Paradox of Democracy

Silvio Simonetti comments about the Paradox of Democracy.

There is a perverse logic that has been commanding human history at least since the French Revolution: The growth of the state’s power. Regardless of the rhetoric employed, every political action has invariably been expanding the power of governing groups over individuals. The state – and the bureaucracy that accompanies it – has increasingly occupied a central role in social interactions and it has slowly replaced old institutions like the Church as mediators of social relations.

The paradox of democracy – in which the people namely rules and the bureaucracy effectively does – prevails despite the will of political agents. The construction of a bureaucratic authoritarianism under the excuse of democratic progress is not an ideological matter insofar as an ideology does not allow the existence of the bureaucracy’s power; on the contrary, it justifies its exercise for the masses. Ideology confers an emotional veneer and helps to break down resistances toward the relentless exercise of the power to govern. However, ideologies are not the engines of power. Power obeys a dynamics of its own that must be understood to be controlled.

Democracy’s dynamic is not unique to this political system. Quite the contrary, the concentration of the power of command and its exercise by a ruling class is a constant in all human political associations. What is striking in the case of modern democracies is the accentuation of this phenomenon precisely at a time when the myth of the increase of both individual liberties and political participation has become universal. The more the reality of the exercise of power is covered by rhetorical layers that celebrate the achievements of human rights, the more relentless the control of the bureaucratic state over individuals becomes.