Rise of the lumpen elite: is this really what we fought for? Maxim Kantor
The great battles waged on behalf of democracy in the 20th century have ended in crisis, proposes the painter and novelist Maxim Kantor. Shares in ‘democracy’ have crashed, while globalisation has led to the rise of a new super-rich lumpen elite which does not even notice that the world is on fire.
The Lumpen Elite: a selection of etchings
So what was the point of the Cold War? What was it trying to achieve? Are there perhaps several kinds of democracy? Does each nation have its own? Perhaps democracy goes through stages of development, where each new stage is quite unlike the preceding one? Today’s citizens have suddenly understood that democracy is merely a system of government with nothing ideal about it at all. Churchill’s much-quoted epigram “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time” is as accurate as Lenin’s mantra that “Marx’s doctrine is all powerful because it is true.” It’s not difficult to see that both statements are a kind of incantation. It was suddenly clear that the word ‘democracy’ is absolutely no cure-all remedy for totalitarianism and that democracy can contain grains of totalitarianism, and can be oppressive.
The Lumpen Elite: a selection of etchings
The 20th century drew to a close after a world war lasting 100 years to decide the best model for the future and the most effective method of crowd control. The options considered included war communism, a corporate state, the Soviet model of centralised democracy, national socialism, an open society directly linked to a market economy, a federal and confederate state etc. The concepts of democracy and liberalism had lost any meaning as ideals of social development and become simply mechanical.
30 years ago the word democracy was synonymous with freedom. 70 years ago people went to their death for democracy, imagining that they were dying for freedom. But then they suddenly discovered that their enemies in the battle also described themselves as free and democratic. The majority of Soviet citizens were convinced that the USSR had democracy, but… there was democracy in the West too.
So what was the point of the Cold War? What was it trying to achieve? Are there perhaps several kinds of democracy? Does each nation have its own? Perhaps democracy goes through stages of development, where each new stage is quite unlike the preceding one? Today’s citizens have suddenly understood that democracy is merely a system of government with nothing ideal about it at all. Churchill’s much-quoted epigram “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms that have been tried from time to time” is as accurate as Lenin’s mantra that “Marx’s doctrine is all powerful because it is true.” It’s not difficult to see that both statements are a kind of incantation. It was suddenly clear that the word ‘democracy’ is absolutely no cure-all remedy for totalitarianism and that democracy can contain grains of totalitarianism, and can be oppressive.
