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).
This article continues in parts 2, 3 and 4.
Sources and notes:
(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 (http://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:
“In contrast to the ‘white terror’, which had more the characteristics of an old-style, authoritarian disciplinary policy or a desperate revenge, or in contrast to the ‘green’ (nationalist or peasant) terror, which oscillated between robbery, murder, rape and pogrom or ‘ethnic cleansing’, the ‘red terror’ was characterized by a coldness and arbitrariness that had methodological traits, as well as by the combination of social and political means and an almost unlimited willingness to increase it.” Kindle version, position 14798.
Bertram Burian, born in 1954, was a teacher and interim director at a new secondary school in Vienna. He completed a university degree in political education, worked as an inventor for many years and got to know Marxism as a late 68er in his youth. He says: “The question is not whether Karl Marx or Karl Popper was right – they were both right and wrong at the same time. In fact, it’s about the good life for everyone as part of an intact biosphere. That also means that we need a new economy and, above all, we have to aim for the good of the 99 percent.”