“If we do not comply with the laws of nature, nature will extinguish us.”

Enrique Dussel, an Argentine academic who became a naturalized Mexican citizen and who teaches at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UNAM, participated in early February in Mexico City in the Conversation “Neoliberal Authoritarianism or Democratizing Democracy?: The Dispute for the Future in Latin America,” jointly organized by CLACSO and the “University Program of Studies on Democracy, Justice and Society” (PUEDJS-UNAM).

In an interview with CLACSO TV, among other statements, he asserted that “if we do not comply with the laws of nature, nature will extinguish us. We are in a process of collective suicide, and capitalism is the fundamental factor in that suicide.”

Interviewed by Gustavo Lema

Regarding democracy, he pointed out that “what matters is its legitimacy. And legitimacy means the participation of those who discuss something that concerns them; they are participants. So, a democracy and a representative have strength when they have legitimacy. Liberal and even neoliberal democracy would be another type of mechanism, or a type of mechanism to achieve a certain legitimacy that, for me, is purely formal. But when we talk about democracy in earnest, we are talking about a system of legitimation, and that can only be the participation of all members of a people, and especially its majority, who are not the large owners of companies or transnational corporations, because that is the 1 percent. A democracy that meets the definition of being a mechanism of legitimation must be majority-based and have a hegemonic proposal that assumes that the majority of the population's interests are contained within it.”