The global democratic vacuum

Compramos lo que nos venden. Somos lo que consumimos.El mundo en el que habitamos lo diseñan las corporaciones a las que tarde o temprano adecuamos gustos primero y más tarde hasta valores morales. "Un mundo despolitizado, blando, basado en el consenso, enfocado al consumo creciente", así lo describe George Monbiot en el artículo que les invito a visitar. ¿Queremos ser como las/os modelos que nos asaltan por todas partes?. ¿Funciona la democracia global?.

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• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 8 April 2014
  • Jump to comments (308)

One of Unilever's ‘real women' series of advertisements for Dove. Photograph: PA

"How do you engineer a bland, depoliticised world, a consensus built around consumption and endless growth, a dream world of materialism and debt and atomisation, in which all relations can be prefixed with a dollar sign, in which we cease to fight for change? You delegate your powers to companies whose profits depend on this model.

Power is shifting: to places in which we have no voice or vote. Domestic policies are forged by special advisers and spin doctors, by panels and advisory committees stuffed with lobbyists. The self-hating state withdraws its own authority to regulate and direct. Simultaneously, the democratic vacuum at the heart of global governance is being filled, without anything resembling consent, by international bureaucrats and corporate executives. The NGOs permitted – often as an afterthought – to join them intelligibly represent neither civil society nor electorates. (And please spare me that guff about consumer democracy or....