Erich Kofmel

In a historical and cross-cultural perspective the fact cannot be denied that most democracies failed. Many formerly democratic countries do not have a democratic government now. Many countries have never known democracy. Only western democracies for a short while - maybe to be dated from the fall of Soviet communism to the rise of radical Islam - believed themselves invincible. It seems therefore expedient to think about political alternatives once more and to study threats to democracy from within and without as well as common modes of failure of democracy and democratization across times and cultures. Will people's disillusion with democratic practices (such as the impact money has on campaigning), mass politics, and the equal inconsequence of everyone's vote ultimately terminate democracy? Oswald Spengler, in "The Decline of the West", said: "As then sceptre and crown, so now people's rights are paraded for the multitude, and all the more punctiliously the less they really signify." Still, all known political alternatives may have discredited themselves. The competing political systems of the twentieth century lost their struggle for world domination. Anti-democratic thought may be directed against a particular form of democracy only or against every form of democracy imaginable. Wherever a form of democracy arose or was proposed, it also found its critics and opponents. Historically, anti-democratic thought directed against abstract democratic principles and ideals most often originated from supporters of competing political systems such as guardianship, absolute monarchy, aristocratic government, collectivist anarchism, socialism, communism, fascism, or theocracy. Parliamentarism has thus been criticized by thinkers as diverse as Carl Schmitt ("Political Theology"), Vladimir Lenin ("The State and Revolution") and H.G. Wells ("After Democracy"). Many anti-democratic individualists on the other hand have felt coerced by majority decisions regardless of democracy's claim to be the political system least obstructive to individual liberty - as evidenced for example by the individualist anarchism of Max Stirner in "The Ego and Its Own". Criticisms of democracy purporting to propose ways of improving democratic processes and performance and/or the political participation of the people over against liberal democracy have arisen chiefly within the context of particular countries and their singular experience with democracy. Recently proposed measures to address democratic disenchantment and what has been called the post-democratic condition include selection of office bearers by lot (sortition), re-localization of decision-making to the community level, as well as emergent forms of electronic direct democracy. All alternative (that is, non-liberal) forms of democracy that have been proposed - while professing to capture the true essence of democracy - seem virtually indistinguishable from both anti-democratic thought and non-democratic forms of government.

Contemporary political philosophy in the West is the philosophy of democracy, is democratic theory. Philosophy under democracy has become complacent. Even the recent reaffirmation of communism by influential philosophers such as Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek failed to inspire a significant following. There has been no radical philosophical reaction to the near-collapse of the capitalist economic system, mainly because any criticism of capitalism would imply a criticism of democracy ("the best possible political shell for capitalism", as Lenin said). Techno-philosophical alternatives to democracy, such as anarcho-capitalist "seasteading", and calls for the suspension of democracy to cure climate change are originating outside academic departments of philosophy. Is there still philosophy if everyone agrees? Is philosophy still philosophy if discontent with the-one-and-only-truth can only be voiced from outside the academy? Or does political philosophy more and more resemble Plato's cave? This paper will venture outside the cave, outside the comfort zone of western academic philosophy as always-already-democratic. Only in this way can it seek to engage in a meaningful dialogue with non-western worldviews. Only by stepping into the light will we illuminate why still, in the twenty-first century, scholars may be justified in studying not democracy, but anti-democracy. Where are the niches of anti-democratic thought that may yet save us from the destruction wrought upon the world by the failing capitalist-democratic complex? What are the political trends against democracy we miss at our peril and what are their philosophical implications, worldwide? What are the new alternatives to democracy that emerge in our day? Free of self-imposed prejudice, this paper rejects the boycott of thought that does not comply with western inhibitions, and refuses to shy away from the encounter of philosophical positions emanating from non-democratic political practices. Philosophy is not blind, it does not condone any ideologies uncritically, and philosophy does not equal democracy.

From a historical and cross-cultural perspective it cannot be denied that most democracies failed. Only western democracies for a short while - from the fall of Soviet communism to the rise of radical Islam - believed themselves to be invincible. This book marks the start of a daring new debate and re-introduces anti-democratic thought and practice to the academic discourse and into the syllabus. It wishes to offer a serious discussion of anti-democratic thought, rather than an apology of democracy. The book outlines a positive agenda for the future. In a comprehensive overview, contributors to this volume discuss theoretical perspectives as well as examples of anti-democratic thought from ancient Greece to modern-day Israel and Bangladesh. A book that grew out of an international workshop on Anti-Democratic Thought organized by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) and held at the 2007 annual conference "Workshops in Political Theory" in Manchester, England.

For a research project I engaged in from 2004-2007, I gathered and analysed statements made by representatives of Islamist terrorist movements on the Internet and compared key themes of their ideology (such as "democracy", "capitalism", "globalization", "colonialism" and "underdevelopment") to the writings and ideology of authors in various traditions of Christian "political theology". In this paper, it is being established that there are clear similarities in the socio-political analysis advanced by Christian political and liberation theologians and representatives of Islamist terrorist movements and radical Islam, respectively. The paper also offers a short history and extended discussion of the concept of "political theology" and elaborates on radical Islam's understanding of theology and politics. Primary and secondary literature on Christian and Islamic political and liberation theologies and radical Islam are being reviewed (including the most recent writings on "political theology" emanating from, mainly leftist, theory circles in Europe and the US). In an attempt to expand the term "political theology" to cover the socio-political analysis, arguments, and ideology of radical Islam, anti-liberalism is revealed as the single most important factor underlying all political theology. The argument is made that being anti-liberal means being (at least potentially) anti-democratic as well. A discussion of future lines of academic inquiry opens up the possibility of a common definition or framework covering all forms of political and liberation theologies and asks whether comparative political theology may be the ultimate political theory.

This paper looks at the linkage between democracy and capitalism, particularly in relation to phenomena of "globalization". It is based on the attempt to systematically gather evidence for such a linkage from different bodies of literature and to relate them to each other. The underlying review covers the linkage between "democracy" and various forms of "capitalism" in a historical perspective, liberal theory, modernisation theory, and the findings of empirical studies in favour of a linkage, as well as the counter argument recently advanced by the anti-(or alter-)globalization movement in the socialist theoretical tradition, and socialist authors affirming a linkage once more. The important finding for political theory is that, independent of their premises, all the authors reviewed (except the anti-/alter-globalization activists) come to the same conclusion: democracy and capitalism are inextricably linked. Being aware of this linkage might transform politics once and for all. Both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the grassroots democratic anti-/alter- globalization movement is contradictory in itself and will not succeed. One cannot fight capitalism, it seems, and replace it with any form of grassroots democracy because any form of democracy, in turn, leads to capitalism. Consequently, I argue that whoever wants to fight capitalism, and maybe sees globalization as today's primary manifestation of it, needs to fight democracy as well. Being anti-capitalist, it appears, one needs to be anti-democratic too.