Both examples, Palestine and Ukraine, show: The threat that arises from the negation of real democracy is clearly before all of our eyes:In both Ukraine and Israel, proto-fascist regimes are in fact at work under the guise of a government that supposedly defends liberal-democratic freedom. Genocide and the provocation of war are undoubtedly proto-fascist acts.
Democracy or Doom
The structures of participation in our community must be redesigned in such a way that the core of humanity can be preserved. Part 1 of 4.
“Democracy or Doom!” This headline exaggerates apocalyptic fears? Perhaps. We cannot see into the future, but there is much to suggest that the further development of humanity – and this can only be achieved by overcoming war – is only possible if real democracy is realized worldwide. It is those people who are not connected at their core with the elites of enrichment and domination, and thus by far the largest part of the population, who continue to preserve the original treasure of humanity (1), even if much of it has been buried. These people must be able to express their real interests in genuine democratic conditions. Various forms of democracy, with normative rules, laws and control, must ensure that the core of humanity can unfold in political action. Council democracy, representative democracy, direct democracy and “democratic centralism” are all insufficient to fundamentally reject and prevent the claims to enrichment and domination that fundamentally threaten humanity. In two very readable articles on the subject of democracy and council democracy, Roland Rottenfußer (“Self-determination instead of voting”, (2)) and Heinrich Leitner (“The unfinished democracy”, (3)) have written contributions that have helped me in my thinking about democracy. Ultimately, I perceive the question of democracy as the key question for the future of humanity. A contribution to the debate.
by Bertram Burian
[This article posted on 2/28/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/demokratie-oder-untergang.]
Democracy under penalty of extinction
If the interests of people, of humanity, cannot be asserted in accordance with their original humanity, the division of society will not be overcome. On the one hand, there will always be those in power and those who enrich themselves, who, in their greed and lust for power, act against the interests of the people and their embeddedness in the biosphere. On the other hand, there will be those who have to pant after those in power and those who enrich themselves in order to survive “well”, as they think.
The consequence is that the former only follow the path of greed and alienated power, even if they may always claim otherwise, and the latter do not come to power to enforce humanity – mainly because they trust in rulers instead of their own inner strength. The further consequence is the proliferation of selfish systems until collapse and war until extinction.
This idea, that only real democracy can ensure a good life without war for the future of humanity, was also formulated by Rainer Mausfeld in November 2024 in his lecture “Why War?” in reflection on the writing of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 to 1804) “Perpetual Peace”:
“The most important insight (of Immanuel Kant) is that peace and social self-determination, that is, democracy in the original sense, as radical social self-determination, are inextricably linked. Only a true democracy can secure peace.” (4)
The root of war is connected with claims of enrichment and domination and destroys the original humanity.
However, it is preserved by “ordinary” people who have neither domination nor enrichment as their goal, let alone war, even if much of it has already been buried and only needs to be excavated and brought into its living human form.
In view of the ever more complex systems that man is driving forward by virtue of his possibilities and controlled by greed and domination, inner contradictions are growing. On the one hand, there is the claim to power for the purpose of imperialistically securing total exploitation of people and nature. On the other hand, there is the struggle against this, in which the original human being seeks to realize itself.
The desire for domination and enrichment may well lead to totalitarianism, but it does not clarify the question of how much, where, and how much the rulers may extract from the population and nature. This leads to war, to total war. On the other hand, however, the willingness to resist, which is connected to the human, cannot be extinguished.
Therefore, the “right” to rule and enrich oneself cannot be enforced in the long term, as we can see from the history of struggles for democracy and against claims to power, despite appearances to the contrary. This boils down to revolution.
The increase of internal contradictions and, from a different perspective, “external” contradictions inevitably leads to implosion – total crisis – or explosion – total war – via bumpy leaps in history, until finally, as a result of “civilization”, in a chaos of irrationality and inhumanity, the end of humanity is reached, if not, exactly that, real democracy in the sense of the elementary enforcement of the original human in the actions of the whole human family.
Let us take an example of how core democratic-human thinking differs from enrichment and domination thinking – even if the core has to struggle to free itself from the mental prison through propaganda irritation: There is no doubt that anyone who is human at heart is opposed to the genocide in Palestine and the abuse of the Ukrainian population by exposing them to war and slaughter for foreign interests. However, anyone who is primarily concerned with maintaining opportunities for enrichment will not shy away from supporting the genocide in Palestine with weapons and cynical, double-tongued words or from preparing and promoting provocations against world peace in Ukraine.
Both examples, Palestine and Ukraine, show: The threat that arises from the negation of real democracy is clearly before all of our eyes:
In both Ukraine and Israel, proto-fascist (5) regimes are in fact at work under the guise of a government that supposedly defends liberal-democratic freedom (6). Genocide and the provocation of war, including the threat of the extinction of humanity, are undoubtedly proto-fascist acts.
Yes, from a historical point of view, there is even a higher level of escalation – not in the magnitude of the crime, but in the audacity with which it is made public. The genocidal act is being carried out completely unabashedly, clearly recognizable to everyone in front of the world public, and it is widely supported in the Western mainstream world through propaganda and arms deliveries.
Western hegemony is placed above international democracy of the peoples. Imperialism and US-American exceptionalism undoubtedly form a deeply anti-democratic concept, even if it is cynically praised as quasi-democratic with the drivel about a “rule-based order”. And there is no doubt that the de facto attempt is being made to undermine the rules of the Charter of the United Nations (UN) (7) and the Genocide Convention (8) with the substitute term “rule-based order”.
The outcry of horror that was supposed to create the conditions for a “never again” after the devastation of the Second World War is being pressed into a deeply anti-democratic, nauseatingly cruel caricature corset in order to assert one’s own interests. Exactly the opposite should be the case: after the Second World War, fundamental, clearly defined and not arbitrary rules should have been used to secure peace worldwide.
Western democracy, as we have known it so far – the separation of powers, freedom of speech, even the constitutional state and international diplomacy for peacekeeping – is being gradually suppressed and destroyed, especially by the Western countries themselves (9).
In Gaza, the territory was emptied by genocidal bombing and starvation, and in anticipation of the final effectiveness of this “cleansing” it was already divided up by the butchers (10). And if this partitioning does not happen, the new American president will simply buy the living territory of the murderously tortured remnant of the people led to the slaughterhouse, in which the previous president played a decisive role. How friendly and determined fascism can be!
I called the spirits…
Man creates systems, especially since the beginning of so-called civilization, which he is increasingly unable to control. “The spirits I have summoned, I now cannot get rid of,” Johann Wolfgang Goethe already wrote in 1797. This lack of control is mainly a result of enrichment and power. If this hubris does not break, then man proves to be a misguided project of evolution.
… perhaps create a great leap.
But certainly, the intensification of internal contradictions can also lead to a leap to a new level, a fulguration (11), which allows a new phoenix to rise from the ashes. Since uncontrolled and unrestrained domination and enrichment are the main problem, the core of the solution must be a new transmission belt from the implementation of the interests of the people, i.e. of humanity itself, to organization and power in the sense of a human family society in this world. Through this, enrichment and the domination and readiness for war that are based on it must be excluded. That would be the beginning of real democracy.
All previous forms of democracy that do not exclude a right to enrich are at best like practicing the art of flying in a cage.
This applies to representative democracy as well as to council democracy, to direct democracy as well as to socialist “democratic centralism”. Real democracy will only be possible in the long term if new normative rules form something like the cushions of a “democratic billiard table”. These cushions must permanently exclude the possibility of drawing private wealth from social action beyond a certain level by strictly limiting it. Enrichment must be made impossible. A fulgurative leap can then arise from the old, familiar components that have been brought forth by the struggle for democracy to date. If the law of enrichment falls, the world looks different. And it is not just about rules in a national framework, but also, as far as possible, about rules for the whole world. Heinrich Leitner rightly speaks of the “unfinished democracy”, Roland Rottenfußer points to necessary alternatives.
Formal solutions – without challenging economic power
The American and French revolutions, as well as all subsequent bourgeois revolutions, were attempts to solve the formal issues. This was also the case with the historical achievement of the first democratic revolution in ancient Greece under Solon and Cleisthenes, as Rainer Mausfeld describes in his book Hybris and Nemesis (12). However, the grandiose onslaught of ancient Greek democracy was not intended to abolish the position of the aristocracy, slavery or the disenfranchisement of women. In other words, the law of enrichment and unjust rule were to remain. Formally, however, equality in the right of citizens to make laws that are valid for all was to be established – especially for state power holders with limited mandates.
Although the right to enrichment and the factual subordination of a considerable proportion of the population were not to be abolished, the “formal” approach to democracy was a big step towards freedom and self-determination, which had become necessary because an almost insurmountable right to enrichment and domination had been established over the millennia (13). However, it is clear that the first explicit approach to democracy could not be permanently successful, since humanity continued to be trampled underfoot by slavery and the lack of rights of women and metics, and by the unrestricted rights of enrichment of the local aristocrats.
As history has shown, formal “democracy” can certainly go hand in hand with the lawlessness of broad sections of the population, because formal democracy can also be practiced merely as an instrument of decision-making within a ruling class.
However, this has nothing to do with real democracy, which can only be such if it includes all people.
The republican-democratic revolution in North America had also stubbornly ignored the question that, logically, real, actual democracy must above all focus on the question of whether there may be a right to enrichment. Slavery was also approved by the American founding fathers (14).
Democracy versus concentrated wealth
In the following century, modern slavery was suppressed thanks to the forces of the fight against oppression. Instead, however, the “capitalist” enrichment-enhancement game gradually flourished. About 150 years after the founding of the North American republic, a democratically appointed judge of the US Supreme Court (from 1916 to 1939), who was also one of the most influential lawyers in the country, was finally to formulate:
“We must decide: we can have democracy, or concentrated wealth in the hands of a few – but not both.” (15)
It is clear here what the formal claim to democracy is up against. If the problem of ‘concentrated wealth in the hands of a few’ is not solved, then no matter how good formal democratic rules are, they will break or become ineffective precisely on this issue.
So what is at stake – and if this is not achieved, we need not talk about real democracy at all – is to end an economy of enrichment.
What do I mean by an economy of enrichment? The crux of the matter since modern times is that in such an economy it is possible, to the applause of all, to do what banks and shadow banks promise their wealthy clients: “Make your money work for you.” However, the fact is that money cannot work; it is always the people behind it who work and create the wealth of others. Ultimately, the reason for the multiplication of money is always to “make people work for you”.
The “work” that is done to ensure that the constant redistribution from bottom to top is organized is ultimately of no social benefit, even if it seems particularly “smart” and “shrewd” today and may still be necessary to some extent, since wealth determines everything and therefore everyone is dependent on it.
Gaining money without the use of socially beneficial work and performance is enrichment. If that is the main goal of a generally recognized social game of increase, then it is an enrichment economy. The common good is not at the center, but rather every chance to somehow gain wealth.
Journalist and filmmaker Tahir Chaudhry recently summed up these current conditions in a conversation about his book on the Jeffrey Epstein case:
“The international elite of multinational corporations — a few hundred families, a few thousand billionaires — relentlessly strive for more capital, more power and more control. With their dominance in the financial sector and their control of central raw materials and means of production, they direct entire societies through a dense network of lobby groups, foundations, media, and educational and research institutions. Citizens are trapped in a system that pushes them into endless consumption through constantly stimulated ‘needs’, while the profiteers of this machinery sit at the levers of global power.” (16)
Now that stable oligarchies of the cult of enrichment have long since taken their place at the wafer-thin social top, the aim is to withdraw the power of these wealth oligarchies and to place this power in the hands of the population in the sense of genuine democracy.
Karl Marx and the communists demanded expropriation in response to the social development that was already clearly visible almost two hundred years ago. But expropriation meant, if we look back at the real socialist attempts at implementation, that property passes into the hands of the state and a self-organizing economy is no longer possible or is fundamentally hindered (17).
The new way – if we have learned from the mistakes of history – would be to recognize that it is not primarily about ownership and wealth, but above all about the amount of income that can be legally derived from ownership, and also about the question of who should determine how social wealth is used, even if it is privately managed.
If the amount of personal income is limited and decisions about investments are made in a socially democratic way, then the management of assets can also be private and personal initiative can continue to be upheld.
What is not needed, however, are those financialized sectors whose activities are geared towards nothing more than making more money out of nothing or out of little money. What is the service of a shareholder? What is the service of “invested” money? What is the service of stock market speculation, high-speed trading, derivatives, shadow banks, tax havens, and so on? Oh yes, all those who multiply money in this way have an explanation of how important their business is.
But the fact is: This sector is largely disconnected from a meaningful social division of labor, from the organization of a good life for all through productive work and fair distribution. It exists only because everyone depends on the flow of money. And those who can create the most money out of nothing make everyone dependent on them the most. This can change if money is transformed into a neutral instrument that measures only fair exchange. That would be the democratization of the power of money. That is where democracy must go. The abolition of a “how to make money out of nothing” sector is necessary, but it can and should go hand in hand with the self-organization of a free market. This can work if the rules of a superior social contract clearly define the rules for the free play of forces and money is managed neutrally and democratically.
How the completely undemocratic monopoly economic supremacy can be abolished, how the fraudulent and extortionate power of money, how personal enrichment from property can be decisively contained, will be discussed in the third part of this article. First, let us look at some aspects of formal democracy and its development.
Council democracy, the historically grown core of democracy
The republican-democratic American Revolution, as Heinrich Leitner shows with very enlightening references to Hannah Arendt, applied important approaches of council democracy. Roland Rottenfußer also emphasizes this and refers to the matriarchy researcher Heide Göttner-Abendroth, who explains that this is an approach that developed naturally from the organization of coexistence among indigenous, matrilineal peoples thousands of years ago.
Rainer Mausfeld also emphasizes this in his book “Hybris and Nemesis” (18):
“In the shared norms and value systems of hunter-gatherer societies, there is a conscious rejection of dominance relationships. They have a highly effective social ethos regarding the handling of power. (…) These societies are characterized by an anti-authoritarian attitude and a culturally transmitted resentment against stable hierarchies of dominance. It is (…) about avoiding the conditions of being dominated.” (19)
The same insight is also underpinned by Uwe Wesel in his ‘History of Law’ (20):
“The collective of the horde determines itself. Decisions about hunting, breaking camp and the location of the next camp are made collectively. Individuals have greater authority, especially the successful hunters, but they have to hold back, are always in danger of ridicule if they don’t, and can be outvoted at any time. (…) Hunters are anarchic, free of domination.” (21)
The idea that the council democracy represents the historically developed core of democracy, so to speak, is certainly important. Councils are local gatherings where those affected decide for themselves what they want: for themselves directly, but also in terms of broader perspectives.
Hannah Arendt’s reference to the fact that all revolutions, after going through a “process of disintegration”, “everywhere led to the astonishing formation of a new power structure, which was by no means brought into being by professional revolutionaries, but arose spontaneously from the people”, supports the statement that councils are the original core element of democracy.
In his account of the 1917 Russian October Revolution, entitled Ten Days That Shook the World, the American journalist John Reed provides a highly illustrative example of the spontaneous recourse to councils and directly effective democracy in certain historical situations:
“All Russia was in motion, pregnant with a new social order. (…) Every man and woman was allowed to vote; (…) there were soviets and there were trade unions. The cab drivers had an association; they were also represented in the Petrograd Soviet. And the waiters and hotel staff were organized, (…) at the front (of the First World War), the soldiers argued with the officers and learned to govern themselves through their committees. In the factories, the factory committees gained strength (…). All of Russia learned to read. And they read – politics, economics, history. The people wanted to KNOW (…). In every large city, almost in every city, on the whole front, every political party had its newspaper, sometimes several.
