DEMOCRACY IN THE PAST AND NOW

SUMMARY

This text is about democracy as a practice in the past and present. Certain conclusions also arise from this practice. Throughout history, rulers have portrayed their power as God-given or claimed that it stems from the will of the ruling elite. From the point of view of the people, power came from above. All rulers claimed to rule in the interests of their subjects and the people. None of them ever claimed to rule against the interests of the people. At the end of the 18th century, people in Europe began to preach on the streets of French cities that power comes from below and that the simple majority should decide who would rule and for how long. After World War II, the liberal principle prevailed and this doctrine underwent a metamorphosis. Now citizens, individuals and minorities are opposed to the will of the majority and the state. This change can only be understood if we take into account the fact that in Western European societies a minority of large capitalists’ rule. The Romans long ago understood that it was easiest to rule when subjects were divided into multiple centers of power (parties) – divide et impera.

INTRODUCTION

When it comes to recent and distant history, there is no place for any political moralizing. Contemporary political moralizing can only distort the true picture of social reality. It can be imagined as political activism, but then that has nothing to do with the scientific approach. When it comes to democracy, the scientific approach can offer a picture that we personally do not like. Someone who has formed their worldview on democracy in liberal-egalitarian coordinates will certainly not be satisfied with this presentation. In that case, the reader has two options: the first is to reject the text without reading it, and the second is to gather some intellectual strength and analyze the stated argumentation. Those who think that the world can change and that historical movement has a goal will be disappointed after reading it.
Every era has its political catchphrases that are repeated to the point of exhaustion. These are actually ideological premises that should be unquestionable and that provide a politician or intellectual with security that no one can dispute. In communist Yugoslavia, these were “socialism” and “workers’ self-management”. When it became obvious that social reality did not fit into the above concepts, then the ready-made phrase that “self-government and socialism have not taken root enough” followed, a good idea, but it is not being implemented. Since the 20th century, the word “democracy” has become dominant. Even before that, since the end of the 18th century, it has been a powerful political tool for all politicians in the struggle for power. So, who can say that it is against the will of the people? Problems with this concept arose immediately after the French bourgeois revolution of 1789. when it was necessary to move from theoretical assumptions to implementation. In the past, rulers claimed that their power came from God, but they always claimed that they ruled justly and in the interests of the classes and the people. We all know that Rome was an aristocratic state, but the Roman aristocrats tried to have the words “the Roman people” – SPQR – inscribed in prominent places in the city next to the Senate.¹ Ancient intellectuals had an extremely repulsive attitude towards democracy. They associated democracy with the rule of the lowest elements in society. They set up a dichotomy between aristocracy and democracy. As a rule, their choice was the rule of the elite, the best, the aristocracy. Horace was very clear when he wrote: “I hate and despise the mob.”² Today, the Latin word for people – vulgus, common people, the crowd – has disappeared from the dictionary. Nietzsche is the last great European philosopher who dared to think about society in an aristocratic way in the 19th century.³ When he writes about the French bourgeois revolution, he regretfully notes that on that occasion the last noble order in Europe collapsed before the onslaught of a vengeful mob. With typical pathos, he describes hierarchical organizations, the Jesuit order and the Prussian officer corps as: “a work of art without an artist.” From the beginning, Christianity took the position that all people are equal by birth before God. This was the complete opposite of the ancient ideal. But when Christians began to create their supranational church state, they accepted the aristocratic principle of organization.
The Catholic Church, as a state, became an electoral monarchy. In this monarchy, elections are held only once, when the monarch (the pope) dies. The pope is not elected by all the clergy or the faithful, but by the church aristocracy (cardinals), who in turn appoint popes. The difference between this church state and secular states is that it did not allow a hereditary aristocracy, but always filled its ranks with fresh cadres from the people. In this way, they avoided the inevitable degenerative processes that were common in secular aristocratic states.

