1

Muhammet Enes Dönmez

Ali Aslan

Political Theory

12.04.2020

A Pandemic

&

Some Thoughts on Western Democracy and Capitalism

I used to think of that Western democracies are on thin ice and that they will be damaged

by a little crisis soon. When Covid-19 virus spread from China to all world, even I didn’t expect

that Western countries would experience such a disorder, to be honest. However, European co-

untries confessed their despair1 2 and pragmatism3 4 one by one. Also the virus undermined all

macroeconomic system and global stock markets, moreover when you buy a barrel of crude oil,

sellers were ready to pay $40 together with oil. So with upcoming economic crisis, I expect that

shells of Western democracies and global capitalism will be broken, yet they will be renewed and

come out as getting stronger. I will evaluate pre-Covid-19 in three pillared arguments: First one is

relations between mass media, public opinion and citizens; second one is relations between burea-

ucracies, governments and governmentality; and third one is relation between state and capital.

In Untied States, only 6 corporations control 90% of the media, while this portion was

owned by 50 corporations in 1983. This six also own 70% of TV channels.5 Also almost all ma-

1Telegraph, “Italians over 80 'will be left to die'” 14.03.2020

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/03/14/italians-80-will-left-die-country-overwhelmed-coronavi-
rus/
2New York Times, “A Deluged System Leaves Some Elderly to Die” 25.03.2020
“https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/world/europe/Spain-coronavirus-nursing-homes.html"
3 MR-online, “Sweden’s flawed coronavirus battle plan hits the poor & elderly” 14.04.2020
"https://mronline.org/2020/04/14/swedens-flawed-coronavirus-battle-plan-hits-the-poor-elderly-resul-
ting-in-worst-death-count-among-nordic-countries/"
4The Guardian, “Thousands of people in the UK are dying from the cold, and fuel poverty…” 27.02.2020
“https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/27/dying-cold-europe-fuel-poverty-energy-
spending"
5BusinessInsider, “These 6 Corporations Control 90% Of The Media In America” 14.06.2012
"https://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6"
 2

instream French Press is owned by 40 billionaires.6 We can argue simply that all these billionaire

owners have personal ideologies and also economic and political interests or at least one of them

so nobody would claim that any mainstream media is objective, even for social media like

Twitter.7 So it is obvious that mass media is intensely used to create, distort and hide the truth.

Noam Chomsky, in his “Necessary Illusion” book, argues that if we think that our go-

vernments are more ethic than others then it means we are living “a comforting illusion world”. In

order to break this illusion, first, we should look evidences for what our governments do practi-

cally, not to what they say and second, we should apply ethic rules to our governments which we

apply others. He also has always concerned that political authorities which use propaganda to dis-

tort important issues from people so “preventing efficient of real democracy”.(Chomsky, 1989)

Similarly Jürgen Habermas criticises mass media since it provides “pseudo-public sphere

diverting ordinary people from taking political action and transforming sphere of public relations

to passive spectatorship rather than genuine public debate”.(Livingstone & Sonia, 1994) We can-

not say he is wrong, when we consider that people watch political discussions on TV from always

same participants and like watching show programs.

Habermas argues that, “The public sphere is a space where private individuals discuss pub-

lic matters, a space which mediates between society and the state.” So the public sphere has im-

portance on make the state accountable for its’ citizens in the process of creation critical public

opinion. (Habermas, 1989) Habermas also considers “the mass media as a medium of talk, of

communicative action and of potential consensus” and claims that, “today newspapers and maga-

zines, radio and television are the media of the public sphere.”(Habermas, 1984, p.49) However,

he has changed this argument later and criticises highly the mass media as pseudo-public sphere

since we have moved from a culture-debating to a culture-consuming public in his “Structural

Transformation of the Public Sphere”(Habermas, 1989, p.162)

6Resource Centre on Free Media in Europe, “French Press: Who Owns What” 01.12.2018
“https://www.rcmediafreedom.eu/Multimedia/Infographics/French-Press-Who-Owns-What"

7BBC News, "Coronavirus: Twitter bans incitement to attack 5G towers” 23.04.2020

"https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52395158"
 3

In addition to Habermas, public sphere has transformed probably more than he expected.

