One could legitimately inquire how this was possible. In looking for an answer I asked Dr. Raoul Kirchmayr, an Italian in between countries like myself, to give me his point of view on Berlusconi. A member of the équipe Sartre at the Institut des Textes et Manuscrits (ITEM) at the Ecole Normale of Paris, he made an effort to explain what Italian contemporary history felt like.

“Italy lived throughout 17 years in which what we call ‘belusconismo’ was the dominant subculture. In the whole, the new political men who governed the country, after the end of the First Republic in 1994, were able to distinct themselves for the grade of incompetency, lack of institutional sense, arrogance and deficiency in political culture.[...] Berlusconi has been the embodiment of a part of Italy that rooted for evil and riches, who continued to milk the country for their own interests and against the common good. The media power offered by the TV channels – the private ones that Berlusconi already owned, and the public ones upon which he forced himself – gave him the power to create an imaginary reality, in which the Italians mirrored and identified themselves.”

As this agenda setter stepped down, he was called ‘the biggest victim of the economics’ by friends and some journalists. Is this the way Berlusconi will be remembered? Is Italy already at work to promote amnesia – as it already happened with the revisionist trend trying to unwrap the Fascist’s era in the pink? Is the court, now afraid to crumble down with its king, propagating this version of the story?

Pondering over these questions, it might be worthy to recall that Berlusconi seems to have lost his crown, but he certainly remains one of the best possible embodiments of a long lasting culture of criminal syndicalism born by the marriage of unrelenting fascism, patronage and graft.

There was a time when something called Propaganda Due, or P2, existed in Italy. It was a Masonic lodge that became a “shadow government” promoting far right politics, and operated illegally from 1976 to 1981. The most famous men linked to it are Licio Gelli, its Venerable Master who called it «l’ Istituzione» (the institution), and Silvio Berlusconi, card number 1816 (1978).

P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes, and it came to light through the investigations into the collapse of Michele Sindona’s financial empire, a banker linked to the Mafia. One of P2 most intriguing design was the “Plan for Democratic Rebirth”; a political programme whose manifesto was found by the police in 1981. It called for a consolidation of the media, suppression of trade unions, and the rewriting of the Italian Constitution.

Interesting enough, when Gelli spoke about Berlusconi in an interview to the Italian newspaper Indipendente, in February 1996, he was intransigent: “He took our plan of rebirth and copied it.” Such plan dictated the use of financial power for the rebirth of two movements, one on the right and one of the left, which would feed a vast net of promotional clubs. In order to enforce the idea, 10 milliard Lire were to be thrown into the Democrazia Cristiana, to buy off the party itself; 10 milliard more and the party were to be broken, and a free trade confederation created.

As far as the media was concerned, Gelli stated, “it was necessary to enlist two or three elements for each newspaper or magazine, nobody would have to know the others”, as they had to support the politicians affiliated with the plan. He continued with a list of ideas that Berlusconi did put into action: “To buy some weekly newspapers”, “to coordinate all the provincial and local press with a centralized agency”, “to coordinate cable TV with the agency for the local press”, “to dissolve Rai (Italian State Television broadcasts) in the name of ‘aerial freedom’; all of this to “control the public opinion” of the country.

Now, as the former Prime Ministers stepped down, this slice of Italian history is destined to the bin; time flies, and political memory is short these days as the economic crisis dictates the news.

One should never forget, however, that Italy tend to recycle trusted men; as in the case of Gelli, who arrived at the top of the P2 due to a career as Fascist, double agent with the Resistance, collaborator with the British and American secret services, and finally Italian secret agent. A willing public servant of the double state, he embraced the non Orthodox war against communism, and moved along so to form the P2 in 1976; an institution that assumed a flexible attitude in the occupation of key political points in Italy, and a business like philosophy that paid back well. As it might appear, it was just the right time for Berlusconi to come along.

History will write its pages, and they might vary depending on the agenda guiding the historian. Nevertheless, there is one grim truth that nobody can toss away, as Dr. Kirchmayr put it: “the most dramatic damage he [Berlusconi] inflicted on Italy is not the financial or administrative one, but the undermining of the Italian cultural basis for a civil life.”