RULE OF THE PEOPLE

It was a long time since Horace until politicians appeared on the streets of Paris in 1789 proclaiming a new political religion. Contrary to the aristocratic principle, they claimed that power came from the people. They hastily created a new Pantheon, which had a great understanding of the rule of the people. The new deities were Equality, Justice and Reason, and there were also new martyrs.

    The revolutionaries chose a beautiful fellow citizen to represent the new deity of Reason in person.

DEMOCRACY IN THE XX. CENTURY

At the beginning of the 20th century, three political movements rejected the principles of parliamentary democracy: Bolshevism, Italian fascism and German National Socialism. According to Marx and Lenin, the working class must be led by an organized political party – the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks, who were a small political group in Russia, immediately dealt with the Russian parliament (Duma) by dissolving it in 1917 and introducing a one-party system. The Bolsheviks became the new ruling elite. This party elite was strictly hierarchically organized, and the authority of the leadership was extremely high. The Bolsheviks were, thanks to this organization of power and fanaticism, invincible in the fight against internal and external opponents. They collapsed only when they stopped believing in their political project and when it became clear to younger politicians that life was going in a different direction. The Bolsheviks, as the ruling elite, rejected the hereditary right of birth and this was their strength. They claimed for themselves that workers and peasants could come to power only by force, that is, through civil war. They did not wait for the majority in elections to give them the opportunity and looked with contempt at the bourgeois parliamentary system. Their worldview was based on the teachings of Karl Marx. Scientific socialism became a new political religion and the Bolsheviks were firmly convinced that they were the implementers of the historical process that was moving towards communism as a goal.

The fascists were creating a society that would not be based on liberal parliamentarism, but on the authority of the leader (Duce) and the state. Parliamentarianism was replaced by a corporatist political system, which was supposed to solve problems between employers and employees.⁴   The second Yugoslavia was also a one-party state. The ruling communists liked to experiment politically and be original in a socialist environment, so they introduced employee representatives into the representative bodies as a separate house (Council of Joint Labor). It is somewhat reminiscent of the Italian concept.

The German National Socialists were firmly against a parliamentary political system where the majority decides. In contrast to him, they emphasize the principle of the leader (Führerprinzip) and authority according to the model of the German army.⁵ They did not envision a ruling elite with hereditary rights, but instead provided access to targets from all parts of the nation. Thanks to this, as well as original and quick solutions in overcoming the economic crisis, they managed to win over a large part of the people.⁶ Since that regime ruled for a short time in peacetime conditions, it is difficult to assess what the development would be in the long run. Both movements have similar anti-liberal starting points, but they did not come to power through a revolution. In simple terms, we can say that they create a “national” socialism as opposed to the “international” socialism built by the Bolsheviks in the USSR. Interestingly, Hitler, after consultation, personally made all important decisions, and later asked the people to vote on them in a referendum. When it comes to majority rule (democracy), everything is clear in the above cases. Things become more complicated in the example of parliamentary Western systems.

DEMOCRACY AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

After the Second World War, democracy in the West experienced a metamorphosis. Now it is no longer the simple rule of the majority, but national and racial minorities for whom this principle does not apply. In addition, human rights have become the new political religion. It is interesting that the collective rights of the majority nations are not in the foreground, but only the collective rights of the minority.

