Western Republicanism: the Failed Model
09/20/2003 - Majority of African states are Republics. But yet they are governed by western-like kings
and despots for life exerting their oppressing domination and whims over mobs ignorant about the (always
twisted) republican rules that govern their countries. Africans know republicanism, because they know its
dramatic failure in Africa. They just don?t know that the republican model is a failure in the West as well,
especially in the United States. However, elites vaunt republicanism as a universal acquisition either because
they are corrupted by politicking or because they are sluggish to trust the reality.
Ndzana Seme
?If you understand the experience of exposure and vulnerability to another -- the experience of domination
-- and if you can see what is awful about it, then you are well on your way to understanding republicanism,?
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines the concept. The encyclopedia further explains: ?Think of
how you feel when your welfare depends on the decision of others and you have no come-back against that
decision. You are in a position where you will sink or swim, depending on their say-so. And you have no
physical or legal recourse, no recourse even in a network of mutual friends, against them. You are in their
hands.?
There is no better picture than the article <Don?t Ever Call It "Corruption"> recently published on these
columns to show that the Republics in Africa have nothing in common with this definition, especially the
Republic of Cameroon which occupies the first rank as the most corrupted country in the world for the last
years according to Transparency International standards. Corruption always puts you in a position ?where
you will sink or swim, depending on (the Corrupt?s) say so.?
The picture in the United States does not meet the definition either. If the American system has integrated --
under the pressure of Progressive Democrats and civil and human rights organizations -- some rights to
welfare and recourses such as hearings and appeals, it is not the case with other major goods essential to
the citizen?s real welfare.
Salary, the key for the American?s welfare, is in the hands of others: the employers. Even if an American
individual were one of the luckiest to be elected for a job, s/he is not ?free? because s/he ?has to keep a
weather eye open for the whims of the more powerful, and if necessary adopt a servile attitude towards
them.?
In fact, Washington ? which includes the White House, the Congress, and the myriad of corporate and the
wealthy?s lobbying offices, agencies, consultants and lawyers who make the laws governing the U.S. -- has
made employers so powerful in the United States that any employee is forced to accept their domination
and adopt a servile attitude towards them. The uncertainty of job stability, the martyrdom of job searching,
the submission of each individual to utility and all sorts of bills and taxes, and many other harsh constraints
force each American to sink or swim depending on the wealthy/employer?s say-so. That the American job
environment be well known as the prominent learning place for betraying colleagues as the best path for the
individual career promotion is one example that just shows you.
We have to put aside the unnecessary libertarian debate that integrates the ?negative freedom? involving
human desires to stay instead with the concept of ?positive freedom? dealing with human possibilities.
Therefore, thoughts such as ?Civil freedom is deemed the silence of the law, since all law is in itself an
intrusion and liberty begins where law ends? would be irrelevant here, because ?just laws rescue us from
the relations of domination in which the natural course of things would otherwise place us,? (Pettit P., in
?Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government?, Oxford University Press 1997.)
Pettit thinks that universal suffrage and widespread participation of citizens in political life can ensure that the
laws will be just, instead of serving particular interests and private concentrations of power. But while
?widespread participation of citizens in political life? is the primary condition for a democracy, the ?universal
suffrage? is the main source of failure of the Western model of democracy.
In the U.S., citizens are not organized. Majority of them are non-voters because they are sick of the politics
that never changes anything the way they want it. While political parties are just electoral machines that are
moved off when it comes to raise campaign money and are parked during the normal course of political life
when laws are decided, the media are ridiculously the resonance chambers of the ?organized money? that
owns them. Universal suffrage is the means Washington uses to foul the people and impose a jungle law that
benefits only to the wealthy. The best measure of the U.S. democracy?s failure is the continuous waning of
citizens? participation in political life.
The wealthy and the employers are those who make Washington, and not the middle- and lower-class
workers or the political parties? supposedly grass-roots. Without insulting the very few who really battle
within the glue of the American ?Mock Democracy? (William Greider, in ?Who Will Tell the People ? The
Betrayal of American Democracy?, Simon & Schuster 1993), the representative in Washington is at the
sole service of the wealthy and the corporations that fund her/his political campaigns. This open corruption
is legal in the United States, because the practice is not unconstitutional. And this is considered a ?just law.?
Domination -- as different from the ?interference? claimed by Democrats -- is the great evil to be avoided in
organizing a community and a polity the republican way. Therefore, freedom is the center piece in any
paradigm about republicanism.
But yet, in the United States, like in Africa, ?organized money? and wealthy individuals dominate the
political institutions that the people could use to become an active, concerned citizenry who invigilate the
exercise of government power, challenge its abuses and seek office where necessary.
The two main political parties are so deeply subjected to ?organized money? that federal representatives
allow it to do even what ordinary citizens are unable to do in Washington: lobbying the laws that govern the
Union by either fighting those that the wealthy and corporations do not like or proposing and defending
those that they like. This is why Democrats, the self-proclaimed defenders of the middle-class, were for
example unable to support the progressive tax rate bills imposing higher tax rates on higher fortunes and
lower tax rates on lower incomes. This is also why Republicans, the self-proclaimed defenders of the family,
have always opposed bills defending federal minimum wages, extended leave and job protection for the
working mother, social benefits for the excluded and many other rights essential to the welfare of the
majority of American families.
Even though their names do not appear on any electoral list or they cannot be jailed for the criminal offenses
many of them excel at, American corporations claimed that they are ?citizens? entitled to the same civil
rights as human citizens?. And Washington had accepted them as citizens with appropriate ?just laws.? And
they have become very powerful ?citizens? united against human citizens? rights; united against exposure
about the disasters, social or environmental, ensuing from their deified cupidity; united to sending their
henchmen at the White House to start imperial wars in order for the ?citizens? to monopolize the world
riches, even when these wars bear a dramatic, heavy cost to the American ordinary people in terms of
security and economic jeopardy?
Unbridled cupidity (deified money) is definitely as jeopardizing to democracy as any other form of
despotism. Because the U. S. system deifies cupidity, its society is one of the least fertile soils for
democracy. In that respect, postcolonial African despotic republics have no cause to be jealous of the U.S.
system.
The Establishment imposes a blurred picture where enterprises and the wealthy are presented as the
dominated, and the State (public administration) as the dominator. Is there any cynicism graver than that?
.
______________________________________________________________________________
____________
©2003 The African Independent, Inc. All rights to republication are reserved