Oldal 122 [122]
120 | Tae PrıLosorry or Eco-PoLıtics
on the ¢ruth of the three statements ...) All three objections are valid,
by the way, they are linked. It is true that nowadays one has a chance
to attain a democratic mandate, i.e., the trust of the majority of voters,
only if one acquires control over the means of mass communication.
His/her truth will become the opinion of the majority; they can even
determine the topics on which the majority should have opinions in
the first place. It is a cliché, but could nevertheless be true that in
media-saturated mass societies the citizens have no firm political
preferences. In contrast to previous periods, today people have to take
a position on such complex issues requiring specialised knowledge that
they have no time, knowledge or ambition to navigate them. They settle
for making their own one of the competing parties’ opinions without
being able to check their accuracy. Perhaps this is exactly the reason
why party preferences are surprisingly stable, while voters, according
to the opinion polls, do not trust the parties to which they might
happen to be clinging obstinately. Decisions are not even made in
Parliament anymore, but are rather based on the work of specialised
apparatuses, behind closed doors, via the deals of influential
businesspeople and party leaders.
‘The problem is not new. The classic Greek thinkers viewed the limits
of democracy similarly. Aristotle, who faced the failure of ancient
democracy in the court of a (possibly) enlightened autocrat — and who
possessed the most practical common sense among his colleagues
anyway — considers the participation of citizens in the rule of the city
state indispensable. He does, however, tie it to three conditions. First,
there cannot be too many of them. Meaningful dialogue, and perhaps
agreement, is possible only where the everyday experience of coexistence
and interdependence creates a strong bond, Secondly, they should be
neither too poor, nor too rich. The overly rich can deceive or bribe the
overly poor at any time. Democracy was invented for the middle classes,
for people who possess some measure of intellectual and material
independence. Thirdly, they should know whomever they elect to any
post. The observations of the Greek sage are made extremely timely
exactly by their seeming untimeliness. What can we do with them, one
can ask, in a mass society where tens and hundreds of millions have to
be governed? Where the middle classes have been destroyed by economic
globalism and deprived of their influence by political centralisation?
Where they vote for candidates whose fictitious personality the media
builds up, then destroys with the aid of character assassination, fake
news and falsified or stolen data?