Mercadeo electoral

En un país donde la imagen ética prima sobre la ideología, postular individuos es mucho más exitoso electoralmente que postular partidos. Es más facil encontrar un individuo que una institución con una imagen ética ejemplar. Al existir más individuos que instituciones, el resultado obedece a una simple lógica de selección. Adicionalmente la imagen institucional es especialmente vulnerable a ser el chivo expiatorio de sus miembros.

Ahora cada partido político busca su propia estrella, su David Beckham. Lo cual no es malo (gajes de una sociedad mediática), siempre y cuando el 'Beckham' sepa a que equipo pertenece y no al revés.

Communism and Democracy

The following is an hypothetical interview with a communist of the era of late capitalism. My aim was to show the contradictions between communism and democracy. The so called communist end up being a quiet nice guy but I guess he is just in campaign as any other politician.

- do you believe in democracy?

- yes.

- How can one attain democracy?

- by assuring the rights of the people to vote based on their own consciousness.

- And who do you expect to take responsibility for assuring democracy?

- The State.

- Why would the sate be interested in assuring democracy?

- Because its legitimacy (read existence) depends on the approval of the people.

- How would this approval be materialized?

-Through the vote.

- Isn't the vote made to change government instead of State?

- if you put it that way, then I mean by people's revolutions.

- So what you say is that whenever the people feel the State is failing to assure democracy, the only way to put pressure on the State is through revolution or the thread of one?

- yes.

- Wouldn't this led to a cycle of revolutions, given the natural tendency of the State to oppose to democracy in the absence of external pressures?

- your claim about the 'natural tendency' is questionable.

- A key element for democracy is the existence of different political options, different parties with diverging ideologies. According to historical materialism, there is a closed relation between ideology and production. Under communism, production is coordinated by a centralized system. How could you envisage diverging ideologies or ideological ruptures under such scheme?

- There would be none.

- But, what about the key elements of democracy?

- Once the communist system achieves a mature stage, there will only be one ideology: that of communism, therefore there would be no need for democracy anymore.

- So what you say, basically is that democracy for communism, is just a transient state?

- yes.

- You talk about 'mature stage of communism'. In order to get there you would need to have an increasing order of electoral victories. The precondition for that would be an increasing number of people joining a communist ideology. How can you achieve that without achieving already a mature stage of communism?

- Every time we win elections our administration will persuade more people to our cause.

- In other words -correct me if I am wrong-, you believe the time-power gap to gain the sympathy of people to communism is covered by democratic time-power concessions and this sympathy will be cumulative in history even with the thread of counter-reforms performed by other party's administrations?

- yes, we bet on that. This is a qualitative change with former communist movements, we think is important for the people to realize by themselves the benefits of the communist system and at the same time is important for us to gradually adjust and amend mistakes from previous formulations.

- what if something goes wrong after you have abolish democracy?

- The people will always have democracy as long as there is dissent. Only in the moment when people don't feel the need for democracy because they have realized the benefits of the system, is when democratic vote will become redundant and therefore useless.

- How can you know whether there will be no further dissents after abolishing democracy?

- We will hear the people.

- How can you assure the State will care to hear the people if they no longer constitute a political thread?

- As I said, there will be democracy as long as there is dissent.

- But suppose there is consensus and then some dissidence appears, what are the mechanisms to let that dissent become a relevant auto-criticism to the system?

- It is very easy to surround an ideology through rhetoric. If we would care so much about the absolute consistency of our ideologies there would be no ideology at all. It is history who has the last word when it comes to the suitability of ideologies.

- can I make more questions?

- ok, go on.

- Every defense of ideology to some extent relies on the history to legitimate itself. For some reason, often, in the history to come. Do you think we will have enough time as a specie to explore all possibilities of history to realize what is the best ideology? shouldn't we start building a simulated approach to history -that of rhetoric as you say- to save lives and efforts?

- 'simulated approaches' as you call them could be misleading.

- What about a balance between the two?

- I agree on that. Still we would have some troubles calibrating the balance, don't you think?

- I agree. Thanks for the interview.