the confusion surrounding democracy.

much may be written about the various meanings of the word democracy. it seems to me this term functions in at least three different semantic fields.

1. democracy as a state form. here, democracy means "rule by the people", and is contrasted to "monarchy", "aristocracy", "oligarchy" and "meritocracy" (there may be more). interestingly, these alternatives are not considered viable these days - the general acceptance of democracy as the best form is even implied by the semantic peculiarity of the word. (the literal english translation of the japanese word for democracy would be "democratism" - and whereas -isms imply the choice between a variety of doctrines, -y's lack this explicit plurality). this normative universality stands at the basis of the second register in which the term operates.

(it needs to be noted that we are not living in a democracy according to the original definition of this state form, in which there was no need for representation. as soon as the inhabitants don't fit into a single room, it is inevitable to turn democracy into representative democracy. we might be living in a representative democracy - although the democratic nature of our current society is severely compromised by the problems surrounding democracy in the third sense of the term.)

2. democracy as a signifier without a signified - a purely rhetorical invocation used to justify mostly foreign policy. when the united states attacked iraq, one of the justifications for this war was the perceived need to introduce democracy into this area. without relapsing into the often heard (but therefore not less truthful) states-bashing, it seems safe to say the term democracy in this particular public discourse did not cover any content - it seems overall much more logical to place this war in the long tradition of economically motivated and US-supported coup d'etats in south america, in which perfectly valid democracies were replaced by military dictatorships.

3. the third meaning is, for me, currently the most interesting one. here, democracy is the movement or tendency that is diametrically opposed to privatization. when the state, for instance, renounces the minimum wage levels, leaving wages to the market, it reduces the sphere of its influence, thereby effectively compromizing the importance of the state form democracy (and reducing the influence of individual voters). clearly, the tendency to privatize compromises the people's power, and increases the power of an oligarchy that operates beside the official democracy, and is of a particular importance on a global level, because there is no global democracy to counter its movement (laws are national, not transnational - so powerful nations may take protectionist measures on their foreign market, while enforcing a laissez-faire liberalism on subaltern states). but on the national level too, a state that leaves all decisions to the market ought not to call itself democracy. if the state form democracy needs to be of any value, the public domain must constantly be wrought from the corporation's hands.

the interplay of these three domains, and the possible existence of even more meanings of the word democracy (such as the meaning propagated when one speaks of the "democracy" of language - the free floating nature of the written word (what jacques ranciere calls literarity)) might be something i'd like to write more about in the near future.