> dispense with these forms. Marx's embrace of direct democracy and call for
> the elimination of the state and politics in toto certainly originates in
> democratic sentiments, but it is entirely utopian; like his call for the
> elimination of all markets, it is based on the premise that it is possible to
> eliminate mediated, indirect and thus more opaque forms of social
> organization with immediate, direct and transparent forms of social
> organization.
Not elimination, transcendence; socialism would actually have way more mediations than capitalism would ever permit. And if you want impossible utopias, turn on the TV: all those glittering faces, phantasmatic goods and satisfied consumers. All quite unreal, but profoundly influential on our thinking, no?
Also, there are lots of excellent Marxist critiques of Stalinism and its variants, in the form of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, so your constant evocation of the StalinMaoPolPotKimIlSung-Beast (we'll call it SMPPKIS) is beside the point.
> politics,' just a certain conception of it. For my part, that I insist is
> that class politics must be rethought in much more historically contingent,
> specific and determined ways.
Then let's get deterministic: are you voting for Nader or McReynolds?
-- Dennis