Democracy versus the People

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE UPCOMING CORPORATE WATCH ANALYSIS OF IRAQ’S SOCIAL AND POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION.

The occupying forces invaded Iraq with high ambitions. Their ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq attempted to build in Iraq, almost from scratch, a version of the liberal capitalism we know in the ‘West’. This ‘reconstruction’ is another example of capitalism’s insatiable need to expand and capture untapped markets and resources. Labelled the creation of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘peace’ it is, in fact, antithetical to the true meanings of these words.

The destruction and ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq constitutes a remarkable window onto the mechanics of the system of elite rule we live in, intensified to enable the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This is a window those with power have tried to obscure with concerted use of disinformation and doublespeak. But it is a window that can never be entirely obscured.

One of the fundamental mechanisms of that system is language. The words we are given to explain an event, and the narrative we are given to place the event in, determine how we understand the event, and therefore, how we respond to it. Words and narratives are therefore important weapons of the powerful, as destructive as their bombs and bullets, since physical force is not enough to secure power. Yet there is an inbuilt weakness in the use of language: if something has to be put into words, and expressed, it clearly is not something universally accepted. It reveals that there is an element of dispute in what is being expressed. The last bastion clung to by the occupiers to justify the invasion and occupation, after the discredited claim of WMDs, has been to claim they are ‘bringing democracy’ to Iraq. However, this veil of ‘bringing democracy’ aims to hide other powerful interests at work, as democracy - rule of the people by the people - cannot be imposed from above it has to be come from below. The ‘democracy’ masquerade grants ‘the West’ a moral responsibility to provide ‘assistance’ and ‘support’ to others, who are not sufficiently ‘enlightened’ or who ‘lack’ the requisite attributes to ‘develop’, ‘progress’ and ‘modernise’ along the ‘universal’ and ‘right’ track, already decided upon in advance. Any resistance displayed is then evidence of their inability to see the truth, or to see their ‘need’ for ‘assistance’, and in short, to see their inferiority. The white man’s burden is still with us; the natives still need civilising.

However, in a ‘post’-colonial world, there is no longer a moral justification for the supremacist belief that the ‘Arabs’ or ‘working classes’ are incapable of making their own decisions. Threatened by the struggles of various social movements, the powerful elites co-opt terms such as ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, and ‘justice’ and turn them into doublespeak. So we are asked to believe that Iraq needed to be destroyed to be saved, occupied to be liberated, and that democracy can be exported. The words ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ‘justice’ and ‘peace’ are persuasive and powerful. However they have been emptied of their content, and now serve as masks for elite power and control. This report is a small part of the attempt to reclaim, recapture and restore those words, and to expose how they are used to deceive and oppress.

Looking at the destruction and ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq exposes what the occupying powers meant by ‘democracy’. In Iraq the occupiers are attempting to build the societal structures and practices necessary to support and enable neoliberal reforms benefiting a transnational capitalist class. And they are building what has worked to defend their privilege and enhance their power in the past: neoliberal economic reforms, state power defended by liberal democracy, and mechanisms to gain consent from the public via manipulation of civil society, the media and other knowledge-producing institutions. These impose particular constraints on people’s actions, allowing for some freedoms, but always ensuring that the rule of the powerful is safe. Furthermore, the pretence of democracy is maintained, which in itself is a protection of power. There is ‘freedom’ for those who obey.

This report shows the building and hiding of these constraints in Iraq via three main pillars of elite rule.

First, the extension of corporate power through economic reforms which apply the rules of the market across all parts of society. This puts decisions in the hands of corporate elites beholden first and foremost to the demands of profit-making, and requires the majority to work in order to purchase their basic needs and wants.

Second, the establishment of the coercive powers of the state in order to provide an enabling environment for this unbridled corporate power by protecting the economic reforms and business interests through state institutions such as the government, the laws, the police, the army, the judiciary, the penal system, etc.

