Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2001 08:00:03 -0600 From: Mary Murphy&Salstrand <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net> Subject: Re: democracy, again D. Diane Davis: I found your notes on democracy very provocative. In the interest of extending this discussion I would like to propose the following model. Georges Bataille has made a distinction between the general and restricted economy and, despite some limitations, I believe a similar distinction might be made regarding government - what I would term a general and restricted democracy. The restricted democracy would be all that is usually meant by that term - constitutions, the rule of law, elected officials and legitimized modes of dissent. This form of government is "exclusive" because of its contractual basis. It is also a regulation of violence. The rulers give up a certain amount of power in the form of rights and liberties in exchange for obedience and acceptance. In a crudely mechanistic way, democracy acts as a kind of reduction valves for the constrained violence inherent in any kind of subjugation. It also represents the hegemony currently being discussed here where domination becomes mere common sense. The tension, however, arises not from the difference between democracy and pluralism as much as it does from its restricted and general forms. The former democracy is restricted by the very nature of the rights it grants, which are historical and bear the trace of previous struggles. There is always a lag between the demands of the moment and the rights that are acquiesced. Thus, in the postwar era of the United States, African-Americans had to fight to obtain the basic rights that other citizens had and met with a good deal of resistance. The resolution of these conflicts won for them voting rights, the Civil Rights Act, Affirmative Action and other legislative victories. Thus, it conferred upon them a place in the restricted democracy although racism continued to persist in many ways that were still unabated. The same thing has been true of women's struggles. Today, the UN has passed various resolutions calling for the establishment of certain basic rights for all global citizens such as the right to adequate housing, food, safe environment and access to health care. All of these have been uniformly rejected by the United States because they fall outside the scope of what our restricted democracy will allow. Whether or not such rights will be secured really depends on two factors. One is the success of formal political movements. The other is based on the continued agitation of various groups and the problems this poses for the governing classes. To speak crudely, we must vote both in the ballot box and in the street in order to obtain a truer democracy. This is where the idea of a general democracy comes into place. The gap between the general and restricted democracy represents the work that is yet to be accomplished. When Derrida talks about the democracy-to-come, one way of interpreting this is as the Kantian Idea of the transcendental coincidence of these heterogeneous realms. It is also where Lyotard's concept of the differend is important. It is the attempt to articulate feelings that have not yet been recognized in the parliamentary language of universal rights and liberties. If restricted democracy can be described as a well-formed game, then the general democracy can be described as a game without rules where the rules must yet be determined. This is also where Autonomist Marxism can have relevance. Here is what Nick Dyer-Witheford writes, "Labor is for capital always a problematic "other" that must constantly be controlled and subdued, and that, as persistently, circumvents or challenges this command. Rather than being organized by capital, workers struggle against it. It is this struggle that constitutes the working class." I would add it is also the way by which the general democracy transforms the restricted democracy.
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