Socialism must be democracy

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Mar 28 10:54:31 PST 2000


Charles Brown wrote:


>What I said was that Marx and Engels conceived of democracy as the
>working class as the ruling class.

You seem to assume the working class is a unitary thing with self-identical interests, and that once "it" takes power, all internal contradictions are resolved. But the working class - the one existing in the world, not the one playing the hero role in the heads of revolutionaries - is complex and divided, and likely to remain so (and many members of the working class would oppose your revolution). I used to think Foucault was unfair when he said Marxism dreamt of an end to history; now I'm pretty convinced he was right.

Doug



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