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post-democracy in Stalder 2018

lect few. Even though growing
numbers of people can and must take responsibility for their own
activity, they are unable to influence the social conditions -- the
social texture -- under which this activity has to take place. Social
mass media such as Facebook and Google will receive particular attention
as the most conspicuous manifestations of this tendency. Here, under new
structural provisions, a new combination of behavior and thought has
been implemented that promotes the normalization of post-democracy and
contributes to its otherwise inexplicable acceptance in many areas of
society. "Commons," on the contrary, denotes approaches for developing
new and comprehensive institutions that not only directly combine
participation and decision-making but also integrate economic, social,
and ethical spheres -- spheres that Modernity has tended to keep
apart.[]{#Page_6 type="pagebreak" title="6"}

Post-democracy and commons can be understood as two lines of development
that point beyond the current crisis of liberal democracy and represent
new political projects. One can be characterized as an essentially
authoritarian system, the other as a radical expansion and renewal of
democracy, from the notion of representation to that of participation.

Even though I have brought together a number of broad perspectives, I
have refrained from discussing certain topics that a book entitled *The
Digital Condition*

(referentiality), flexible cooperation (communality), and informational
automation (algorithmicity). In what follows, on the contrary, my focus
will turn to the political dynamics that have emerged from the
realization of "productive forces" as concrete "relations of production"
or, in more general terms, as social relations. Without claiming to be
comprehensive, I have assigned the confusing and conflicting
multiplicity of actors, projects, and institutions to two large
political developments: post-democracy and commons. The former is moving
toward an essentially authoritarian society, while the latter is moving
toward a radical renewal of democracy by broadening the scope of
collective decision-making. Both cases involve more than just a few
minor changes to the existing order. Rather, both are ultimately leading
to a new political constellation beyond liberal representative
democracy.
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::: {.section}
Post-democracy {#c3-sec-0002}
--------------

The current dominant political development is the spread and
entrenchment of post-democracy. The term was coined in the middle of the
1990s by Jacques Rancière. "Post-democracy," as he defined it, "is the
government practice and conceptual legitimization of a democracy *after*
the demos, a democracy that has eliminated the appearance, miscount and
dispute of the people."[^3^](#c3-note-0003){#c3-note-0003a} Rancière
argued that the immediate presence of the people (the demos) has been
abolished and replaced by processes of simulation and modeling such as
opinion polls, focus groups, a

a Merkel is happy to call her political program
*alternativlos* ("without alternatives"). According to Rancière, this
attitude is representative of a government practice that operates
without the unpredictable presence of the people and their dissent
concerning fundamental questions. All that remains is "police logic," in
which everything is already determined, counted, and managed.

Ten years after Rancière\'s ruminations, Colin Crouch revisited the
concept and defined it anew. His notion of post-democracy is as follows:

::: {.extract}
Under this model, while elections certainly exist and can change
governments, public electoral debate is a tightly controlled spectacle,
managed by rival teams of professionals expert in the technique of
persuasion, and considering a small range of issues selected by those
teams. The mass of citizens plays a passive, quiescent, even apathetic
part, responding only to the signals given them. Behind this spectacle
of the electoral game, politics is really shaped in p

ough admittedly preserving
or even providing new []{#Page_129 type="pagebreak"
title="129"}possibilities for participation, simultaneously also
strengthen the capacity for decision-making on levels that preclude
co-determination. This has brought about a lasting separation between
social participation and the institutional exertion of power. These
developments, the everyday instances of which may often be harmless and
banal, create as a whole the cultural preconditions and experiences that
make post-democracy -- both in Crouch\'s strict sense and the broader
sense of Rancière -- seem normal and acceptable.

In an almost ideal-typical form, the developments in question can be
traced alongside the rise of commercially driven social mass media.
Their shape, however, is not a matter of destiny (it is not the result
of any technological imperative) but rather the consequence of a
specific political, economic, and technical constellation that realized
the possibilities of the present (productive forces) i

such a way as to increase the probability that shoppers will reach
for healthier options. They refer to this system of control as
"libertarian paternalism" because it combines freedom of choice
(libertarianism) with obedience []{#Page_141 type="pagebreak"
title="141"}to an -- albeit invisible -- authority figure
(paternalism).[^35^](#c3-note-0035){#c3-note-0035a} The ideal sought by
the authors is a sort of unintrusive caretaking. In the spirit of
cybernetics and in line with the structures of post-democracy, the
expectation is for people to be moved in the experts\' chosen direction
by means of a change to their environment, while simultaneously
maintaining the impression that they are behaving in a free and
autonomous manner. The compatibility of this approach with agendas on
both sides of the political spectrum is evident in the fact that the
Democratic president Barack Obama regularly sought Cass Sunstein\'s
advice and, in 2009, made him the director of the Office of Information
and Regulatory A

the general methods and self-justifications with which service providers
of social production, consumption, and security are constantly
"optimized" is one reason why there has yet to be widespread public
protest against comprehensive surveillance programs. We have been warned
of the establishment of a "police state in reserve," which can be
deployed at any time, but these warnings seem to have fallen on deaf
ears.[^49^](#c3-note-0049){#c3-note-0049a}
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### The normalization of post-democracy {#c3-sec-0009}

