“Democracy, in modern public consensus, has attained the status of an absolute principle. Merely mentioning it seems to confer legitimacy, as if repeating its name were enough to ensure its moral value or criterion of rectitude. It is presented as government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but that formula, however solemn it may be intended to be, acts more as an empty abstraction than as a description of a fact. Instead of illuminating, it veils, it covers. It does not articulate an empirical truth, but rather establishes an ideological convention. As Foucault has pointed out, contemporary power no longer needs to assert itself through visible violence: it becomes diffuse, internalized, takes the form of consensus, and manifests itself through the illusion of freedom. In this context, democracy does not function as an expression of self-government, but as a regulatory device that operates through consent or approval. It perpetuates itself precisely because it manages to persuade the majority that they are deciding, when in reality they are merely confirming decisions that have already been made by others. Although it does not emanate from the people, it is exercised in their name without being oriented toward their benefit. What it effectively accomplishes is a silent conversion: it transforms powerlessness into participation, and obedience into political virtue. Democracy makes people feel part of a power they do not have. Those who previously felt they had no control now feel like participants because they vote or express themselves. However, democracy is more like a football or basketball game: you have the right to buy your ticket, sit in the stands, and cheer or boo, but you have no influence on the game. You don’t decide the plays, you don’t choose the players, and you certainly don’t determine the outcome. Your participation is only as a spectator. This system remains stable, even if the names change, even if the parties alternate or the flags are renewed. Faces are replaced, languages are adapted, but the fundamental structure remains unchanged. A minority concentrates power; a majority grants its approval. What is truly disturbing is not obedience itself, but its normalization under the guise of autonomy and freedom. Where submission is recognized as such, there is still room for resistance. But when it becomes the norm, when it is presented as an inevitable condition of political life, even critical thinking loses its foothold. The slave who recognizes his condition can imagine another way of being in the world. The one who believes himself free, on the other hand, has been stripped even of that possibility.
This regime does not arise from a specific conspiracy or a recent strategy. It is part of a broader genealogy, in which seemingly different devices respond to a common logic. Institutionalized religion and the state are not forces in tension, but complementary gears in the same machine. They promise different goals—a postponed redemption, administered justice—but they demand the same price: the abdication of autonomous judgment. Religion exalts faith and, with it, neutralizes the capacity for discernment. The state imposes slogans, appeases the conscience, and produces a subject molded for assent. Nietzsche had already sharply described this mechanism in his critique of herd morality: when obedience is elevated to a virtue, thought becomes suspect and freedom becomes scandalous.
From this perspective, democracy can no longer be thought of as an exercise of popular sovereignty. What is presented is a ritualized staging of obedience, carefully regulated by institutional forms. Citizens, convinced of their autonomy, regularly go to the polls to cast their votes, believing they are exercising a power that, in fact, has been taken away from them. This act does not reinforce their capacity for transformation; on the contrary, it consolidates their dependence. Political alternation acts as a relief mechanism: it absorbs social tension and channels discontent, but without altering the architecture that produces it. They are offered a symbolic gesture of decision, while being denied any real possibility of intervention. Under the rhetoric of freedom, the impulse that could make it effective is deactivated.
The outcome remains unchanged. Regardless of who is elected, the system that organizes the game remains intact. Genuine emancipation, authentic independence, cannot be achieved through suffrage or representation. The ballot box does not redeem, parliaments do not save. The real break is not to be found at the institutional level, but in another dimension: that in which the fictions that legitimize obedience are dissolved. It is not a question of replacing one master with another, but of understanding that there is no master outside the mental framework that produces him. Freedom cannot be negotiated or delegated: it is affirmed. And once recognized, it cannot be contained by any form, discourse, or structure.”
Prabhuji
