Re: [OPE] it's not going to be OK

Jerry: "The bourgeoisie tends to embrace totalitarianism only when they feel TINA."

As concepts, totalitarianism and democracy are the opposite of each other, but in practice all capitalist societies contain a mixture of the two, and so for descriptive purposes we should talk about degrees of democracy (and therefore degrees of totalitarianism); I agreed with the original article that present conditions are likely to lead to serious assaults on democratic rights. BTW, the left will hardly be in a position to object if it's going to support such assaults in places like Venezuela.

"A deep and long-lasting 'recession' in the US, for example, may not
give rise to working-class radicalism in the US. It could have a quite
different impact. We have already, for instance, seen the re-emergence
of 'Buy American' campaigns ..... Furthermore, all it might take is one 'terrorist' event (real or contrived) to strengthen the hand of those in the ruling class who believe that a
military 'solution' might, ultimately, be the way out of the crisis.

Agreed, but both of these possibilities would also likely result in anti-democratic measures (against immigrants and foreigners, for example).

Imperialism is not only the age of war and revolution (as someone on this list said recently), but also the age of reaction; at the same time in this period reaction is under constant challenge, since the masses are more involved in political life than ever before. Overall, society over the last hundred years has become more democratic, not less (one only has to mention the example of women's rights to prove this point), and it will be much harder for the authorities to sell some of the more barbaric 'solutions' they have employed in the past. This is to our advantage, and one of the many things we can thank imperialism for.

Paula

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Received on Tue Feb 10 20:10:34 2009