements to public administration, such as the privatization and outsourcing of public services (provision of water and electricity, waste disposal, public transportation, health care, etc.), public-private partnerships, and so on. The term now is about to receive a new meaning thanks to the work of Patri Friedman and others. For them, "competitive government" describes the competition between the political arrangements of entire (future) nation states, be they democratic or otherwise. It is about the freedom of people to decide themselves in what political system they prefer to live and the freedom for every individual to move to a "nation" state/country of his or her choosing. It is about diversity in the forms of government worldwide rather than the uniformity of international "democracy promotion". For a number of reasons the term "competitive government" may not be ideal, though, for what Friedman and others envisage. After all, unlike today there would be no real competition between such (new) nation states/countries. (Traditionally, competition between national governments and nations too often ends in war.) It's not about dominance, but rather about co6 existence and tolerance for other, alternative, diverse forms of government, even "niche" government (political systems that only a minority of people would volunteer to live in). In a competition-theoretical sense, "competitive government" means, however: no monopoly for democracy. At the same time, the "nation" would have to lose any connotation of blood, ethnicity, and nationalism and come to stand for communities of politically like-minded people instead. It is safe to say that Friedman is stuck in the terminology of economics – "competition" rather than accommodation or tolerance, "nation" as the basic entity of political-economic discourse. Western democracy promotion suffers from the same competitive misapprehension, inherent in its linkage to capitalist market philosophy and mechanisms. Questions remain, of course, like on what basis people are supposed to come together to form a new "nation"/country/community if they do not have a prior abstract idea, model, conception of a future society all of them aspire to? Like anarchist, capitalist libertarians, others too will have to find ways of conceptualizing such nonor anti-democratic societies first, and then put their ideas into practice and to the test in existing or new states, while never ceasing to experiment. Patri Friedman's own libertarian project suffers from his erring belief that capitalism can durably be separated from democracy. As his grandfather, Milton, knew full well a capitalist economy will (in the long run) always lead to democratic forms of government – and thus the same old problems (see Kofmel, 2008a: 205-8). New forms of government will not be democratic. They will not be capitalist either. To build a swimming country will always require a lot of money. New non-democratic, noncapitalist societies are therefore unlikely to arise on the high seas. But arise they will. The suspension of democracy to cure climate change 7 Man basks in the sham glory of being the only species able to "destroy Earth". In reality, though, it is only mankind and/or our way of life that we might be destroying. And would that be all bad? It is not in our hands to destroy Earth. Unlike us, Earth has been around for billions of years, and – albeit changing incessantly – existed through warmer and colder periods much the same. Enough is being said about this. No point in adding to it. Interesting for our purpose, though, that one of the arguably most progressive movements of our times – environmentalists fighting global warming and climate change – is showing signs of turning anti-democratic in the wake of the perceived failure of the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen. Before Copenhagen, hardly anyone took notice of anti-democratic thought arising out of environmental science, one of the most fashionable fields of research at this time. Let me highlight some of the recent developments, and mark their philosophical implications. In March 2010, the "Guardian" newspaper published an interview with the 90-year-old independent British scientist James Lovelock, named one of the world's top-100 global public intellectuals by "Prospect" magazine in 2005. During the interview, Lovelock reportedly fired off verbal thunderbolts at the various 'dumbos' with whom we have bestowed our collective fate: namely, 'the politicians, scientists and lobbyists'. [...] He is not one to toss around crumbs of comfort when he believes they're not justified, and displays a great deal of contempt for what he believes to be the naive idealism and ideologies of much of the current environmental movement – a significant proportion of which still looks up to him with a certain reverence. For example, it was his high-profile switch a few years ago to promoting nuclear energy as the best hope for saving ourselves that helped convince many environmentalists to rethink their instinctive opposition to this technology. Now, he says, he is not convinced that any meaningful response to 'global heating', as he likes to call it, can be achieved from within the modern democracies of the western world. 