Hundreds of thousands of leaflets were distributed by thousands of organizations, flooding the army, the villages, the factories, the streets. (…) Russia absorbed reading material insatiably, like hot sand absorbs water. And it was not fables that were devoured, nor historical lies, nor watered-down religions, nor the cheap novel that demoralizes – it was social and economic theories, philosophical writings, the works of Tolstoy, Gogol and Gorky (…). And then the spoken word (…), lectures, debates, speeches; in theaters, circuses, schools, clubs, in the meetings of the Soviets, the trade unions, in the barracks (…). Assemblies in the trenches at the front, in village squares, in factories… What a sight to see the workers of the Putilov factories, forty thousand strong, streaming out to hear the Social Democrats, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Anarchists – whoever had something to say, as long as they wanted to talk. For months, every street corner in Petrograd and throughout Russia was a public platform. On the railways, in the tramcars, everywhere there were improvised debates, everywhere (…). And the all-Russian conferences and congresses that brought together people from two continents – congresses of soviets, cooperatives, zemstvos (a kind of “district council”), nationalities, priests, peasants, political parties; the Democratic Consultation, the Moscow Consultation, the Council of the Republic. In Petrograd, three or four congresses were constantly in session. At the meetings, every attempt to limit speaking time was rejected. Everyone had complete freedom to express what was on their mind.” (22)
So here we have an example of how a revolution announces itself and how much of a democratic core it has.
When reading these lines, however, we must not forget in the historical context that the Soviets – that is, the councils of revolutionary Russia that opposed the rule of the tsars – soon had to bow to a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, which the communist party – the Bolsheviks – enforced with mirror-image but novel brutality against the old brutal ruling caste (23).
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Democracy or Doom
The structures of participation in our community must be redesigned in such a way that the core of humanity can be preserved. Part 2 of 4.
“Democracy or Doom!” This headline exaggerates apocalyptic fears? Perhaps. We cannot see into the future, but there is much to suggest that the further development of humanity – and this can only be achieved by overcoming war – is only possible if real democracy is realized worldwide. It is those people who are not connected at their core with the elites of enrichment and/or domination, that is, by far the largest sections of the population, who continue to preserve the original treasure of humanity (1), even if much of it is buried. These people must be able to express their real interests in genuine democratic conditions. Various forms of democracy, with normative rules, laws and control, must ensure that the core of humanity can unfold in political action. Council democracy, representative democracy, direct democracy and “democratic centralism” are all insufficient to fundamentally reject and prevent the claims to enrichment and domination that fundamentally threaten humanity. In two very readable articles on the subject of democracy and council democracy, Roland Rottenfußer (“Self-determination instead of voting”, (2)) and Heinrich Leitner (“The unfinished democracy”, (3)) have written contributions that have helped me in my thinking about democracy. Ultimately, I perceive the question of democracy as the key question for the future of humanity. A contribution to the debate.
[This article posted on 3/4/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/demokratie-oder-untergang-2.]
In part 1 of this article, I used the example of the revolutionary situation in Russia before the October Revolution of 2017 to illustrate the power of councils that form themselves from the population and represent an original democratic element. I then explained that in reality, the power of the councils had to be handed over to the communist party as the situation developed. Here, in the second of four parts of the article, we will look at the inevitable internal contradictions of the concept of democracy.
The aporia (24) of democracy and dictatorship
As early as 1918/19, Rosa Luxemburg (“Freedom is always freedom for the one who thinks differently” (25)) criticized the role of the Bolsheviks in the communist uprising against the tsarist dictatorship, saying that if dictatorial measures had to be taken again, this should only have been in a new “way of using democracy and not in its abolition” (26).
Unfortunately, it did not turn out that way. In the struggle for survival against the counter-revolution – which was supported and carried out by many Western powers – it was soon no longer a matter of council democracy, but of a different form of rule in the name of an ideological “certainty” and a party that soon, without a democratic decision-making process, only claimed to realize the will of the people in a dictatorial manner.
When Rosa Luxemburg associates dictatorial powers with an application of democracy, we should pause for a moment in our spontaneous horror at the enormity of bringing democracy and dictatorship into context. Perhaps – no, certainly – we should use different terms, but we cannot avoid the fact that every real democracy also has a “dictatorial” side.
This may sound like an absurd paradox and it probably is, an aporia (24) indeed, and it may be the reason why the early workers’ revolutionaries spoke of the long-term goal of the “withering away of the state” (27). This was an attempt to envision the attainment of a future state of unrestricted, democratic reason and freedom. But for the transition phase, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels formulated, there would have to be a “dictatorship of the proletariat” to prevent the old exploiters and oppressors from regaining power (28).
There is no doubt that the term “dictatorship of the proletariat” is not just a semantic mistake, because at the same time the forces of real democracy are undervalued and replaced by a “scientific” program to achieve the ultimate goal by means of a cadre party. All the more remarkable is Rosa Luxemburg’s criticism!
However, it is indeed true to say that there are strict rules, especially in a democracy, of whatever kind. A democracy that does not allow the social whole, i.e. itself, to prescribe rules (laws) is not a democracy, because then the social whole is not organized at all, and thus not in the interests of the population either. The consequence is not freedom, but a proliferation of the law of the strongest; there are “failed states” wherever people live together in concentrated form. This is even the case in nature, which has otherwise developed through evolution. Peaceful animals may begin to tear each other apart when the biosphere’s rules and safeguards are no longer in place – for example, in completely unnatural captivity (29). The “animal” man must also be given a “species-appropriate” attitude, which, as a result of man’s constant intervention in nature and in his inner human coexistence, means imposing rules on himself when a larger number of people want to work and live peacefully and positively together.
There is no way around the fact that freedom also consists of Hegel’s “insight into necessity” (30). Even a single person or a group who live freely and carefree in nature voluntarily submit to the rules of the biosphere all the time. If man does not do this, he will not be able to live freely. For example, if we take just a trivial example, anyone who tries to eat things that do not agree with them from the diversity of nature will not be able to lead a good or free life. A free and good life is only possible in harmony with the biosphere.
A free society can only exist in accordance with rules that enable a good human existence. If this is not established by a democracy and instead particular interests of enrichment are helped to dominate, which prevail by others doing the necessary work to procure this wealth, then there can be no question of real democracy and a good life.
In fact, every kind of democracy also sets itself the necessary, strict rules. The question is not whether there are rules, but which rules they are, and of course, above all, whether the sovereign, the people (31) themselves have given themselves the rules! However, once the laws have been democratically created, it is rightly insisted that these laws really apply and are adhered to. We do not call the effect of these laws dictatorial, but what else is it when people can be sentenced by courts and even go to prison if they do not follow the rules?
I was amazed to read that Immanuel Kant, in his essay “Perpetual Peace” (1795), even formulated: “Of the three forms of government (autocracy, aristocracy, democracy), that of democracy, in the actual sense of the word, is necessarily a despotism” (32).
Real democracy between dictatorial understanding of democracy and proto-fascist willingness
The aporia that democracy and dictatorship should exclude each other, but at the same time democracy requires strict, “dictatorial” measures, cannot be resolved by either side, unless in the long term a paradisiacal balance of freedom and rules is actually formed, one that is in harmony with humanity and the connection between peoples, whereby the aporia could then really “dormant” in practice.
The opposite of this is when those in power try to “master” the contradictions in the system of enrichment economy with increasingly fascist (33) means. State terrorism (34) is by no means an unknown quantity in “democracy”. Storming police troops to track down the use of the word “moron” or Julian Assange’s torture arrest are just two examples. The dictatorial side of democracy, or of what is supposed to be democracy, is obviously deeply inscribed in the “democratic” subconscious and, as it turns out, can quite easily be turned upside down in a state-terrorist concept, providing the fertilizer for fascist developments.
An example of how easily dictatorial measures can be accepted in the self-image of today’s democracy was demonstrated in the deeply frightening farce when people who were firmly convinced that they lived in the best of all democratic worlds were prepared, without blinking an eye, to endorse the most totalitarian rules when they believed and followed the story with criminal recklessness, that a devastating pandemic threatened them.
In this case, the dictatorial measures were anything but the justified result of democracy, obviously not. But this was mainly because the premise of the “pandemic” was constructed and used deliberately to be able to impose dictatorial measures on the populations at will and for one’s own advantage.
In fact, it was an unvarnished dictatorship that, with all its consequences, undoubtedly claimed many lives worldwide. Anyone could see it, or at least could have seen it. In all likelihood, it was millions of people around the world who ultimately died prematurely as a result of the actions of direct or indirect operators and those responsible (35)! This happened heatedly and conveyed by hysterical measures or “unnoticed” and concealed with pseudo-scientific “tests”, with ugly eloquence, with state coercion, with medical malpractice and with “vaccinations” – and represents a huge crime against humanity. As we know from history, it was once again, paradoxically, publicly “unnoticed”, but basically visible to everyone. However, the subjugated people seemed to take the coexistence of democracy and dictatorship for granted, so much so that they did not even notice that democracy was suddenly taking on fascist traits.
Yet the contradiction between democracy and dictatorship in the “corona era” could hardly have been more glaring. However, the fear whipped up by the authorities removed any shred of democratic understanding from the minds of many creditors without difficulty.
But there were those who saw through the fact that the declaration of the pandemic was primarily a staged act on the world stage to catapult pharmaceutical companies, billionaires and power-hungry politicians and the military into a triumph of enrichment on the one hand and domination on the other. These people quickly realized that the range of measures taken by some billionaires and state actors was much more similar to fascism than to free democratic decisions based on the knowledge and will of the sovereign.
This democracy was pursued in a typical “stop the thief” manner, so that today many present themselves heroically as anti-fascists and “fighters against the right”, who openly or tacitly approve of a long chain of crimes against humanity, such as “democratic” wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, genocide in Palestine, the “corona” crimes just mentioned, the preparation and provocation of the war in Ukraine and much more. This does not mean that the “others” cannot also take a path that corresponds to a general fascist tendency. This tendency arises from unresolved internal contradictions, not so much from the acting groupings alone. But in any case, nothing is more wrong and more anti-democratic than to use or follow the Babylonian confusion of languages, which is more or less consciously brought about, in order to justify the existing relations of domination and enrichment.
Freedom rights are not up for debate, but “enrichment freedom” is
If we recognize that democracy can only be imagined in an aporetic duality with strict rules, we must at the same time undoubtedly establish a basic consensus as to which freedom rights must not be violated. According to the results of struggles against ruling castes over the centuries, these include, in particular, the following: freedom of speech and freedom of the press – today, this also includes truly free communication on the internet, which would mean democratic control over the design of algorithms – freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of science, freedom of religion, freedom of travel; equality before the law, freedom of trade, protection of property, protection of the right to access education, protection of the right to housing and work, protection of children’s rights.
However, there can be no such thing as a “freedom to enrich oneself” or a “freedom to exploit” or similar. The argument put forward, that it would result in a win-win situation if some economic leaders became rich because then the others would also benefit, represents the spraying of a toxic brew in the interest of an enrichment oligarchy.
A brief comment on current events is in order here: When today an ex-president Joe Biden and, as if on cue, other Western politicians are suddenly warning of a wealth oligarchy that is undermining democracy, this warning from the mouths of those who have been at the very core of this undermining of formal democracy by wealth elites is hard to beat for hypocrisy. What we see is only the spectacle of how the elites betray and defraud each other (36). The population, if it is wise, will once again be brought to a greater realization of the truth by this spectacle.
A win-win situation can arise when free exchange and, above all, positive human cooperation reasonably increase the common social wealth. But an unjust internal distribution is never a win-win situation. On the contrary, it is the result of a zero-sum game that tears apart every society (37). There can and must be no right to enrichment; there can be no democratic right to acquire wealth. People are not all the same, and they do not all have to have the same wealth or income, but their lives and their happiness in life must in any case count for the same in terms of the framework conditions that a truly democratic society gives them!
The dilemma of power concentration
Back to the approaches to at least formally implement democracy: the importance of historical struggles for democracy is indisputable and undoubtedly belongs on the side of success in the history of civilization. However, whether representative democracy or a democracy of workers’ councils or “democratic centralism”, as the socialist idea called and in China still calls its type of democracy, or whether one or the other is combined with elements of direct democracy: the problem always remains that the air at the top gets thinner, the view gets further and the chance to pull the strings of power gets greater.
As long as the political self-organization of humanity in society takes the form of local councils that formulate and implement the will of a more or less unified community on local issues, the mechanisms involved are manageable. But it is illusory to imagine society as being composed only of such local units.
Inevitably, there are questions and decisions that go beyond the local, and yes, there are also inevitably questions that go beyond the national framework. The broader the level at which and for which questions are to be decided and implemented, the fewer decision-makers there are, who accordingly also acquire more formal power.
Even if the councils of a soviet republic instruct the “higher” councils to execute only what has been specified by the local population, there will inevitably be a dilution of the local democratic power effect and a concentration of power in the “higher” councils. Approaches to a consent and “non-majority voting” democracy, as proposed, for example, by the sociocratic democracy practice (38), will also hardly be able to avoid this problem altogether.
It is difficult to imagine that the delegates of the local councils, who are entrusted with a bound mandate, merely act as “paid agents of the electorate” (39), as formulated by Hannah Arendt, who speaks of a dilemma. If, on the other hand, representatives have a free, unbound mandate, it may, in the best case, happen that the commissioned emissaries learn new arguments and convictions in the debates that take place “further up” in the “chosen” circle, learn new arguments and convictions that relativize their original mandate, which could even lead them to decide against the original mandate, even if they feel obliged to follow the spirit of the original mandate and want to do so.
In the worst case, however – and this is where every purely representative democracy tends to go if unchecked power interests are allowed behind the scenes – the representatives will do whatever they want, deceiving the population if it seems “necessary”, while secretly serving completely different masters.
Roland Rottenfußer quite rightly emphasizes: “Modern democracies function according to the motto ‘I take your vote and then do what I want with it’ (…)”, whereby “the ‘conscience’ (…) is a very cloudy and manipulable construct that (…) often votes in the interests of the powerful” (2).
Party democracy and party discipline do not represent the sovereign
While MPs can ultimately do more or less what they want with the votes they collected at the election, they usually submit to a party whip, so they give up their “free will” as soon as they are entrusted with a mandate that they are supposed to serve according to “free knowledge and conscience”. In any case, this is miles away from real democracy.
A party-based democracy, in which the will of the people is supposedly represented by supposedly competing parties, is not based on the idea that the sovereign itself should create the rules and laws that then apply to everyone.
The parties, which were originally supposed to represent the interests of the farmers, entrepreneurs, workers, etc., based on their different economic needs, in the sense of balancing those interests, soon became reservoirs of ideologically aligned pseudo-essentials, but they were all united in their kowtowing to the interests of the economically dominant class of the rich and super-rich. Behind all the ideological blah-blah, the parties, because they hardly address the core issue, are in truth instruments for enforcing the interests of those who have gained financially. If people stand up on their hind legs on sub-issues that directly affect them or that they consider important and join together in organizations that pursue certain educational and political goals, this can of course be an element of genuine democracy. But the matter loses its way as soon as these “non-governmental organizations” or the “color revolutionaries” come into the sphere of influence of these very power apparatuses and thus, behind a flurry of mirrors, become the servants of false masters.
