Not just from my wife. I got to see good old Soviet election places myself, right in downtown Moscow. Doesn't get any better than that, :-). Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Charles Brown <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Thursday, June 01, 2000 4:05 PM Subject: Re: Democracy and socialism
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>>>> "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb at jmu.edu> 05/31/00 03:15PM >>>
> About a year ago the conservative US columnist
>George Will wrote a column about how in the early
>days in the US citizens would go to the polls and
>openly and publicly declare how they would vote.
>Will thought this was great and urged readoption of it.
> Anyway, let me just remind folks of how things
>were done not all that long ago in the good old USSR
>(nostalgia! huzzah!). Everyone had to vote. You could
>either vote "yes" (for the one candidate) or "no." If
>you voted yes, you put your ballot in a box under a statue
>of Lenin and could then go over to the table where you were
>greeted with smiles from the lovely Party women who would
>then provide you with wonderful refreshments. If you voted
>no you put your ballot in another box and received a nice
>set of frowns.
> So, is this the way to go? (At least in Will's case there
>was more than one candidate to vote for.)
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>CB: I think the stories about the SU are essentially true, especially since
Barkley has an eye witness account ( from what he has said about his spouse)
. However, the key thing is that in the U.S. the system has been subverted
because both candidates are for the same side, the $$$$$$$ 'ed interests.
So, the U.S. can't claim that its elections make the country more
democratic. The U.S. has perfected subverting the democracy of its own forms
, such as elections and freedom of speech. The U.S. is as much of a
dictatorship as the SU was.
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