268
Conclusion
solution w ill be possible by submitting to the futile discipline of “con straints,” or yielding to the grim charms of “realism,” or pining for a lost paradise that must somehow be regained (which, paradoxically, is what certain critiques of neoliberalism amount to in seeking to rescue a world on the verge of being destroyed, mistaking it for a defunct golden age that can yet be brought back to life).12 The idea of a world straining to reach the horizon, a world in a state of permanent anticipation, is consubstantial with modernity, and it cannot be made to vanish or go away. There are two ways of regarding this condition of chronic expec tancy. First, as a secularized version of religious messianism—waiting for a miracle to happen. This attitude has long been dominant on the left, where the prospect of revolution naturally finds an essentially theological- political disposition of this kind a congenial companion. But the future can be conceived otherwise, more positively, as an opportunity to master the world, a capacity for consciously making history. On this view, de mocracy has to be seen in terms of the problems that must be overcome if its potential is to be realized and the constant risk that it w ill deterio rate into oligarchical rule successfully avoided. It is a matter, in other words, of looking at democracy as a reflexive phenomenon in which public debate over how it should operate acts on, and is acted on by, a commitment to do what needs to be done in order to produce a stronger and more unified society. This is what permanent democracy means. It is a vision that lies at the heart of the new democ ratic revolution whose first stirrings are now just beginning to be felt. Just as the spirit of 1789 made it possible to think of society in a new and different way, g oing beyond what the adoption of an electoral-representative system en tailed, so too redefining the relationship between the governing and the governed w ill open the way to a clearer understanding of what must be done to bring about at last a society of equals.