On closer inspection, the formal model of party and representative democracy was probably always intended to a large extent to ensure that the ruling interests of a wealth oligarchy would not be questioned. Rainer Mausfeld points this out in connection with the creation of the American constitution:
“When the fathers of the American constitution invented ‘representative democracy’, (…) it was a deliberate misrepresentation of words. This can be easily recognized by the intention of its inventors. For the creators of the American constitution were explicitly anti-democratic. They were explicitly guided by the desire to prevent an egalitarian democracy in the original sense and to establish a capitalist elite electoral oligarchy” (40).
The democratic idea of representative democracy, that members of parliament draft and vote on laws in the name of and for the good of all, but according to their own free will and conscience, has been perverted into a voting machine for laws, largely determined by factional pressure. It is not uncommon for the draft laws to be written, or at least decisively influenced, by a variety of lobby groups and also by military apparatus and secret services, all of which are in turn influenced by industry, banks, and financial conglomerates. The major media, in turn dependent on the wealth pyramid, lubricates the whole process with “reports” and “arguments”. In the end, party leaders wheedle their way through with the economic, de facto ruling power. So it happens that enrichment oligarchies prevail, although the people have given their vote in a different sense.
Philip Manow (41) also emphasizes that it was the original conception of representative democracy to ultimately keep the actual population away from power. Ulrike Guérot sums it up:
“Basically, Philip Manow describes quite smugly, a bit playfully, how parliamentary democracy is actually a system that was created to be accountable to the people as an abstract entity, but to basically keep out the people as a real people, that is, as a street, as a mass, as a mob or as a plebs. Yes, and he cites a lot of quotations, (…) about the USA, so 1776 American Revolution and then French Revolution (…), that it was also said that way at the time, so that those who actually invented parliamentary democracy actually assumed that one had to find a system in which the plebs are only represented, but are not authorized to take part in the business, the legislation themselves. Because it had to be ensured that the better represented the worse. Yes, so basically parliamentary democracy or representative democracy is a trick to keep the masses out of decision-making because they are ‘represented’” (42).
A major study in the United States, which ran for over 10 years and evaluated 1,779 cases of policy-making, came to this conclusion in 2014:
“The data show that ordinary citizens have little or no independent influence on policy. (…) In the US, the majority does not govern – at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes” (43).
Council democracy, direct democracy, transparency and public control, the possibility of voting out
Roland Rottenfußer emphasizes the fundamentally democratic character of council democracy and the positively binding aspect of the imperative mandate:
“Certain groups of people send elected councils to a body that belongs to a higher organizational unit. The ‘imperative mandate’ is important here. This means that councils do not present their own opinions in the council; they faithfully adhere to the views of those who elected them. And they also vote in their interests.” (2)
This is certainly one possibility, but nonetheless, we cannot completely avoid recognizing the dilemma of the concentration of power. In a vibrant democracy, various solutions will be used: free or bound mandate.
Not only because we cannot get beyond representative elements, but in any case, the practice of voting out of office is important. Publicly accessible control mechanisms for the correct execution of the mandate can contain the dilemma that the air is thin for the last decision-makers, without being able to completely eliminate it. “Checks and balances”, separation of powers, interlocking of powers, as they exist in formal democracies, are undoubtedly important, but they cannot replace control from below.
Public control must be linked to the obligation of maximum transparency. This must be the self-evident foundation of a democracy. Hiding behind state secrets, redactions, trade secrets, “protective” security surveillance and so on and so forth is usually an indication of collusion by the powerful against the democratic sovereign, i.e. of state conspiracy and not of democracy.
The President of the EU Commission refuses to make public billion-euro text message contracts. The contracts themselves are also kept secret. People are supposed to inject themselves with genetically modified substances as a vaccination, without even the test authorities receiving all the information, because they represent “trade secrets” (44)! The non-public nature of the actions of state and private power holders has long since become “self-evident” in many cases. It is quite obvious that this has nothing to do with democracy.
This went and goes so far that a decision that can clearly only be made on the basis of sufficient information, namely whether or not to be vaccinated, was and is also being enforced by the state without any guarantee of transparency about the substances that are to be put into one’s blood personally (45). Why do you think that doctors, who had learned from the crimes of National Socialism, formulated the Nuremberg Code (46)? And why do “upright democrats” seem to forget it when it comes to compulsory vaccination?
Control? We want freedom!
There is a significant difference between control by the state and control by the sovereign.
In the case of control from the bottom up, control is not spying on citizens, but serves the implementation of the highly legitimate claim of real democracy to protect civil liberties! Here it must be self-evident that all those who are endowed with temporary power in the public interest must bow to this control.
For example, some 2,500 years ago, Attic democracy had already introduced the ostracism, which could punish the abuse of power with banishment: “Every year, at a public assembly, each citizen could hand in a piece of pottery on which he had scratched the name of the person to be banished (if necessary). (…) It was a form of negative vote by which the Athenians could send into exile for ten years any aristocrats who were too hungry for power and whose actions they feared could harm the city (47).
Direct democracy
In addition to the democracy of the councils, direct democracy, as practiced in Switzerland, for example, is seen by many today as a model. Of course, elements of direct democracy are of great importance for real democracy. Immanuel Kant, for example, believed that only the sovereign could decide on war and peace through direct voting: “In (a republican) constitution, it cannot be otherwise” than that “the consent of the citizens is required to decide whether or not there should be war” (48).
And yet, direct voting on all issues cannot be the solution to the democracy question per se. The example of Switzerland, which is a model country of the financialized economy of enrichment, also shows that direct democracy can be guided by the enforcement of interests that do not correspond to the interests of the population. Incidentally, Swiss democracy is also a representative party democracy, like the others. It is only supplemented by undoubtedly very positive elements of direct democracy such as referendums and popular initiatives.
However, it also shows how the economic power of elites seeking to enrich themselves – and this always includes, above all, monetary power – is able to pave its way despite direct democracy. In addition to influencing the main media, it is also important to influence the wording of the votes themselves. Those who win the battle for minds with the help of propaganda also win direct-democratic votes, even if they are clearly against the interests of the population._______________________________________________________________
Democracy or Doom
The structures of participation in our community must be redesigned in such a way that the core of humanity can be preserved. Part 3 of 4.
“Democracy or Doom!” This headline exaggerates apocalyptic fears? Perhaps. We cannot see into the future, but there is much to suggest that the further development of humanity – and this can only be achieved by overcoming war – is only possible if real democracy is realized worldwide. It is those people who are not connected at their core with the elites of enrichment and domination, and thus by far the largest part of the population, who continue to preserve the original treasure of humanity (1), even if much of it has been buried. These people must be able to express their real interests in genuine democratic conditions. Various forms of democracy, with normative rules, laws and control, must ensure that the core of humanity can unfold in political action. Council democracy, representative democracy, direct democracy and “democratic centralism” are all insufficient to fundamentally reject and prevent the claims to enrichment and domination that fundamentally threaten humanity. In two very readable articles on the subject of democracy and council democracy, Roland Rottenfußer (“Self-determination instead of voting”, (2)) and Heinrich Leitner (“The unfinished democracy”, (3)) have written contributions that have taught me something in my reflections on democracy. Ultimately, I perceive the question of democracy as the key question for the future of humanity. A contribution to the debate.
[This article posted on 3/8/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/demokratie-oder-untergang-3.]
The first two parts of this article showed that formal democracy is only learning to fly in a cage, when the power of wealth determines the range of the flapping of wings within the bars of the cage. Even the weak approach of republican-constitutional democracy is today being radically dismantled along the indissoluble contradictions associated with the concept of democracy, and this is being done primarily by the state itself. Previous forms of democracy are only precursors to genuine democracy, because the latter can only function if the rights of enrichment of an economy based on fraud and domination of people over people fall once and for all!
Freedom, equality, fraternity – but capital enriches itself
In addition to the first great democratic revolution, the American Declaration of Independence and the Republican Revolution of 1775 to 1783, the other, more “constitutional-democratic” revolution, the French Revolution of 1789 to 1799, had less the local independence of the councils in mind than the radical fight against the rule of an aristocracy in order to end the misery of the “ancien régime”. Heinrich Leitner writes:
“In France, there is terrible hardship and bitter poverty among the people. In France, according to Hannah Arendt, the people were ‘driven by hunger’. “Le peuple is the key to any understanding of the French Revolution (…)” (49), and the people were the ‘unfortunate’ ones, those afflicted by misery. It is the ‘social question’ that determines what happens. The overthrow of the regime and the assumption of power by the people was intended to achieve the ‘liberation of the people from poverty and want’ (50).
As much as this revolution aimed at a social solution in the spirit of “liberty, equality, fraternity”, the question of the right to enrichment was ultimately clearly not resolved. This is strikingly illustrated by the French economist Thomas Piketty in a graph that he created on the basis of a broad and reliable data set:
Figure 3.2., Thomas Piketty (51), Gestaltung grafischer Hinweiselemente von Bertram Burian
Thomas Piketty shows that “capital in France” was passed down from the feudal nobility to the “capital nobility” without interruption. It was about the wealth in the hands of a narrow layer that corresponded to the value of seven years of production by the French. It was only with the labor movement at the end of the 19th century, the First World War and the revolutionary situation in Europe after the First World War – influenced above all by the October Revolution in Russia – that a dramatic change occurred. In the meantime, thanks to the radical counter-revolution in the market economy, the unequal distribution of wealth has once again reached historic peaks (52).
So while the French Revolution by no means achieved a demand for social equality, it did bring further movement in a formal-political direction. The formal equality of civil rights was undoubtedly a great step forward and an act of liberation. But on the other hand, these purely formal rights represent a stronghold of dishonesty and inconsistency as long as there are no serious efforts to limit economic power and the greed to “have more” and to subject these to democratic rules as well.
What use is equality before the law if the economic power of the other party is anchored in the heavens of injustice? Or to put it another way: what did the slaves of ancient Athens get out of Attic democracy? Nothing of any significance.
It makes a difference whether there is law, separation of powers and choice – or not.
Of course, the achievements of formal democracy should not be underestimated, especially when they were supported in certain historical phases by the idea that “property entails obligations”, as it is written in the German Basic Law (53), among others. The development of formal democracy in the United States in connection with the New Deal and in Europe in connection with the “welfare state” undoubtedly has historical significance. Today, radical democracy is being dismantled in the West, but the fundamental question remains. It makes a difference whether you can at least “theoretically” sue for rights or whether you are subject to the arbitrary decision of an aristocrat or a slaveholder, a state official or a party apparatchik. It makes a difference whether there is actual separation of powers or not.
It makes a difference whether there are opportunities for election – and de-selection – or not. It makes a difference whether there is a constitution that guarantees fundamental rights and freedoms such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, human dignity, commitment to peace, human rights, and so on, or not. It also makes a big difference internationally whether there is a “constitution” such as that formulated in the United Nations (UN) Charter (54) worldwide or not.
The difference even exists when the constitution is de facto trampled underfoot by those in power, but they do not yet dare, and by virtue of public opinion cannot, proceed to open dictatorship or open fascism or to the open suspension of the UN Charter. The difference then lies at least in the fact that it is possible to appeal to a desired state of affairs that has already been agreed upon in a social contract.
And if you are aware that ultimately public opinion, when it is presented self-confidently, decides everything – which is why propaganda or the honest winning over of public opinion is so important – then invoking the still existing paragraphs can still be a certain weapon. For example, anyone who was not completely out of touch with reality must have noticed that it could not be right for people to be arrested for walking around with the Basic Law in their hands during the times of the special Corona arbitrariness.
And even if arbitrariness is omnipresent, as shown, for example, by the conviction of that Weimar judge (55) who wanted to enforce the welfare of the child, a comparison with a normative target is still possible for people who observe critically. This is certainly only a small consolation compared to the clearly recognizable de-democratization and securing of power that is rapidly spreading today, especially in the West.
If economic power is left out, there can be no question of real democracy.
As already stated, it is always a misconception to speak of real democracy when economic power is more or less unrestrictedly available to those in control of it, and they in turn can use it to bend political decisions and laws to their needs and wills. In Part 2 of this article, I have already referred to the long-term study in the USA, which provides exemplary evidence of what most people sense anyway, namely that the interests of the general population are virtually ignored in government action (43).
But the fact that there will always be economic power is a problem of a general nature. This is inherent in the matter itself. The larger the economic units are in an economy of enrichment, the greater this power is. It arises simply from the fact that we all depend on a well-organized form of cooperation in the form of the division of labor. We cannot live without a more or less clearly defined “economy of the common good” (56).
The term “economy of the common good” that I am using here seems absurd. But even then, in a sense, we have an economy that serves the common good, even if it is completely perverted by elites seeking enrichment and organized arbitrarily only for their own advantage. For the masses of people, the “common good” is then reduced to an existence in the most diverse dependency and alienation and the modern struggle for survival. But without even this perverted form of the common good, survival would hardly be possible today, or only for a very, very small number of “dropouts”. Why many highly adapted people are regularly willing to submit and, for example, willingly affirm, against their better inner knowledge, that they live in the “best Germany of all time”.
The economy must function. Economic power also arises from this circumstance, as long as it is still somehow “functioning”. If it is in the hands of a few super-rich economic “leaders” or even the state to distribute money or not, the dependencies are enormous. Everyone has to adapt to the hierarchies and needs of “the market” – in reality, the winners of enrichment – or a party. For example, it may happen that the pharmaceutical industry, with the aim of milking the profit cow and covered by the interests of others, can rule with the help of a “pandemic” and a large proportion of the people, who then quickly lose their minds and decency in anticipatory obedience, willingly submit to fear.
Historically, there was a particular desire to break economic power with socialism and the labor movement. But the advantage, long believed by many fighters for freedom and equality, that it is better for the state to hold economic power, by no means automatically turned out to be a form of democracy in the historical examples so far. Quite the opposite!
Because the state is not the people (57)! If economic power is merely transferred from private beneficiaries to the state through expropriation, the democratic needs of the population are not automatically met. The state has its own interests and power aspirations.
If these coincide with economic power, the situation for the population is unlikely to look very good. Rather, it must be the population, the sovereign, who commissions and, if necessary, forces the state to act in its name. The sovereign lays down the rules. These rules and the laws derived from them then apply to everyone – thoroughly “dictatorial”, namely in the sense of strict, unambiguous and indivisible – especially to the state itself, which is what makes it a “democratic” state in the first place. This state must be monitored particularly closely because, of course, it is also necessarily endowed with power, which is another of the dilemmas that will not go away.
Moving beyond a purely formal consideration
So how do we achieve real democracy? And on a global scale, if possible? How do you arrive at a vibrant political culture in which the decisions of the sovereign prevail in favor of rules that correspond to the core of humanity, which thus can by no means be controlled by greed and lust for power? How do you arrive at this fundamental, real democracy that also takes control of economic power? The question may seem abstract and as a question that is only on the agenda for a distant future.
The reality is different: today’s fundamental upheaval, which began with the demise of the imperial rules of the unipolar world order, which developed directly from the long waves of slavery, feudalism, “capitalism”, colonialism and neocolonialism, but which is now, after centuries, heading towards its end with crises and wars, makes it enormously important to at the decisive moments, when the “dough” of upheaval is soft, to shape the form of a new democracy.
The most important part of the answer, it seems to me, is: one has to step out of the purely formal consideration of what democracy is. As we have seen, it is of little use to have formal democracy in one form or another while leaving out the logic of enrichment and economic power.
Inevitably, the oligarchy of enrichment then takes power and democracy is nothing more than a shadow theater, with remnants of rights that were heroically and bloodily fought for over centuries, whereby even the remnants of the democratic meal, in a putrefaction process of state-violent rearing against the loss of power, are increasingly subject to fascist-like tendencies.
We do not seriously need to talk about democracy when economic power lies in the hands of enrichment elites or the state itself.
