>But if we set aside empirical considerations for a moment and focus on
>the bare-bones of theory--not theory as in conjecture, but theory as in
>how it works--something astonishing comes into focus: ONLY proportional
>representation allows for majority rule.
I too am in favour of proportional representation in Britain and the US, as ways of weakening the bourgeois two party system. But we need to understand in some depth from a marxist point of view what happens now and how it might change. One of the shifts is in undermining any simplistic sense of bourgeois democracy: that an election allows the majority to "rule".
It is a rather process of equilibrated conflicts and interests. A system of proportional representation seems to require interests to be examined more carefully, and endless compromises to be reached, but to be done so relatively openly, rather than in secret deals.
It may also allow minority views of course to be presented and the left must decide whether they would rather have that platform for the price of having to address directly the reasons why another minority may follow populist rightist leaders. Because populist rightist leaders are not the main enemy, my feeling is that we should be prepared to take on that challenge.
Does anyone claim to have made a marxist analysis of proportional representation?
Chris Burford