A look at the limitations of liberal democracies, using the metaphor of a mortgage to expose their limitations on human freedom.
Producer: Michael Caplan ise@social-ecology.org
Uploaded by: George King georgekingiv@yahoo.com
Most capitalist states claim to be "democracies." Rather than dismiss the claim outright, this presentation will draw on anarchist ideas to argue that they are democracies of a particular kind: "mortgaged democracies." The mortgaged status of contemporary liberal democracies means that they cannot be an expression of individual freedom. Liberal democracies express two forms of mortgage relationship, which are like exploitative agreements for a monetary loan with debtors and creditors. On the one hand, states can be mortgaged to entities such as large corporations or international financial institutions. On the other, individuals mortgage their freedom to the state and financial creditors. This talk will address a number of questions: What is the nature of these mortgages? What is the form of interest? What happens when the conditions of the loan are not fulfilled? What alternatives to the mortgage are found in anarchist thinking and activism?
This talk was presented at the third Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference, at the Institute for Social Ecology, August 2001.
For further information on the conference, please visit http://www.homemadejam.org/renew/archive/archive.html