So where should economic power – and first and foremost monetary power – be placed? Correctly, in the hands of the sovereign, the population itself. But how can this be possible in a self-organizing economy with free actors? Well, where monopolies and corporations, and especially financial corporations, have emerged from a long chain of expropriations (58), these must be subject to strict rules of democracy. But not through ongoing intervention by the state, which then becomes a universal “total capitalist”, but first and foremost through new normative rules, a new social contract that the sovereign itself establishes.
At this point of consideration, the historical question of socialism or capitalism comes into play, along with the hope for freedom. Apart from the fact that many people today refer to what is in fact the bureaucratic rule of enrichment elites as socialism, when it comes to the demand for freedom, the question must always be asked: does it only mean the freedom to enrich oneself? In other words, only the freedom to arbitrarily form monopolies, financial conglomerates, military apparatuses, media fraud institutions, pseudo-scientific think tanks and seemingly independent “non-governmental organizations (NGOs)? Or does it mean freedom from private and state plunder and tyranny?
After 175 years of continuous human experience, the question of socialism and capitalism must undoubtedly be revisited. It should be noted that history has given rise to a tangle of formidable prohibitions and constraints on thought as a result of bitter struggles fought with ideology and weapons. One must first cut through this thicket of confusion with courage and a sharp mind in order to arrive at new visions for the future.
One of the conclusions will probably have to be that a coercively controlled economy is in some respects worse than a self-organizing one (17). But the idea that only an absolutely “free” market, i.e. an omnipresent “market radicalism”, is able to satisfy all the needs of the population for a happy life with the help of an invisible hand, can hardly be surpassed in childish naivety. Free market yes, but strong rules, secured by a strong, truly democratically controlled state! Rules that guarantee that the needs of the population itself are expressed!
Never again must the needs of the people be subordinated to the needs of the expropriation and exploitation machines that monopolies are in collaboration with a corrupt state. The central struggle must be for the fundamental normative rules that can be put out of dispute because they are based on a broadly accepted social contract.
My proposal for three of these fundamental rules is:
The first rule: maximum income
No matter what someone does in this self-organizing economy or elsewhere, according to a new social contract, he has no right to collect more income than, say, ten or, even better, only five times the minimum income that is binding for everyone. For example, no one can work more than five times as much as another person who is also hardworking. The supposed “bearing of responsibility” that is supposed to justify extraordinary income regularly turns out to be a mere pretext for accumulating wealth or, when the going gets tough, for shamelessly shifting that responsibility onto those ultimately affected by suffering. But okay, so there may be some difference in income after all. That seems better than a general flat-rate income that negates all differences in performance.
But there must be an upper limit: a maximum income. Such a maximum income should not only apply to managers, who only get so much money today because they serve the actual winners of enrichment, who are really the ones among today’s beneficiaries of economic power. No, the maximum income must apply above all to the members of today’s propertied class themselves. To avoid misunderstandings, we are talking here about personal income and not about the turnover or profit of a company.
If there is a maximum income, everyone is free to pursue their occupation and deal with their existing property as they wish, but they must give up what they earn above the socially determined level. This also applies to companies if the income is not directly reinvested and thus an “own-doing” is kept going.
The problem only arises when someone sits on their wealth, “owns” it, and draws income from it without doing anything socially useful. Hence the limit of a personal maximum income. Who should enforce this? That’s right: the sovereign, by means of a truly democratically controlled state.
The second rule: newly printed money goes to everyone
The possibility of money being misused as a function of power must be removed. This can be done with the simple rule that newly created money must always be distributed among all the people in a currency area. Newly printed money must never again be distributed to those who have gained from the crisis. Under no circumstances should newly created money go to the state, except perhaps through a direct referendum. A democratically strictly controlled “monetative” (59) must control the issuance of fresh money on behalf of the sovereign and not on behalf of the banks and the oligarchs who have gained from the crisis.
The third rule: the sovereign has an investment money pot
This rule allows democracy to find the basis on which it can grow and through which the citizen, who has often become lethargic today, can once again develop into an actively participating organizer of the “res publica”: Who should decide on the use of new, trend-setting investments? The owners of a corporation, banks or financial conglomerates who want to exact as much tribute as possible from humanity? Or the state? Or the sovereign? Only when the population itself decides where the major investments (60) should be made does the sovereign itself possess economic power.
How can that work? Well, not everything can be voted on in parliaments, not everything can be decided by direct referendum. Much must be decided by decision-making bodies that are formed by sortition from the general population. The system of lot selection already played an important role in ancient Greece. Councils that decide on investments, control bodies and so on can be determined by truly independent lotteries. Random compositions of councils can lead to a relatively good, truly independent representation of the will of the sovereign in the long run.
Investment proposals from people or institutions that want to promote “self-action” can be submitted to and justified before such councils. Of course, these councils must be supported by experts, but the councils themselves must organize this expertise in order to avoid manipulation as far as possible. Further-reaching decisions, such as those involving large investments, will then no longer be made by those who have accumulated enough fraud money. The power of investment goes into the hands of the sovereign.
These three rules, which I present under the title “3rules2new1world” and will also explain in more detail in a book, are only very briefly outlined here and must of course be subjected to discourse. The discourse can lead to justified changes in the design of the project. But one thing is clear: there will only be real democracy when not only political power arises from the sovereign itself, but when, above all, economic power is controlled. This must be adhered to, otherwise there will be no democracy.
Those who are in favor of a free market and agree with a demand for a maximum income may be with us, the sovereign people. However, anyone who is in favor of the free market and only means the free right to enrichment should remain silent with their demand for formal democracy, because they cannot mean it honestly.
_______________________________________________________________
Democracy or Doom
The structures of participation in our community must be redesigned in such a way that the core of humanity can be preserved. Part 4 of 4.
“Democracy or Doom!” This headline exaggerates apocalyptic fears? Perhaps. We cannot see into the future, but there is much to suggest that the further development of humanity – and this can only be achieved by overcoming war – is only possible if real democracy is realized worldwide. It is those people who are not connected at their core with the elites of enrichment and domination, and thus by far the largest part of the population, who continue to preserve the original treasure of humanity (1), even if much of it has been buried. These people must be able to express their real interests in genuine democratic conditions. Various forms of democracy, with normative rules, laws and control, must ensure that the core of humanity can unfold in political action. Council democracy, representative democracy, direct democracy and “democratic centralism” are all insufficient to fundamentally reject and prevent the claims to enrichment and domination that fundamentally threaten humanity. In two very readable articles on the subject of democracy and council democracy, Roland Rottenfußer (“Self-determination instead of voting”, (2)) and Heinrich Leitner (“The unfinished democracy”, (3)) have written contributions that have helped me in my thinking about democracy. Ultimately, I perceive the question of democracy as the key question for the future of humanity. A contribution to the debate.
[This article posted on 3/12/2025 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.manova.news/artikel/demokratie-oder-untergang-4.]
In the first three parts of this article, I argued that the achievements of republican-constitutional representative democracy are not only being eroded today, but that they are fundamentally insufficient to realize real democracy, even if they are supplemented by other forms of democracy – council democracy, direct democracy, “democratic centralism” or other forms.
This will only be possible when the “right” to enrichment, which the winners of a capitalist game of increase claim for themselves, is ended once and for all by a new social contract, which a new democratic movement must enforce. In the third part, I have put forward three proposals under the title “3rules2new1world”. This last part is about the necessity of international democracy and the question of whether meritocracy could be an alternative.
Democracy – a global issue
A very crucial factor is often overlooked in the democracy debate. The reason for this oversight is often the idea that we live exclusively in a nation state or, at least, could live entirely on our own in one — although we know deep down that this is not the case! We may wish for whatever we want, and a solid nation-state building may certainly be part of our wish list, but we certainly cannot avoid recognizing that in many things it is in the nature of things that issues must be resolved internationally. This is obviously the case with questions of global justice, global peace, global distribution of resources and global trade, to name just a few.
If Daniele Ganser has quite rightly reintroduced this wonderful concept of the human family (61) into our world view, this realization that all people form one big family also implies that we only have one world, which we must ultimately regulate together in friendship among nations and states.
And we have to regulate it! This arises from the fact that it is we ourselves, as human beings, who constantly intervene in nature and in the events, conditions and processes that we ourselves have initiated. Ultimately, we also do this as a global community, whether we like it or not. There is therefore no way around the fact that we also have to face up to the question of global democracy (62).
To cite two examples: Any attentive observer can see what it means when there is no effective national democracy at the international level and, for example, oligarchs of enrichment “buy up” world organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) in order to pursue the disenfranchisement of the world population through so-called pandemic treaties (63). And everyone can see what it means when the strategic decision about war and peace is made in collusion between unelected wealth and/or power elites, without their own people even being heard, let alone the question, which concerns the fate of nations more than anything else, being submitted to a democratic vote.
Professor Jan Oberg, director of a “Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Studies” in Sweden, recently gave a lecture in Skopje (64), in which he proposed the following solution to the question of international democracy: as a first step, the representatives of the countries in international organizations should be determined and sent by national election:
“What a bizarre world we live in! We speak of ‘we the people’, but today, at the United Nations, it is ‘we the governments’ who are sitting there, having appointed themselves. I have no idea, I have never voted for the person representing Sweden at the United Nations. (…) Why can’t we hold elections for the people who represent our countries internationally? There is no technical reason why we shouldn’t do this. If we can vote by text message for the best song in Europe, why should we not be able to vote internationally on who should represent our country and us in international organizations? We live with the consequences, but we have no influence over them. Mrs. von der Leyen in the European Union is appointed at dinner parties. You call that democracy?” (64)
It is therefore imperative that national democracy also extends to international issues, otherwise there can be no question of democracy, especially since international issues are then determined behind the backs of the people, with nation states having a decisive (and even decisive) impact on them, while their own ruling elites act as if they had nothing to do with them.
Unipolarity or multipolarity, a question of international democracy
In a fundamental way, the question of “unipolarity” or “multipolarity” has developed into a world-political decision question, which essentially raises the question of international democracy. The Charter of the United Nations (UN) (65), after the devastation of the Second World War and the realization of the absolute necessity of “never again”, tried to prevent once and for all, through normative rules – in the sense of the Kantian “Eternal Peace” (66) – that there would be a new increase in crimes against humanity in the event of failure.
A democratic international law, in the sense of the “res publica” of a world society – that is, the public affairs of the human family – (Article 1, paragraph 2 of the UN Charter: “Equality and self-determination of peoples”) can only prevail if, ultimately, an individual right of enrichment is abolished worldwide.
Only in this way can the “right” of the stronger in social relationships be removed from the basis. At the international level, the same applies in principle to states.
Rainer Mausfeld emphasizes the connection between democracy and peace, citing Immanuel Kant in his lecture “Why War?” (two parts) (67). He analyzes the current situation as follows:
“Since 1991, the United States has explicitly sought a hegemonic world order. You can read about this in each of the official government doctrines. (…) Each of these government doctrines is an explicit mockery of the UN Charter, which seeks to consign the UN Charter to the dustbin of history.”
And he quotes “the great international law theorist” Ingeborg Maus, who describes the current situation as follows:
“The currently prevailing unilateralism – (…) a technical term for a rule-based world order – has bombed the world back to the international Stone Age and discredited Western constitutional principles for a long time. Of course, the proponents of a rule-based world order do not want to present it as what it is, namely the rule of brute force.”
If, in a decisive break from this unilateralism, approaches to democracy at the international level are emphasized in cooperation with peoples who want to shake off the imperial domination of the West, with reference to the UN Charter, then this is a correct way to save the rule of law – and not an arbitrary, rule-based order – and, if possible, to raise it to a higher level of world democracy.
We certainly cannot say that Russia and China do not also, and above all, have their own interests in mind when they act on the world stage, but it is noteworthy that historical development is pushing for international democracy, as envisaged in the UN Charter, to be loudly demanded today by those who are fighting to defend themselves against the world hegemony of Western imperialism under the specific “leadership” by the United States. The following wording can be found in the press release of May 16, 2024, following the meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin:
“We are working together to build a more just and democratic multipolar world order based on the central role of the UN and its Security Council, international law, cultural and civilizational diversity, and a balanced accommodation of the interests of all members of the international community.” (91)
Can we conclude that historical development is pushing towards international democracy? Will it now be shown that Mao Zedong was right in the following points, which he formulated in 1949 and 1956:
“’All reactionaries are paper tigers’ and ‘US imperialism is a paper tiger’ (68) (…) US imperialism is now very powerful, but this power is not real. Politically, it is very weak because it is detached from the broad masses of the people. (…) The states of America, Asia and Africa will, it seems, have no choice but to continue their dispute with the USA until the paper tiger is destroyed by wind and rain. (…) There is no need to fear the big. It will be overthrown by the small. The strong must give way to the weak. (…) What is the use of imperialism? The Chinese people do not need it, nor do the other peoples of the world. Imperialism has no right to exist” (69):
In October 2024, the BRICS countries stated in the Kazan Declaration that it was about
“decisions that can pave the way for a fairer, more balanced, more democratic and multipolar world order. (…) We reaffirm our commitment to multilateralism and to upholding international law, including the purposes and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN) as the indispensable cornerstone, as well as the central role of the UN in the international system, in which sovereign states cooperate to maintain international peace and security, promote sustainable development, promote and protect democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, and ensure cooperation based on solidarity, mutual respect, justice and equality. (…) We reaffirm our commitment to improving global governance by promoting a more agile, effective, efficient, responsive, representative, legitimate, democratic and accountable international and multilateral system” (70):
And Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in his annual review press conference on 14 January 2025:
“Now we need to increase the representation of the BRICS countries (in the UN Security Council). And after a reform of the Security Council, we will also be able to force the West to understand that it is no longer in a position, as in the colonial era, to impose its own rules on the whole world for centuries, to grab raw materials, resources, to grab the wealth of Asian, Latin American and African countries and to exploit them; that it is necessary to seek a balance of interests today, and that there is a good basis for this, namely the world order established after the Yalta and Potsdam conferences, based on the UN Charter – that is the basis” (71).
Once again, it is remarkable and, to a large extent, another contradiction in terms that the UN Charter is now held up as a benchmark by countries that do not all come from the cradle of Western democracy, while the countries that do come from the historical tradition of the struggle for democracy join in a loud chorus of cynical chatter about a “rule-based order” or even openly claim the right to simply annex sovereign countries, as Trump has announced he will do in Gaza, Panama, Greenland and even Canada.
In a sense, the BRICS countries are basically calling for democracy at the international level. We do not yet know how sustainable this will be. Further developments will show. What seems clear to me is that only truly democratic systems will provide the conditions for democracy between nations to become permanently possible; genuine democracy in nation states is the prerequisite. And this, in turn, will not happen if the economy of enrichment is not ended.
A rule-based domination of the enrichment elites with a mere democratic veneer is a fundamental obstacle for honest approaches to an “international democracy”! Thus, the perspective of humanity depends on the question of whether genuine democracy can be realized. Because the alternative is war. And with today’s means, war will sooner or later wipe out humanity.
Rainer Mausfeld also emphasizes:
“Peace can only be achieved by delegitimizing the law of the strongest. (…) Our instrument (…) can only be an egalitarian international law – and, very importantly, the ‘Kantian’ point, on the basis of social self-determination” (69).
Is Meritocracy a Viable Replacement?
In my previous discourse on questions of democracy, I did not address the question of whether there is an alternative to democracy. I would like to shed light on an apparently possible alternative to democracy here, at the end of this series of articles.