Because corporations and capital have increased its’ impact in public sphere from Second World

War until 1970s and today. Public sphere has become a kind of mixture with private sphere with

opening up thousands of shopping centres and commerce areas. Thus, after organised private inte-

rests have penetrated into public sphere, competition between individual interests have started to

be exhibited in public sphere.

So there has been neither a private-sphere nor public-sphere where people can talk, criti-

cise states and develop a common public opinion to improve democracy, anymore. Only sphere

left for people is a pseudo-public sphere which is dominated by illusions of mass media which are

owned by billionaires who have personal interests and agendas on politics and economy. People

can just watch and follow news and knowledges which are softened specially for them. Only thing

that they can do in order to break the illusion is to reject the illusion given and pursue the truth in

beyond the illusion as Chomsky suggested.

My second argument is the transformation of understanding of governance, bureaucracies

and how these transformed citizens. I find very interesting and appropriate to today’s world that

Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity and Michel Foucault ’s understanding authority and go-

vernment. Bauman argues that we have moved from Solid Modernity to Liquid Modernity. In

Liquid Modernity, identities become more blurred and unsharp also ideas have become more

transitive because of its’ liquidity.(Bauman, 2000) I think this ‘liquid’ understanding of modernity

allows Foucault to develop his ideas on that, ‘discourses’ are the government.

Foucault observes types of governances from the middle age’s monarchies to nation states.

In this process concept “ruling/dominating” has transformed into “governing”. Because while

King were focusing on ‘ruling of a specific land’; rulers such as Machiavelli’s Prince have focused

on ‘governance of people and things on the land’. So ‘govern-mentality’ which he has conceptuali-

sed are taught to people by not applying force on them rather by making them feel that they are

‘governed’. Because for him, government is not ‘something’ rather it refers a relations between

those who govern and those who are governed. This teaching process is also ‘liquid’ as Bauman
 4

argues because people join to a system of government relations which regulates behaviours of

members of a society processing in many different levels. He names these systems as “discourses”.

(Foucault, 1991, p.102) Foucault also rejects the idea that knowledge/knowing is power/govern-

ment. However, while he accepts that knowing creates power/government, on the other hand it is

created by the government. For him government is shaped by Will to Knowledge instead of Ni-

etzsche’s Will to Power. Because ‘knowing’ and ‘discourses’ have penetrating and pervasive nature

rather than mere ‘power’ and this penetrates into every level of government relations in teacher-

student, father-kid and doctor-patient. He calls it as “power of discourse”.(Foucault, 2008)

Max Weber’s ‘Iron Cage’ of the rationality is similar to Foucault’s ‘govern-mentality’ in

some aspects with its’ nature and consequences. Because Weber’s bureaucracy as a product of the

rationalisation has also expanded in every part of the life today. A strict and normative society

does not tend only to restrict individuals also tend to dehumanise them. Because individuals’ soci-

al actions do not ground on traditional values of family and society or on religious beliefs, rather

on productivity and achieving to specific interests.(Weber, 1978, Ch.4)

Since purpose of rationalisation is to increase productivity of works, desires of individuals

serve to purposes of bureaucratic organisations then this destroys the individuality. In spite of the

fact that people became more dependent to each others with specialisations, individuals feel that

their values are determined by others rather than by their specialities and skills. One’s desire to

develop itself gives way to obsessed ambitions to find better job, earn more money and gain better

social status.(Weber, 1946, p.139) In 21st century, this seems like became reversed, because im-

portance given to individuality has increased, however, erosion in these values have also accelera-

ted. Because today, individuals just suppose that they protect and strengthen their individuality,

however their individualities are shaped by bureaucracy and rationalisation which is all-pervading.

In modern society, we can observe lots of applications of Weber’s rationalisation idea. For

example, American sociologist George Ritzer has come up with the term “McDonaldization”.