'We need a more authoritative world,' he says resolutely. 'We've become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It's all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can't do that. You've got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. They should be very accountable too, of course – but it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.' (Hickman, 2010: par. 4, 13-15) 8 In September 2010, Micah White, a US activist and contributing editor of the Canada-based anticonsumerist magazine "Adbusters", commented in the same newspaper: It is time to acknowledge that mainstream environmentalism has failed to prevent climate catastrophe. Its refusal to call for an immediate consumption reduction has backfired and its demise has opened the way for a wave of fascist environmentalists who reject democratic freedom. [...] [Lovelock's] words may be disturbing, but other ecologists have gone much further. Take for example Pentti Linkola, a Finnish fisherman and ecological philosopher. Whereas Lovelock puts his faith in advanced technology, Linkola proposes a turn to fascistic primitivism. Their only point of agreement is on the need to suspend democracy. Linkola has built an environmentalist following by calling for an authoritarian, ecological regime that ruthlessly suppresses consumers. Largely unknown outside of Finland until the first English translation of his work was published last year, Linkola represents environmentalism pushed to its totalitarian extreme. [...] His bold political programme includes [...] 're-education' in eco-gulags [...]. In Linkola's dystopian vision, the resources of the state are mobilised to clamp down on individual liberty (White, 2010: par. 1-4, 9). Linkola, the son of a former Rector of the University of Helsinki and grandson of a former Chancellor of that same university, has even had a "Fansite" dedicated to him (www.penttilinkola.com/pentti_linkola/ecofascism/). On that site, he is quoted as saying (presumably originally in Finnish): "Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent [a] dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people." Already three years ago, the Australians David Shearman and Joseph Wayne Smith (2007) wrote a book titled "The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy", described on the publisher's website thus: "Shearman and Smith [...] are not suggesting that existing authoritarian regimes are more successful in mitigating greenhouse emissions, for to be successful economically they have adopted the market system with alacrity. Nevertheless, the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power. [...]. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between liberty or life." And James Hansen, a renowned climate modeller with NASA (and billed as "[t]he scientist who convinced the world to take notice [...] of global warming"), is quoted by the "Guardian" as 9 saying last year "that corporate lobbying has undermined democratic attempts to curb carbon pollution. 'The democratic process doesn't quite seem to be working,'" for "money is talking louder than the votes" (Adam, 2009: par. 2, 4). "In Hansen's view, dealing with climate change allows no room for the compromises that rule the world of elected politics." (Goldenberg, 2009: par. 7) It remains to be seen whether such sentiments uttered more frequently by climate scientists and environmental philosophers outside the academy will be able to turn public opinion against democracy, and if the protesters that got themselves beat up and arrested on the streets of Copenhagen will turn away from the anti-authoritarian and decentralized grassroots democracy that is still the preferred mode of operation of most antiand alter-globalization and environmental activism. Also, Shearman and Smith are correct to stress that the environmental record of today's authoritarian regimes is by no means better than that of democratic governments. From what emerged after the Copenhagen summit, it appears that China with her obstruction policy was largely responsible for its apparent failure – while western democracies took the blame. China is not interested in curtailing her economic and industrial growth and the burgeoning capitalism (which, in time, will lead to democratic reforms). Rule by experts, as proposed by climate scientists, is not a new idea either, though. It is as old as Plato's philosopher kings, H.G. Wells' liberal fascism (see Coupland, 2000), communist planning, and the EU bureaucracy. Let's just say, it hasn't worked. We need new alternatives. Calls to revolution Taking a step back, into the folds of more familiar concerns of political philosophy, and more traditional discourses, onto safe ground, that is, for most among us, we have recently seen a renewed interest in and propagation of communism as an alternative to the failing capitalist10 democratic politico-economic complex. Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek may be singled out as the most vocal proponents of such a reassessment, reconsideration, return. Until now, they have failed to add to communist theory, to further it, to take it into the twenty-first century, they present it as an option always available, and available once more. Still, the anti-democratic dimension of this reapproachment, revival may not be fully understood. For the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, according to Jodi Dean, writing on his politics and what Žižek calls "democratic fundamentalism", "democracy is the form our attachment to Capital takes; [...] democracy binds our thinking – anything that is not democratic is necessarily horrible, totalitarian, and unacceptable to any rational person" (Dean, 2006: 102, 104-5, 109). In a recent book that sets out to rehabilitate totalitarianism, he states: "What, today, prevents the radical questioning of capitalism itself is precisely the belief in the democratic form of the struggle against capitalism" (Žižek, 2008: 183). The book's publisher announces: "Faced with the coming ecological crisis, [Žižek] argues the case for revolutionary terror and the dictatorship of the proletariat". As Matthew Sharpe found, "Žižek is unconditionally, or rather profoundly, attracted to [...] the utopian moment of radical negativity, in which the old regime is overthrown and suddenly we confront an indefinite, open future, shorn of any 'big Other' defining what is possible and impossible, permitted and prohibited" (Sharpe, 2010: 26). In Žižek's own words: "Nothing should be accepted as inviolable in this new re-foundation, neither the need for economic 'modernisation' nor the most sacred liberal and democratic fetishes" (Žižek, 2008: 276). A more intriguing philosophical reapproachment, and different call to revolution altogether, gets even less attention. Mario Tronti is a left-wing Italian philosopher and politician, formerly on the faculty of the University of Siena, highly influential in the development of autonomist thought, and a former communist member of the Italian Senate, the upper house of parliament – and he recently declared against democracy. 11 The editors of a contributed volume in which an English translation of his brilliant essay, "Towards a Critique of Political Democracy", was published last year, Lorenzo Chiesa and Alberto Toscano, say about him: "Tronti formulates the conditions for a critique of democracy that would permit a rebirth of political thought in the current conjuncture. [...] For Tronti, democracy is increasingly synonymous with the pervasiveness of capitalism [...]. The homo oeconomicus and the homo democraticus are fused into the dominant figure of democracy, the 'mass bourgeois'" (Chiesa and Toscano, 2009: 8). Tronti himself explains: [C]ontemporary democratic systems [...] should not be read as a 'false' democracy in the face of which there is or should be a 'true' democracy, but as the coming-true of the ideal, or conceptual, form of democracy. [...] [C]ontrary to what is commonly thought today, it is not in its past or in its theories but rather in its realisation that democracy has become a weak idea, to the point that 'democracy' is a noun in constant need of qualifying adjectives. [...] Democracy today is not the power of the majority. It is, as we were trying to suggest [...], the power of all. It is the kratos of the demos, in the sense that it is the power of all on each and every one. That is because democracy is precisely the process of homogenization, of the massification of thoughts, feelings, tastes, behaviours [...]. The 'common' which is spoken of today is really that in-common which is already wholly taken over by this kind of self-dictatorship, this kind of tyranny over oneself which is the contemporary form of that brilliant modern idea: voluntary servitude. [...] Democracy is this: not the tyranny of the majority, but the tyranny of the average man. And this average man constitutes a mass within the Nietzschean category of the last man. [...] I am trying to understand the astounding silence of revolution in these decades, in this phase. This is what I am trying to shed light upon, this darkness. [...] For some time, without great success, I have argued for the necessity of revisiting the great theoretical moment of the elitists. I get no further because the resistances – which here too are both emotional and intellectual in character – are strong. But the elitists were the only ones to have formulated a critique of democracy before the totalitarianisms (Tronti, 2009: 99, 103-5). What Tronti calls "the power of all on each and every one" and "the tyranny of the average man", I called "the tyranny of everyone", "a faceless mass [that rules] over oneself and a majority of mediocrity [...] placed higher than one's own [the true individual's] best judgement" (see Kofmel, 2008b: 2, 14). Finally, one revolution there is. In the so-called motherland of democracy, Greece, the democratic order has, once again, come under attack. Youth riots and anarchist violence and 12 bombings have been shaking the capital, Athens, for two years now. On 9 January 2010, a bomb exploded outside the building of the Greek Parliament. The attackers had warned the media of the imminent threat, so the area was cordoned off by police at the time. No injuries were