Third, the maintenance of both of these pillars is dependent on the management of potentially threatening elements further from the reach of either the market or the state, such as civil society, the media, and other knowledge-making institutions. These external parts cannot be suppressed without shattering the claim to democracy, so they must be managed. Too much force and the legitimacy of the use of force might be questioned and challenged. In managing these ‘independent’ forces, the attempt is made to make this ‘democracy’ appear natural, inevitable, and legitimate, as though it is ‘common-sense’. The use of the word ‘democracy’ is crucial to this attempt. Its discourse conflates freedom with economic freedom, protection with rule. In this way, consent to be ruled over is garnered, and resistance becomes hard even to imagine, let alone attempt. Who can disagree with democracy and freedom after all? This form of ‘democracy’ is designed to be built on more than physical force. It is also built on manipulating language and information, thoughts, and beliefs. In this way, the use of forces of constraint that negate democracy are disguised or legitimated, as part of the pretence of democracy and freedom.

What works so well for elites in the West is being exported around the world, and particularly at the moment in the Middle East. Yet this drive to expand is also a fundamental weakness. Capitalism is built on the internal logic of expansion: its requirement for more markets, more resources, more labour can never be satiated. That is the logic behind imperialism, behind globalisation, and behind the invasion of Iraq. While the justification is that ‘Iraq needs us’, in fact the elites needs Iraq, because they need more resources, more markets, more labour. And increasingly, force is required, as the only environments left for capitalist expansion are increasingly hostile, and increasingly resistant.

Iraq is a case in point. Unsuccessful attempts had been made since the 1990s to integrate Iraq more fully into the neoliberal global economy. Unlike the regime in Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein maintained state restrictions on corporate investment in Iraq and bucked the neoliberal trend. Even the sanctions imposed failed to make Saddam Hussein release his grip on the command economy. In fact, it is hard not to believe that the cruelty of the sanctions did not have the result of intensifying anti-Western and anti-neoliberal sentiment in Iraq. The attempted coups, backed by the CIA and MI6, also failed to depose Saddam. It seems that tougher measures were required to bring Iraq into line with the neoliberal regime. Saddam Hussein was also conveniently easy to demonise, in the simple narrative of good and evil. There would also be massive advantages in securing another US-UK corporate friendly satellite in the Middle East. This could provide strategically placed military bases, to add to the ones secured by the invasion of Afghanistan. It could also help combat the rising anti-US, and anti-Israel Arab nationalist movement. And of course, Iraq is the site of the world’s third largest oil reserves, providing fuel for the world economy, control of which is necessary to maintain strategic power within that economy. But the ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is about much more than oil. It is about the expansion of neoliberal economic policies around the world. This has required the ‘reconstruction’ of a whole new society in the mould of the system of liberal capitalist ‘democracy’ developed over centuries in the ‘West’.

For all these advantages for elite power, the restructuring of Iraq remains a venture which has over-stretched and weakened the occupiers and the transnational elites, and reveals the contradictions underpinning late-capitalism. It has required a military invasion and ongoing occupation, massive costs in terms of both money and political legitimacy, and an immense public disinformation campaign. In fact it has exposed the hollowness of liberal democracy in the ‘West’; for instance, by the avoidance of a vote on the decision to invade in all of the invading countries, by the degree of disinformation, and in particular by the intensification of ‘security’ controls in the domestic sphere. Fear has been invented, mobilised, and manipulated in the form of the ‘War on Terror’. Physical and psychological weapons have been deployed to defend the attempts to expand capitalism through military force. These intensifications have angered even those who believe in ‘our glorious democratic tradition’, since they inevitably entail a more blatant admission of racism and social control on the part of the occupying governments than the new ‘politically correct’ variant of cultural imperialist discourse generally allows for.

The War on Iraq has therefore also been fought in the ‘West’. Moreover, it has been fought with propaganda and business contracts as much as with bombs. It is a war over more than oil. It is a war that provides a window onto neo-imperialist capitalism, and onto its strengths and weaknesses. When Tony Blair says the war is fought for ‘the freedom, democracy and tolerance that are the hallmarks of our way of life’, he is in fact telling the truth.[1] The war on and occupation of Iraq, and the consequent intensification of capitalist democracy in the West are to defend our corporate-dominated ‘way of life’ and its very peculiar forms of ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’ and ‘tolerance’, and to impose this way of life, this mode of power, elsewhere. Just as the material space, power and resources are being fought over, so are the terms used to define, and therefore understand, these battles. ‘Freedom’ or oppression; ‘Democracy’ or elite rule; ‘Tolerance’ or racial supremacy? ‘Our way of life’ needs to be exposed for what it is and resisted, rather than defended and exported.

References [1] www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page3294.asp