REFERENDUM

In the liberal political environment, the referendum became undesirable and the example of Charles de Gaulle was quickly forgotten. In 1969, this great French statesman made it possible for the people to express their opinion on his proposal for the reorganization of the government. When he did not get support, he resigned. The idea of a referendum is based on the basic premise of democracy, which is the rule of the majority. Today, the majority has become a hindrance in the implementation of the will of the minority.
The manner in which the European Union was formed also shows this nicely. There were attempts to put such an important issue to the people’s decision, but it immediately became clear that it is much easier to solve it in a small circle of politicians. In Germany, democracy is so advanced that their Constitution does not provide for a referendum, and it was much easier to abolish the mark as a national currency there. It is now clear to everyone that the original goal was not just to create a monetary union, but also a United States of Europe (USE).⁷
In Croatia there is an institution of referendum, but its implementation does not suit political parties at all and they do everything to make it impossible. Some say that the people have already indirectly elected the government in the elections for the Parliament, so there is no need for voting anymore. A very interesting version of democracy in which for the liquidation of the national currency, it is not necessary to ask the people. Likewise, the people should not decide on family issues and the electoral system. The people can vote once every four years in the elections for the Parliament, and then they should take a break from politics. A responsible government should not be afraid of a referendum, it should have clearly stated that it wants to abolish the national currency and then put that decision to a vote.⁸ The major parties are frantically trying to prevent any attempt at a referendum. This is where a parapolitical body called the Constitutional Court comes to the rescue. This institution performs an excellent role as a political service when it is necessary to prevent a referendum in order to save the people from an unwanted vote, and on the other hand, it is always convenient for the government to transfer the decision to the Constitutional Court in order to avoid individual responsibility.

Human rights and UN charters also come in handy as an excuse to prevent a referendum. Who still remembers the provisions of the Constitution that explicitly state that power comes from the people? And not only do liberals see a referendum as an unnecessary hassle that can complicate the implementation of policy from above, but they have also become unwelcome for all politicians who talk a lot about national interests. It should be known that international capitalism is a greater enemy of nation states than international socialism once was. For this purpose, a new political buzzword, “populism,” has been created. No one knows exactly what it means, but it sounds so beautiful and its beauty is that it can mean all sorts of things, something similar to the political misuse of the legal term “Disturbance of public order and peace” in Croatia. It seems to be a substitute for the word “demagoguery”, as cheap pandering to the electorate and making false promises. The question now is who are those who make false promises, who are the true interpreters of the will of the people and who is the supreme authority that judges in this case? It is true that populists can be ordinary demagogues, but they still address the people at a time when demos is officially a measure of political will. The real question is who is the supreme authority to politicians who use this word in a negative sense? It is certainly not the people, but someone above the people. If we set political values in this way, then it is certain that the classic understanding of democracy as the rule of the majority has long since become obsolete. As usual, the answers are simple: The ruling capitalist elite is not comfortable with public enthronement, because in that case they should also bear responsibility. In addition, they should go to the polls, and that does not suit them at all.

