Il tempo ambiguo della democrazia corta

Abstract

In the secular confrontation between economics and politics, the current season is characterized by a return of the supremacy of the former over the latter, due to the speculative game of finance capital. The private-dominant logic of profit reproduction, interconnected with a revolution of the modes of production, is giving rise to widespread social fractures and, subsequently, to a real “democratic stress”. Today’s forms of “short democracy” (populism and “action committees”, on the one hand, practices of participatory democracy on the other) can therefore be read as a reaction – indeed weakly articulated in a systemic way – to the neo-economic imperialism logic and a certain impotence of the traditional forms of politics. But are they a solution?