(The XXII World Congress of Philosophy (WCP 2008)

July 30 August 5, 2008, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

A Philosophical Study on the Crisis of Democracy in Korea

Seong-Woo Kim Korea Association For Studies of Philosophical Thought lennon87@hanmail.net Abstract: The result of 2007s presidential election in South Korea symbolizes the decline of the Left and the growth of the new Right. They say it goes with the global retrogression of democracy, or the consolidation of the hegemony of the rightist versions of democracy. According to Choi Jang-jip, the general public in Korea has thought that the Roh Moo-hyuns administration had betrayed them, handing power over to the market, and seeking to form a coalition government with the conservatives. Similarly, Professor Jang Ha-jun asserts that the democratic governments of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun have mistaken economic democratization for neo-liberalistic structural adjustment.

The alleged deconstruction of the old left-right dichotomy is not a real dissolution of the problem, but causes new problems. In the result, the equality/inequality axis of N. Bobbio is the reflection of the historical truth. Liberal democracy based on the principle of real inequality with a face of formal equality is only a degenerate one of democracy based on the principle of real equality. The latter will be realized by non-capitalistic system which the principle of equality forms the foundation of. In this article, I show that the equality/inequality axis should be the true standard of the left-right distinction.

1. The result of 2007s presidential election in South Korea has been symbolizing the decline of the Left and the growth of the new Right. This political phenomenon that has lastly been
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happening in the country corresponds to the victory of neo-liberalism and the transformation into the Third Way of the Left through the late-1990s and 2000s in the world. The latter has implied the death of the Left after the collapse of real communism in Eastern Europe and The Soviet Union, which, in its turn, has resulted in the passive or coerced changes of the political ethos of the Left. The Leftists in the almost countries have declared that they had moved beyond the old left-right dichotomy. At last, the global trend of the political has swept over the land of the morning calm too late. It means the global retrogression of democracy, or the consolidation of the hegemony of the rightist versions of one. Lets review some self-diagnoses of the leftists of South Korea about the political affairs. According to one like Choi Jang-jip, the general public of the country has thought that the Roh Moo-hyuns administration had betrayed them, handing over power to the market, and seeking to form a coalition government with the conservatives. The result is that the working conditions and socio-economic polarization have worsened terribly. The serious mistake of the progressive government has made people feel disgust for progressive values. It has damaged the spirit of progressivism living in the peoples mind after 87 democratization of Korea. Similarly, another like the University of Cambridge professor Jang Ha-jun asserts that the democratic governments such as the Kim Dae-jung one and the Roh Moo-hyun one have become the missionary of neo-liberalism, yielding to the claims of transnational capital and adjusting the Korean economic structure into the neo-liberalistic one. He boldly says that they have mistaken economic democratization for neo-liberalistic structural adjustment.

The assertions of reflexive Progressives of Korea like those of the above-mentioned two ones are somewhat reasonable, but still one-sided. They ignore the global aspect of this phenomenon of the decline of the Left and the growth of the new Right of the country. The strong effects of 87 democratization of Korea had deferred the coming of the global political trend. Already in the early 1990s, many western commentators like neoconservative sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset had written that the Left is spent, or dissolving itself, because it was obvious that leftist economics was a disaster and that the electorates would no longer leftist in power.1 The Prophecy of them has exactly been fulfilled in the political scene of Korea. Not the Korean specificity of the political trend as the global retrogression of democracy, but the universality of it must be taken note of. It is not the end of history as the victory of liberal democracy(F. Fukuyama). On the contrary, Liberal democracy is diametrically opposed to democracy, because the former is only the perversion of the latter. It is not the dialectical synthesis of liberalism and democracy. Democracy is the mediated

sublation(Aufheben) of liberalism.

2. The deconstruction of the old left-right dichotomy doesnt mean the perfect dissolution of it, but the generation of such another. N. Bobbio2 says that the moral value of equality is the essential component of all left political theories and types of opposition to such equality are inherent in all right political theories and that the equality/inequality axis is intrinsic to the left-

