Lisa Aubrey (
Citizen Activism Now: Beyond
Neo-Conservative Liberalism
In thinking about global citizen
activism now, my first reaction is that I am frustrated that genuine
participatory governance theories seem to be at a historic impasse. My
frustration is at its height as there seems little hope that the dispossessed
globally are gaining voice fast enough, even though the old liberal paradigms
of the 17th and 18th centuries, warmed up and spun anew after the end of the
Cold War, are losing credibility with deliberate speed among many in the world.
These resuscitated paradigms, which
we currently call neo-liberalism, are losing credibility because of their
arrogant and erroneous assumptions about how the world operates in linearity
from tradition to modernity; that all the world’s peoples want to follow the
path of progression and development of former Western empires; and that
different cultures of various people and places do not matter in the way they
govern themselves. The truth is that the
neo-liberal paradigm grounded in Western European history has never had
universal applicability even though neo-conservative Francis Fukuyama, its
major proponent at the end of the 20th century, argued with certainty that liberal democracy was the
“universal homogenous state” and the end of ideology as well as history.
Despite its inapplicability to most
polities in the world, liberal democracy continues to be hailed as the final
form of global human governance by international institutions (IFIs) and
states, even though Fukuyama himself is now questioning his own earlier
“wisdom.” Moreover, liberal democracy
has never been the popular choice of the majority of people in any country.
Only certain people initially allowed to participate in politics in the public
sphere had a say in the choice and crafting of the system of governance, such
as propertied white men who wrote and ratified the US constitution; a small
percentage of aristocratic men were allowed to negotiate with the King under a
feudal system for a shift toward a limited form of democracy in Britain, for
themselves; and only certain Greek property-owning men were allowed to
participate in city-states’ direct democracies! Excluded were Native Americans
made landless, Africans enslaved and transported as labor, all women, and white
men who did not meet property qualifications in the US until political activism
and war cracked a fissure in the political system; lesser men, women, and the
enslaved in Britain until social pressures widened the political space
overtime; and women, the enslaved, foreigners and aliens, and the majority of
men who did own sufficient property in Greece. All of these people had no
choice in creating the system that ultimately determined how they were
governed.
Liberal democracy has been imposed
on numerical majorities in different parts of the world at different times for
the past three centuries, without their consent: in the US, where ironically liberal democracy
has come to be lauded as “the model”; in former communist and socialist
countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War
in 1991; in Global South underdeveloped countries, especially in Africa, in
synchronous waves in the same years toward a parallel Afrostrokia; and, most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq
where the US has initiated wars of aggression and is responsible for the deaths
of thousands, which it now subsumes under the Global War on Terror, for the
purpose of establishing US political and
economic dominance in the Middle East where it attempts to systematically
eliminate all formidable rivals by any means necessary. US policy globally yells to all the world
that it has an inherent right to all the world’s resources, like Iraq’s oil,
and dares anyone to get in the way of its access—governments or citizens.
While many political elites in
Global South countries, and aspiring elites, scramble to figure how, in the US
sense, political parties work, how civil societies work, how the media and
judicial systems work, how elections work (or don’t), how to set up
their militaries and other state institutions in ways that will be get Western
approval and aid for “good behavior,” while screaming about their civil and
political “rights” and “freedoms” under new constitutional democracies, many of
us within these so-called established and sustained liberal democracy countries
shake our heads and laugh, albeit with
sadness, as we have lived majoritarism under liberal democratic principles and
practices manipulated by race, class, gender, ethnicity, age, and patriarchal
and corporate interests. We feel sorry
for the mimic men, and their impotence, dependence, and sometimes gullibility;
and for women who get caught in this patriarchal game of politics as well. We
join activist organizations that aim to end political and economic hegemony
over the Global South, and over poor and dispossessed populations in the Global
North.
