By Cristiano Gianolla, 19 April, 2013.
The Biennale Democrazia 2013 (10-14 April) is the third edition of the event that took place in Turin since 2009 under the auspices of its director, Gustavo Zagrebelsky. The topic of this edition is: ‘Utopia. Possible?’ (in Italian: Utopico.Possibile?) The very rich calendar was divided in four main themes: open horizons, creating worlds and imagining cities, practising democracies and the ‘possible’ Africa. The Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra co-organised the event “When the constitution is written by Citizens”. This article will provide a report of this event preceded by an account of other initiatives and happenings (including art performances) classified according to particular themes.
Utopia, doubt and change
The first day was inaugurated by the Italian President of the Chamber of Deputies, Ms Laura Boldrini, with a solid lecture which began by affirming that utopia is strictly linked with doubt and that doubt is necessary in politics and for change. Doubt and uncertainty should not instigate fear but consolidate humbleness for the service of common good.
Ms Laura Boldrini represents an innovative element of the Italian political landscape after the elections of February 2013. She served in the UNHCR for several years and she was not a political-party person until she was invited to candidature by the left wing party “Sinistra, Ecologia e Libertà” (SEL), and elected President of the Parliament few weeks later. She is a new entry in the political scene and her presence is a change in itself.
The opening of the Biennale was well coupled with a show dedicated to Giorgio Gaber in the evening, a leading counter-hegemonic Italian singer and showman who died ten years ago. Gaber had long pronounced the limit of the liberal democratic system and the western-centric model of development aimed at exporting democracy and liberty, including with arms and bombs. His words and works are as valid today as they were 30 or 40 years ago, when most of them were created.
Boldrini and Gaber were both very much applauded in overcrowded Teatro Regio. Since the first moment, when Ms Boldrini was announced by the speaker of the theatre, there was a standing ovation for her. While speaking she was interrupted for over fifteen times by applause. The show dedicated to Gaber was rich of life performances and recorded videos and the applause in the theatre was richer than many of those recorded in the video. These facts confirm the overwhelming feeling of change present in the Italian public sphere. Gaber sang that “liberty is participation”. Boldrini affirmed that a renovation of the representative model is fundamental to stand the doubt brought about by the utopian will of change in the political arena. She also affirmed that new technologies will be of great support but the reduction of participation to one screen – one vote is excessive. Change has to come with due institutional and social preparation, without fear and with doubt. Full change is never accomplished, therefore it is utopian.
Ideas
The richness of the Biennale touches upon a good number of topics. Also the diversity of the disciplinary approaches enriches the variety of the presentations. The second day of the event was devoted to Ideas, Knowledge, Information and Social inequality, with Gustavo Zagrebelsky speaking about “ideas over ideas” followed by a presentation on the potentials of Wikipedia when used in an educational framework and a dialogue between a physicist (Corrado Agnes) and a political scientist (Nadia Urbinati) on equality and differences. Finally, three forefront Italian journalists, Lucia Annunciata, Mario Calabresi and Paolo Mieli, discussed the future of information and the impact of new media.
Ideas are fundamental in society, they are fundamental to see social dynamics although they are not too much taken into consideration in the economic, social spheres. Ideas are incommensurable and are not taken into account when establishing criteria to measure social wealth. Ideas can be of four sorts — descriptive, to solve problems, to project a change or dreams and to overcome social reality. Different sorts of ideas can be compared in order to face social challenges. A combination and a proportionate distribution of the four sorts of ideas listed above will bring social cohesion and greater focus on the common good.
Zagrebelsky affirms that knowledge and social lobbying leads to a dangerous fragmentation and a group-based egoism that remains far from attainment of the social good. Zooming-out from a specific socio-political context may help to widen perspectives and increase the capacity to interact with other social groups. Political parties are supposed to merge this social cohesion in search of the common good and honest intellectuals are responsible to create a social trust in search of the common interest.
