Power and Wealth in a Sick Democracy

Is there a basic condition for a democracy to be real ,  and not simply a tale hiding a totally different situation?  It is possible to maintain that such a condition is a certain level of equality  among citizens. The three basic conditions dictated by the  French Revolution  put “ègalité”  immediately after “liberté”  and  before “fraternité”,the latter beeing the feeling  towards other citizens giving them   a state if not of parity , at least  not of a gigantic difference.

The distribution of wealth – should I say maldistribution- in modern countries, and especially in the USA, is well known. The difference is so large that the riche, the so-so and the poor, live each of them in a completely different world.
The problem lies in the fact that the  gap in wealth produces a gap in power, as the rich use their wealth in  order to defend  and increase the difference  between themselves and the others.

The power of the instruments  used to influence the poor, or semi poor,  has been well proven by the last  US elections,  in which the orientation of the poor has been wrenched out of their hope  of economic and social improvement, and directed against the “Government” , seen as an “oppressor” of every citizen, rich or poor. A completely new extremist movement has been created from scratch in a handful of months, and used to defend, among  other things,  the fiscal exemption  for the wealthy.  Today , the rich control  a persuasion machine    which is all pervading, and is not countered, or not even  compensated by  any other instrument.

The history of democracy in the US got a strong development with the creation of the Trade Unions, which were able to create, perhaps not always, but often, a countervailing power against the all-pervading authority of the rich. At that time the difference in the level of wealth between the rich and the poor was in no way as deep as it is now. However, the real countervailing power of the Trade Unions has now been reduced to very little, as the Unions represent now only a small part of the workers, not enough today to have a definite and stable counterinfluence on the voters.

Today, the rich vote for themselves, and the poor either don’t vote, or their vote can be either neutralised or manipulated, and eventually almost coerced, by the campaign of the media.  The media are owned by the rich, and serve the rich people’s interests. In this situation, is it still possible to define “democratic” a society? Every citizen has a vote, but a small part of the citizens can use their wealth, and their connections, to influence the voters, and they can do it in the name of  the democratic regime  that they themselves do not consider  really in their interest. Their enemy is the State, that must be contained and constrained in order to allow the rich to become richer, and more powerful. The State is, for each its very nature, compelled  to consider, at least in principle,  the citizens as all equal one to another, and that can be used to defend  the poor.

The State, and the services that it would offer  to every citizen, the so called public services,   must be attacked, because such services  have the effect to make the poor less poor, and therefore more able to think with his own head.  Such services create a practice of equality that is not acceptable to the rich. So, such services must be accused of inefficiency, and privatized, that is, given to the citizens according to their wealth, and not to their nature of citizens. Privatizing the University, for example, means to make the students pay, which guarantees that there will be space for the scions of the “good families, and fewer upstarts from poor families stealing good jobs and getting insolent. The attack of the rich is of course done in the name of freedom, the freedom that is used by the rich to constrain the poor in their environment, and even to make them descend to the conditions of serfs.