Every form of democracy must necessarily include elements of representation, since not everything can be decided directly, whether in councils or nationally or internationally. There will always be the decision-makers in the thin air above. They can be controlled, but their position cannot be eliminated. Since, as I said, not everything can be decided directly by the sovereign, who, as we know, does not always have to agree “among themselves”, there must inevitably be some kind of representation. This means that those in positions of responsibility, whether directly commissioned and controlled or not, act in the interest of the sovereign or in the interest of what they assume to be the interests of the sovereign.
If formal democracy abuses representation, it may be further removed from genuine democracy than a well-managed meritocracy might be.
What is meant by meritocracy? Meritocracy aims to create a class of the best through a system of education and training, to whom responsibility for social domination can be entrusted. Confucianism relies on meritocracy to a certain extent. Anyone who has observed the German foreign minister or other government officials in the Western world in recent years will probably feel a strong sympathy for the idea that bearing responsibility is also related to education and ability. There must also be an ability and an inner will to represent – virtue.
Immanuel Kant said:
“The smaller the number of rulers, the greater the representation, (…) the more the state constitution tends towards the possibility of a republic” *(72).
While formal democracy may, contrary to its own claim, mock the representative representation of the interests of the population, a ruler who is not democratically legitimized can certainly also act in the interest of the population.
There have also been “good” autocrats in history who recognizably stood on the side of the population, perhaps even representing them more in some matters than is the case under such “democracies” that are not genuine at their core. However, we should certainly not glorify this possibility, because there have been a multitude of autocrats who have cruelly shed blood against the interests of the populations!
Confucian meritocracy under Marxist guidance?
If you ask the Chinese-influenced artificial intelligence “DeepSeek” (73) to answer the question of whether socialist democracy and meritocracy are compatible, you get this answer, for example:
“Socialist democracy not only secures the position of the people as masters of the country, but also selects and promotes capable individuals to serve the people through scientific and democratic decision-making processes. It continuously refines the selection and appointment mechanisms for civil servants and strives to promote and select outstanding talent that is loyal, principled and responsible. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, it is ensured that leadership positions at all levels are filled by people who are both morally upright and professionally competent. Thus, the principles of democracy, efficiency and fairness are fully implemented and long-term governance of the country for the well-being of its people is ensured. The fundamental interests of the broadest majority of the population are always identified and represented by means of the principle of democratic centralism, whereby the country’s political life is both centralized and unified, as well as vibrant and orderly. This is an important advantage of the socialist political system with Chinese characteristics, which also reflects a reconciliation of socialist democracy and meritocracy.”
It is remarkable how the artificial intelligence of another world and thought region reflects the associated world of ideas. I cannot adequately assess what it looks like in practice, i.e. to what extent the interests of the population are actually represented in China by a different kind of “democracy”. What is certain, however, is that the Chinese population is much more satisfied with their government than Western populations are with theirs. A worldwide study conducted by a US company based in New York (Edelman Trust Barometer) annually determines the trust that populations have in their governments: “Please indicate how much you trust the government to do the right thing.”
In 2024, the survey showed positive approval of 85 percent in China, while approval among the population in the US was only 40 percent (74). And it is also certain, to give another example, that the Chinese start-up that produced DeepSeek makes it available to the world population free of charge as an intellectual commons. At least in this case, this is clearly a different attitude than the ideology of enrichment of Western corporations (75).
Neither Russia nor China nor almost any of the countries in the Global South are free of an “economy of enrichment”. But the relationship between state and economy may be different. It makes a big difference whether private economic and monetary power has bought the state or whether the state primarily pursues an independent line (76). The voices raised in Russia, China and many countries of the global South against the “golden billion” of the West implicitly urge that we draw on other human experiences than the 500 years of capitalism, colonialism and imperialism.
Democracy is a universal value, but the Western democratic system is not one of them.
In an article in the magazine International (78), the economist and author Robert Fitzthum (77), who has been living in China for many years and has written two important books about China’s successes, recently reported on very concrete and real efforts to establish democratic elements across a broad front in China. In his latest book, which will be published soon, he also deals with this question. In the summary of his presentation, he quotes Weiwei Zhang, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, as saying:
“Democracy is a universal value, but the Western democratic system is not. The two things cannot be confused with each other.” (78)
And Robert Fitzthum himself concludes:
“Socialist China is developing its own form of socialist democracy, a mixture of electoral democracy, deliberative democracy and grassroots democracy” (78).
Indeed, efforts towards democracy do not have to follow Western patterns of thought. And by the way, if we consider contemporary Chinese thought, it is influenced not only by Eastern Confucianism and the government concept of “meritocracy”, but also by Western-influenced Marxism and its concept of “democratic centralism”.
If we look at the last few decades, where the most brutal wars and crimes have been instigated in the name of the West and its global “export of democracy”, many countries have rightly learned to be on their guard, lest a cruelly familiar colonial attitude once again be hidden behind a one-dimensionally Western-defined democracy.
And yes, as long as no further progress is made, a good representation of the people’s will, even if it is not free of autocratic traits (79), is in some cases possibly better than a formally exercised sham democracy – a cross on the ballot paper every four years – that pushes large parts of the population into precarious and miserable conditions, tears society apart, greedily and inhumanly playing with fire at the undergrowth of the third world war and offers no long-term prospects except that the rich should become even richer – and, as we can see from the many wars, with raw, brutal, inhuman military and secret service violence (80).
And yet we cannot imagine the future as a meritocracy or, as we like to call it in an emergency, an expert government. Only democracy can succeed in ensuring that the population is certainly only exposed to those in power whom they themselves control.
The people themselves make the rules and laws and exercise control – that was the idea that probably first became a design project in Europe 2,500 years ago. Revolutionary uprisings to enforce the will of the people have accompanied history in all countries, but Europe developed the specific aspiration to turn this into a special, democratic form of government and state.
As we can see, the road to this goal has been beset with major setbacks, but it remains the only way forward – not necessarily following the European model, but definitely in the sense of genuine democracy. Humanity’s wealth of experience is greater, as Rainer Mausfeld also points out in his book “Hybris and Nemesis”, as mentioned earlier. As we have seen, the pre-European forms of democracy, as it were, had also formed the basis in many original communities, in connection with the intention to prevent domination and enrichment.
Meritocracy or not, doing something good for the people is not the same as giving the people themselves the power to decide.
Even if the rule of the “best” may have the considerable advantage of demanding a certain education and training for the bearing of social responsibility, a selection of the “best”, however it comes about, cannot alone ensure that the original treasure of humanity can unfold. Rigid hierarchies – with which Confucianism was also associated – can all too easily be the inevitable consequence if we only have in mind to select the “best”, for which, we must emphasize, there can be no objective, unreservedly valid criterion. It is therefore all too easy for this to result in a system of open or hidden enrichment and domination, unless real democracy, as discussed in this article, puts a stop to the constant “wanting more”.
However, a combination of democratic decision-making and control with the selection of candidates for the highest offices who are sufficiently equipped with the knowledge and educational assets of humanity is very conceivable in order to bring the original human being into line with normative rules, laws and governance. In 1993, I dealt with this question in a gray paper (81).
Here is an intermediate sentence on a current development
If billionaire kings are elected to lead a country that, with its imperialist claim, bore the greatest responsibility for the fundamental de-democratization, especially of international relations, it may initially look like a return to more democracy as a result of the palavers, because a deep state is to be put in its place. Whether this will happen, however, remains very much open. Every step in this direction would be good. Many a positive development, accompanied by reason, is certainly possible.
As I said, even wealth “meritocrats”, who are schooled in the market and competition and the indomitable will to enrich themselves, can see that the world cannot go on like this. But it is certainly not to be expected of them that they will really dissolve the tightly woven gigantic system of internal contradictions in the direction of a real democracy. They themselves are, after all, on one side of these internal contradictions. They themselves want to continue to enrich and rule. And they will not be able to resolve these internal contradictions, which, in essence, mean accumulating more and more money on the side of wealth, while at the same time accumulating more and more debt (82), poverty and exclusion, thus fueling debt-finance collapses and revolts.
The fact that they, as billionaires, pursue their own interests and belong to a world of thought that cannot be that of the general population will prevent them from doing good in the long term, even if they wanted to do so.
Open instead of hidden imperial behavior, approval of genocide in Gaza and forcing the population to flee (83), sham solutions such as tariffs – none of this will in any way eliminate the internal contradictions of the system, including the danger of further military escalations, even if real steps towards peace in Ukraine are of course to be welcomed. The same applies to the de facto admission that the exceptional unipolarity cannot be maintained despite all the talk of “Make America Great Again”. If only all this comes about (84).
It may well be that state power will be freed from the clutches of one or other oligarchic group. This is not an unimportant question. Wherever state power has merged with the oligarchy of enrichment, the distance to democracy was and is particularly cemented, however “friendly” everything around it, between Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the transatlantic think tanks, the American president and Wall Street, may have seemed for a few decades. But what we can see now is that a group of billionaire kings is taking over the democratic power of the state directly.
Maybe with “good” intentions, and yes, in some ways still bound to the old, existing achievements of American democracy. But that will certainly not decide the question of power in favor of the population, even if parts of the old power cliques and the “neocons” (85) were actually deprived of power, which would be very much to be hoped for. Due to the unresolved internal contradictions, the development can also quickly slide into increasingly fascistic traits. No, “meritocracy” – here the rule of the best and most brutal wealth winners – is by no means a substitute for democracy in this constellation either (86).
But let’s see what happens. We must always look at the actual course of history and not at the imagined one.
Abolish the law of enrichment – the people make the rules, the most trustworthy implement them under control
I think all this will only succeed when it is recognized in the inevitable fundamental crises that we need rules that abolish the law of enrichment – but not the self-organizing market – once and for all.
Rainer Mausfeld calls the prevention of the possibility of a harmful “wanting-to-have-more” taking hold and thus establishing a hostile rule against humanity a core approach to democracy.
He explains about the emergence of ancient Greek democracy:
“As in the previous history of civilization, the social roots of democracy lay in the long tradition of a collective consciousness that parasitic power and property elites set in motion dynamics that lead to the destruction of a society. An understanding of the psychological and social dynamics of the desire for more – referred to by the Greeks as ‘pleonexia’ – and of the insatiable parasitic greed of power and property elites also provided the impetus for reflection and reform in ancient Greece, which ultimately led to the invention of the guiding civilizational principle of egalitarian democracy (87).
The debate on democracy must move beyond the purely formal question. What began with Attic democracy 2,500 years ago, but how naturally the disenfranchisement of slaves, women and metics was accepted, which today reproduces itself just as naturally with a representative party democracy that has nothing against wage slavery in favor of enrichment elites, which impose a tribute on 99 percent of humanity, must be further developed in such a way that the various democratic approaches of the human family are based on democratic control to prevent an economy of enrichment. Only then can we talk about real democracy. And we need this in order to be able to enforce the original needs preserved at the core of humanity.
The other way is out of the question if humanity wants to follow a path of good life for all in the long term.
The unbridled “wanting-to-have-more” and the psychopathic lust for power not only lead to the elimination of paths of self-design by the sovereign, but also threaten the existence of humanity with total war and total crises and fascist-like power apparatuses. Democracy, then, or face extinction!
But let us not let the apocalyptic outlook cloud our concrete view of real events: perhaps the seething of opinions and the growth of insights, supported by the new media, in which the direct voice of the people can in some ways unfold more widely than it ever has in the history of communication (88), is part of the stormy weather that now, despite all the stumbling blocks and threats, serious steps towards the realization of genuine democracy can be taken (89). Insofar as this struggle continues, we can agree, from a meta-perspective, with Philip Manow’s thesis that we do not have a crisis of democracy (90). Yes, as history shows, the core of what it means to be human, which yearns for democracy, cannot be suppressed permanently. This gives us hope despite the very real threats.
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Notes for Parts 1-4
Part 1
(1) What do I understand by “original humanity”? What man has become in the course of his long evolution as a human being in the context of the biosphere is not the same as what man has become through the approximately 10,000 years of the history of civilization. Here are a few examples: We are originally human when we see ourselves mirrored by the lively behavior of non-normatively impaired children between the ages of about one to three or four years. We are originally human when we experience the feelings between friends, lovers and in the community. We are originally human when we recognize the beauty and wonder of nature and the universe. We are originally human when we are in the flow of knowing, creating, understanding in harmony with our feelings. The indigenous peoples, who lived in an “actual affluent society” (Marshall D. Sahlins), were much closer to the original human being than many of today’s civilization-blinded people, who live in the narrow canyons of modern cities and their digital sham buildings. What is originally human is how we live our lives. It is about a core of humanity that we all know, but which is buried by system constraints associated with property, the state and the “expulsion from paradise” of non-knowledge. Our thinking leads to seemingly certain knowledge. But how real is reality (Paul Watzlawick)? We regularly deceive ourselves collectively about the degree of our knowledge of the external and internal world. When Socrates speaks of the application of the art of midwifery (maieutics), he perhaps means the process of extracting the right knowledge that is connected to the core of humanity. Only when “civilization”, which undoubtedly also means a positive development of what is originally human, has freed itself from the negative constraints of that same civilization, will it be possible to return to the core of our humanity, the “originally human”, embedded in system rules that liberate us and do not oppress us.
(2) Roland Rottenfußer, Manova, October 12, 2024: “Self-determination instead of voting,” https://www.manova.news/artikel/selbstbestimmung-statt-stimmabgabe
(3) Heinrich Leitner, Manova, November 28 and 30, 2024: “The Unfinished Democracy,” https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie and https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie-2.
(4) Rainer Mausfeld’s lecture on November 21, 2024 in the Hugenottenhalle in Neu-Isenburg: “Why War?”, Westend-Verlag, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVXOZ7PI52c&t=1990s.
(5) “fascistoid”: tending towards fascism.
(6) Regarding Israel, the fascistic character of the government is clearly recognizable, however many residual elements of democracy may still exist in one form or another. A collection of statements by the right-wing extremist ministers and by Netanyahu himself is sufficient as evidence, which I will not present here. You can find everything on the internet. Here is just one example of an opinion piece on Al Jazeera from 2022, well before October 7, 2023 and well before the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes against humanity: “Netanyahu, the godfather of modern Israeli fascism”: https://www.aljazeera. com/opinions/2022/12/21/netanyahu-is-the-godfather-of-modern-israeli-fascism.
See also: AcTVism Munich: Israeli Torture Network – Interview with an Israeli Holocaust Researcher, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PzOAgf53eY ; Holocaust Survivors Condemn the Genocide in Palestine on Holocaust Memorial Day, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Posmzxqx4HA; Jochen Mitschka published on apolut, https://apolut.net/tag/standpunkte/, enter “Jochen Mitschka” in the search mask; the books and articles by Karin Leukefeld, Michel Lüders and Petra Wild.
There is also a wealth of evidence for Ukraine, ranging from the glorification of former fascist leaders such as Stepan Bandera, who worked with the Nazis to murder the Jewish population, to the banning of the language of significant parts of the population, the elimination and persecution of large parts of the opposition, https://www.nachdenkseiten. de/?p=97237, and the creation of death lists for political opponents. A member of the Ukrainian parliament who is in prison recently forwarded a document on systematic torture in Ukrainian concentration camps to the UN Security Council. He wrote on Telegram: “I sent the chairman and all members of the UN Security Council materials about the existence of a network of secret prisons and concentration camps run by the SBU (Ukrainian secret service), where torture and killings take place against those who disagree with the Zelenskyi regime,” https://t.me/dubinskypro/19093?single.
(7) UN Charter: https://unric.org/de/charta/.
(8) Genocide Convention: https://www.voelkermordkonvention.de/.