right distinction(the progressive-conservative one in Korea). Growing inequality caused by the expansion of neo-liberalism has actually proved the validity of his argument. All liberal theorists use a dual axis of liberty/equality and liberty/authority instead of the equality/inequality axis. They see equality as the synonym of authority. Accordingly, they have narrowed the meaning of the concept. But equality is not opposed to liberty. Perfect liberty should be realized only on the basis of equality. Liberty has degenerated into oppression without equality, which has been shown by the globalization of capital market. The Authoritarian equality such as the perverted communism of Stalin doesnt mean the realization of any true equality, but only a destruction of it. The true equality is the mediated sublation(Aufheben) of liberty. The word liberal democracy reflects somewhat truth of the state of affairs. Historically, liberals of 19 th century had criticized democracy as politics for the poor and rejected equal suffrage. In spite of the situation, liberals have decorated their faces with democracy, for, democracy bestows an aura of legitimacy on modern political life: laws, rules and policies appear justified when they are democratic.3 However, democratic liberals are, they still prefer inequality to perfect social-economic equality. They say only growth or liberty instead of inequality. Liberal democracy is an unequal democracy., which is an absurd concept because democracy primarily means equality. They have the strong fear of equality and democracy. In this respect, liberty is still another name of inequality and liberalism also the synonym of capitalism. Therefore, the dual axis of liberty/equality and liberty/authority of liberalism is a wrong use. In reality, capitalism and democracy are not complementary systems. Rather they are two sharply contrasting rules
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regulating both the process of human development and the historical evolution of whole societies.4 Liberalism as capitalism is characterized by the priority of economic privilege based on property rights; democracy as the political vision of the leftists sees equal human rights including social rights as fundamental. In the result, the equality/inequality axis of N. Bobbio is the reflection of the historical truth. The old Leftists have still regarded democracy as a discreditable thing and socialist democracy as fried snowballs, a contradiction in terms(as Leszek Kolakowski put it). The chief one of the causes of this general discredit is the Stalinist system. It is a counter-revolution, the suppression of the democratic potential in the revolutions of 1917 and the installation not of socialism, but of a particular variant of capitalism, bureaucratic state capitalism. 5 The failure of the existing communism is in the lack of a form of democracy which is not liberal, but socialist. The current crises of liberal democratic states including Korea also result from the worsening of inequality as the outcome of the success of neo-liberalism. Therefore, the collapse of the Communisms represents not the final success of liberalism as an ideology but the decisive undermining of the ability of liberal ideology to continue its historic role.6 Liberal democracy based on the principle of real inequality with a face of formal equality is not the form of, but a degenerate one of democracy based on the principle of real equality. The latter will be realized by non-capitalistic system which the principle of equality forms the foundation of. The equality/inequality axis should be the true standard of the left-right distinction.

3.
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The decline of the Left and the growth of the new Right as a global phenomenon is not the fall of the Left, but only of the false Left who have revised their identity toward the Right and disguised their faces with centrism such as the Third Way of T. Blair and Roh Moo-hyun, who spoke of his political identity as the leftist neo-liberalism. Their transformation is not a evolutionary process but only a opportunist betrayal. They have betrayed their peoples intense aspirations toward emancipation from their poverty and real inequalities. A new strategy of the future Left will be that at first, democracy should be separated from liberalism, which means a deconstruction of liberal democracy, and that then, a form of democracy which is non-liberal, or post-liberal be sought after. In order to grounding it, the dialectical interpretation of equality of equality and inequality should be tried that is based on the one of very important dialectical principles as identity of identity and non-identity(= difference) in the doctrine of essence of Hegels Science of Logic.7 It means that this interpretation is a dialectical sublation of deconstructionist logic of difference. After all, the essence of the seemingly current global crises of the Left is in that these crises are ones of neo-liberalists and of the pseudo-Left with liberal faces.

C. Derber, Whats Left?: Radical Politics in the Postcommunist Era (The University of Massachusetts Press, Boston 1995), pp.1-2.
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N. Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1996).
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D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Stanford University Press, Stanford 1995), p.3. S. Bowles, H. Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism (Basic Books, Inc., New York 1986), p.3.

A. Callinicos, Socialism and Democracy, in ed. D. Held, Prospect for Democracy (Polity Press, 1993), p.201.
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I. Wallerstein, After Liberalism (The New Press, New York 1995), p.3. I will focus on this study and write a separate essay on it in time.

References N. Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1996). S. Bowles, H. Gintis, Democracy and Capitalism (Basic Books, Inc., New York 1986). C. Derber, Whats Left?: Radical Politics in the Postcommunist Era (The University of Massachusetts Press, Boston 1995). A. Callinicos, Socialism and Democracy, in ed. D. Held, Prospect for Democracy (Polity Press, 1993), pp.200-212. D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Stanford University Press, Stanford 1995). I. Wallerstein, After Liberalism (The New Press, New York 1995).