reported. The "Guerrilla Group of Terrorists – Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire" took responsibility for the bombing in a communiqué titled "Democracy Shall Not Win" of which a translation in (poor) English has become available on an anarchist website (www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/2010/01/18/172). This is one of the most sensible and clear-sighted indictments of democracy I have read. And that's precisely why even bombs will not get it the attention it deserves. I quote: If it sounds unthinkable in our days for anyone to speak against democracy without being labeled a conservative or a fascist, it is because propaganda resides in the houses and in the minds of [democracy's own] subjects. [...] This is why we claim that democracy is technique and the ability of power not to be understood as oppression. [...] Democracy's main role is to function as the smokescreen for the monstrous capitalist machine. [...] Because in reality democracy is the spectacular reflection and the substitute of freedom. No freedom can exist for as long as democracy exists. [...] To begin to fight means to stop seeing yourself through the eyes of the system, to allow no more for yourself to be determined by coercions, to be freed from fear. [...] The conscience and the determination of certain persons to terminate the habit of survival are enough in order to pass from resistance to attack, to place the question of liberation – not in a vague future for the following generations, but in the permanent present; here and now, for their own selves – and this is how a guerrilla group is born. [...] [Parliament,] the temple of democracy, surrounded by the most cuttingedge systems of surveillance and a large number of policemen did not stand as an obstacle to our choice. The choice, that is, to offend this symbol, the prestige of democracy without any moral hesitation. Each place has its vulnerable point and the satisfaction of finding it will never cease. [...] To democracy we shall show no respect, only rage and attack. Conclusion The leftist French philosopher and former Chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, Alain Badiou, made a valuable observation: "There is a statement by [the late US philosopher Richard] Rorty that really struck me, a very important statement, which says that 'democracy is after 13 all more important than philosophy'. While this statement may appear banal, its propaganda content is truly remarkable. Can a philosopher affirm that a political form is more important than his own activity? I think that in fact this strange statement carries a repressive content. It is intended to prohibit philosophy from asking what the veritable essence of that which today goes under the name 'democracy' is" (Badiou and Žižek, 2009: 89). This short paper is unable to provide, or even propose, a systematic treatment of antidemocratic thought (I attempted that elsewhere: Kofmel, 2008b). It offers, however, a survey of current trends as they pertain to anti-democracy in the twenty-first century and seeks to advance a positive agenda for anti-democratic thought in philosophy departments the world over. The same paper, or a paper of the same title, written for a different audience, would illustrate its contentions with different examples. Here, for our purpose, I excluded, for instance, the extensive antidemocratic discourse to be found in Islamist literature of recent years. More on this and other neglected lines of thought may be found on my website, the premier resource for the scientific study of anti-democratic thought and practice across the boundaries of academic disciplines and political traditions, the "Anti-Democracy Agenda" (www.anti-democracy.com). Regardless of the audience, political scientists, development economists, or philosophers, and irrespective of geographic location, in the West or the Middle East, democratic or nondemocratic countries alike, the message would however remain the same. We must reclaim the ability, and the intellectual freedom, to think against democracy from a western perspective. We must find alternatives to democracy, before the imminent failure of capitalism and democracy leaves us with no alternatives but authoritarian despotism, as envisaged by Plato and Aristotle (Plato, 1941: 288-98; Aristotle, 1988: 1305a). Rather than set ourselves narrow boundaries of permissible thought, and boycott everything and anyone outside these boundaries, we must stray ourselves outside the cave, into the glaring sun, trusting that our eyes will get used to the light, once more. 14 Only then will we be at liberty to engage in a meaningful and unprejudiced, albeit critical, dialogue with non-democratic, non-western worldviews. Only then will we be fit to be philosophers in the twenty-first century. In Iran, I declare: I am an anti-democrat. Geneva, 31 October 2010 References Adam, D. (2009), "Leading climate scientist: 'democratic process isn't working'", guardian.co.uk, 18 March (retrieved 30 October 2010 from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/18/nasa-climate-change-james-hansen). Ames, M. 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