(9) In his book “Das 1×1 des Staatsterrorismus – Der neue Faschismus, der keiner sein will” (The 1×1 of State Terrorism – The New Fascism That Doesn’t Want to Be One), Ullrich Mies makes it clear how far this tendency has already taken hold. Klarsicht Verlag 2023.
Two current examples from the abundance of accusations against these developments:
Werner Müller, Manova, “Die Gewaltenfusion”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-gewaltenfusion;
Michael von der Schulenburg, NDS, “Das Europäische Parlament dreht durch”, https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=125590.
(10) The Jewish Chronicle: Israel should settle Gaza ‘forever’ after war, ministers insist at settler conference, https://www.thejc. com/news/israel/israel-should-settle-gaza-forever-after-the-war-insist-ministers-at-settler-conference-ojusldhw ; https://www.newarab.com/news/israelis-plan-gaza-resettlement-conference-enclave-border; https://www.jpost. com/israel-news/article-825512.
(11) A fulguration is an unexpected, erratic change towards a new whole, a new solution. The pressure for such changes comes from the dialectic of “more of the same”. The jug goes to the well until it breaks, as the saying goes. Things build up until internal contradictions cause a system to break. In a fulguration, more than breaking occurs: old, familiar things are reassembled, and suddenly a new system emerges.
Konrad Lorenz, who adopted the term from medieval mysticism, demonstrated this with a very simple technical example: if you combine a capacitor and an inductor correctly, an oscillating circuit is created. This is the basis of radio, TV, satellite transmission, in short, it is the basis of a large part of our modern technology, which we as a human race use to shape our communication today. Capacitors and coils do not have any properties that have anything to do with functioning radio waves, and yet something higher arises from them, a new whole with completely new properties.
Above all, fulgurations characterize living processes. They are an unrecognized or incomprehensible but crucial element of evolution and existence. The term fulguration is literally derived from the Latin “fulgur”, lightning. When people put things together in a new way, a fulguration is probably the “flash of insight”. I think that such a flash of insight also exists as an intersubjective process in entire societies, today probably primarily in a world society or human family, as Daniele Ganser calls it. However, those in the midst of these erratic changes may not be able to see what is happening to them and to society. It happens anyway, and it is done through the thinking and actions of the individual and, above all, through the cooperative thinking and actions that arise from the pressure of “more of the same”. Evolution always proceeds in leaps, in which something new suddenly emerges from crises. The saying “crisis as opportunity” is intended to suggest this; but it is more than an opportunity. A large number of unused opportunities leads to the last alternative: necessary execution of change or decline. The new “necessity” draws on new properties or structures of a system as a result of the interaction of its elements, which had developed under the guise of the old. This is how the term emergence is defined. I prefer the term fulguration because it emphasizes the erratic, the sudden emergence from self-organization. Compare Konrad Lorenz: “The Back of the Mirror”, Piper Verlag 1973.
(12) Rainer Mausfeld: “Hybris and Nemesis – How the de-civilization of power leads us to the abyss – Insights from 5000 years”, Westend Verlag 2023.
A very good description can also be found in Uwe Wesel: “History of the Right – From the Early Forms to the Present”, Verlag C. H. Beck 2014, chapters 1 and 2.
(13) The “law of enrichment” was tied to a rigidly established aristocracy. But that does not mean that its proximity to humanity was not a subject of contention. The “axle time”, as Karl Jaspers called it, was characterized by prophets, religions and philosophers who demanded rules for necessary human behavior, formulated as an appeal to the inner human necessity of existence before God. Economic rules were less affected by this, although individual rulers with strong state power were able to enforce regular debt relief, which led to a certain redistribution of wealth and land.
For comparisons, see, for example: Kessler, Rainer, Art. Jobeljahr, in: Das Wissenschaftliche Bibellexikon im Internet (www.wibilex.de), 2009;
Erlassjahr: https://cms.ibep-prod.com/app/uploads/sites/18/2023/08/Erlassjahr__2018-09-20_06_20.pdf.
Jubeljahr: https://cms.ibep-prod.com/app/uploads/sites/18/2023/08/Jobeljahr___2018-09-20_06_20.pdf.
(14) The US Constitution contained several clauses that implicitly protected slavery. Slavery was seen as politically and economically indispensable, even by the founding fathers who personally opposed it (see, for example, James Madison). George Washington kept hundreds of slaves on his Mount Vernon plantation. Although he freed them in his will, he did so only after his death and not during his lifetime. Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 slaves and fathered children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman. Despite his harsh criticism of slavery (“A fire bell in the night”), he saw slavery as a necessary evil. James Madison and Patrick Henry defended slavery as the economic basis of the southern states, despite moral concerns.
(15) Quoted from Paul Schreyer: “The Fear of the Elites – Who is Afraid of Democracy?”, Westend Verlag 2018, page 13.
Lois Brandeis was by no means alone in his criticism. The following statements can be found from the later President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson (from 1913 to 1921):
As governor, President Woodrow Wilson declared in 1911:
“The greatest monopoly in this country is the monopoly of money. As long as it exists, our old diversity, freedom and individual energy for development are excluded. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, and all our activities, are therefore in the hands of a few men, by whom, even if they act honestly and in the public interest, must needs be directed to the large undertakings in which their own money is involved, and who, because of their own limitations, must needs stifle, restrict, and destroy genuine economic freedom. This is the greatest question of all; and statesmen must face it with a sincere determination to serve the future and the true freedom of the people.”
The Pujo Commission, appointed in 1912, stated:
“Far more dangerous than anything that has happened to us in the past with regard to the elimination of competition in industry is the control of credit through the domination of our banks and industries by these groups. (…) Whether the funds in our banks would be greater or less under some other monetary system is comparatively immaterial so long as they continue to be controlled by a small group. (…) It is impossible to compete with all the opportunities for raising money or selling large bonds when these few bankers and their partners and allies, who together dominate the financial policy of most existing systems, hold these opportunities in their hands. (…) However, the actions of this inner group, as described here, have been more destructive to competition than anything the cartels have accomplished, because they strike at the very heart of potential competition in every industry under their protection. A state of affairs that, if it persists, will make all attempts to restore normal competitive conditions in the industrial world impossible. (…)
When the credit arteries, now almost choked by the obstacles created by the control of these groups, are opened up to play their important role freely in the financial system, competition in big business becomes possible and business can be conducted on the basis of its merits instead of being subject to the tribute and good will of that handful of self-appointed trustees of the national prosperity, https://louisville. edu/law/library/special-collections/the-louis-d.-brandeis-collection/other-peoples-money-by-louis-d.-brandeis (translation with DeepL).
(16) Tahir Chaudhry, *Nachdenkseiten, December 30, 2024: https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=126504.
See also: Werner Rügemer, Nachdenkseiten: “BlackRock in the Chancellery?” https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=128643.
(17) Both Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Mao Zedong recognized in the practical process of the revolutions they led that the self-organization of economic activity (“market”) can be of great importance. Lenin summarized this insight from 1921 in the proposal for a “new economic policy” (speech at the Tenth Party of the Russian Communist Party; Lenin’s writing “On the Circulation Economy”), and Mao Zedong pointed out very early on that there should be a balance between central planning and decentralized initiative (“The Chinese Revolution and the Communist Party of China”, 1939; “On the Ten Relationships”, 1956; “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”, 1957). Although both revolutionaries and theorists only granted the market a temporary right to exist, they did bow to the reality that was expressed in the power of self-organization.
(18) Rainer Mausfeld: “Hybris and Nemesis”, Westend Verlag 2023.
(19) Rainer Mausfeld, at the place given, page 100.
(20) Uwe Wesel: “Geschichte des Rechts”, Verlag C. H. Beck 2014.
(21) Uwe Wesel, at the given place, page 20.
(22) John Reed: “10 Days that Shook the World”, Dietz Verlag Berlin, 18th edition 1982, page 49.
(23) Gert Koenen: “The Color Red: Origins and History of Communism”, Verlag C. H. Beck, Kindle version:___________________________________________________
Part 2
(1) What do I mean by “original humanity”? What man has become in the course of his long evolution as a human being in the context of the biosphere is not the same as what man has become through the approximately 10,000 years of the history of civilization. Here are a few examples: We are originally human when we see ourselves mirrored by the lively behavior of non-normatively impaired children between the ages of about one to three or four years. We are originally human when we experience the feelings between friends, lovers and in the community. We are originally human when we recognize the beauty and wonder of nature and the universe. We are originally human when we are in the flow of knowing, creating, understanding in harmony with our feelings. The indigenous peoples, who lived in an “actual affluent society” (Marshall D. Sahlins), were much closer to the original human being than many of today’s civilization-blinded people, who live in the narrow canyons of modern cities and their digital sham buildings. What is originally human is how we live our lives. It is about a core of humanity that we all know, but which is buried by system constraints associated with property, the state and the “expulsion from paradise” of non-knowledge. Our thinking leads to seemingly certain knowledge. But how real is reality (Paul Watzlawick)? We regularly deceive ourselves collectively about the degree of our knowledge of the external and internal world. When Socrates speaks of the application of the art of midwifery (maieutics), he perhaps means the process of extracting the right knowledge that is connected to the core of humanity. Only when “civilization”, which undoubtedly also means a positive development of what is originally human, has freed itself from the negative constraints of that same civilization, will it be possible to return to the core of our humanity, the “originally human”, embedded in system rules that liberate us and do not oppress us.
(2) Roland Rottenfußer, Manova, October 12, 2024: “Self-determination instead of voting,” https://www.manova.news/artikel/selbstbestimmung-statt-stimmabgabe.
(3) Heinrich Leitner, Manova, November 28 and 30, 2024: “The Unfinished Democracy”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie and https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie-2.
(24) An aporia describes a unity of contradictions that cannot be resolved. Herbert Pietschmann, emeritus professor of theoretical physics in Vienna, defined an aporia in his book “The End of the Scientific Age” (Paul Zsolnay-Verlag, 1980) as follows:
“1. There are two contradictory statements. 2. Both are true. 3. They are mutually dependent. (Each of the two sentences is only true if the other is also true),” page 206.
I think it should be noted that aporias not only exist in ‘statements’, that is, in the description of circumstances and processes, but that they are present in these circumstances and processes themselves.
(25) Compare, for example: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freiheit_ist_immer_Freiheit_der_Andersdenkenden
(26) In Rosa Luxemburg, who is also quoted by Hannah Arendt, we can read this assessment:
“But with the crushing of political life in the whole country, life in the soviets must also increasingly weaken. Without general elections, unrestricted freedom of the press and assembly, and free debate, life dies in each of the public institutions, becoming a mere semblance of life in which only the bureaucracy remains as an active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless idealism direct and govern, among them a dozen outstanding minds actually lead, and an elite of workers is summoned to meetings from time to time to applaud the speeches of the leaders, unanimously approving the resolutions put forward. Basically, it is a clique economy – a dictatorship, but not the dictatorship of the proletariat, but the dictatorship of a handful of politicians, that is, dictatorship in the bourgeois sense, in the sense of Jacobin rule (postponing the Soviet congresses from three months to six months!). (…) The fundamental error of the Lenin-Trotsky theory is precisely that they, like Kautsky, oppose the dictatorship to democracy. ‘Dictatorship OR democracy’ is the question for both the Bolsheviks and Kautsky. (…) It is the historical task of the proletariat, when it comes to power, to create socialist democracy instead of bourgeois democracy, not to abolish democracy altogether. (…) Socialist democracy begins at the same time as the dismantling of class rule and the building of socialism. It begins with the moment of the socialist party’s conquest of power. It is nothing other than the dictatorship of the proletariat. Yes: dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the USE of democracy, not in its ABOLITION, in forceful, decisive intervention in the vested rights and economic relations of bourgeois society, without which the socialist transformation cannot be realized. But this dictatorship must be the work of the CLASS and not of a small, leading minority in the name of the class; that is to say, it must arise at every turn from the active participation of the masses, be under their direct influence, be subject to the control of the entire public, arise from the growing political education of the masses” (Rosa Luxemburg: “The Russian Revolution,” PDF, pages 16-17, http://www.mlwerke.de/lu/lu3_106.htm).
If we bear in mind that Rosa Luxemburg was not yet aware of the historical experience that the socialist ideal also contained other significant weaknesses, and if we disregard the false notion that “the class” tends towards the right view of its own accord, this quotation nevertheless shows very nicely how comprehensive Rosa Luxemburg’s claim to democracy is and how much she understands democracy as a genuinely political process. Regarding the highly dubious choice of words “dictatorship of the proletariat” – which goes back primarily to Friedrich Engels – it should be said that not every intervention in the regulatory system of a society that is determined and clear can be categorized under the term dictatorship. If we have to stop strictly at red at the traffic light, that is neither a dictatorship of oncoming traffic nor of the legislature, but simply a reasonable rule. It would be the same with a rule that sets a maximum income and is strictly (!) enforced by a democratic state.
(27) Friedrich Engels, in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State”: “Society, reorganizing production on the basis of free and equal association of producers, will put the whole state machine where it then will belong: in the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.”http://mlwerke.de/me/me21/me21_152.htm (27)
(28) The Communist Manifesto of 1848 states:
“When the proletariat, in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, necessarily unites as a class, makes itself the ruling class through a revolution and, as the ruling class, forcibly abolishes the old relations of production, it abolishes with these relations of production the conditions of existence of class antagonism, of classes in general, and thus its own rule as a class!”
In 1850, Karl Marx also reproached an editor of the Neue Deutsche Zeitung who had criticized Marx for representing the rule and dictatorship of the working class while striving for the abolition of class differences in the first place. Marx replied, “I do not understand this correction,” and cited the above quote from the “Communist Manifesto,” among other things. In his writing “The Class Struggles in France” (1850), Karl Marx reports that the Parisian working class replaced petty and even bourgeois demands with the bold revolutionary slogan: “Overthrow the bourgeoisie! dictatorship of the working class!” Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ‘On the True Study of Marx,’ https://marx-wirklich-studieren.net/marx-engels-werke-als-pdf-zum-download/ Volume 7, page 33.
(29) The “Universe 25” experiment by John B. Calhoun from the 1950s, in which he shows that mice die out when they have everything available to them but are locked up, is interpreted primarily in terms of the effect of overpopulation and the negative consequences of the narrowness of urban canyons. One crucial factor stands out, but is not mentioned in general: the mice did not have to work for their supply. The natural supply of their species and the natural way of life, which requires self-organization including the work of foraging within the conditions of the biosphere – and this is by no means primarily about the supposedly Darwinian struggle – was made completely impossible. We could also draw the conclusion that a species that no longer has to work in mutual exchange with the biosphere to survive may be threatened with extinction.
(30) The quote “Freedom is insight into necessity” is not a direct quote from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. It is a summary of the meaning by Friedrich Engels.
For more on this, see Kai Froeb, hegel-system.de: https://hegel-system.de/de/zitat_freiheit_ist_einsicht_in_die_notwendigkeit.htm#fnref10.
(31) The term “Volk” is in many respects a burdened one. This stems from colonialism and, above all, from National Socialism. The term can undoubtedly be very easily misused and cannot be clearly defined. Nevertheless, there must be something like a “Volk” in a state structure that encompasses a particular population. The distinction between state and Volk is not without significance. Immanuel Kant wrote in his essay “Perpetual Peace” that the “people” are formed by the “act (of forming) the general will” (in the indicated place, page 9). Anyone who uses state power against the interests of the population clearly has no interest in the formation of a general will by the “people”. Despite all justified critical objections to an unsuspecting use of the term “people”, democratic constitutions very clearly provide for the Kantian term “people”: For example, Article 1 of the Austrian Constitution states: “Austria is a democratic republic. Its right emanates from the people.” Those who do not want this in their hearts naturally do not want the positive side of the concept of the people either and only refer to the abuse of this concept.