Knowledge, Information and Social inequality
Wikipedia is a tool to co-create knowledge. Its use can achieve a paradigmatic shift in knowledge production, as it happens when the students know better than their professors how to use the internet to find and elaborate adequate information and produce new voices. Into an educational context, Wikipedia favours the zooming-out as well as a re-definition of the paradigm of knowledge production and use.
The use of Internet challenges not only knowledge production but also the traditional forms of transmitting knowledge. Important newspapers are moving towards the digital format leaving the paper version behind. Nonetheless, the journalist profession is not undermined by the web because the quality of the information cannot be confused with the rapidness that is achieved through the Internet. Circulating information quickly does not mean being able to circulate accurate information. Beyond the openness of the internet, professional journalists grant analytical and experiential presence that cannot be a substitute by the informality of the internet. Beyond the format (paper or internet), journalists reinvent the way on which they work but journalism remains a reference to vehicle information.
Trans-disciplinary knowledge can be used to produce analysis of social dynamics starting from law of the physics. This is what Agnes and Urbinati achieved by demonstrating that the basic physics of water helps understanding the basic physics of underlying society. The law regulating social interaction is codified in norms that fail to accomplish the perfection of natural law, but the existence of social laws presupposes that different individuals or social actors may work upon the social norm that fails with the ambition to improve them. As in physics the concept of equality and equivalence are not synonymous, so in the socio-political theory equality, one person – one vote, must be combined with equivalence, in order to grant equal rights to all. The worst-off must be protected against the reasons that imbalance their socio-political position with a positive action that brings their status to an equivalent position with the better-off.
Habitat
The ambiguous friendship of thinkers to city or country side has characterized the socio-political debate in particular in times of industrial development. Is life better or desirable in city or in the country side? Cesare de Seta has explained the different positions by intellectuals defending the city as the “incubator of history”, such as for Marx and Engels, and its opponents, such as Babeuf, Saint-Simon and the counter-revolutionaries for which city represented social degradation. Fourier thought that architecture was a tool to organise the city and its society, and his utopian idea of “phalanstère” should contain a utopian community living into an urban, a social micro-cosmos. Fourier believed that through concentration of service and people, society could be better organised and manage resources better. Fourier’s utopia does not exhaust the complexity of the question of a good life in the duality between city and country side. De Seta affirms that good governance in the city should harmonise life in it, the right to the city should prove to be able to strengthen this orientation. However these positions are still less open to non-Eurocentric visions to be able to achieve a greater level of discussion.
Social economy
Social economy and taxation are complex issues, which are basic in the current debate on democracy. Philippe Van Parijs explained the idea of the “Basic income” or the “citizenship income” which is an income assigned to all citizens regardless of their familiar situation, wealth and working status. The independent characteristic of the “Basic income” from these three conditions would allow this income to be self-sustainable and achieved not as a negation of other social benefits or as a stigmatic income for the poorer. The audience at Biennale was tough on Van Parijs who was strong in defending the project. Through the basic income there should be improvements in social interactions, social entrepreneurship and renovation of personal professional education and career; eventually the basic income will increase social justice. This income should be awarded at the higher sustainable level and to a wider possible scale.
The EU crisis is read by Van Parijs as an opportunity. The Eurozone is in cries; if compared to the dollar zone, it lacks internal migration and a common economic policy to achieve stability. A common basic income project (euro-dividend) could be established in the Eurozone to achieve a common policy which could be sustained by a slight increment of the VAT.
Gendercide
Serena Dandini, an Italian presenter and comedian, has presented a brilliant show extremely talkative about violence against women and their collective homicide. The show focused on several stories of killed women, they all told their story after the murder, and told a story of a women killed by men. The cases through the narratives from domestic violence and extensively exploring all nests of violence and killing against women base on sexual exploitation, cultural bias, human trafficking, religious extremism, female genital mutilation, military strategy and machismo, which is the underground reason for all others. The show stated the passivity of all people involved in allowing violence against women to take place: family, friends, neighbourhood and society as a whole. An extremely clear example of how urgent and important it is for democracy to undergo democratization of family, social, religious and professional life in order to achieve concrete result and prevent this daily massacre.