McDonald’s has become the most obvious example of the process of the rationalisation. For Rit-

zer, process of the rationalisation of McDonald’s has five stages. Productivity, calculability, predic-
 5

tability, control and ultimate irrationality of the formal rationality. Calculability from these refers

to things which are determinable as quantity. For example “Big Mac” in McDonald’s, it refers to

quantity by saying “big”, not to quality. Also ultimate irrationality here is dehumanisation attitude

of the McDonald’s towards its’ customers and employees. Everybody has heard that how terrible

conditions McDonald’s employees work in and how bad quality of meats have, probably they are

not even meat. Also this principles of McDonaldisation have been applied by many multinational

corporations and international food chains.(Ritzer, 1996)

One step forward of this is stated by British thinkers Dennis Hayes and Robin Wynyard

in their book “The McDonaldisation of Higher Education”. In this age, education has gone be-

yond being a purpose per se. It has been approached with rational logic as a means to achieve

another purposes.(Hayes & Wynyard, 2002) Western philosophy has already moved away from

‘the truth’ after they blessed ‘solely knowledge’ by saying that, “Knowledge is power” and they

made knowledge their purpose per se after Reform and Renaissance movements. However, they

go beyond one more degree and now they are instrumentalising something one more time which

they have already distorted. So where we came is what Foucault refers: “Western man has become

a confessing animal…(as)…one of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing

truth.”(Foucault, 2008, p.59)

My third argument is relation between state and capital. Even though we acknowledge

development and degree of Western democracy and capitalism in comparison to others’, it has

succeeded to hiden its’ faults expertly. These faults only show up during a crisis situation occurs.

Karl Marx argues that economic crises are chronic in capitalist states and it will eventually be

concluded with proletariat revolution. However, this has not happened in reality and Habermas

explains this reality in his article “What Does A Crisis Mean Today?”. As societies became more

democratic, they have changed with welfare state policies such as free health care services in order

to compensate individual inequalities. Also collective identities have fragmentised and individu-

ality has increased. So this transformation shows us that class based conflicts has disappeared. Ac-

cording to Habermas, crisis of modern Western society is crisis of legitimation. Because Modern
 6

Western states as a supervisor of free market have to both solve economic problems, provide de-

mocracy and satisfy people’s demands. If people find state policies as insufficient, they can withd-

raw their support. Thus, the state has a great challenge to balance between favouring capital and

sustaining mass support from people. In other words, while governments protect interests of ow-

ners of business and property, it has to display this as for the benefit of everybody.(Habermas,

1973, p.656)

It was a disappointment when I saw my own arguments were already said by Habermas.

However, differently from him, I don’t have hope for future of Western democracy as it is today.

Also each crisis has shown its’ weak points like a car seemingly running properly whereas you only

realise that it has already a problem inside, when it does not run properly and when you open the

hood. These came to my mind when I see economic chaos scenarios stated by global institutions

like World Bank, IMF8 and many others. Central Banks are printing trillions of dollars to rescue

financial markets and some big corporations which are credible enough to be provided credits by

Central Banks. Federal Reserve’s this gigantic value of assets purchases’ supervisory are given to

another gigantic investment bank BlackRock. On the other hand, a couple of cents health masks

cannot be found by people, even not by governments. These trillions or billions dollars should

have gone to its’ people and citizens not to real responsible of the crisis who led millions of people

to become unemployed.

After 2008 Financial Crisis, The Independent has listed former GoldmanSachs directors

appointed, non electively, to European Union’s and some member countries’ important positions

responsible from economy in 2011 then it was asking with the title that, “What price the new

democracy? GoldmanSachs conquers Europe”.9 So how much democratic is it that positions res-

ponsible from Europeans’ wealth and economy are ruled by global private banks’ directors and its’

8IMF, "The Great Lockdown: Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression” 23.03.2020
"https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/03/23/pr2098-imf-managing-director-statement-follo-
wing-a-g20-ministerial-call-on-the-coronavirus-emergency"
9Independent, “What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe” 18.11.2011
“https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-price-the-new-democracy-
goldman-sachs-conquers-europe-6264091.html"
 7

agendas? Also, CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Diamond, one of the biggest banks of US and world

was remaining its’ position in board of directors of Federal Reserve of New York at the same time.

