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the roots of democracy

Henry Giroux sees that neo-liberalism is not just about governing free markets withe light hand of regulation. He rightly sees it as a political philosophy. He says that neo-liberalism:

".... is also a political philosophy and ideology that effects every dimension of social life. Neoliberalism has heralded a radical economic, political, and experiential shift that now largely defines the citizen as a consumer, disbands the social contract in the interests of privatized considerations, and separates capital from the context of place. Under such circumstances, neoliberalism portends the death of politics as we know it, strips the social of its democratic values, and reconstructs agency in terms that are utterly privatized and provides the conditions for an emerging form of proto-fascism that must be resisted at all costs."

He gives no acknowledgement of community as a counter force. Instead he focuses on the state, education, critique in order to "link the matters of economics with the crisis of political culture and to connect the latter to the crisis of democracy itself."

Democracy has no roots in community. Where then are the roots of democracy?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at August 19, 2004 10:39 PM | TrackBack