A critique of capitalist society never fails to trigger the gag reflexes of those on the left, who inevitably vomit the word “democracy” in response. From liberal vote-shaming, to Bernie Sanders’ “democratic socialism,” to Marxist economist (?) Richard Wolff calling for the “democratization of the workplace,” more democracy seems to be the only solution the left can conjure up to fight capitalism. But what has COVID-19 taught us about democracy and its limits?
Across the country, state officials are disregarding the advice of public health experts and reopening their economies despite drastic increases in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases. While Republicans like Greg Abbott in Texas and Rick DeSantis in Florida are receiving most of the attention, Democratic governors in many other states seem equally committed to endangering millions of people. The question is, why?
The most convincing answer to this question can be found in Robert Kurz’s 1993 essay Die Demokratie frisst ihre Kinder (Democracy Eats Its Children). In it, Kurz describes democracy as “the most modern type of dictatorship of a compulsive social form over the development of human needs and relationships.” According to Kurz, “the unconditional submission of human expressions of life to the logic and constraints of the market is the essential characteristic of all modern democracies.”
This certainly sheds new light on the debate about how best to balance public health and the health of the economy as states reopen. Specifically, it shows that there is no such debate at all (at least outside the studios of NPR). To capitalism, the words “public health” appear as ancient cave hieroglyphics, totally indecipherable and completely meaningless. The economy reigns supreme as the only subject whose life matters.
The compulsion to reopen the economy as quickly as possible without regard to the impact to human life goes far beyond the greed or corruption of political elites who are in the pockets of the rich. It is present in every person living under capitalism, since their well-being is tied to their ability to sell their labor power in order to buy the things they need to survive. Making society more democratic would do nothing to change this, which is why Kurz points out that “democracy is not the opposite of capitalism, but the way in which the capitalistically organized ‘people’ ‘control themselves’ according to capitalist criteria.”
To be sure, I am not suggesting that we stand by idly while power is consolidated in the hands of the rich so that more human life can be sacrificed on the altar of valorization (Robert Kurz). I am simply criticizing the tendency among leftists to conceptualize democracy as a form of governance that could potentially control capitalism. The left would do well to realize that democracy as we know it has been constituted by capitalism, for capitalism, and that we cannot reflexively turn to it for liberation. The only thing that would be “liberated” in a perfectly democratic society would be our ability to freely act out the script that has been embedded in our heads.
Oliver Blackwell 