>>> Brad De Long <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> 04/22/00 12:49AM >>>
>The bourgeois media keeps telling us the Cuban CP is dictatorial too.
>
>CB
Isn't it? I had always thought that multi-party elections were not Castro's forte...
((((((((
Multiple parties does not define non-dictatorship, and multiple parties does not define democracy.
The fundamental principle of democracy , as in the first words of the U.S. Constitution , "We, the People", is popular sovereignty. Cuba has more popular sovereignty than the U.S. Cuba is more of a democracy and less of a dictatorship than the U.S. of A. , Gringos.
"Multiparty" elections are only non-dictatorial so far as they enhance popular sovereignty somehow through the republican or representational principle , part of which is elections.
Even the original U.S. ideologues were against a multiple party system. They referred to parties as factions. They even recognized that parties inevitably represented different economic classes, and this was exactly why they were against a multiple party/faction system, because they knew that the working classes would be rocking their boat eventually if they had parties.
So, the U.S. developed a system of parties, but all representing the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. This is a fake multiparty system. All the "parts" are not represented in the "parties". The biggest parts, the working classes, do not have their own representatives. They must seek representation through bourgeois parties.
Anyway, multipartyism as practiced in the U.S. is not a key identifier of non-dictatorship.
And beyond the fact that multiparty elections are minor, very non-essential aspect of non-dictatorship, the elections system itself in the U.S. has long been (like forever , but getting worse at an accelerated rate like the growth of the stock market) so completely corrupted by $$$$$, ($$$$$$$ rules), that it is much more a dictatorial system itself, then one would think from its own PR for its great "freedom". The dictatorship of the $$$$$$$'ed class is profoundly augmented by elections nowadays. It gives a phony "democratic" endorsement to the U.S. $$$$$$$ elite's rule.
Easter was election day in Cuba.
Juan Miguel