As a result, people try to concentrate on their work, if they have one. Their attention is stubborn, stately focused on a possible future. There still are projects that they want to come to fruition; they still believe that endurance is rewarded with a promising outcome, and this make their sacrifice worthwhile. If a few weeks ago they felt on the threshold of a new era; now most of them have crossed over. They populate an unknown zone in time, a place where politics are not the same they used to be, and politicians cannot follow the rules of the past. This baffles them, and people’s reaction to it comes in different shapes.

On a call in between airports, my friend Maria confessed her shock over the fact that Italy faces the abyss as Greece does. “What has the future in store for our countries?” she asked me. A Greek history professor, but a foreign correspondent by trade, Maria cannot refrain from being deadly dramatic in everything she says. Confident in her understanding, I shared my concern over the sense of contingency that envelops our lives. I nagged a little over the political future of Italy, and adventured myself so far as to state that Greece has never before experienced such a crisis.

There and then, and just as I imagined it, Maria went mute.  “No… wait.” She uttered after a few seconds, and hit me with an interesting take on the current Greek crisis.

“Papandreou played well!” She started off with, but went on asking me if I noticed a pattern resembling a Backgammon game in the recent Greek political events. Puzzled as I was, Maria didn’t take long to understand that I don’t play the board game.

Happy to solve what for me was nothing but a riddle, she started lecturing as she waited for her suitcase in Rome. Backgammon, or Tavli as commonly known by the Greeks, is based on philosophy. Its beauty can be found in the grand design hidden into its board.  The wooden plank where the battle takes place represents one year, and each side of it twelve months; the twenty-four points on it are the hours in a day, and the thirty checkers represent the day in a month. Finally, the sum of the opposing sides of the die represent the seven days of the week, and the contrasting colours stand for night and day. The winner is always the one able to hold on to the end of the game, no matter what the opponent might throw along the way. “It is just like life.” She concluded.

I started to see what Maria implied; George Papandreou’s ability to endure, and play on the very difficult Greek political board, reminded her of the cunning of a Backgammon player. She stressed that from a strategic point of view what happened in Greece is good: the lame political routine made of micro politics, that finds a justification only in the desire of certain politicians to gain power taking advantage of a crisis, has now lost its larky flavor. Therefore, due to the seriousness of the situation, obsolete political practices have either to be put aside or to adjust to new rules. “Papandreou found a way to bend them all. It’s the Greek old way” she stated.

I admit that I did not see eye to eye with this interpretation at first; to me the never changing rules of Backgammon could hardly offer an inspiration for a new political routine in Greece. Nevertheless, I soon found myself mulling over it: “extreme measure for extreme political weather has been taken. It was a matter of nerves and strategy enacted to win the war, not a battle.”

Is Greece a country born out of extreme political strategies?  Maybe, maybe not; but the hardness of the game made me shiver.

As a child, I saw stories of kings and queens unfolding in front of my eyes on the chess board: some of them lived, some died; in the end nothing really mattered, it was only a game. In this case it is a country, and real people. Greece had to reach the point of ‘check mate’ to see everybody’s attention focused; to force them to take responsibility over what they can deliver.

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change”, writes Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957) in the The Leopard (1963).  Is this the kind of manoeuvrings Mr. Papandreou had to pull to finally see some capable people working together for Greece?  Maria seems to be sure about it; I am keen on thinking she is right.

Then, the worse of me gets the upper hand and I recall Lampedusa, again: “We were the leopards, the lions, those who take our place will be jackals and sheep, and the whole lot of us – leopards, lions, jackals and sheep – will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth.” He spoke about politicians.

The notion of Entropy

The term “Entropy” comes out from the Greek words “εν & τροπή” (in & conversion). The term was at first used from the German Physicist Clausious to express the difficulty of heat conversion into mechanical work. In a broader sense the term entropy expresses the measure of internal difficulty to transform one physical entity to another.

