What do socialists say about democracy?

[marmar]

from ISR:




What do socialists say about democracy?
By PAUL Le BLANC


“DEMOCRACY DOES not come from the top, it comes from the bottom,” Howard Zinn tells us at the beginning of his wonderful film The People Speak. “The mutinous soldiers, the angry women, the rebellious Native Americans, the working people, the agitators, the antiwar protestors, the socialists and anarchists and dissenters of all kinds—the troublemakers, yes, the people who have given us what liberty and democracy we have.”1 This insight from Zinn provides a key to our topic—the relation between democracy and socialism, especially the socialism associated with the outlook of Karl Marx.

The great democratic ideal of our country, historically, has been that we live in a land in which there is government of the people, by the people, and for the people, with liberty and justice for all. It is worth raising a question about how much democracy—how much rule by the people—actually exists in this American republic of ours. The definition of “republic” is rule (or government) by elected representatives—not quite the same thing as government by the people. We’ll need to come back to that shortly. But certainly even an imperfect democracy is better than rule over the people by a government that decides it knows what is best for them. Many right-wingers today claim this is the goal of socialism.

That is a lie. Yet one of the tragedies of the twentieth century is that so many self-proclaimed partisans of socialism plugged themselves into that lie, leaving “rule by the people” out of the socialist equation. They defined socialism as government ownership and control of the economy, and government planning for the benefit of the people, who some day (but not yet!) would be permitted to have a decisive say in the decisions affecting their lives. This so-called socialism from above was central to the ideology of certain elitist reformers associated with the so-called moderate wing of the socialist movement, and it was also central to the Stalin dictatorship in Russia. Even down to the present day, some well-meaning folks use this logic to describe despotic regimes (such as that in North Korea) as “socialist.” Such thinking has disoriented millions of people over the years. But as the Afro-Caribbean revolutionary internationalist C. L. R. James insisted (using the word “proletarian” where many of us would say “working class”),

the struggle for socialism is the struggle for proletarian democracy. Proletarian democracy is not the crown of socialism. Socialism is the result of proletarian democracy. To the degree that the proletariat mobilizes itself and the great masses of the people, the socialist revolution is advanced. The proletariat mobilizes itself as a self-acting force through its own committees, unions, parties, and other organizations.

Similar things were said in earlier years by the Italian Communist leader Antonio Gramsci, the Chinese dissident Communist Chen Duxiu, and the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui, to name three of many. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.isreview.org/issues/74/feat-socialismdemocracy.shtml

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. From the bottom up. If only we could elect someone like

a community organizer!

Why, then such a person woud NEVER cavort with the corporate set or give them our money while people lose their homes or force us to buy their crappy products or fight their wars for them just so he could feather their re-election nest.

Wherever shall we find such a soul?

[Ozymanithrax]

3. LOL ... +1

:rofl:

[Radical Activist]

5. Or maybe he would start the long-term institutional reforms necessary

to put more economic power in the hands of the people directly. You could start with something basic like giving shareholders more rights and voting power over how a company operates. Or create a consumer financial protection agency to lay the groundwork.

Oh wait, both of those things were part of the financial reform bill. hmmm...

[Nuclear Unicorn]

7. And that 1 bill certainly makes all the wars, bailouts and mandates worth it

No, not really.

We're incrementally crawling up the rope that is being dropped into the stew pot.

I love my conservative husband but we disagree on many things such as healthcare, entitlements etc but I will say the one thing I honestly believe he is right about is, the system is so big it corrupts all who touch it.

Maybe that's sounds cynical but fighting for everything on a federal level is a waste of time because the bastards in DC don't care about us.

If Texas doesn't want healthcare reform, FINE! (and you know what it means whan a girl says, "FINE!" in a fit of pique). Enjoy your ride but don't come asking the rest of us who want sensible reform for a handout. You do your thing we'll do ours and we'll see who has real social justice.

If the RW is going to drag their feet the whole way that's no reason the more reasonable states should be denied.

I'm not talking secession or any such silliness, I'd just like a little live and let live.


BTW - the preceding rant was NOT aimed at you.

Still friends?

[socialist_n_TN]

2. Well my view of socialism would be pretty........

bottom up. I would START with elected Workers Councils to replace Boards of Directors in companies that are presently run by the capitalists. In the big, "general welfare" industries that would be nationalized, the Workers Councils would assist the government overseers in running these industries for the benefit of the overall population of the entire country. I would leave the REAL small businesses pretty much alone. Why would a government want to mess with a sole proprietor making $20k per year? More trouble than it's worth. And my version of socialism would be pretty libertarian on personal issues.

But that IS one of the problems with the word "socialist". It means a lot of different things to different people.

[Warpy]

4. The problem with the bottom, as Marx saw it, was the lumpen proletariat

who were those basically politically unaware people who would simply never understand class theory and who would always be steadfast in their admiration of the rich and/or powerful.

Lenin thought he'd solved the problem by declaring a dictatorship by the Party instead of a dictatorship by the workers. Unfortunately, what he created soon devolved into a very right wing political oligarchy that simply supplanted the hereditary aristocracy that had preceded it.

My own feeling is that any pure system is not likely to work until and unless humanity becomes pure. Democracy is messy enough to tolerate the lumpen as long as the rich are kept from becoming too powerful and that means a mixed capitalist and socialist economy with a frequent change of political leaders.

[Radical Activist]

6. The idea that we should give any government enough power to reshape society

has been a spectacular failure. The only way to force government to give up that power is to have another revolution, which may or may not end up being a left one.

The factory reclamation movement provides a better model on how to build a democratic, equitable economy from the ground up without relying on authoritarian state-socialism.

http://www.thetake.org/