POLITICAL DECISION-MAKING BASED ON UNIVERSAL VOTING RIGHTS

In Croatia, we have a good example of how parliamentary democracy works on the principle of one man, one vote. Since the people as a whole cannot decide on current politics, citizens elect the Parliament as their representative body. From that moment on, elected representatives cannot be recalled by the electorate, and they often use their status in political commerce for personal gain. When one of the Croatian politicians was warned that he might lose his majority in the city council, he reassured journalists by claiming that, if that happened to him, he would easily find new representatives on the political market. It is fortunate that the politician in question was, above all, an entrepreneur and had no need to be dishonest. This is the reality of our political system.
It is interesting that majority decision-making does not work anywhere except in general elections for politicians. In the army, science, state administration, the business world, or the family, no one would think of deciding by majority vote. If citizens were offered the opportunity to choose the composition of the national football team and the head coach themselves, most would accept it. Later, the question of who is responsible for the failures would come up: the voters or the coach who imposed the players on them. In this case, the voters as a collective cannot be held responsible. Criminal law and political practice do not recognize collective responsibility. The coach can only be held responsible if he has a free hand in composing the national team.
The political team in our country is composed by the Prime Minister. When it comes to the order of candidates on the party list for the Parliament and the composition of the Government after the elections, the Prime Minister holds the personnel strings firmly in his hands. And when it comes to responsibility for the work of the Government, everything becomes unclear. Every time the Prime Minister is surprised when a scandal occurs, the usual phrase is “let the institutions do their job”, and we will observe all this from the sidelines until the scandal is forgotten or in the meantime it is pushed into the background by new surprises. It should be emphasized that these institutions were not invited to determine the composition of the Government, only the Prime Minister. It is extremely unfair when the Prime Minister does not accept political responsibility for the poor choice of a minister, but feigns surprise when the media and the police uncover corruption. It is all a bit comical. It seems as if the mischief occurred among the ministers of another government, and not within his own ranks. But that is not the end of the matter, the Prime Minister must obtain the consent of the parliamentary majority for each new minister. So, who is now responsible if the minister in question ends up in pre-trial detention? We need to know what is political and what is criminal responsibility. Politicians cannot escape responsibility when something negative happens, and at the same time be proud of their successes. Irresponsibility has become so great that our parliamentary system has become a political caricature.
This picture is completed by the constitutional provision that the people directly elect the president of the state, who has no authority, and the prime minister is elected by the parliament, which has almost all authority. Our Constitution stipulates that the presidents of state and government co-create/co-sign certain political decisions. So, who is then responsible for not making decisions or making bad decisions? There cannot be two ministers of foreign affairs or two commanders-in-chief of the army. What would a businessman say if someone imposed on him the rule that he must always agree with someone before making a decision? The one who introduced the provision of co-signing and co-decision into the Constitution created a great political mess, and the representatives as a collective cannot be held responsible, and thus the great political circus of Croatian parliamentarism is closed.
Furthermore, it is unclear how the representatives can decide on matters that are clear only to the professionals? In practice, this comes down to instructions given by the party leadership, which are again the result of the opinion of one expert. This kind of political system in Croatia, which includes a low electoral threshold for entering the parliament, is ideal for political corruption and inefficiency in decision-making. If the long-term national interest prevailed, then the party leaders would have to agree in advance in writing what the basic elements of the new health system would be, regardless of the election results. Of course, there is no such consensus because that would mean losing votes, and the agony of the health system continues. If there were no political cowardice, all parties would have to agree in advance on the measures that need to be taken to decisively suppress the opiate trade and uncontrolled gambling. It is absurd that drug dealers threaten police officers who are overly zealous in their work. The former know that they can do so with impunity, while the latter are aware that they do not have the right support from politicians and the media. Let us just remember what happened to a brave politician who raised her voice against drug dealers on Korčula (Croatian island)
According to our Constitution, all citizens decide equally when voting. But members of national minorities can have more representatives in Parliament in relation to the number of voters than is the case with the majority people. This is in direct contradiction to the principle of one man, one vote. To make matters even more confusing, minorities elected in this way can fully decide on the confidence in the Government. Not only is this practice unconstitutional, but in the long run it is politically very harmful for these same minorities. All citizens, regardless of gender, are politically equal in rights. Nature has ensured that the number of men and women is approximately equal and at first glance everything is clear, but egalitarians are unhappy that women are not more represented in political life and are actively pressuring for this to change. Now the confusion is increasing, if there are no obstacles in society for the equal participation of women in political life, then it turns out that egalitarians themselves do not believe in their basic assumptions, and so it is necessary to impose their will on the majority in this way. Now is the opportunity for men to feel politically discriminated against and so on ad absurdum. Egalitarians are not at all interested in the biological and the resulting division of gender roles in society. They still have to solve a small thing such as equal roles in the birth of children between the sexes. For example, one child is born to a man and the other to a woman. In the first case, men would stay at home and women would go to war, thus correcting gender discrimination. The same practice would apply in the case of natural disasters, because all differences between the sexes are just a social construct. In the same time, they are also not interested in the rapid extinction of our society. It is no coincidence that one of the first decisions of the new Zagreb government after winning the 2022 elections was to abolish financial assistance to mothers with multiple children. The reasoning is that women should be financially independent of men and be in the labor market, which in practice means as far away from children as possible, etc.

