Is Democracy Possible In A Corrupt Society?

Democracy is for PR purposes only in corrupt neofeudal nations.
 

Correspondent Chris rightly critiqued me for not mentioning democracy (or the lack thereof) in my recent entry on China: Do We Have What It Takes To Get From Here To There? Part 2: China [27]. It is indeed vital to include democracy in any discussion of corruption, for it raises this question: is democracy possible in a corrupt society?

 

We can phrase the question as a corollary: in honor of my new book Why Things Are Falling Apart and What We Can Do About It (print $24) [28] (Kindle $7.95) [29], let's call it WTAFA Corollary #1:

 

If the citizenry cannot replace a dysfunctional government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only.

In other words, if the citizenry cannot dislodge a parasitic, predatory financial Aristocracy via elections, then "democracy" is merely a public-relations facade, a simulacra designed to create the illusion that the citizenry "have a voice" when in fact they are debt-serfs in a neofeudal State.

 

When the Status Quo remains the same no matter who gets elected, democracy is a sham. We might profitably look to Japan as an example of a nation which replaced its dysfunctional dominant party via elections to little effect (Do We Have What It Takes To Get From Here To There? Part 1: Japan [30]).

 

We can ask this question of Greece: in a pervasively corrupt neofeudal society, is democracy even possible?

 

Neofeudalism is characterized by a carefully nurtured facade of social mobility and democracy while the actual machinery of governance is corrupted at every level.

 

This corruption may manifest as first-order daily-life corruption such as buying entry to college, bribing officials for licenses, and so on, but the truly serious corruption is the second-order variety that functions behind the closed doors of central banks and financial/political Elites.

 

Here in the U.S., the people elected Barack Obama in 2008 on the implicit promise that the politically dominant financial sector would be limited in some meaningful fashion. Instead, President Obama immediately nixed any meaningful reform.

 

The progressive case against Obama [31]: The president is complicit in creating an increasingly unequal and unjust society.

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