Re: [OPE] winning the battle of democracy

Claus asked:
"when you talk of democracy, do you mean 'bourgeois democracy'?"

There is bourgeois democracy (eg national independence; freedom of speech)
and workers' democracy (eg right to strike; bargaining rights). Socialists
IMO must be 100% in favor of both. When Marx and Engels talked about the
proletariat winning the "battle of democracy", they were talking mostly
about bourgeois democracy. The reason, very simply, was that the main
political struggles of the time were fought around issues such as voting
rights, freedom of expression, etc. Today such struggles are still going on.

But countries that call themselves "socialist" or "communist" often have
neither bourgeois nor workers' democracy. In today's China, for example,
there's neither freedom of expression nor the right to strike. The same was
true, throughout most of its history, of the USSR. And Cubans are denied
many rights. When the left make excuses for this sort of thing, they can no
longer be said to be engaged in a battle for democracy; if they are fighting
at all, they are fighting on the other side.

I'll deal with the other points separately.
Paula

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Received on Wed Mar 16 20:08:23 2011