USA: More Repressive Than North Korea (was Re: RES: a trip to North Korea)

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Wed Apr 26 02:45:36 PDT 2000


In message <p04310123b52bab3bcbb5@[216.254.77.128]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes


>That's a pretty weird exercise. This thread seems to me about that
>ancient controversy, whether bourgeois democracy is a sham or not.
>For all its flaws, I'm on the non-sham side, and our resident
>Leninists seem to be on the sham side. Your counterfactuals are pure
>but empty mental exercises about which one could never say anything
>conclusive.

Yes, and it is odd that would-be Leninists should show such disdain for democratic rights. Lenin himself, of course, put Leninism on the map by a defence of that most bourgeois of rights, the right of nations to self-determination.

Eight-something years ago Lenin rubbished the vulgar economism that held the question of democratic rights cheaply, as a 'caricature of Marxism'.

-- Jim heartfield



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