Zygmunt Bauman: “Everything done can be undone”

It is a privilege to listen from their own voices the knowledge of the sociologists ZigmuntBauman and Ignacio Ramonet. To welcome both of them together at the debate "Crisis and democracy: how the crisis imposes its agenda", is a present for the knowledge and also for the Rototom Sunsplash's hope, and for all the public which this Tuesday fully attended, as every day, the Social Forum.

Politics' crisis and the need for the birth of a new and true democracy, one that represents people, not the interests of money and maximum benefit, have been the centre of this debate, chaired by the director of Mediterráneo, José Luis Valencia, in which the sociologist AleksandraKania has also participated.

Do we want to go back to that supposed grandeur of the nineties, an apparent rich period when banks granted loans to allow us to turn into better consumers? Do you want that to continue? Should we carry on believing that the problem is part of the solution or should we build a new system that allows us to build a new model of life, a new and true democracy for the people, and do not succumb to the markets totalitarianism?

The professor ZigmuntBauman, Principe de Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2010, believes that there is a divorce, a notable breakup between democracy as legitimate government chosen by the people and the international politics imposed to those democracies: "Politics is subjugated by two fundamental stresses: the pressure from citizenship, who has seen how the system does not work, and the unstoppable and voracious pressure from the markets, who want to split the population into small communities of consumers and control their life and consumption roles, and ultimately their lives. Traditional political institutions are less and less credible because they do not help to solve the problems in which the people are suddenly involved. There has been a collapse amongst the national democracies (what people has voted), and the dictates imposed by the markets that swallow the social and fundamental rights of people", remarks the Polish sociologist.

In this respect coincides the director of Le Monde Diplomatique: "The agenda was already written. Perhaps the crisis acts like shock: the argument of crisis is used so to allow the agenda of capitalism be put into practice. This is the case of Europe, which was built based on some fundamental principles of freedom compiled under international treaties like the Rome one, or Maastritch...These treaties in their origins foresaw another type of freedom which have nothing to do with the ones for citizenship but for the markets: free circulation of goods, of investments, of free change. Mechanisms in order to closely watch and keep under control the national democracies have been created, so they could apply (as is happening in Spain right now as it was in the past in Ireland, Portugal or Greece) programs of international adjustment from a new entity that dictates the logic to come out from crisis: The Troika composed by the International Monetary Fund, the European Union or the European Central Bank; non-democratic institutions, their members are not chosen by the people, institutions that do not represent the population. All these with the support of the mass media that works as ideological mean of the markets, which are handled by the interests of economical, financial and political pressure groups , in charge of creating the systems and tools of control that reduce real democracy, emerging from true politics, which seems to be not working and this is why the social movements are taking its place. Do people have the chance to rebuild politics, to regenerate democracy? I personally think so", concludes Ramonet.

At the debate "Free communication: independent media facing crisis in journalism", they have also reclaimed the necessity of a true democracy and having the population well informed. Amongst other, they have dealt with the gradual casualization of the career and the disappearance of traditional journalism thanks to or caused by the eruption of new technologies in the communication sector, with its advantages and disadvantages; They have also talked a lot about the power of information and the need to inform about who is behind the information we receive. Chaired by Ignacio Ramonet, with Susana Hidalgo from MásPúblico (the new media created by the workers after the close down of the journal Público), Gonzalo Gárate from Diagonal and Jorge Romero Abuin, from Radio Malva.

They have also analyzed the handling of the fires at the Valencian Country, on a debate by Amics de Palanque and Ecologistas en Acción; and they have approached the present legal situation of cannabis consumers and their legal future in an interesting meeting with the lawyer Héctor Brotons, who works to defend the civil rights of cannabis users so they can proceed with a situation of legal attack to those who violate them in the future.

Pilar Robledo | Translated by: Mª Paz Marcos Silvestre