Re: [OPE] winning the battle of democracy

Jerry wrote:
"Your uncritical stance towards the National Transitional Council is odd
indeed".

Just because I support their democratic demands, it doesn't mean I'm
uncritical of other aspects. Same as with the so-called "youth movement" in
Egypt - I supported their democratic demands, but not necessarily their
views on other matters, their methods, or whatever.

"consider the fact that the leader of the National Transitional Council
(Mustafa Abdul Jalil) was - up until a few weeks ago - the *JUSTICE
MINISTER* in the Gadaffi government!"

Side-changing is part and parcel of any revolution. It's precisely because
the pro-democracy side is such a mixture of forces and influences that we
should strongly support the democratic demands, and not necessarily anything
else. Same in Libya as in Egypt. But if you go around saying free elections
= 100% exploitation, then you make it easier for authoritarian forces to
prevail.

Michael wrote
"china is not communist in any way, except the name of its ruling party ...
of course there is capitalism in china ... of course there is exploitation".

I completely agree; and my original point in this discussion was that a lot
of regimes and institutions who call themselves "Marxist", "socialist",
"communist", etc, are so only in name; in reality, they have been some of
the worst violators of democratic rights, both 'bourgeois' and
'proletarian'.

Finally, between Jerry and Dave we now have three different definitions of
fascism, two of which consist of lists of traits. It doesn't sound very
strict to me. In any case, many if not most of those traits apply to the
Gadhafi regime - certainly all the traits in the Paxton definition that Dave
posted apply.

Paula

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Received on Fri Mar 18 20:33:04 2011