The Cognition of Conflict: Ontology, Dynamics, and Ideology - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 29

1.9.1.4 Conflicts: The Presupposition of Democracy

No conflicts, no democracy . Democracy is not only a “response” to conflicts and
aimed at moderating them; it would and should be a way of encouraging, expanding,
and resolving them.
Conflicts are not just to be governed, reduced, or reconciled; they should even
be promoted , and this is in fact the role and function of specific forces and
organizations, such as, for example, trade unions, parties, special interest groups,
associations, and movements, the crucial stakeholders in a democracy who are
responsible for the typical social, cultural, and economic progress of western
countries in recent centuries and now of the rest of the world.
Of course, conflicts can be dangerous, leading us to combat, violence, or war. It
is true that societies and groups need rules to govern them, to avoid degeneration.
The centralized state was one of these solutions: the state monopolizes violence;
private or group violence is forbidden.
Democracy is also a solution to conflicts; more precisely, as stated earlier,
it presupposes and needs conflicts and represents a way to make them useful
and progressive; it provides space (demonstrations, parties, parliaments, rallies),
a voice, roles, and rules for expressing conflicts, not necessarily because con-
flicts are reconcilable; some agreement is possible through argumentation and
persuasion.
Conflicts are not just conflicts of points of view or opinions or result from
different conceptions, information, or ways of reasoning. There are conflicts of
interests: if you realize your goal, I cannot realize my goal or lose something I
have. So the problem has to do with conflicts between groups or classes or conflicts
between private interests as opposed to common interests, the so-called commons
and public goods.
Democracy is not just a forum for discussion; it has rules for prevailing over
others, for changing society in favor of or against the interests of some group
however with shared norms and values (constitution).
Social conflicts in fact do not have a verbal/cognitive or a so-called technical
solution that is based on data and technical principles; they have political solutions;
they are a matter of power and of prevailing interests and compromises (equilibrium,
partitions/shares).
Conflicts are thus the motor and principle of democracy and of its possible
effectiveness in changing society in favor of subjugated subjects, disadvantaged
classes and groups, etc. Up with conflicts! Dissent is the highest form of patriotism
(Thomas Jefferson).
When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to stop and
reconsider .
Mark Twain