The promise of the benefits of
liberal democracy—freedom, justice, equality, equal protection, choice,
compromise, voice, participation, vote—being tied inextricably to modern free
market capitalism (which is not free) has eluded and betrayed many
generations, just as the American dream has been a nightmare to a marked number
of Americans, yet liberal democracy continues to be propagated and exported across the world as the
liberation paradigm for all peoples—embrace it economically and it will “free”
you politically, especially those of you who once lived under communist rule. The
logic goes: the more economic freedom
you have, the more political freedom you will want and demand; the more you
produce and sell, the more say you will want in government about fiscal and
monetary policies; and the more say you have in the formulation of these
policies, the more money you will get to keep for yourself in profits to enrich
yourself and consume. As Fukuyama notes, with liberal democracy in the
political sphere, all of the world’s people will gain easier access to “VCRs
and stereos” in the economic sphere, and for this he thinks citizens of the
world should celebrate.
Are these the promises of liberal
democracy? Is pacification with material goods a satisfying substitute for
democratic practice? Current activism says a cautious no. Instead, activism now seems to say material
improvement in life circumstances is part, but participatory governance as an
end in and of itself is also important, with freedoms, rights, reciprocity, and
consent between state and society. Yet important questions abound: is there an
amount of material goods with which the average person can be bought? With what electricity, especially in the
rural areas in most parts of the world, will average folks run these VCRs and
stereos? In liberal democratic practice today, are consumption and consumerism
of the homo economicus replacing the demand for political, economic, and social
rights of homo sapiens?
Without knowing the definitive
answers to the above questions, what is certain is that “entrepreneurship” and
“finding the market niche” are fast becoming the mantras of the democratic
spirit in this day and age, and making profit as an individual, without a
thought toward extended kin, local community, the human family, ancestors, or
the environment is prevailing. Private
enterprise expansion is a base measure of liberal democratic success by liberal
democracy proponents. I doubt however
even the most Eurocentric of traditions would chant this mantra without wanting
to add on some caveats, for individuals, born into families and cultures, do
tend to care about the well-being of others, albeit in different degrees. All
is not a cold and calculating world, as theories about political and economic
rational choice behavior would suggest.
Some cultures, especially ones in Africa, maintain widespread
communitarian values where sharing in economic successes, as well as failures,
is expected. Rational behavior to these cultures is to share the spoils, even
ones gained on an individual basis from elected public office. These values
which uphold the commitment to the community remain in constant conflict with
liberal democracy’s focus on the individual in modern governance. Moreover,
these values generate activism against increases in taxes, against water
privatization and electricity privatization, against the increases in fuel
prices, against multinational exploitation of local communities, like Shell Oil
in Nigeria, and for external debt reduction. This activism that is generated in
Ghana is called “wahala.”
In spite of communitarianism and
group well-being remaining important values in many parts of the world,
countries that do not make a passing grade in transitioning to and
consolidating liberal democracy with the requisite focus on the “individual”
and on the development of domestic “capitalism” are said to be “stuck in
tradition” and not creating the middle classes nor the markets for liberal
democracy to work. Liberal democracy
proponents ask no questions as to what type of governance people want; instead
their primary concern is that individuals are not developing the tastes and
generating the financial resources to buy VCRs and stereos, hence they will
have no impact on democratizing governments. Most troubling is that these
criticisms do not only come from the Washington consensus—World Bank,
International Monetary Fund, and US Treasury, and other European institutions
promoting liberal democracy; sadly they also come from some of the political, economic, educated elites in
Global South countries who likewise demonize communitarianism and their own
Global South cultures. They argue that it is traditional institutions, that are
hierarchal, conservative, and based on kinship, that make it impossible for
liberal democracy to take hold. One wonders if these Global South elites are
Western-identified, and how they became so?
In whose realities do they live daily? Moreover, whose interests and
pockets do they have in mind? Perhaps capitalism has liberated them on an
individual level, and the majority of the world’s citizens do not count in
their worldview. They blame the victims of global inequalities for their
marginal conditions. Whether the world’s downtrodden are liberated or not does
not matter to them. The hope they see for activism today is in the development
of capitalism under the liberal democratic governance paradigm. As such, we
should also ask what type of activism they hope for, for not all activism is
necessarily progressive.