(32) Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace’ (1795), Kultverlag, page 9:
“Of the three forms of government (autocracy, aristocracy, democracy), that of democracy, in the actual sense of the word, is necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an executive power that decides for all and against one (who does not agree), and therefore against all, who are not all; which is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom.”
PDF: https://oxnzeam.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/kant-zum_ewigen_frieden.pdf.
(33) “Fascist” means: tending towards fascism. Some “upright” or “left-wingers” are convinced that they alone recognize the “fascist danger” on the “right”, with the AfD, with Donald Trump and so on, and consider themselves to be the “good guys” who stand up for the fundamental values of “liberal democracy”. It may be that they subjectively believe they are on the right side of history, and I do not want to take away the ethos of many of them. After all, it is valuable to distance oneself from fascism. But by no means does this automatically put one on the side of the “good guys”. Even “antifascism” can be fascist in its attitude and in its goals and blindness. Those who blindly fight against the “right” with undemocratic means, at the side of the state and even under the guidance of the winners of enrichment – for example, Bill Gates, George Soros and others – and who rely on exclusion, prohibition laws and denunciation, are at best simply unaware of how blind they are to the essence of fascism. Fascism spreads, following an inner logic, when the highest escalation of the internal contradictions of the system of an economy of enrichment, in the sense of maintaining domination, leaves no other room for maneuver. This happens primarily on the side of the state and the “fighting organizations” it integrates, but possibly also on the side of those who fight this very state. On the surface, there is a Babylonian confusion of languages. Or perhaps it is intentional. When the German Minister of Economic Affairs allows himself to be projected onto the Munich Siegestor for the election campaign, it may simply look like ordinary propaganda. But the fact is that the National Socialists also knew how to use the Siegestor: After his commemorative speech in 1935, Hitler drove “at midnight through the Siegestor, along Ludwigstrasse illuminated by fire pylons, to the Feldherrnhalle, which was lined with blood-red cloth,” https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4654/1/4654.pdf. It is hard to beat in terms of cynicism when an obvious warmonger uses the Siegestor, which was once revered by the Nazis, for his own purposes, thus reversing the gate’s cautionary reinterpretation – “dedicated to victory, destroyed by war, calling for peace”. Yes, born out of the general confusion of knowledge and language, there are “combat solutions” for this or that – but in the background, the profiteers continue to rub their hands. The confusion of definitions is greatly encouraged because the protofascist tendencies try to sell themselves in the guise of anti-fascism, as Ignazio Silone already suspected in 1944 with his saying: “If fascism returns, it will not say: ‘I am fascism’. No, he will say: ‘I am anti-fascism’”. For comparisons, see for example https://jungle.world/artikel/2020/05/silones-warnung.
When is something fascism? In which direction does a fascistic display of power push? I have tried to formulate a definition of fascism:
Fascism is ultimately and at its core the enforcement of immediate or strategic particular enrichment interests that directly or indirectly stand in the way of the good life of the rest of humanity. It is based on the open or disguised use of violence, which is supported by the contracting economic-political power. This use of force is implemented in a systematic way, following strict hierarchical rules, preferably a leader, and organizing all “modern” means. In doing so, especially in times of systemic crisis, the state or quasi-state apparatus of violence proceeds with unlimited willingness to commit crimes and wages war against humanity. In doing so, it “supports” its ultimate goals, which have necessarily long since become delusional, with deception, propaganda and pseudo-science. In this way, it succeeds in mobilizing large numbers of alienated and traumatized sections of the population, in the form of the adapted “good guys” or the “true” fighters, in a more or less inflammatory way. The fight of these mobilized parts of the population is directed against a “scum” of people constructed as subhumans – of whatever “kind”. In addition to the open, terrorist use of violence, this also causes the death of the greatest parts of direct humanity, since general mistrust, fearful, hateful or predatory surveillance and delivery of fellow human beings to the state instruments of violence determine the coexistence.
See also Ullrich Mies: “Das 1×1 des Staatsterrors: Der neue Faschismus, der keiner sein will”, Klarsicht Verlag 2023; https://www.manova.news/artikel/des-faschismus-neue-kleider-2;
Lisa Maria Binder: “Der Superfaschismus”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/der-super-faschismus;
Jana Kerac: “Wiederholung als Schicksal”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/wiederholung-als-schicksal/.
(34) Ullrich Mies: “The 1×1 of State Terrorism – The New Fascism That Doesn’t Want to Be One”, Klarsicht Verlag 2023.
(35) There are many studies, reports and news items to support this thesis. However, the question has not yet been sufficiently clarified in the broader public opinion and is still subject to drastic manipulation pressure. Real education and science provide evidence on many levels that is beginning to be accepted as new truth. What has caused people worldwide to die before their time? 1. The lie or the carelessness of the misjudgment about the “pandemic.” 2. The fear-hysteria that was knowingly promoted. 3. The wide variety of non-medical measures that radically cut people off from their normal life opportunities and care. 4. Incorrect or omitted medical treatment. 5. The injection of dubious and harmful substances into the body, either directly or through fear and lies. 6. A wide range of indirect consequences.
Here are just a few, almost “arbitrary” sources from the many that can all be easily found if you want to find them:
Peter F. Meyer: “Study: 30.9 million additional deaths due to corona measures and vaccination campaign”, https://tkp.at/2024/07/21/studie-309-millionen-zusaetzliche-todesfaelle-durch-corona-massnahmen-und-impfkampagne/;
Günter Kampf: “Excess mortality: Why the corona vaccines cannot be ruled out as a cause”, https://radiomuenchen.net/de/podcast-archiv/radiomuenchen-themen/gesundheit/2659-uebersterblichkeit-warum-die-corona-impfstoffe-als-ursache-nicht-auszuschliessen-sind.html;
Milena Preradovic, January 17, 2025: “Vaccination data from the PEI has emerged: ‘Sheer horror’ – with Prof. Dyker and Prof. Matysik”, https://punkt-preradovic.com/aufgetauchte-impfdaten-des-pei-blanker-horror-mit-prof-dyker-u-prof-matysik/;
Gunter Frank: “Das Staatsverbrechen”, Achgut-Verlag 2023.
Jana Kerac: “Wiederholung als Schicksal”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/wiederholung-als-schicksal/.
(36) How grotesque: Robert Habeck spouts sentences like this in his commercial:
“I saw these images and thought, democracy is not about the power of the rich, but about a better life for the many. Trump sits with the billionaires, I want to commit myself to the people. Let’s stand in the way of the tech oligarchs and fight for democracy, real freedom of expression and our future before it’s too late.”
The richest man in the world, undoubtedly a tech oligarch who derives his influence from the billions that others have earned for him, then calls him – depending on the translation – an asshole, or he comments: “What a dick.”
Many recognize the deviousness of a Habeck, who only prefers to work with other tech or pharmaceutical oligarchs, who bends submissively before Joe Biden and who fears freedom of expression like the devil fears holy water, forcing punitive campaigns against citizens at public expense who express their opinions. One comment therefore asks: “How is ‘real freedom of expression’ spelled in the tyrant’s dictionary?”
Correct! But many may fail to see that in imperialist wars, just as in struggles between cliques of oligarchs, the main thing is not to take sides and not to be drawn into the conflict again, as has happened so often in history. https://www.tiktok.com/@alexanderdietrich00/video/7470154918817582358?q=habeck%20pimmel&t=1739285145790.
(37) Heinz-Josef Bontrup, 2015: “Arbeit wird billig wie Dreck” (Work is becoming as cheap as dirt), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKnJvO6h9yc.
(38) Sociocracy, definition: Wikipedia, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soziokratie, YouTube: “What is Sociocracy?”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3JJotOJ7kI.
(39) Hannah Arendt: “On Revolution”, Harper & Row, 1968, page 299.
(40) Rainer Mausfeld: op. cit., page 53.
(41) Philip Manow: “(De-)Democratization of Democracy”, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2020.
(42) Ulike Guérot in her lecture and book review “on ‘(De-)Democratization of Democracy’ by Philip Manow”. Minute 12:30.
See also Rainer Mausfeld in conversation with Markus J. Karsten, YouTube: “They thought they were in power, but they were just in government”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QyvAphbMDk:
“Our concept of democracy has degenerated so much today that most of the population no longer even know what democracy is for and why it came about. They have long since swallowed the fact that democracy today means the opposite of what it is supposed to mean – quite Orwellian: war is peace. (…) For more than 2,000 years, democracy was considered something very, very bad by all the wealthy and all the educated, by all the powerful. (…) The disadvantage of democracy (for those in power) is that in a democracy the majority of the poor can rule over the minority of the rich. And now one of the most important and truly great founding fathers of the USA, Madison, says that we must organize democracy in such a way that the minority of the propertied are protected from the majority of the non-propertied! (…) Democracy is actually the most radical restriction of power there is, namely the complete control and accountability of every form of power to the social base. (…) Democracy is the toughest form of elite control there is. The point (in the Attic model of democracy) was to prevent the elite from degenerating and forming parasitic elites, that is the real idea of democracy.”
(43) IPG interview: “In the USA, the majority does not rule!” Five questions for Benjamin I. Page about “elites, interest groups and average citizens”, https://www.ipg-journal.de/interviews/artikel/in-den-usa-regiert-nicht-die-mehrheit-374/;
____________________________________________________
Part 3
(1) What do I understand by “original humanity”? What man has become in the course of his long evolution as a human being in the context of the biosphere is not the same as what man has become through the approximately 10,000 years of the history of civilization. Here are a few examples: We are originally human when we see ourselves mirrored by the lively behavior of non-normatively impaired children between the ages of about one to three or four years. We are originally human when we experience the feelings between friends, lovers and in the community. We are originally human when we recognize the beauty and wonder of nature and the universe. We are originally human when we are in the flow of knowing, creating, understanding in harmony with our feelings. The indigenous peoples, who lived in an “actual affluent society” (Marshall D. Sahlins), were much closer to the original human being than many of today’s civilization-blinded people, who live in the narrow canyons of modern cities and their digital sham buildings. What is originally human is how life lives. It is about a core of humanity that we all know, but which is heavily buried by system constraints associated with property, state and the “expulsion from paradise” of non-knowledge. Our thinking leads to seemingly certain knowledge. But how real is reality (Paul Watzlawick)? We regularly deceive ourselves collectively about the degree of our knowledge of the external and internal world. When Socrates speaks of the application of the art of midwifery (maieutics), he perhaps means the process of extracting the right knowledge that is connected to the core of humanity. Only when “civilization”, which undoubtedly also means a positive development of what is originally human, has freed itself from the negative constraints of that same civilization, will it be possible to return to the core of our humanity, the “originally human”, embedded in system rules that liberate us and do not oppress us.
(2) Roland Rottenfußer, Manova, October 12, 2024: “Self-determination instead of voting,” https://www.manova.news/artikel/selbstbestimmung-statt-stimmabgabe.
(3) Heinrich Leitner, Manova, November 28 and 30, 2024: “The Unfinished Democracy,” https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie and https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie-2.
(49) Heinrich Leitner quotes Hannah Arendt here, at the given location, page 94.
(50) Heinrich Leitner, Manova: “The Unfinished Democracy”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie.
(51) Thomas Piketty, page 157:
“Figure 3.2. Capital in France, 1700-2010: Value of national capital, as a percentage of national income. Legend: In 1910, national capital in France was equivalent to almost 7 years of national income (of which one year was invested abroad). Sources and series: see piketty.pse.ens.fr/capital21c.”, http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/pdf/G3.2.pdf.
(52) Compare for example: Ecobono: “Wealth distribution in the US, Daily Chart of June 15, 2024”, https://www.ecobono.com/vermoegensverteilung-in-den-usa/.
(53) German Basic Law, Article 14: “(2) Property entails obligations. Its use shall also serve the public good.”, https://dejure.org/gesetze/GG/14.html.
(54) UN Charter, https://unric.org/de/charta/.
(55) Thomas Oysmüller, TKP.at: “Weimarer Richter rechtskräftig verurteilt”, https://tkp.at/2024/11/21/maskenpflicht-aufgehoben-weimarer-richter-rechtskraeftig-verurteilt/.
(56) Compare Christian Felber: “Gemeinwohlökonomie”, Deuticke Verlag, 2010. Christian Felber uses the term in the sense of an alternative to the existing “capitalist” order. It is undoubtedly true that the “capitalist” order, by definition, does not have the common good in mind. It is undoubtedly true that the chains of the economy of enrichment must be thrown off in order for a genuine economy of the common good to become possible. Adam Smith’s hope that the common good would be achieved by the action of an “invisible hand” has certainly failed completely, given that the true result of the action of the “invisible hand” is that The disruption of society as a result of massive inequality is enormous and constantly growing. What remains unchanged, however, is that we all depend on a “common good” – no matter what injustices are accumulated by the respective economic system.
(57) Daniela Dahn: “We are the state”, Rowohlt Verlag 2013. The extremely important and apt intention of the book, which focuses on the core issues of democracy, is expressed in the subtitle: “Why being a people is not enough”. We would just have to add why it is not enough to be a people of dull-witted sheep. How true! But that is why we are not the state. We – the people – will always have to watch what the state does, keep it under control, keep it on a tight rein. But this is only possible if we understand that we are not the state: we are the sovereign. The sovereign must, can and may impose rules on the state. Making this clear is one of the intentions of Daniela Dahn’s book. The main title is misleading in this respect. Of course the state is not a separate “person” and therefore of course does not have any “personal rights” either. But if the people themselves were the state, the task of limiting power for the people would no longer apply. No, no – we, the sovereign, are not the state and should not want to be. We, the people, are the guardians of humanity. The state is a necessary evil that can serve us well, but we must clearly set limits for it in order to tame it democratically. The statement “We are the state” stands in the way of this necessary perspective, which differentiates between the state and the people and also between the state and the sovereign.
(58) We are happy to see that property is protected, but we readily admit that the property of one person can be ruined by the property of another. Monopolies, oligopolies and megacorporations arise from the destruction of the property of others. This may be a necessary process of “creative destruction” (Schumpeter), but if a few have appropriated the property of almost everyone, the logical conclusion, if the reversal of the expropriation is not to be on the agenda, is that the administration of property by the few cannot be free from democratic control by the sovereign. For example, the sovereign can very well prescribe the algorithm to the administrators of social media platforms that really guarantees freedom of expression, because, among other things, the algorithm is publicly controllable.
(59) The term “monetative” was introduced by the economist Franz-Ulrich Lange and further discussed by Joseph Huber. Clearly, a democratic movement still has a lot to think about on issues of this kind.
(60) This does not refer to investments that are necessary to maintain ongoing operations. Profits, which must be made for a company to flourish, are not affected. However, if profits grow beyond this level, they must go into a public investment pot. There, the companies lose their power of access. So on the one hand, there is a truly free market and on the other, there is social, democratic control over the direction in which society should develop through investment. Let us recall the words of former US President Woodrow Wilson: “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit” (15).