Spirituality, young ideology and real life
Affirming that utopia is in the first place a critic of the status quo and then an aspiration to change, Father Bartolomeo Sorge has delivered an insightful lecture on Christian utopia aiming by no means to close Christian spirituality in a defensive and bounded space but, on the contrary, aiming at arguing that spirituality and ethics are deep need for a democratic society, thereby Sorge defends the idea of local ideology. He argues against a civil laic approach which is when there is a double instrumentalism between political parties and religious institutions, namely the Catholic Church. Since the second Vatican council, and in particular with the current Pope Francis, the Catholic Church has a chance to give strength the real Christian utopia. This kind of utopia coincides with the utopia of the Italian Constitution; there are no conflicts among the two because Christian utopian is not a civil religion and does not imply a “Christianity regime”.
An historical limit of the Catholic Church has been to look too close to the political power. The Church has now to think globally and act locally, this means that it must think and respect diversity and act beyond it. Sorge affirmed that also the religious forms of the church shall be incorporated in a non-Eurocentric way by different societies. Citing the example of the missionary Matteo Ricci that went to China and respected the cultural context, Sorge affirmed that Christian belief shall be distinct form its Judaic-European roots. The Church shall be the church of the people and achieved in the forms that people feel closer to the message of Jesus.
State shall be independent from religion but shall favour ethical upheaval of society as ethical and religious conscience as the guarantee of democracy. Gustavo Zagrebelsky affirmed that social horizontality is confirmed within the ethical-religious background of the people in a sort of supreme guarantor of that same horizontality. Therefore democracy and the horizontality that aims at achieving this is confirmed by the individual and social presence of spiritual aspiration. On the contrary, consumerism is the extreme excess of a society that is purely horizontal.
Being utopia the topic of the Biennale, there have been several references to philosophers of all times (although not of all places as almost all reference concerned the west), that have worked out the concepts and have deepended its understanding. In one of the debates, Marx, Gioacchino da Fiore and Campanella were considered to understand the relation between utopia and the youth. For many indeed, reality is the extremism of realism where alternatives are unthinkable and utopia as well. From Gramchi’s “Spirit of Scission” and Bloch’s “Principle of Hope”, utopia is looking beyond the present to change the present. Youth without utopia is relegating youngsters to instrumental adulation but kept away from the interesting/important management of society. Democratic institutions constantly announce the importance of supporting younger generations but rarely implement this announcement. Unemployment and lack of stability bring youth to the extreme, the youth age lasts longer than ever. Young people are not integrated in the dominant structure but subdued to it. Utopian thinking is fundamental to escape the despaired.
Enrico Donaggio elaborated on the “Principle of Hope” by Ernst Bloch which affirms that the human beings are essentially moved by the principle of hope although they too easily diverge from it contented with much less than the hope would expect. The whole world as well, as human beings, is moved by the principle of hope, utopia is therefore the metre of society – the less the diversion from hope the more society demonstrates utopian thinking, possibility of change and social strength. Commodity represents the first and more dangerous diversion from utopia, and, at the same time, the quest of commodities translates a utopian need of something higher than the commodity itself, a deeper and un-eradicable utopian need that in commodities is never fully satisfied.
The discussion of the real life issues, in the “utopian” biennale of democracy, could not miss the huge debate on mega-projects. These are projects to build huge infrastructures such as the new rail track between Turin and Lyon which is opposed by the NO-TAV movement. These kinds of projects, as other real life situations, demonstrate that a strong involvement of the people in decision making is central to the aspiration of progression and achieving relevant social changes. Conflict of state institution against social movements (as the No-TAV) emerges when institutions take important decision without consulting the population which, on its side, loses trust in the institution and struggle against it.
