US involvement with dictaorships

Chris Doss chrisd at russiajournal.com
Tue Jan 8 22:54:32 PST 2002


Would it be correct to call the Yeltsin regime circa 1993 a "bourgeois democracy"? There was no real bourgeoisie as of yet, just some thieving nomenklatura, mafiosi and some proto-oligarchs.

BTW, some of the oligarchs have actually started, perish the thought, investing in the economy! Oleg Deripaska has been buying up the auto industry and actually making cars instead of stripping assets! this is virtually unprecidented.

Chris Doss The Russia Journal

While Yeltsin's behavior seems a bit heavy-handed even for the genre, I think we're still within the boundaries of _bourgeois_ democracy here, in which the _demos_ isn't just everybody, but is arranged into sets where some people are much more important than others, some can speak but others must remain unheard, some pay, others are paid and yet others stand by, and so forth. As long as the democracy in question is _bourgeois_ democracy, I believe Capital will prefer it -- it's their kind of thing. The problems with places like Algeria is that the electorate isn't yet sufficiently bourgeoisified. Russia was near the edge when Tsar Boris shot up the parliament, so strong methods were indicated.

- -- Gordon



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