What are investments anyway? The regulation of spending money on investments obscures the core of what investments are about: investment decisions are decisions about where labor is to be employed in the future. Just as an indigenous village decides to use its collective labor to build the hut of the new bride and groom next week. If this decision is made in a modern society by spending money, it must be recognized that this money is not actually money at all. If money is supposed to mediate the fair exchange of labor and products of labor, then in the case of investments there is no work that has been done yet, because this will only take place in the future. A pot of money that is available for future investments is therefore something like a tool to be able to implement decisions for future work input, just as the abacus is a tool to achieve a calculation result. However, after the revolution in labor input, the money remains in this pot and can be used again and again, just as the abacus can be used over and over again to perform a calculation. Where the investment “money” from this large investment pot should flow must be the direct decision of the sovereign itself, otherwise the whole of society will remain forever dependent on banks and financial conglomerates that dominate the population and undermine democracy. _________________________________________________
Part 4
1) What do I mean by “original humanity”? What man has become in the course of his long evolution as a human being in the context of the biosphere is not the same as what man has become through the approximately 10,000 years of the history of civilization. Here are a few examples: We are originally human when we see ourselves mirrored by the lively behavior of non-normatively impaired children between the ages of about one to three or four years. We are originally human when we experience the feelings between friends, lovers and in the community. We are originally human when we recognize the beauty and wonder of nature and the universe. We are originally human when we are in the flow of knowing, creating, understanding in harmony with our feelings. The indigenous peoples, who lived in an “actual affluent society” (Marshall D. Sahlins), were much closer to the original human being than many of today’s civilization-blinded people, who live in the narrow canyons of modern cities and their digital sham buildings. What is originally human is how life lives. It is about a core of humanity that we all know, but which is heavily buried by system constraints associated with property, state and the “expulsion from paradise” of non-knowledge. Our thinking leads to seemingly certain knowledge. But how real is reality (Paul Watzlawick)? We regularly deceive ourselves collectively about the degree of our knowledge of the external and internal world. When Socrates speaks of the application of the art of midwifery (maieutics), he perhaps means the process of extracting the right knowledge that is connected to the core of humanity. Only when “civilization”, which undoubtedly also means a positive development of what is originally human, has freed itself from the negative constraints of that same civilization, will it be possible to return to the core of our humanity, the “originally human”, embedded in system rules that liberate us and do not oppress us.
(2) Roland Rottenfußer, Manova, October 12, 2024: “Self-determination instead of voting,” https://www.manova.news/artikel/selbstbestimmung-statt-stimmabgabe.
(3) Heinrich Leitner, Manova, November 28 and 30, 2024: “The Unfinished Democracy,” https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie and https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-unvollendete-demokratie-2.
(61) Immanuel Kant wrote in 1795 in his essay “Perpetual Peace”, page 24, Kindle version:
“Since it has now come to such a pass with the (closer or further) community that has once become widespread among the peoples of the earth that the violation of rights in one place on earth is felt by all: the idea of a world civil right is not a fanciful and exaggerated conception of the law, but a necessary supplement to the unwritten code of both state and international law, to public human rights in general and thus to eternal peace, which one can only flatter oneself about being in the process of achieving under this condition.”
(62) After I had written this, I came across Ulrike Guérot’s book review of Philip Manow’s book “(De-)Democratization of Democracy”. There she asks the question about the point of reference for democracy with these words:
*”Where is the space or place of democracy? Is it my neighborhood, my city, my region, my nation state, is it perhaps Europe or the UN? Yes, do we also need global forms of democracy and, so to speak, the interfaces between the small, the local, the regional, the national and that which is above it?”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y_VVlAqJUo.
(63) See, for example,
Walter van Rossum, Manova exclusive interview on May 4, 2024: “The World Health Domination”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-gesundheits-weltherrschaft
Uwe Froschauer, Manova: “The World Domination Organization”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-welt-herrschafts-organisation
The Interdisciplinary Association for Health Professions, Manova: “A last reprieve for human rights”, https://www.manova.news/artikel/galgenfrist-fur-die-menschenrechte
Karolin Ahrens, apolut: “Der Pandemievertrag – Ende von Demokratie und Grundrechten?” https://apolut.net/der-pandemievertrag-ende-von-demokratie-und-grundrechten/.
(64) Professor Jan Oberg: “How Western ‘Democracy’ Fights for Freedom While Losing It.” October 3, 2024 – Global Change Centre’s conference in Skopje, Macedonia on “Cooperative Multipolar Systems: In Quest for a New World Order”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgXovCAa-1o.
(65) UN Charter, https://unric.org/de/charta/.
(66) Immanuel Kant: Perpetual Peace. PDF: https://oxnzeam.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/kant-zum_ewigen_frieden.pdf.
(67) Rainer Mausfeld: “Why War?”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVXOZ7PI52c&t=2085s and “The Right to Rule and the Law of the Jungle”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1beUebXYNmk.
(68) See Julia Lovell: “Maoism: A World History”, Pluto Press, 2023, Chapter 1, page 76, notes 82 and 83.
(69) Mao Zedong: “Imperialism Is a Paper Tiger” (1956), Selected Works, Volume V, page 347, People’s Publishing House PRC, 1977.
(70) Kazan Declaration of the XVIth BRICS Summit, October 23, 2024, points 6 and 7: http://static.kremlin.ru/media/events/files/en/RosOySvLzGaJtmx2wYFv0lN4NSPZploG.pdf.
(71) Sergei Lavrov, SKY News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb5DCIAj27Q.
(72) Immanuel Kant, op. cit., page 10.
(73) DeepSeek, https://chat.deepseek.com/.
(74) Edelman Trust Barometer, https://www.edelman.com/trust/2024/trust-barometer.
(75) Hermann Ploppa, apolut: “DeepSeek – or: the second Sputnik shock”, https://apolut.net/deepseek-oder-der-zweite-sputnik-schock-von-hermann-ploppa/.
(76) Bertram Burian, Manova: “The Final System Question”, Parts 1 and 2, https://www.manova.news/artikel/die-finale-systemfrage.
(77) Robert Fitzthum: “Erfolgreiches China: Die Fakten zur Befreiung aus der Armut, zur grünen Umgestaltung und zu menschengerechten Städten der Zukunft”, Goldegg Verlag 2021; “China verstehen: Vom Aufstieg zur Wirtschaftsmacht und der Eindämmungspolitik der USA”, Promedia Verlag, 2018.
(78) Robert Fitzthum: “Das reale China”, Zeitschrift International V/2024, page 34, https://international.or.at/.
(79) Let us imagine, for example, the governance of Muammar al-Gaddafi. Among other things:
“Last but not least, with regard to education, the illiteracy rate in Libya fell from 61 percent in 1971 to 14 percent in 2001. In 2005, the gross enrollment rate in primary education was around 95.9%. Libya was thus close to Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 2 within the 2015 timeframe. The adult literacy rate in 2009 was about 89%, with 94% of males and 83% of females able to read and write. According to the UN Human Development Index report of 2007/2008, the literacy rate among young people in Libya was 99.9%,” https://abuummusulaim.wordpress.com/2019/10/20/the-rise-and-fall-of-muammar-gaddafi-achievements-challenges-and-lessons/.
(80) Here is a statement by a long-serving military officer from the early 20th century. I am referring to an article by Wolfgang Effenberger. He writes:
“US Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940) – also known as The “Fighting Quake” [said] in his 1935 speech “War is a Racket”:
*’I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and most of that time I spent as a high-level thug for big corporations, for Wall Street and its bankers. In short, I was a crook, a gangster for capitalism. In 1914, I secured Mexico and especially Tampico for the American oil interests; I made Haiti and Cuba a nice place for the guys from the National City Bank so that they could collect the revenues. I helped to rape half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. From 1902 to 1912, I cleaned up Nicaragua for Brown Brothers International Bank. In 1916, I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the sugar interests. In 1903, I helped to prepare Honduras for the American fruit companies. In 1927, I made sure that Standard Oil was left alone in China. I could have given Al Capone some tips. The best he achieved was to operate in three districts (of Chicago) with his racketeering. I operated on three continents.
US General Douglas MacArthur called the highly decorated Major General Smedley D. Butler ‘one of the truly great generals in American history’ and named the US Marine Corps base in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, after him,” https://apolut.net/tweedledee-und-tweedledum-von-wolfgang-effenberger/
(81) In 1993, in a reply to the Spiegel Spezial edition, “The Earth 2000 – Where Humanity Is Heading,” I wrote in a gray paper that I distributed in a small circle as part of my studies in political education:
“I think we will have to find new, creative solutions. Parties have long since been primarily concerned with how to manage their re-election in order to secure their spheres of power. How about abandoning the party system? Democracy without parties can lead to the liberation of democracy from the ideological shackles of power systems. Democracy without parties is the way to a real democracy, in which factual issues are addressed by elected and recallable, knowledgeable personalities. What the parties do today would have to be guaranteed by a regulated institution of democracy: rules on how elections are conducted from level to level and rules on what means and possibilities the candidate may use. These means would be the same for everyone. In return, he/she is provided with everything for his/her election advertising. If he/she is elected, the only responsibility is to the people, a people that can become politically effective through numerous citizens’ committees. He/she can be voted out of office at any time. Control bodies (opposing politicians accompany the decision-making process of the people’s representative). Every interest in maintaining power (except for an interest in pushing through convictions) must be abolished. There is only the re-election of people with clear competencies. There is no election of obscure parties, there is no party discipline and no lobbies. Of course, the personalities who stand for election must have gone through ‘schools’, and they will be representatives of social and spiritual movements. There must be a way to get to the top and be voted out. Etc. I cannot and do not want to develop a finished concept here. I just want to hint that democracy must be much more than the miserable squabbling that is largely on offer today and where only certain interests are represented. Of course, the role of the media must be defined, and ways must be found for people to be able to vote frequently (preferably from home – should be possible with modern electronics) on clearly presented issues, without much effort. The flexibility and ability to act of democracy (people’s rule) must be significantly increased. This is also the best way to prevent the call for a strongman once and for all. With such democratic conditions, which then really deserve to be called that, control and steering mechanisms are also conceivable in the transition from self-interest to social impact. Of course, someone has to decide who is given capital for meaningful use and from whom it should be gradually withdrawn. This will of course lead to even more clashes of interest and requires democratically established mechanisms for conflict resolution, control and the ability to vote out.”
(82) Since all monetary assets represent debts on the other side!
“The sum of all assets is always exactly equal (that’s the first semester) to the sum of all debts. So, if the assets grow, then the debts must also grow, otherwise the assets cannot grow. If I turn it around now, if we reduce the debts that are destroying some people, if we reduce the debts, then we have to reduce the assets at the same time, otherwise we cannot reduce the debts. That’s perfectly clear.” Prof. Heinz-Josef Bontrup, 2015: “Work is becoming as cheap as dirt”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKnJvO6h9yc, minute 21:52.
(83) Assoc. Professor Lorenzo Maria Pacini, *TKP.at: “Trump, Gaza and the Final Solution”, https://tkp.at/2025/02/09/trump-gaza-und-die-endloesung/.
(84) Rüdiger Rauls, “Trump under Pressure”, https://ruedigerraulsblog.wordpress.com/2025/02/05/trump-unter-druck/
Mikhail Delyagin, “The Dollar has finally become a toxic currency”, “Доллар окончательно стал токсичной валютой”, https://zavtra.ru/blogs/dollar_okonchatel_no_stal_toksichnoj_valyutoj.
(85) Here is an example of an analysis of the disastrous political impact of Victoria Nuland, an example of the efforts of the neoconservatives (neocons): AcTVism Munich, March 2024: “War Advocate Victoria Nuland: The revelation of a disastrous career), https://www.actvism.org/latest/victoria-nuland-krieg-karriere/.
As early as 2004, Michael Lind wrote in an article in the magazine Blätter:
“For at least two decades, the neocons have been wrong about almost everything in foreign policy. When the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse, the hawks of Team B and the Committee on the Present Danger declared that it was on the threshold of world domination. In the 1990s, they exaggerated China’s power and danger, once again putting their ideology before the sober analysis of the professional military and intelligence experts. The neocons’ obsession with Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat was so great that they overlooked the growing threat from al-Qaeda. After 9/11, they pushed the use of ineffective panaceas such as preventive war and missile defense as solutions to problems such as airplane hijackers and suicide bombers.
They said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He didn’t. They said he was allied with Osama bin Laden. He wasn’t. They predicted there would be no major insurgency in Iraq after the war. There was. They said a wave of pro-Americanism would sweep the Middle East and the world if only the United States would act boldly on its own. Instead, a wave of anti-Americanism rose regionally and globally, https://www.blaetter.de/ausgabe/2004/april/es-gibt-keine-neocons.
(86) Elon Musk said it openly, after presenting himself and his cronies as alpha animals:
“A republic with high-ranking men is best suited for decision-making. (…) A democracy only for those who can think freely.”
And by “free to think” he means those who have the mental, spiritual and probably also material ability to do so. It is the old idea that democracy should only be what pleases the enrichment elites and is supported by the rich themselves. So not a democracy. https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1609762259416.jpg.
(87) Rainer Mausfeld: “Hybris and Nemesis”, Westend-Verlag, 2023, page 47.
(88) The Swiss scientist and management consultant Leo Keller, together with physicists, developed his own semantic intelligence systems that allow the use of unstructured public internet data (“OSINT Open Source Intelligence”). He uses them to collect the opinion behind the published opinion. Together with Harald Welzer, he wrote an article entitled “Published Opinion” in the Neue Rundschau in 2023. His conclusion in an interview is this:
“Overall, I think that thanks to the internet, people today are able to inform themselves in a very differentiated way, and I think we can see that in their reactions on social media. They are often very differentiated, very searching and very deliberative. And that is why, let’s say, the admonishers and the doubters are quoted there much more often; so I’ll take John Mearsheimer and Henry Kissinger, as two unsuspected American witnesses, who express a clearly different view in this [Ukraine] war. They are ignored in the traditional media of this German-speaking world, but not in the social media. This shows me that the social media is almost a way to break out of the bubble of the respective published channels, be it FAZ or Spiegel or RTL or ZEIT or NZZ or whatever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi6gtJPR1Og Minute 36:58; https://www.fischerverlage.de/magazin/neue-rundschau/die-veroeffentlichte-meinung.
And in an interview with Pascal Lottaz of “Neutrality Studies”, Dr. Dieter Reinisch of the magazine International reports that, for example, in Northern Ireland, the renowned quality newspaper Irish Times immediately and vehemently swung into line with NATO, starting on February 22, 2022: everything against the Russian aggressor, unconditional support for Ukraine, arms deliveries, and so on. At the same time, however, the newspaper regularly conducted surveys among the population and found that 80 percent of the population, even after years of being influenced by the opposite opinion, stuck to the view that neutrality and peace are the values to be upheld. When the newspaper realized that they were unable to change the opinion, they stopped the surveys! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WFNKOjGSpo, from minute 36.
(89) Ulrike Guérot, at the given location, minute 22:30:
“’Unfinished Democracy’ (…) I actually also find that a nice term. So if you could fully realize that, it would be like if we were just making a few sketches on a canvas of how we are shaping tomorrow’s democracy, then the picture is still unfinished, yes, or a symphony, ‘The Unfinished’. That means we still have to add a few notes or a few strokes of color to make it work for us today. Yes, and with that Manow says – and that’s not the relaxing part – that basically we don’t have a crisis of democracy today and that democracy is not in danger either (…).”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y_VVlAqJUo.
(90) Philip Manow: “(De-)Democratization of Democracy”, Suhrkamp Verlag, page 174:
*”We have entered (…) times that seem to be specifically out of balance. However, the lack of balance is (…) only imprecisely and therefore potentially misleadingly classified by the diagnosis of a ‘crisis of democracy’. Here, in his (Manow’s) book, the thesis was developed that we are not only not confronted with a crisis of democracy, but quite the opposite: with a democratization of democracy that is increasingly leading it out of its institutional and constitutional, and that also means out of its international containment.