Of 'Perks' over 'Principles' in the age of De-Democratisation
Introduction: Voting in the Age of Simulation
Democracy is often treated as the crowning achievement of modern civilisation, a system in which the people choose their leaders and direct their collective destiny. But for a growing number of citizens in the post-industrial West, democracy no longer feels like a choice—it feels like a chore. Voting, once an expression of political agency, now resembles a loyalty program: you participate for the perks. Where no incentives are evident, many opt out.
This is not simply apathy. It is symptomatic of deeper structural decay—a collapse of meaning within democratic rituals, and the growing suspicion that power resides elsewhere. From a hyperrealist point of view, politics has become a simulation of choice, democracy a stage play in which the outcome is pre-written.
The Spectacle of Hyperreality: A Postmodern Lens
French theorist Jean Baudrillard argued that in a world saturated by media and symbols, reality itself is displaced by simulations. In Simulacra and Simulation (1981), he wrote: “We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.” This insight is painfully apt in contemporary politics, where political action is mediated through spectacle, spin, and screen.
Campaigns focus on aesthetic performance. Politicians are not policy-makers but branded personas. Voting becomes a symbolic gesture rather than a substantive act. Political discourse is reduced to viral moments, image management, and emotional manipulation. Participation is encouraged not through principled appeals, but through targeted perks: stimulus cheques, tax credits, identity affirmation.
The result is a de-politicised populace, exhausted by contradiction, alienated from real choice, and drawn into a theatre of the absurd. Change becomes a branding slogan, not a political process.
Lenin on Bourgeois Democracy and the Illusion of Choice
Vladimir Lenin, writing more than a century ago, anticipated much of this spectacle. In The State and Revolution (1917), Lenin made a withering critique of bourgeois democracy, calling it “the best possible shell for capitalism.” Parliamentary systems, he argued, give the illusion of popular control while real power remains with the ruling class.
Lenin wrote:
“To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people in parliament—such is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism.”
He called it a system designed to “stupefy the masses,” perpetuating the idea that change can come through voting, while insulating real levers of economic and coercive power from popular interference.
Today, this critique resonates with the disillusioned voter who sees the same economic interests fund every party, the same policies dressed in different language, and the same elites recycled through revolving doors between government and industry. In this light, abstention is not irresponsibility—it is clarity.
Lenin would not have been surprised by this turn. He argued that real political consciousness does not arise spontaneously from participation in bourgeois democracy, but through struggle outside and against it. This view sharply contrasts liberal optimism about democratic reform. For Lenin, meaningful political action begins where the illusion ends.
Neoliberalism and the Marketisation of Citizenship
The political spectacle coexists with another, more insidious transformation: the neoliberal recasting of individuals as market actors, not citizens. Wendy Brown, in Undoing the Demos (2015), describes how neoliberal rationality colonises every sphere of life. Governance becomes management; politics becomes economics by other means.
Citizens are now consumers of policy packages, not co-authors of the social contract. Voting is reframed as customer feedback. “What’s in it for me?” replaces “What’s right for society?” This logic encourages instrumental participation: people vote for immediate benefits—unemployment checks, student loan forgiveness, tax breaks—rather than visions of justice or solidarity.
This marketisation of politics reinforces Lenin’s argument that bourgeois democracy serves to protect property, not to empower people. The state becomes a manager of capital’s interests, ensuring social peace through minimal redistribution and maximum control.
De-Democratisation and Post-Politics
This convergence of spectacle and neoliberal governance produces what theorists like Colin Crouch and Chantal Mouffe call post-democracy or post-politics—systems that retain democratic formalities but lack substantive contestation.
Crouch, in Post-Democracy (2004), writes:
“A small, self-reproducing elite increasingly decides the issues of public policy, and the role of the mass of citizens is to accept the choices made for them.”
Mouffe adds in The Democratic Paradox (2000) that consensus-based politics strips away ideological difference, creating a sterile public sphere dominated by technocracy. Political participation is reduced to a performance within tight boundaries; real alternatives are excluded.
Under such conditions, elections are like reality television—drama, voting, but no real consequence. As Zygmunt Bauman argued in In Search of Politics (1999), “Power has become extraterritorial… while politics remains local.” The nation-state becomes a stage with actors, but no real scriptwriters.
Hyperrealist Defiance: To Vote or Not to Vote?
What, then, should the hyperrealist voter do? Is abstention surrender or resistance?
From a Leninist angle, abstention from bourgeois democracy can be the beginning of radical consciousness, not its end. It is the recognition that politics must move beyond electoralism. Lenin believed that revolutionary energy was born not in parliament, but in workplaces, streets, and autonomous organisation.
In hyperrealist terms, refusing to participate in a simulated democracy is not apathy—it is a rational act of refusal. It is the rejection of participation in a system that rewards submission with illusion. This view contrasts sharply with liberal commentators who equate non-voting with civic decay. In truth, it may signal the early stages of political reawakening.
But defiance must not stop at withdrawal. Without organisation and direction, disengagement devolves into nihilism. Here again, Lenin’s emphasis on political education and vanguard organisation becomes relevant. If political consciousness does not arise spontaneously, then the task is to build spaces where people can connect their lived experiences to structural critique.
Conclusion: Reclaiming Politics from the Real
To reclaim democracy, we must go beyond the spectacle. That means rejecting the shallow incentives of electoral loyalty and demanding a system where power is genuinely accountable to the people—not to shareholders or lobbyists.
It means restoring politics as a collective project grounded in solidarity, not individualised consumerism. It means recognising, with Lenin, that the forms of democracy can obscure its absence, and with Baudrillard, that symbols can seduce us into complicity.
The hyperrealist voter is not the end of politics. They are its ghost—haunting the ruins of representative democracy, waiting for something real enough to believe in.
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Works Cited:
• Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Semiotext(e), 1981.
• Brown, Wendy. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Zone Books, 2015.
• Crouch, Colin. Post-Democracy. Polity, 2004.
• Lenin, Vladimir. The State and Revolution. 1917.
• Lenin, Vladimir. Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. 1920.
• Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. Verso, 2000.
• Streeck, Wolfgang. How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System. Verso, 2016.
• Bauman, Zygmunt. In Search of Politics. Stanford University Press, 1999.
• Žižek, Slavoj. Living in the End Times. Verso, 2010.