Please don’t get me started on democracy. What exactly is democracy? In a nutshell, it’s a way of organizing a society where everyone participates in making decisions for the benefit of one and all. Sure looks good on paper.

But let’s take a closer look at the European democratic situation. Who rules the EU? Who are the decision-makers? The Parliament? The Parliament is a joke. It may be a democratically elected body, but its political power has been reduced to the right of its own opinion. Perhaps the Council of the European Union? Representing the governments of EU member states, the Council is a toothless institution without any political clout.

So who wears the pants in the EU, you wonder? It is the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund that call all the shots. The so-called troïka. The Commissioners are appointed; the Board of directors of ECB are appointed; the governors of IMF are appointed, representing the interests of big business and big banks – the 1 %. The societies of this world are run by dictatorships, theocracies, monarchies, oligarchies, plutocracies and kleptocracies to mention just a few, and democracy is only used for window-dressing, propaganda and disinformation.

Now let’s take a gander at the situation on the ground, at street level, to find out how the poor bastards working the machines and doing the paperwork exercise their inalienable democratic rights at their place of work. After all, that’s where they spend most of their productive lives. I wonder what’s so democratic about showing up for work and doing what your boss tells you to do. Sure sounds like dictatorship to me.

And what’s the solution? Anarchism.