Nobel Prize for Literature 1998
Portugal
19 January 2002
(from the liner notes of Another World is Possible)

And what about democracy, that age-old system invented by some ingenuous Athenians for whom, in the specific social and political circumstances of the time, and according to the popular expression, it meant a government of the people, by the people and for the people? I often hear sincere persons of undoubted good faith, along with others with an interest in feigning an appearance of goodness, argue that although it is an undeniable fact that most of our planet is in a catastrophic state, it is precisely within the framework of a general democratic system that we are most likely to fully or at least satisfactorily achieve human rights. Nothing could be more certain, if only the system for governing and managing society which we currently call democracy were really democratic. But it is not. It is true that we can vote, it is true that by exercising that iota of sovereignty which we are granted as voting citizens, and usually through the party system, we can choose our parliamentary representatives, and lastly, it is true that the numerical strength of such representatives and political arrangements which the need for a majority imposes will always result in a government. All this is true, but it is equally true that the possibility of democratic action starts and ends there. The voter can remove from power a government he does not like and install another in its place, but his vote has never had, does not have and will not have any visible effect on the single and real force that governs the world, and hence his country and his person: I am obviously referring to economic power, in particular that constantly growing part managed by multinational companies in accordance with strategies of domination that have nothing to do with the common good to which democracy aspires by definition. We all know this is true, and yet, with a kind of verbal and mental automatism that prevents us from seeing the raw, naked facts, we continue to talk of democracy as if it were something alive and active, when little remains of it but a set of ritualised forms, the harmless passes and gestures of a kind of lay mass. And we do not notice, as if it were not right in front of our eyes – that our governments, those we elect for better or for worse and for which we are therefore primarily responsible, are increasingly becoming mere “political commissars” of economic power, with the key mission of producing laws to suit the purpose of that power so that later, packaged in honeyed official and individual publicity, they can be introduced into the social market without arousing too much protest, other than by certain well-known eternally discontented minorities…

What can be done? From literature to ecology, from expanding galaxies to the greenhouse effect, from waste treatment to traffic congestion, everything is discussed in this world of ours. But the democratic system, as if it were a given, definitively acquired and untouchable by its very nature until the end of time, cannot be discussed. However, unless I am mistaken, unless I am incapable of adding two and two together, then among so many other necessary or indispensable discussions, it is urgent, before it is too late, to promote worldwide debate on democracy and the causes of its decadence, on citizens’ role in political and social life, on relations between States and international economic and financial power, on what affirms and denies democracy, on the right to happiness and a worthwhile existence, on the misery and hopes of humanity or, in less rhetorical terms, on the simple human beings that people our world, one by one and all together. There is no greater deception than self-deceit. And that is how we are living.

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