Is democracy in crisis today? It certainly seems to be, especially as we look over at the United States. Even in countries that have escaped the extreme nature of the crisis in the US — so far — we see public involvement in elections, political party membership and social movements declining. At the same time we see a resurgent fascist threat that seeks power on the basis of reactionary authoritarian populism, unleashing racism, sexism and sectarianism to realise those goals.

Notably, it is clear that much of this is being funded and resourced — and for their benefit — by an oligarchic class, most prominently led by persons such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, with the aim of rolling back the democratic advancements of the past. To this end, it is necessary to start rethinking democracy as a starting point to developing new paths for the future and reviving democratic forces.

The achievement of what is known as democracy today did not drop out of the sky like manna from heaven. Rather, it involved profound and protracted struggles by the working class — both men and women — which was always resisted by those whose privileges and property were threatened by such struggles.

We have seen this in our own history, most notably in our “democracy” after slavery when those who held power sacrificed the votes of the “small” White men for the sake of the greater White supremacist good in order to restrict the franchise to effectively bar Black participation in power. The use of property qualifications to vote, and the power of multiple votes based on property ownership throughout the island, served to keep Black power at bay. At every step, equal voting power and equal rights had to be fought for by the working class in the face of a White supremacist, propertied power structure — our local oligarchy.

Even with the expansion of the vote to women in 1944, to the introduction of universal voting rights for all in 1963 — albeit restricted to 25+ and retaining the property vote — to the abolishing of the property vote and reducing the voting age to 21 in 1965, to the end of segregation in 1972, and the eradication of gerrymandered constituencies that gave Whites more voting power than Blacks in 2002 — one may question, do we have democracy yet today? Especially as we remain a deeply unequal society, a colony and with an unelected head of state.

It is important to recognise that democracy, like solidarity, should be properly understood as verb — as an active process of continuous action and becoming. The struggle for democracy was never about, per se, certain processes or institutions. Rather, it has been always a broad social struggle for a kind of relationship among people for their self-governance. It was, and still is, a struggle because those who would prefer privilege and property to be the basis of governing decisions have resisted — and continue to resist — these attempts to realise democracy. This is as true today as it was in 1609, 1834, 1959 and 1998 — and all the years in between.

Often we confuse various institutional reforms as examples of democracy, when in reality they are better understood as concessions by power to create institutional spaces to continue contesting democracy and the depth of democratic relationships, while simultaneously (mis)directing democratic struggles away from radical democracy that fundamentally challenges the power structure. They have been both concessions in the face of democratic struggles, and attempts to co-opt these struggles into forms that did not fundamentally challenge power.

That being said, such institutional spaces to contest democracy still have power, but their ability to deliver a substantive democratic experience has depended on the strength of democratic pressure brought to bear on them – and this has been sapped by the multiple forms of inequality created, and/or exploited, by capitalism; the co-optation of popular movements; and various “opium of the people” used to distract and detour democratic struggles by modern-day bread and circuses. One of the most powerful tools used by anti-democratic forces has been the deployment of considerable resources to both shape and control public discourse to discredit or destroy a radical democratic imaginary — to convince the people that there is no alternative to the capitalist status quo.

By the democratic struggle, I mean the struggle to introduce democracy, and then maintain it, deepen it and defend it against those who would seek to rule by wealth and status — and by broader social relations of inequality (race, class, gender, etc). Importantly, the democratic struggle occurs both in the open (public discourse, parliament, elections) and behind the scenes, as well as within institutions and organisations — including those of the working class (political parties, unions, community clubs, social movements).

Throughout history, democratic advances or concessions won from power have occurred only through struggle – or the threat of struggle. Struggles for democracy by the working class, along with the strength and vitality of working-class organisations — political parties, unions, protest movements — have been key in this. In the 20th century, the Russian Revolution and the threat of an alternative to the status quo was particularly key, both in the immediate aftermath of the revolution and again in the postwar period.

Much of the postwar democratic advancements can be really seen not as inherent to capitalism but as concessions by power to avoid revolution. Neoliberalism, emerging in the aftermath of the 1968 revolutionary surge and consolidating itself in the 1980s, was effectively a counter-revolution with the goal of stripping governments of the ability to respond to the social and economic needs of the working class — that is, to strip governments of their ability to respond to democratic demands and render state power solely as a tool for capital. This was made explicit even in the writings of such anti-democratic think-tanks as the Heritage Foundation, which has brought us much of the rise of fascism today in the US.

Key aspects of the existing crisis of democracy has been the global economic ravages of neoliberalism, the loss of a genuine democratic imaginary and the decline of working-class organisations. The latter aspects thus point to the dual tasks of democratic forces today — reviving a genuine democratic imaginary that a better world is possible and reinventing and remobilising working-class organisations, both for defensive purposes against the fascist resurgence and for offensive purposes to advance the cause of democracy for the sake of both people and planet.

The struggle continues!

• Jonathan Starling is a socialist writer with an MSc in Ecological Economics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from Heriot-Watt University