回顾“现代民主的四大悖论”

武夷山

意大利都灵大学的Mauro Bonaiuti在Futures杂志2012年第6期发表文章，Growth and democracy: Trade-offs and paradoxes（增长与民主：权衡与悖论）。文章首先回顾了Norberto Bobbio（1909－2004，意大利法哲学家、政治思想史家）在20世纪70年代中期的观点，即现代民主面临四大悖论。

1.      现代民主制的组织规模过大。从上层国家机器直到基层，由于组织规模过大，就无法让每个公民就关系其自身利益的事项充分表达其意愿，也就是说，无法实施直接民主。

2.      随着经济增长，福利国家的形态蔓延开来，官僚机构的功能不断扩充。由于官僚制是层级制的结构，而不是民主结构，权力施行是自上而下的，官僚制度的发展就意味着民主的丧失。

3.      只要是工业社会，无论是社会主义还是资本主义，都会发展出巨大的技术系统。于是，就不断产生这样的诱惑：委托少数能人去做重大决策得了。民主制与技术精英决定制之水火不容，这一点是一目了然的。

4.      工业社会是巨型社会。巨型化的后果是普遍的服从。首先是广告的驯化作用（Indoctrination）。然后，人们逐渐认同了现制度。这样的社会最终趋向于消解任何意识感和责任感，即消解了个人和集体的自治，而自治正是民主制的本质。

Mauro Bonaiuti认为，现在可以肯定的是，与可持续发展政策相联系的任何温和（bland）政策都不足以克服我们面临的危机，因为这些政策都不涉及对处于支配地位的社会想象的任何质疑。

要走向非增长的可持续发展社会，就要想象一种对现今财富生产之经济、社会和文化条件的深刻匡正，就要迈向一种由经济组织和制度组织所构成的分散式／合作性网络，尤其是，富国应该率先行动。

本文摘要如下：

Abstract

The present paper attempts to reveal the relationships between some long-run systemic processes (on the economic, ecological, social and symbolic levels) and the theme of democracy. Starting from the distinction between democracy and autonomy, the paper focusses on its main issue: the trade-off between growth and autonomy. Continual growth can be produced, and indeed has been produced throughout history, only if accompanied by a loss of autonomy, even, beyond a certain scale threshold, to the detriment of representative democracy. While this conflict has never been rejected by political theorists, it has, in actual fact, been removed from all political debate.

The second part of the paper seeks to individuate some of the long-run basic dynamics that characterise the global system: the analysis starts from the growth/accumulation/innovation process which characterized industrial capitalism, first, and financial capitalism, later, pointing out its self-pursuing, multi-scale, emergent nature with its main consequences for both ecological and social sustainability. The outcome of these processes, such as the loss of well-being, the increasing social and ecological costs and the growing fragmentation of the collective imaginary, in the long run leads the global system towards a condition of non equilibrium, from which either scenarios of greater autonomy or fatal risks for democracy itself, may emerge.