Another dilemma is about independency of Central Banks. I have never seen any econo-

mist who can explain that why do Central Banks have to be independent? Central Banks’ money

policies are always easier than government's fiscal policies to perform in short term and usually

former one is preferred last 70 years in all world. So we can say Central Banks’ impact is bigger

than governments on economy in some aspects. However, people do not have any right to choose

for Central Banks’ administration, while they can decide democratically government which are

appropriate to their economic policy expectations.

Late capitalist or developed states have common problem of elderly population. While

their populations remain same or even decrease, their economy cannot grow. Simultaneously the

governments’ healthcare consumptions eventually increase. One of the good examples is Japan

economy which is both one of the most developed and most in debt economy in the world. For-

mer PM and Finance Minister Taro Also has rejected that government provides end-of-life care

and said that he “would feel bad knowing treatment was paid for by government and that elderly

should be allowed to ‘hurry up and die’”10 That’s truly astonishing. Is state for people or vice versa?

These are what Covid-19 reminds me but why is Covid-19 so important? Because if it did

not led such a lockdown and politic economical crisis, my expectation with many other econo-

mists is that an economic crisis would happen in any case in 2020-21. However, it accelerated

economic crisis by freezing supply/demand and deepened political crisis of democracies as well by

revealing priorities of political and economic elites.

So I think this acceleration is unmissable opportunity for political and economic elites.

Thus, anybody won’t be able to blame neither capitalism nor democracy itself. One of the basic

reason for states’ holding right to use of force is to protect its’ citizens from internal and external

threats. So state provides protection for people in exchange for people’s sacrificing their some ex-

tent of freedom. This extent widens during external threats especially such a deadly pandemic and

10The Guardian, “Let elderly people 'hurry up and die', says Japanese minister” 22.01.2013
“https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/22/elderly-hurry-up-die-japanese"
 8

people will keep silent for restrictions of freedom, state of emergency and suspension of constitu-

tion, some people will even beg to state to do so for their health and protection.

Moreover, bankrupted or depreciated companies and stocks will be bought by bigger

companies in upcoming crisis and bigger will get bigger. When economies will shrink as econo-

mists expect, unemployments and public debts of governments will increase incrementally, debi-

ted states will be more debited and more ‘dependent’ to their ‘independent’ Central Banks which

we don’t know not at all. Also we come to an end in the unlimited ‘fiat money’ of American dollar.

After 1971, when President Nixon abandoned Gold-standard of American dollar, US has conso-

lidated its’ dollars which it is printing as much as it wants, by increasing demand towards Ameri-

can dollars with ensuring that oil is sold out with only dollars and by decreasing supply of oil with

wars, invasions and instability in oil regions. However this fictional system was not sustainable.

Today world is going towards limited “commodity moneys” backed by valuable commodi-

ties like gold, silver and even limited digital money. Revisionist powers such as China, Russia, In-

dia and Turkey have been buying hundreds kilograms of gold since 2008 Financial Crisis. China

has already offered its’ own PetroYuan system. So China buys oil from a country with Yuan and if

the country wants, they can exchange their Yuan in their hands with golds provided by China.

China has been preparing to transform this system into a digital currency.11 Also again China,

during these Covid-19 days, found the opportunity to test its’ despotic/dystopic control technolo-

gies12 as many others imitate like Turkey and Israel. Also as crisis deepens, many imaginary issues

started to be talked such as Social Credit System, Universal Basic Income or mandatory vaccina-

tion as referring a great transformation.

Democracy is being eroded, capitalism is changing shell. States are increasing their power

over people, capital is increasing its’ power over states either. As Hannah Arendt said, “The rule by

Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.”

11The Guardian, “China starts major trial of state-run digital currency” 28.03.2020
"https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/28/china-starts-major-trial-of-state-run-digital-currency"
12BusinessInsider, ”As China lifts its coronavirus lockdowns…” 07.04.2020
"https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-china-health-software-color-coded-how-it-works-2020-4"
 9

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