At best, it seems as though the reflex of many people is to respond to
even fundamental political issues by considering only what might be
useful or pleasant for themselves in the short term. Apparently, many
people consider it normal to []{#Page_146 type="pagebreak"
title="146"}be excluded from decisions that affect broad and significant
areas of their life. The post-democracy of social mass media, which has
deeply permeated the constitution of everyday life and the constitution
of subjects, is underpinned by the ever advancing post-democracy of
politics. It changes the expectations that citizens have for democratic
institutions, and it makes their increasing erosion seem expected and
normal to broad strata of society. The violation of fundamental and
constitutional civil rights, such as those concerning the protection of
data, is increasingly regarded as unavoidable and -- from the pragmatic
perspective of the individual -- not so bad. This has of course
benefited political decision-makers, who have shown little desire to
change the

nment
in which people have to orient themselves should be optimized through
comprehensive control and manipulation -- whether they agree with this
or not.
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::: {.section}
### Forms of resistance {#c3-sec-0010}

As far as the circumstances outlined above are concerned, Bauman\'s
conclusion may seem justified. But as an overarching assessment of
things, it falls somewhat short, for every form of power provokes its
own forms of resistance.[^61^](#c3-note-0061){#c3-note-0061a} In the
context of post-democracy under the digital condition, these forms have
likewise shifted to the level of data, and an especially innovative and
effective means of resistance []{#Page_149 type="pagebreak"
title="149"}has been the "leak"; that is, the unauthorized publication
of classified documents, usually in the form of large datasets. The most
famous platform for this is WikiLeaks, which since 2006 has attracted
international attention to this method with dozens of spectacular
publications -- on corruption scandals, ab

through the construction of environmental conditions that operate
simultaneously in many places. On their own, the individual commands and
instructions are often banal and harmless, but as a whole they
contribute to a dynamic field that is meant to produce the results
desired by the planners who issue them. In order to reconstruct this
process, it is necessary to have access to these large amounts of data.
With such information at hand, it is possible to relocate the
surreptitious operations of post-democracy into the sphere of political
debate -- the public sphere in its emphatic, liberal sense -- and this
needs to be done in order to strengthen democratic forces against their
post-democratic counterparts. Ten years after WikiLeaks and three years
after Edward Snowden\'s revelations, it remains highly questionable
whether democratic actors are strong enough or able to muster the
political will to use this information to tip the balance in their favor
for the long term. Despite the forms of resistance that have arisen in
response to these new challenges, one could be tempted to concur with
Bauman\'s pessimistic conclusion about the irrelevance of freedom,
especially if post-democracy were the only concrete political tendency
of the digital condition. But it is not. There is a second political
trend taking place, though it is not quite as well
developed.[]{#Page_151 type="pagebreak" title="151"}
:::
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Commons {#c3-sec-0011}
-------

The digital condition includes not only post-democratic structures in
more areas of life; it is also characterized by the development of a new
manner of production. As early as 2002, the legal scholar Yochai Benkler
coined the te

direction or the other. This assessment should not be
taken as some naïve appeal along the lines of "Be the change you want to
see!" The issue here is not one of personal attitudes but rather of
social structures. Effective change requires forms of organization that
are able to implement it for the long term and in the face of
resistance. In this regard, the side of the commons has a great deal
more work to do.

Yet if, despite all of the simplifications that I have made, this
juxtaposition of post-democracy and the commons has revealed anything,
it is that even rapid changes, whose historical and structural
dimensions cannot be controlled on account of their overwhelming
complexity, are anything but fixed in their concrete social
formulations. Even if it is impossible to preserve the old institutions
and cultural forms in their traditional roles -- regardless of all the
historical achievements that may be associated with them -- the dispute
over what world we want to live in and the goals that should be achieved
by the available potential of the present is as open as ever. And such
is the case even though post-democracy wishes to abolish the political
itself and subordinate everything to a technocratic lack of
alternatives. The development of the commons, after all, has shown that
genuine, fundamental, and cutting-edge alternatives do indeed exist. The
contradictory nature of the present is keeping the future
open.[]{#Page_175 type="pagebreak" title="175"}
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[]{#notesSet}Notes {#c3-ntgp-9999}
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[1](#c3-note-0001a){#c3-note-

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