Managing Democracy, Managing Dissent

Argues that despite its inherently anti-democratic nature, global capitalism is dependent upon the manipulation of the concept of democracy in order to survive. Far from allowing open dissent, today’s ‘democracy’ limits popular participation, manipulates public opinion, and co-opts or represses political dissent in order to protect capitalism from the threat of real democracy. These twenty essays expose various mechanisms through which our opinions and actions are influenced, policed and repressed in the name of democracy; they alert us to the real agendas behind the empty democratic promises and arm us with the tools to resist co-option. The volume includes examinations of the corporate media, the entertainment industry, the use of celebrity activists as propaganda vehicles, the attempts to co-opt and neutralise NGOs and social movements, the demonisation and repression of unco-opted dissent, and the imperialist agendas behind so-called democracy promotion interventions. The aggregate result is a powerful illumination of how democracy is used to organise popular consent for the anti-democratic practices necessary to sustain capitalism. Such struggles over the meanings and rhetoric of democracy represent a key battleground in the struggle for a more just and equal world. Despite the disturbing picture described in these essays, the situation is far from hopeless, since the social order is dependent upon our believing its contradiction-filled myth of ‘democratic’ capitalism, a myth which, in these times of financial and ecological crisis, is becoming ever more difficult to sustain. By exploring some of the powerful, subtle and insidious forces and processes seemingly so adept at containing dissent, the volume shows that the consent capitalism requires to continue ultimately rests upon a house of cards.