THE CHINESE EXAMPLE

After coming to power in 1949, the Chinese communists went through all the stages of terror and egalitarian hysteria, similar to the one in the USSR. After the death of Mao Zedong, a group that rejected rigid communism prevailed in the leadership of the party.

They made a U-turn and allowed private initiative in the economy, but kept the one-party system, control over the banks and the macroeconomics of the state. This development of events is giving trouble to liberals, they don’t know how define this new political system. It is usually labeled as an authoritarian system, and that is correct. It should be added here that all political parties have, to a greater or lesser extent, their authoritarian leaders and small groups that support them. We cannot know whether it would have been better for China if, after Mao Zedong, they had established a multi-party system in which there would be more claimants to power? By all accounts, the Chinese Communist Party will remain written in their history as an integrative national organization. The Chinese have managed to transform the state from a political object into a political subject on the world stage.
In the former USSR, the opposite happened. There, the Communist Party lost power in the 1990s and that huge country embraced the principles of wild capitalism and liberal democracy overnight. They needed a long time to consolidate a multi-party political system and economy in what was left of the mighty red empire.
India is also a populous country. They gained independence at the same time as China, but the Indians copied the British multi-party parliamentary system. It is striking that India’s economic development much slower than the Chinese one. It can be concluded that the form of government over the people does not have to be bad or useful in itself. The best is the one that gives good results. The best is the one that gives good results. It happened that in the one-party Chinese system the economy progresses faster than in countries with liberal capitalism. And the Chinese communists also say they rule in the interest of the people. By all accounts, the people are happy with this system. Carl Schmitt correctly stated that a one-party system is not necessarily undemocratic, but it is always anti-liberal. It should also be added that a classical parliamentary system does not necessarily produce a government that is guided exclusively by the interests of the people (the demos).

The question arises whether the current political order in China is completely original? It should be recalled that in the first half of the 20th century, politicians came to power in Italy and Germany who formed a one-party system, introduced tight control over banks and the economy, but retained private initiative in entrepreneurship. This comparison may seem strange to many, but facts are facts.

