Date: Sat, 28 Sep 1996 15:16:14 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: the state redux & socialism



OK, so your view is that we do not have liberal democracy. But when we get
rid of the class that has the power to monopolize the political process
and the media in virtue of its control of productive assets, what's the
objection to having liberal democracy, with genuine universal suffrage,
representative government, extensive civil and political liberties, and
the ruke of law? Adam rejects these things beacuse he sees government as
exclusively a machine of class repression. On taht view, liberal
democracy would get in the way of the proletraian dictatorship as a
dictatorship unlimited by law over groups of people who have no rights.
(It would do that.) But if you do not share that conception, and see
government instead as also a way of making policy decisions and resolving
disputes, what better form for these functions than a liberal democracy
undistorted by capitalist power?

--Justin

On 28 Sep 1996, jc mullen wrote:

> The main elements of capitalist liberal democracy are in fact almost total
> control of the important decisions of society by simply those who have the money
> to buy factories and insurance companies, newspapers or television stations, the
> appearance of popular participation by almost universal suffrage in a context
> where the candidates proposed all support capitalism, violent repression
> whenever there is a real threat to who controls, cheerful support for the most
> bloody dictatorships in other parts of the worls if they suit the financial and
> strategic interests of the richest people in the world. 
> 	On other planets, it might be different I guess. Even to use the
> expression "liberal democracy" is a bit of a mistake. Capitalist democracy is
> more accurate.
> 	Under socialism naturally democracy will be a hundred times wider,
> because we won't have unelected people deciding to throw us on the dole, declare
> war on masses of workers elsewhere in the world, or organize famines because
> food prices are "too low".
> John Mullen
> SI France
> 
> 
> 
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