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Post by me on Aug 31, 2005 6:12:19 GMT -5
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Maz
Revolutionary
rock out
Posts: 106
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Post by Maz on Sept 26, 2005 16:26:14 GMT -5
Food for thought from Bhattarai; I think it strikes to the heart of this discussion.
"Democracy and dictatorship are two sides of the same coin. In a class divided society democracy for one class is dictatorship against another class and dictatorship over one class is a democracy for another class. Hence in the new proletarian state to apply dictatorship over the handful of exploiting classes is to provide democracy for the overwhelming masses, and to expand the scope of democracy for the masses is to tighten the noose of dictatorship over the reactionary classes. In this sense democracy is also a form of state and as soon as the dictatorship of the proletariat becomes unnecessary democracy, too, becomes unnecessary or withers away.
"Hence the revolutionaries should be freed of the hypocritical illusion of absolute democracy or ‘democracy for all’ as spread by the bourgeois. The bourgeois democracy, or formal democracy, is a concept born out of the struggle against absolute monarchy. Though it has a progressive character and role in a particular historical context, in another historical context it becomes retrograde and it is imperative for proletarian democracy to replace bourgeois democracy; and proletarian democracy itself will be negated in yet another historical condition. "
From: The Question of Building a New Type of State, Baburam Bhattarai, Worker #9
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redstar2000SE
Revolutionary
The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves
Posts: 113
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Post by redstar2000SE on Nov 2, 2005 22:27:26 GMT -5
repeater wrote: First off it is clear that this thread is about formal democracy. This point has been lost in the criticisms of flyby by both redstar and burningman. The entire point of his post as I see it is that popular conceptions of democracy are imbued with a class content which expresses itself in reification of the democratic process. Highest above all these processes is the act of voting.
This is a point not without interest. In a bourgeois "democracy", the act of voting determines which group of ruling class politicians shall take office.
The purpose is not that of determining policy but rather that of conferring "legitimacy".
The desired effect is to resolve the "conflicts of ambition" among leading circles of the capitalist ruling class in a peaceful fashion.
Communists usually scorn to dignify this sort of theatrical garbage with the word democracy.
What should rather be under discussion here are the possible forms of proletarian democracy.
repeater wrote: No one voted to end prostitution in China, or to put an end to the opium trade, or syphilis, and yet all these efforts led by the Communist Party of China were profoundly democratic.
One would imagine so...but there is no way of knowing.
You think that if the party leadership decides to initiate some vast social project that it "must be profoundly democratic" unless it is so unpopular that it provokes mass insurrection.
Capitalist ideologues would happily accept such a loose standard in defense of their own class dictatorship.
That is precisely where "the act of voting" becomes crucial to proletarian society. It's not a matter of "choosing the best man to govern us"...it's a matter of choosing what is to be done!
The idea that we "govern ourselves" by "voting for a leader" is, I think, a heritage of bourgeois ideology. To "govern" is to take a direct role in making social decisions.
Unless you have that, you have nothing.
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Post by celticfire on Nov 3, 2005 0:01:35 GMT -5
redstar2000: Obviously your pessimism for Leninism is popular these days. I saw more anarchists/syndicalists then anything else today (Nov 2).
But, what is your honest opinion on the experience of China under Mao - did it not progressively bring the masses into administrating -- or was it all just party bureaucracy punctuated by routine elections?
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redstar2000SE
Revolutionary
The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves
Posts: 113
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Post by redstar2000SE on Nov 3, 2005 8:44:50 GMT -5
celticfire wrote: Obviously your pessimism for Leninism is popular these days. I saw more anarchists/syndicalists then anything else today (Nov 2).
Don't I wish that I could "take the credit" for the widespread antipathy towards Leninism. I would imagine that most of the people you saw on November 2nd have never heard of the redstar2000 papers...but perhaps someday some of them will.
It's the historical practice of all those who decided to "follow Lenin" that is responsible, in my opinion, for that "pessimism".
To be sure, "western" bourgeois ideologues lied their heads off about Leninist practice and continue to lie their heads off to this day.
But the truth was bad enough. They really had no objective "need" to lie. A straightforward objective description of what life was like for ordinary people in those countries would have been more than sufficient.
People there lived pretty much like people live here...except with a substantially lower material standard-of-living.
Who wants that?
celticfire wrote: But, what is your honest opinion on the experience of China under Mao - did it not progressively bring the masses into administrating -- or was it all just party bureaucracy punctuated by routine elections?
It was probably a "mix"...and depended a great deal on where in China you happened to live and which "part" of the "Mao era" you happen to be speaking of.
If you happened to live and work in Shanghai during the "January Storm", you may have had the chance to genuinely participate (at least briefly) in something that might be legitimately described as at least the beginning of "a dictatorship of the proletariat".
Or, a somewhat different example, in the earliest years after 1949, even a very large number of peasants had, for a brief time, the chance to exact their revenge upon rural landlords and compel them to disgorge most or even all of their plunder.
And it's likely that there were a large number of "small-scale" incidents that went mostly unreported even in China. Workers in a particular plant succeeded in getting a particularly oppressive boss transferred someplace else. Peasants in a particular collective farm managed to force an especially arrogant "party boss" out of office.
Revolutionary China was still a class society -- meaning that class struggle still went on...as it does in all forms of class society.
In my view, the "January storm" was the high point of mass participation in Chinese political life. Afterwards, the GPCR continued in name only. I think all the leading circles of the party, including Mao himself, were frightened by the events in Shanghai (and perhaps in other parts of China as well).
The masses "could get out of hand" and might "seek power for themselves".
The GPCR was ritualized...very much in the spirit of bourgeois "elections". People gathered to formally denounce this or that personality...but policy was "off limits" to the masses -- just like it is here.
Are you really surprised that most young people these days who are deeply critical of the inequities of modern capitalism and who are seeking "revolutionary options" simply have no interest in any variation of Leninism?
True, it would be better for them if they had actually studied some Lenin and some actual history of the 20th century Leninist experiments. Many of the assumptions of bourgeois ideology can easily be "translated" into anarchist or syndicalist terminology...where they would have the same pernicious effects as they did on Lenin himself and all his heirs.
But we "do not make history under conditions of our own choosing". Bourgeois ideas must be sharply criticized no matter what "revolutionary" costumes they appear in.
And the idea that the masses are "inherently unfit to govern themselves" is one of the worst and must be ruthlessly attacked whenever it crawls out from under the rocks of class society.
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