***

Liberal democracy presents itself today as the best political solution. At first glance, this claim seems plausible. In practice, things look completely different. Parties and politicians navigate waters with strong currents. If there is one thing that all politicians understand well, it is the wind rose. It should be known that never in the history of European nations has been such a concentration of capital in the hands of a small number of people as today. Since democracy is a very expensive political game, big capitalists can easily control the political wind rose. The owners of the media, the entertainment industry of big banks and corporations are the only sovereign power in this case. The best confirmation that this is so is the media lynching of the American politician Trump. Big capitalists have become so self-confident that they were able to deny access to Twitter to a politician who was elected by the people as head of state. It should also be added that this country does not even have a state TV.
One of the most intelligent observers of political life, Carl Schmitt, correctly observed that liberalism and majority rule are quite different.⁹ Liberals do not put the will of the majority in the foreground, but the individual and his rights. After the Second World War, the democratic principle of the majority slowly took a back seat. Now minority rights have become God-given and unquestionable. And what’s more, homosexuals are forced into such protected minorities?
There are other illogicalities in parliamentary and liberal political life. All of them are firmly against the emphasized authority at the head of the state. A strong authority at the head of the state is a potential danger for the multi-party system and the individual. They mostly believe that he stifles freedom and democracy. On the other hand, parliamentary parties are organized and led by authoritative individuals who do not tolerate too many factions, and then there are accusations that the party leadership is undemocratic. All of this becomes understandable if we start from the assumption that the political struggle for power and supremacy operates on the same principles in all parts of society. The people have always been ruled by a minority and it cannot be otherwise. But never in the history of European nations has such a small number of people ruled. The modern aristocracy is actually a plutocracy. It does not occur to the new aristocrats to apply the principles of universal suffrage in decision-making or to allow pluralism of opinion. That is a story for liberal politicians. They have also created typical dynasties while opposing other dynasties. For the first time in the history of European nations, the supreme power does not like to be in the foreground, does not like the media and does not adorn itself with titles, nor does it like to emphasize its power. The plutocratic aristocracy likes to be in the background and manage a political show called liberal democracy. They do not mind at all that people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are highlighted in the media as the richest people in the world, even though this is not true. After all, who do they take loans from when they need to finance major business decisions? From whom do the governments of individual countries take loans? For example, the European Union planned to take out a loan amounting to hundreds of billions of euros to repair the damage caused by Covid, with the explanation that it will borrow on the international capital market. A common-sense question arises: how can the most developed countries of Europe, which produce a lot of goods and services, be indebted to private bankers who produce nothing but loans and interest?! In the end, no analyst when considering the principle of universal suffrage can avoid the fact that people are not born equal and that there are very pronounced physical, intellectual and character differences in individuals and genders.
Large shareholders in a company would only laugh if smaller co-owners proposed equality in decision-making. Every nation is one big shareholder society and the number of votes in elections should be adjusted according to how much the voter has contributed to the community.
A man who does not want to serve military service and one who fulfills this obligation cannot have the same weight in voting. Young men, who are more inclined to be voyeurs in a warm home, enjoying computer games and action movies on TV, contribute less to society and cannot have the same rights as other citizens. Thus, all men who refuse military service should be denied or made more difficult the right to perform public duties and work in the state administration.
The rights of citizens cannot be set in an egalitarian manner; the criterion must be the obligation to the community. How far the liberal principle can lead when it comes to fulfilling military service is best shown by the number of conscripts who refused to pick up a rifle during the first attempt at general military training after the liberation from Yugoslavia.
In addition to the above, there are also racial and religious differences within individual nations and states. If different collective interests are large, then parliamentary democracy has difficulty or does not function at all. Such was the example of the multinational second Yugoslavia. The same problem arises within a single nation. Thus, in Croatia today, a large part of the citizens perceive the state as an administrative concept, see themselves as citizens who, by a twist of fate, found themselves in Croatia, and consider the Yugoslav leader Tito to be a greater political authority than the founder of the state, Tuđman. It should be known that Tito was a determined Yugoslav nationalist and communist and as such an opponent of any independent Croatian state and parliamentary political life, It should be known that Tito was a determined Yugoslav nationalist and communist and as such an opponent of any independent Croatian state and parliamentary political life, and Tuđman was his general who turned politically against him and set himself the task of changing all that.

The capitalist aristocracy in the West systematically imposes a “multicultural” society, a mixture of different races and peoples. We are witnesses of tragicomic scenes where individual states invest large amounts of money in preserving the borders of other states, while at the same time leaving their own borders completely open to invasion by other nations that are rapidly gaining the right to vote in elections. This kind of society has become a model in the media. A multi-party political system with universal suffrage, modeled on European practice, is mechanically imposed on such a society. If a politician appears somewhere who is too independent, condemnation and political anathema immediately follow, he is authoritarian, dictator, undemocratic, and the like. From the point of view of the ruling elite, this attitude is understandable; it is easiest to rule people if they are divided into several political groups with universal suffrage, divide et impera. From the point of view of the majority people, the multicultural concept is, at the very least, an introduction to political instability. In the final analysis, it is the path to civil war.
There is no point in theorizing about these issues; the only guide is recent and distant political history. For example, the Anglo-Saxon political system has been quite stable so far where the Anglo-Saxons have dominated. Where they slowly cease to be dominant, things usually happen that go unnoticed by the media. One such “little thing” happened in Canada when the statues of the two British queens, Victoria and Elizabeth II, were found lying face down in the dust.¹⁰ Parliamentarism did not function in both Yugoslavias, and it still does not function in most of the world today. There is something morbid about this Eurodemocracy, and that is the desire to impose political recipes on the entire world. Peoples are racially and culturally different and they should form their political customs according to their own recipes that are based on their historical experience.

