Post a response:
|
The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission by Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, Joji Watanuki REVIEW (MANY OTHER REVIEWS TOO): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1120175.The_Crisis_of_Democracy January 16, 2015 Everyone interested in understanding the origins of neo-liberalist ideology and the reemergence of authoritarian rule in the US today, MUST read this seminal analysis of what ruling-elites saw as a time of crisis that challenged the viability of their rule. In the early 1970's ruling class elites, centered around David Rockerfeller's Tri-lateral Commission, tasked three academics with analyzing what was perceived as the "crisis" of democracy--in the context of the seismic political shift contained in a worldwide cultural revolutionary tendencies among youth in the 1960's, which derailed their imperialist war in SE Asia, and threatened to topple the US government. A "crisis" (for them) indeed! The resulting analysis, The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies..., presented three possible alternatives for the ruling elites to select from. The core "governability" problem with "democracies" was framed as an excess of democracy; the people had too much to say about the decisions of the ruling-elites, including a much too free media, and were increasingly critical of ruling-elite agendas, thus democracies were becoming out of control and un-governable, as far as the ruling-elites were concerned. The alternatives defined by the academics were: 1. Do nothing, in which case the days of ruling-elite-control were numbered; 2. Liberalize, with ruling-elites standing aside to give the people more freedom and more political-economic control, ultimately allowing transfers of wealth from the haves to the have-nots (as the people were demanding), rather than increasing the concentration of wealth, which of course also threatened the prevailing political-economic control of the ruling elites (ie "the governability of democracies"); or 3. Clamp down on democratic institutions, beginning with the media, ultimately dissolving "democracies" in a gradual turn to outright corporate-state (fascist) control by the ruling-elite oligolopy, today know as the 0.001%. The analysis actually recommends the 3rd option as the best alternative for ruling-elite power, although, as a sort of head-fake, the academics recommended that a toned-down version of the 2nd option be implemented as a short term fix, appearing to yield to SOME of the people's demands (Remember Jimmy Carter?) as a strategic way to stave off the incipient people's revolution. Notably, this was a plan that Zbigniew Brzezinski (also a co-founder of the Trilateral Commission who became Carter's most influential national security adviser...) loved, explaining in 1974 that "...it is very easy to love humanity and hate your neighbor, but it does seem to me that much of our universal idealism is really a hedonistic escape from our real problems" referring to the un-governability of democracies... perhaps foreshadowing his role in creating the Pakistani-trained mujahideen network to counter the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, a network that post 9/11 became the Taliban which in 1997 allied with Osama bin Laden's al Qadea, just prior to 9/11. This book offers key insights to the ruling-elite agenda faced today in the US and should be on the reading list of anyone interested in building a united front movement for revolutionary social change. DOWNLOAD: The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission https://annas-archive.gd/search?index=&page=1&sort=&display=&q=The+Crisis+of+Democracy+Michel+Crozier+%2C++Samuel+P.+Huntington+%2C++Joji+Watanuki [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst] |