Consumerism as a discouragement of Direct Democracy

Consumers do not make good citizens. Anyone who would not inconvenience themselves for the sake of society cannot be called a good citizen and since the life of the consumer is ruled by convenience and the desire for convenience than they can hardly be called good citizens who will actively participate in society beyond their immediate circle of friends and relations.

Direct democracy has traditionally failed for two reasons. One, because the elites want to stay in power and parliamentary forms of pseudo-democracy provides an effective vehicle for them to maintain their authority while maintaining at least a veneer of popular legitimacy. Second, because the people are generally lazy, poorly motivated, and do not wish to actively take responsibility for governing their communities so they prefer bureaucrats and parliamentary politicians, who they can constantly ridicule, to take responsibility for affairs of government while they the people struggle to get rich and famous. Indeed, fame, beauty and wealth are the fondest ambitions of the majority of people in a consumer oriented society.

These two forces conspire to keep the people docile – indeed they don’t believe that they have a choice in the matter anyway for the most part. It will be decidedly difficult to shake people out of this sense of complacency and yet it must be done if active citizenship, civic virtue, and human dignity are to be upheld and realistically put into practice in society at large.

In a parliamentary pseudo-democracy, only lip-service is paid to these concepts and when participation is encouraged it is limited to placing a piece of paper within a box once every four years or so – which can hardly be called active participation in civic affairs. Ultimately it is merely a charade to the make the citizen think and believe that he or she is politically empowered when in reality the government sees him or her only as an anonymous “X” on a ballot box combined with a social insurance number. 

By keeping the public debate within the confines of a limited number of party platforms and through these voting methods, the elite are able to hold onto power quite easily within a parliamentary pseudo-democracy.