Citizens with criminal records of taking other people’s property cannot have the same weight at the ballot box as those who live off their work.
Parents who raise three or more healthy children should have more weight at the ballot box than those who do not have children.
Research shows that nature has not “democratically” distributed intelligence quotients (IQ) and it is a big question what part of the electorate has the intellectual capacity to correctly judge what is and what is not in the interests of the people. The intellectual representation of each nation is small in relation to the total number of citizens. It would be of general benefit if this elite had more weight in voting. If this is so, how can all votes have the same weight in the election of political representatives? In practice, the reverse process occurs, members of this (IQ) elite have less and less influence on political life because, as a rule, they have a much lower birth rate than most nations.
When we look at men and women as a multitude, a mass, and a crowd, their behavior is similar. However, the female half of society is much more driven by superficial emotions, and this can be detrimental to common interests. It is a political curiosity that in a well-ordered European society like Switzerland, women only gained the right to vote in 1969.
Today, it is common in Europe that citizens who turn 18 automatically gain the right to vote. The question is, does society benefit from this right? How can someone who has not yet started living independently make decisions on an equal footing with citizens who support their family?
Parliamentarism in Croatia has been functioning for long enough that we can compare its results. It is convenient to compare the results of elections for members of parliament, and then indirectly the government, and the results of elections for the national football team’s coach. In the first case, the incompetence and corruption are so obvious that they do not need to be explained in more detail. In the second case, there are achievements at a world level. The same applies to other sports. It is known that football clubs regularly change their coaches if they do not show results, and no one would think of appointing a coach who is not professional and who is not successful. Likewise, no coach would think of inviting mediocre players to the national team, only the best are considered. We can say that in the selection of athletes in Croatia, the ideal of ancient philosophers that the best should rule/play is realized. In contrast, members of parliament never have the need to step down from their duties. They are elected by the people and cannot be collectively or individually responsible during their term for the poor choice and work of the Prime Minister. What worries them most is how they will be positioned on the party list for the next elections and duties, and this ranking list is determined by the Prime Minister/party.
Advocates of liberal democracy can never answer the question of how their principles are not valid anywhere except in the case of the election of political representatives for the parliament or the head of state. Furthermore, the entire history of politics shows that the collective cannot govern responsibly, only the individual can. When it comes to parliamentary democracy, it should be clear to everyone that it is a struggle for power. Parliaments do not have the academic atmosphere of the ancient Greek academies, where discussions are respectful and the goal is to find the right solution. In parliament, parties have their own interests, and these individual interests do not necessarily coincide with the national interest. European parliamentary democracy is not a universal model for political behavior. In principle, each nation, depending on its racial composition and historical experience, shapes its own political system.
Considering all the above-mentioned shortcomings of the rule of the people according to universal suffrage, it should be said that such a political system does not prevent the creation of a good ruling elite. As peoples are different, so are the elites that are formed or imposed on them. In principle, if there were no other centers of power, it could be said that every people has the government it deserves.
In practice, it happens that the electorate and political life of European peoples are controlled and shaped in the long term by large capitalists, especially the owners of the media and entertainment industry. In such an environment, democracy based on universal suffrage and a multi-party system is most often a great illusion. There are many examples of this, but the owners of the media make sure that they are not discussed. If it happens that individual EU members take the sovereignty of the people and democracy seriously, then blackmails measured in billions of euros follow (Poland, Hungary).
It is comical to watch these large-scale blackmails being formally carried out by an anemic and fragile female figure from Brussels. If blackmail is happening over entire countries, how vulnerable are the leaders of small parties within individual countries?
All political parties need a lot of money, and they produce nothing. They are constantly under the threat of a carrot and stick, what if something goes wrong and the financial/media infusion is turned over to competitors in the fight for power. It is so difficult to be in opposition, while time is inevitably passing. And when the opportunity finally arises to seize power or a part of it, then there is always an excuse for political twists. From the opposition’s perspective, it would be reckless to refuse to participate in government because of some principles. A politician who has been thirsty for a long time does not have time to think much about who will quench his thirst for power, especially when his party competitor is ready to accept the dictates without thinking. It must be admitted that the life of a politician in a liberal democracy is not easy, but it is not any easier for intellectuals either. It is a real pleasure to watch and listen to contemporary political scientists and philosophers endlessly rant about democracy and human rights, while in the process bypassing this main shortcoming of contemporary political life in a wide circle. They all know that it is not very wise to problematize this because their scientific career, publication of works, and even public appearances will be in question. In that case, they could easily become politically incorrect weirdos banished from media paradise.

