Democracy, political domination and social emancipation

Abstract

The reduction of democracy to a simple set of institutions has been instrumental in its reconciliation with capitalist society, allowing the masking of domination relations, although it opened loopholes for the expression of interests of the dominated. On the left, the denunciation of the limitations of representative democracy gradually gave way to an uncritical acceptance of its institutionality. Therefore, at present, when even the most limited electoral democracy becomes uncomfortable for the ruling class (the so-called «de-democratization»), the left seems constrained to be its guardian. In order for democracy to recover its position as the vector of a transformative project, it is necessary to seek a different path, deepening the critique of the limits of liberal representative democracy and reaffirming an expanded concept of democracy that goes beyond a political sphere disassociated from the lived world.

Democracy; Liberal Representative Democracy; Left; De-democratization; Social Domination.