Despite the twinning of liberal
democracy and capitalism, there remains no proof that liberal democracy and
capitalism necessarily go hand-in-hand, or that liberal democracy coupled with
capitalism is an assured route toward harmonious living bringing about social
justice in a fair, peaceful, and stable environment. Even though capitalism and
liberal democracy can make no promises whatsoever for effective, efficient, or
good governance, we think little of alternative forms of governance. Fukuyama
tells us that alternative ideas are merely “strange thoughts” to people in
Burkina Faso and Albania.
More understandable than Fukuyama’s
comments are comments by people who do not know where to turn
ideologically. They are not convinced
that liberal democracy is liberating, and some even find themselves unfulfilled
and frustrated by liberal democracy’s outputs, so they ask, “Well, if not
liberal democracy, then what? They find
themselves without alternative suggestions, as their mode of thinking is
dichotomous, conditioned by the propaganda of the Cold War—making a false
analogy comparison of “democracy or communism,” as if communism could not ever
be democratic, not even in theory! Their
question also highlights a resignation of many in the world that “there are no
alternative paradigms of governance,” as well as no alternative ways of living,
and no alternative ways of citizen activism not generated by capitalist
development. To this, we must ask what has happened to the human imagination,
human innovation, and creativity of the human spirit?
Frustration has reached its
apex: We know that liberal democracy is
disempowering to us politically, economically, and culturally. What are we doing about it? Are we resigned
to let liberal democracy take us to the guillotine? We have lost confidence in
ourselves, and our ability to govern ourselves.
Activism today must restore our self-confidence, and our ability to
think broadly about what we can create in the world. Activism now demands that
we pull up stories from our archives of historical knowledge to give us
direction for action. We can do this as
activism is an ancient practice.
Beninois civil society, expatriate
in France and in-country in Benin, for example, pulled up a historical story
from its archives, as a way to force Mathieu Kerekou, Benin’s President first
from 1972 to 1991 to open the way for political and economic reforms. By calling Africa’s first National
Conference, Benin scheduled and held Africa’s first democratic elections after
the end of the Cold War. Beninois civil society called on its cultural
knowledge, shared with the French former colonialists, linked to King Louis XVI
for regime change, to redefine popular sovereignty and to renegotiate the
social contract. Beninois activists
succeeded in their mission and ushered in a change in government in Benin.
Activism today must take place in
our homes, neighborhoods, communities, schools, clubs and organizations,
churches, mosques, other places of worship, markets, universities, and on the
radio, internet, and other communication waves. Activism must as well be transnational
and cross-cultural. It must become not only something that we do, but more
fundamentally something that we are. It
must become as natural as breathing, as well as a continual process.
In pulling up our historical
archives we will see that past activist movements are important and instructive
for us in continuing activism today. The poor and dispossessed have been
critical in starting and pushing movements forward. Liberal democratic theory attempts to confuse
us by making us think that it is the capitalist and middle class that makes the
big difference. But look at Malcolm X,
Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Kwame Nkrumah, Dedan Kimathi,
Mahatma Gandhi, Julius Nyerere, and Nelson Mandela. Were they entrepreneurs who
found their niche in the capitalist machine and from that trajectory pushed for
change as the neo-conservatives tell us is the path toward political
activism? Is liberal democracy trying to
hoodwink us?
On a visit to the
Defining power in Dr. King’s way
demands that we make a revolutionary shift in the way we think about the world
and relationships between human beings and institutions. Power is not determined by the balance of
arms—conventional and nuclear, and not by “the ability of A to get B to do what
B otherwise might not do in the ordinary circumstance.” If we embrace Dr.
King’s definition of power, what a difference this would make in the
Perhaps, as activists, we should
stop looking for the way forward in leaders and saviors. Perhaps leaders will not save us, as
intellectuals will not save us either, as they have possibly been mislead and
mis-educated to mimic. Perhaps we need
to unlearn modern-day hierarchies, and remove ourselves for hierarchies, and
look deeper inside ourselves as average everyday world citizens for activism to
grow. We depend so much on leaders and
their pre-packaged directions that we forget to think for ourselves. We don’t think and don’t espouse what and how
we feel.
As for me, activism is simply a
part of who I am, while I try to remember each day the interconnectedness of
Power, Love, Justice, and those who came before me, giving me the optimism to
envision possibilities beyond liberal democracy and knowing that change will
come.