The parent organization behind recent anti-politician protests currently taking place in Spain, Democracia Real Ya, offers readers the opportunity to affirm their support for its manifesto by filling out a form at the bottom of the cited page. As of this moment, a grand total of 27,589 persons have done so. This figure, despite the phenomenal amount of media coverage that the acampada in the Puerta del Sol is receiving, calculates out to about zero-point-five percent of the country's 4,900,000 unemployed as reported in the last EPA survey.It is not surprising that this 'revolution' has not escaped the same fate of irrelevance that its adherents claim to so discredit conventional politics. Their platform, rather than being the break with the past that it touts itself to be, is little more than a recycling of the utopian, lowest common denominator and subsidized lunch for everyone theme teleported directly from 1968 - with revealing token bits of modern detritus such as the insistence that the law prohibiting free downloads of copyrighted entertainment be rescinded.
Count this writer as being tremendously disappointed.
Kudos, on the other hand, to its organizers who have apparently done a good job of getting participants to behave in a civil manner.
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3 Comments:
They won't disprove Schumpeter, and who'd expect them to. Isn't it quite interesting already how the different political players react?
PSOE baffled, nostalgic and looking for a way to use the demos to turn the tide. PP irritated and wondering if this will steal the elections they were so sure to win (while it's dogs at Intereconomía and El Mundo bark like rarely before), Catalan nationalists afraid of what might be a serious competition to their own wet dreams.
And the left fringe trying to capitalise on the discontent, as usual.
I smell fear and greed. Schumpeter doesn't cover animalistic instincts. Spain is always full of them. They call them politics here.
But how frustrating for Toxo, Méndez and Lara. Relegated to irrelevance by the protests whilst their schpiel is lifted intact.
By the way, what does Schumpeter say about societies dedicated exclusively to the hoarding of rights?
If "hoarding of rights" I understand correctly the answer is: probably nothing. Seems to be a post-modern phenomenon. But I've got your point.
Now, I've spent some time wondering if this is the only or best angle on the demos. I guess not, although there is no reason for criticism of society to be stopped.
I guess that for the time being this "spanishrevolution" is better than to keep whining, and might even produce some good proposals by its own inertia.
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