From another approach, the term expresses the degree of difficulty of a system to implement its task. High entropy means great reduction of the system’s ability to implement its task.

In thermodynamics when entropy obtains its maximum value then the production ability nullifies and then the thermodynamic death occurs. Similar results happen to all other systems, e.g. social, political, those of informatics.

The Law of Entropy

According to this law “all spontaneous changes in nature result to entropy increase”. This evidently means that the reduction of the ability of the systems (entropy increase) is deterministically certain.

People do not need to toil for the deconstruction of the systems, as it is no needed to toil for the water running to the sea from the top of a mountain. The best they have to do is not to impede nature’s effort to reduce the rate of increase of entropy. This rate reduction, known and as negative entropy, can not overturn its law, but only to delay the entropy increase.

Negative entropy is created either from nature, when she is not raped by people, or from people’s efforts to reduce the entropy of the human systems.

But sometimes people ignore the law of entropy. Many times people proceed to nature raping and actions that increase the entropy.

The Entropy definitions

In the various branches of Physics the previously-mentioned general definition is specialized both qualitatively and in quantity by using higher mathematics. However such a mathematical formulation is understandable only by those who know the mathematical language. To avoid this difficulty, the entropy notion is expressed below qualitatively only. Mathematical definitions of entropy are briefly stated in footnotes.

The Entropy in Thermodynamics [1]

In thermodynamics entropy is defined as “the measure of transformation difficulty of thermal energy to mechanical energy”. Big entropy means a big difficulty in transformation and vice-versa. When entropy reaches its possible maximum, then thermodynamic systems can’t produce any mechanical work.

The Entropy in Statistics and in Quantum Mechanics [2]

In modern Physics entropy is defined as “the measure of disorder (ataxia) of matter elements”.  A high ataxia means high entropy that is reduced ability of the system in producing useful work. It is important to clarify that the term ataxia here refers to the energy disorder of matter elements.

The Entropy in Informatics [3]

In informatics, “entropy is defined the reverse of the measure of information”. Reliable information is achieved when the entropy is low and consequently the system has increased ability.

The term “transparency” used from politicians and socialists means in reality existence of low entropy in the political and social systems respectively.

It might be interesting to remind that disorder and information have a contrary relation. Great disorder means little information and vice-versa. We do know this relation from our experience when arranging a disorderly and an orderly storehouse.

The entropy in Sociology and Politics

We do not know whether there exist a mathematical nor a generally accepted logical entropy definition for the social and the political systems. This happens either because our knowledge on the subject is small, or because a mathematical definition of entropy in this case does not exist.

From sources found in the Internet, we drew the conclusion that “entropy in social and political systems is the measure of their degradation”. Big entropy means great decay of the respective system. And when entropy reaches its maximum value then the social and/or the political death takes place.

From the aforementioned and from other data is can be concluded that the notion of entropy in various branches, modern physics, informatics, sociology, politics, is actually the same

The entropy of Political Systems

In order to understand the notion of entropy of the political systems it is necessary to clarify the notion of ataxia in those systems.

What is the ataxia which constitutes the entropy of the political systems?

Starting from the physical/moral postulate that pepole have out of nature power (freedom, force, energy), which means that they have the possibility to take and to execute decisions, we conclude that order exist when all men (in a political system) have this possibility, that nature has gifted them. Consequently disorder (ataxia) is the opposite. In ataxia the power is not controlled by the people/owners of power, but is concentrated to a few men who control it. [4]. The higher the power concentration is, the bigger the entropy becomes.

In the Ancient Greek form of government, that of Direct Democracy, the entropy was minimum. This happened because:

(1). All the citizens have the status of ruler and being ruled so the concentration of power was the least possible.

(2). When all citizens rule, the limitation of information is neither possible, nor has any meaning. So the amount of information is the maximum, compared to what happens in other forms of government. In the absolute monarchies happens just the opposite. Entropy obtains a maximum value, because the people power is concentrated in one man’s hands only. The information has a minimum value, because only those who handle the power have access to it and they do not want to disseminate it. Simple citizens have not such a possibility.