Forms of participation are therefore requested to democratise the real life of the people. The law for public debate (already existing in France and in the making in other countries) provides a useful tool to create a space of participatory democracy. In France this law gives rise to a commission for public debate which is autonomous and independent and shall consult the parties implied in a mega-project before the project is started. The commission guarantees equivalence among stake holders, quality of the discussion and transparency. The costs are covered by the institution or the company that promotes the project and the work of the commission concludes with a report in which there is no final decision from the commission but a recapitulation of the positions of the stakeholders and the arguments which is supposed to help the project promoter in deciding if and how to follow up with the project. This system includes both positive (allows discussions, gives voice to people, gives chance to the project promoter to provide information and answers, can be a deterrent against bad projects, decision makers must sooner or later listen to the people) and negative aspect (the commission cannot take decisions, the debate is often ignored by project promoters, the scale of the debate is national but participation is local, the selection of the representatives of the stakeholders can be questioned and this system does not suppress the conflict).
When the constitution is written by Citizens
The Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra (UC) in the person of Giovanni Allegretti, participated to the co-organistion of an event in the Biennale Democrazia 2013. This event was a round table named “When the constitution is written by Citizens” whose intervenors were Slvör Nordal (President of the Islands’ People’s constitutional court and Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at the University of Island), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Director of CES and Emeritus professor of the Faculty of Economics at UC) Nadia Urbinati (Professor of Political Science at Columbia University) and moderated by Umberto Allegretti (Emeritus professor of Florence University). The debate has been rich, dynamic and controversial. The positions of the participants were divergent on some points and vast in bringing to consideration constitutional transformations from Latin America to Europe.
The case of Iceland was elaborated in detail by Nordal including what concerns problem faced and shortcomings. The case of Iceland demonstrates that democratic institutions (such as the Supreme court and the Parliament) were not upholding the position emerging by the people’s consultation about the new constitution emerging from the consequences of the economic crises. This created some discontent and eventually a referendum that confirmed the people’s consultation. One issue is that the constitutional council was too far from the political arena and institutions and this extended the fracture between the people and the institutions. The lack of ownership and participation from the institutions is now an obstacle for the implementation of people’s consultation and will.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos elaborated on the constitutional experiences of Ecuador and Bolivia thereby giving them as examples of “Demodiversity”, which is when different forms of democracy (representative, participatory, communitarian…) co-exist in the same constitution. The drafting of these innovative documents has been a complex path that underwent a number of paradigmatically significant transitions in relation between the people and the state. On the one hand the social movement and indigenous peoples pushed for the recognition of the diversity present in society and were able to achieve it in an unprecedented form in these constitutional documents which are plurinational and intercultural. On the other hand the same social movements and indigenous peoples transited in a transformative process that united and divided them. For example indigenous peoples matured decision making in traditional forms of communitarian democracy then expressed within the representative arena (elections) to select their candidates and sometimes the results were surprising (99% of consent). Negative aspects are not missing, as the assimilation or co-option of movements and people’s leaders in the mainstream political interest. As for the case of Iceland this experience shows that utopian thinking in democracy leads to grater achievements and that it shall not be separated from perseverance and patience because the progressive path that leads to utopian results does include shortcomings and struggle.
Urbinati affirmed that the current crisis in Europe has led to the challenge of democratic assumptions. Democracy makes realistic not utopic promises. When the forms and procedures implemented to make democracy happen fail, the crisis emerges – as in Europe since 2008. Democracy is a process whose outcome is not certain. The case of constitutional reform in Hungary has led to an authoritarian approach, although it has been approved by the Parliament and therefore achieved though democratic process.
Urbinati then elaborated on alternative democratic procedures, as raffle. She affirmed that this kind of procedures is proportionate when it is used for specific controlling commissions but is inappropriate for the democratic institutions that should represent the people. Urbinati is also critical of other emerging forms of democracy such as direct democracy. She believes that representative democracy is a richness which has to be protected against degeneration but is valuable because based on an indirect decision making that is enhanced by intermediary movements, exchange of information and dialogue. Democracy cannot be reduced to its intermediaries and its skilled professionals. Democracy needs parties. Finally about social cohesion and people’s will, Urbinati affirmed that democracy is the government of social conflict not flattened unanimity.
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