1. Senatus et Populusque Romanus [↩]
2. Quintus Horace Flaccus (65 – 8 BC), “Odi profanum vulgus et arceo”. [↩]
3. Friedrich Nietzsche (1884. – 1900.), German philosopher. [↩]
4. In 1934, 22 corporations were formed. These corporations have their starting point in trade union organizing and represented different interest groups in society. Since political parties were banned, the government had to solve current problems through them. [↩]
5. Since the 19th century, the Germans have been applying an interesting military doctrine, Auftragstaktik. Like other armies, it implied the authority of the superior, but it differed from others in that it allowed the subordinate a lot of freedom in carrying out the task. The subordinate was stimulated to show initiative and accept risk. In this way, the credit for success was clearly defined, but so was the responsibility for failure. Failure could be tolerated if the commander had a militarily acceptable intention. Inactivity and waiting could not be justified. The entire system of German military education and training was designed on this doctrine. For more information on this topic, see the text on this website: “Military Issues” – “German Secret Weapons”. [↩]
6. The German and Italian economic concept at one time was a third way between international capitalism and international Bolshevism, which was based on the abolition of private property. [↩]
7. The unification of two of the three German states activated the old fears of a too strong Germany, and that is why the process of that state being absorbed into the EU was accelerated. [↩]
8. When it comes to the referendum on EU accession in 2012, Croatia can serve as an example of how the people are manipulated. For this occasion, the Constitution was changed and it was no longer necessary for more than 50% of voters to participate in the referendum, so the vote had to “succeed”. The entire campaign for unconditional acceptance of all demands from Brussels was perfectly covered by the media. For example, when it came to liquidating the national currency, the advantages were emphasized, but no one was ever allowed to explain what the national currency was actually for and what harm its rejection would cause. The rejection of effective protection of state borders was similarly camouflaged. At the same time, legislators took care to increase the number of signatures in order to prevent future uncontrolled initiatives to launch a referendum. The aforementioned measures are not in the interest of any nation, but it should be emphasized that voters in parliamentary elections in Croatia regularly support politicians who have done a good job in renouncing national sovereignty. And while political parties wage a “merciless war” among themselves in the struggle for power, when it comes to renouncing sovereignty, there is harmony among them, true “brotherhood and unity”. They all use the same phrases about the European path, the European acquis, that it is a necessity and that others, who have not yet renounced national sovereignty, can only envy our success. All in all, no one can claim that if there is no democracy in Croatia, we have the democracy we deserve. [↩]
9. Carl Schmitt (1888 – 1985), German lawyer and political scientist. [↩]
10. Members of the indigenous/non-European population tore down monuments to two British queens on July 1, 2021. For the European part of the population, this date is marked as a holiday, Canada Day. The occasion was the discovery of mass graves of indigenous people near boarding schools where the British forcibly brought their children for literacy and inclusion in the new society of the colonizers. The media presented everything as genocide and no one thought to ask how many more of these children would have died from infectious diseases if they had remained living with their parents in far worse hygienic and health conditions. The BBC was pleased to report that the protest and demolition of the monument was largely peaceful!? [↩]