The entropy in all other forms of government depends upon the number of people exercising the power and is reduced when the number of those persons increases.

The entropy in the representative democracies has values between this in monarchies and that in the Direct Democracy, because, at least in theory, the power is concentrated to the representatives, (and not to all citizens). But even this does not happen. What happens, everybody knows. In practice, the power is concentrated in one man’s hands. For instance in Greece, according to its institutions, the power is concentrated in the hands of the Prime Minister. For this reason the power concentration is actually many times greater from what the Constitution prescribes. The great concentration of power is the reason for the entropy increase and for the crisis of today representative democracies.

Today the entropy of the representative democracies is closer to that of monarchies than to that of authentic (the direct) democracies. This fact constitutes a logical contradiction, a hypocrisy and selfishness of our representatives if it is taken under consideration that the representative democracies are those which have overthrown monarchies to install democracies.

The law of entropy in the Political Systems

The law of entropy has a high value in all systems and consequently to political ones. Knowing the present entropy and estimating the future one, we can draw certain conclusions for the systems ability and their fall.

In the frames of logic that the ataxia of the political/social systems is proportional to the concentration of power, the before-mentioned law of entropy may be rephrased as follows:

“In the political systems, all spontaneous transactions tend towards the increase of power concentration “[5]

This means that the increase of the power concentration is developing with deterministic certainty. It does not need any institutional assistance. On the contrary, institutional assistance is needed for the retardation of the power concentration increasing; institutional assistance is needed for the development negative entropy.

Institutions for the development of negative entropy are: the full independence of the legislative, of the executive and the juridical power, the limited duration on exerting the power ruling, the use of raffling instead of election whenever there are the appropriate presuppositions

In Ancient Athens, though the law of entropy was unknown, the duration of being in power was one year and the nomination of rulers took place by raffling or by election the best citizens for the execution of certain power and raffling among them for the final choose.

From the previously mentioned thoughts we conclude that many of nowadays institutions contribute not to the reduction of entropy but to its increase. Some of those institutions are: the competence diminution of the President of Democracy, the substantial degradation of the Parliament’s role, the election (in reality nomination) of the members of parliament from a list, the full abrogation of raffling, and others.

Conclusions

Since the crisis of the political systems is owed to the increase of entropy, its surpassing can be achieved through one way: By broadening nowadays democracies with the spirit and the principles of the Ancient Greek Direct Democracy, adapted to the 21^st century data.

Such a surpassing is today, functionally and economically, feasible by means of the digital technology.

Δημοσιεύθηκε στο dd-democracy.gr

NOTES

[1] It is the first definition of entropy as stated from the German Physicist Rudolf Clausious(1822-1888). The entropy is defined from the relation ds=dQ/T where ds=to entropy change, dQ=heat’s change in an irreversible change and T=the absolute temperature.

[2] The definition of entropy in Statistical Mechanics was given from the Austrian Physicist Ludwich Boltzmann (1844-1906). According to him the entropy is defined from the relation S=klnW, where S the entropy, k=the Boltzmann’s constant, ln=the natural logarithm and W=the parameter of ataxia (disorder).

[3] The definition of entropy in Informatics was given from the American Mathematician and Electrical Engineer Claude Shannon (1916-2001). This definition is similar to that of Boltzmann’s. Then, Shannon proves that the sum of entropy S and of the information I in a physical system is constant. That is  S+I=C or S=C-I. From this relation comes out the before-mentioned physical notion of entropy. Furthermore when the information becomes zero (I=0) the entropy becomes maximum (S=C) and vice-versa.

[4] Owing to the fact that the transference of power is determinately impossible, the concentration of power is realized by voluntary or involuntary concession of the right that somebody else controls the  power of the people, e.g. the king, the leader or the representative.

[5] The Direct Democracy in Telearea, by Demosthenes Kyriazis, Patakis’ Publications 2005. English version:  http://issuu.com/georgepapagiannis/docs/telearea