Opinion
The Soapbox: Does democracy still work in a post-neoliberal world?
By Cesar Renero ’17
October 6, 2016
Tags opinion
2016 has been a trying year for democracy across the globe, challenging the Western world’s most common solution to mass organization. Referendums in Britain, Colombia and Hungary—where 98 percent voted to exclude refugees—demonstrate how people in these countries seem to be choosing undemocratic options. What is clear, however, is that they are anti-neoliberal. How will democracy prosper in an age where we must accept a new horizon of globalized trade and labour, along with their consequences?
Trying to reverse neoliberalism would be as useful as reversing Fordism in America and import-led substitution in Latin America. To say it’s a done deal does not mean the passage of time will stop as well. What we have learned from 2016 so far is that there is a rapidly growing percentage of people in Western countries who are strongly challenging the status quo. Neoliberalism has changed trade relations between countries and labour relations between individuals and their societies. As a result, the framework of democracy has been affected.
Now that trade has been globalized, responsibilities for the function of trade are everyone’s burden. The beneficial effects of free trade are clear, but we must recognize the drawbacks as well, such as crime organizations spanning nations, immigrants crossing continents and refugees seeking to protect the lives of their families. More complex effects like brain drain, exported profits and tax evasion further stress the need for international cooperation. Because of their variegated origins, these problems are hard to assign to individual nations. Governments solve similar problems inside their borders through taxation; thus, we should globalize taxation to mitigate the extreme and negative effects of globalized trade.
Following the world state analogy, we should look at the way countries themselves are dealing with the changed labour dynamic that has characterized neoliberal free trade. Going to a basic, legal definition, the state is one which outlines and enforces both the rules and obligations between agents, as well as the responsibilities concerning the state. Three basic types of actors, namely companies, individuals and the government, form the troika that determines these relationships. Assuming capital is a form of accumulated labour, we can centralize our conception and treat labour as the energy transferred between these actors. Thus, we divide the kind of phenomenons resulting from these transactions into three realms: the market, the workers and the state.
There will be a multitude of crossover between these concepts, such as how leaders will manage workers within markets, just like many will be employed by the gamut of bureaucracy. Nevertheless, we must also ensure the existence of effective regulators to administer the interactions between agents that act across markets and states. And yet, we all aspire for all these interchanges to be brokered over the anvil of democracy. We must then ensure that these basic actions are preserved for the continuation of democracy, so that this democracy can enhance their operation and improve the livelihood of people all over the world.
A Hamilton education, such as any kind of education, must increasingly deal with global issues and consider these parameters in the instruction it provides. In the U.S., this anti-neoliberal pace has already been set by Clinton and Trump, who are significantly less pro-trade than Obama. The American economy continues to be the leader, and American citizens will continue to provide key functions in society, including in the realms described previously. Neoliberalism has made many people angry, dissatisfied and thirsty for change—a pattern that started long ago but is now being held in varying degrees by the majority of the population. It isn’t that democracy is broken but that its function to communicate desires between the levels of society should be highlighted. Just like a market reacts to prices, the government should solve these disputes. Ultimately, the world should recognize that the Westphalian conception of the state might be coming to its close. What will follow?
Finally, I hope this article will serve as an open invitation for us to discuss this topic to a greater extent within our community. Through our strong publications, active clubs and thought-provoking lectures, we can view the world in a critical, multifaceted manner. If democracy is something we should actively try to protect, enhance and solidify, we should reckon the circumstances we are experiencing and try to do our fair share for our college, our nation and the world.