>Are you kidding? Just because (1.) the US calls itself a democracy and (2.)
>many/most Americans believe it, it doesn't really mean very much. If the USA
>were a democracy similar to ancient Athens --- a "direct democracy" to use
>the technical term --- I would agree with you. But it isn't.
I believe Athens was a democracy in the same sense that Apartheid South Aftrica was a democracy - the minority of the population who were citizens were entitled to vote. Slaves did not get a vote in Athens.
I'm not basing anything on what the US calls itself, but on what really happens. America has virtual universal adult suffrage. (I gather convicts and ex-convicts are disenfranchised in some states, a clearly racist outrage, but that doesn't make a big difference in practice.)
It is a democracy. Athens was not a democracy, any more that Apartheid S.A. was a democracy.
>You said: "The nature of capitalist class society is that it is an economic
>dictatorship, not a political dictatorship."
>
>Same thing if you ask me, since the enormous differences in access to the
>means of production --- i.e. class --- has to have profound implications for
>political process. How much is the average cost of campaign for the US
>Congress? I seem to recall a figure of $10mil being thrown around.....
Americans can change that democratically.
>>"In other words it is the nature of a capitalist class society that, instead
>>of standing over you with guns, the ruling class stands over you by
>>monopolising the means of production and demanding you obey them or starve."
>
>If it were that obvious it would not be happening would it? So maybe we're
>all very stupid. Or there are.....people with guns, stopping us from ending
>this state of affairs.
Yes, there are people with guns, but they are intended to stop a minority from staging a coup to end the current state of affairs. Since they are ultimately accountable to the majority through the democratic government, they cannot stop a majority from changing the economic system.
You really have to face up to the fact that a majority don't want to change the economic system and that it won't change until the majority can be convinced it should change.
>>"The political state and the people with guns are under the democratic
>>control of the people."
>
>Really? I thought people with guns tended to follow their own rules.
Only if you let them.
>>"The capitalists don't directly control the people with guns (and don't
>>usually need to), they control the purse-strings of the people who control
>>the people with guns."
>
>This doesn't sound very "democratic" to me.
It is only political democracy. It may not sound very good to you, but to people who don't have it it sounds like a big improvement. Our ancestors sacrificed a great deal to bequeath it to us, we don't have to be satisfied with such limited democracy but we can at least acknowledge that it is better than no democracy at all.
>>"The US military (the people with the guns) are responsible to the the
>>citizens of the US, collectively."
>
>In theory yes; in practice, if (for example) the people don't even know the
>foreign policies enacted in their name, then there is absolutely no way that
>they can be responsible.
Don't give me that crap. The foreign policies carried out in their name are easily discovered. But if a people don't want to know what is being done in their name, their studied ignorance doesn't absolve them from responsibility.
> Chomsky and others have demonstrated at length just
>how the flow of information is severely restricted and distorted in the US,
>compared to countries like (e.g.) Belgium and Australia.
I'm not convinced though, I've always thought that this was the weakest link in Chomsky's argument. No doubt the government does all it can to conceal the ugliest aspects, all governments do. But US citizens have the same access to information I do and a lot more influence on what their local media reveals.
I suggest that it is not the attempts to restrict access by the government which is the main cause of poor flow of information in the media, but the simple fact that people don't want to know. There are none so blind as those who will not see. If Americans don't want to know, that would fully explain why the American media doesn't tell them.
It is a conspiracy, but not a conspiracy as you know it - it is a conspiracy of the people. If so, they had it coming to them.
>>"They get their orders from the politicians freely elected by Americans."
>
>Voting according to what they know, which is not that much.
I have disposed of this feeble excuse, it won't help to keep repeating it.
>>"Not from self-appointed dictators."
>
>No, from dictators appointed by capital; especially capital in the strategic
>forms of laissez faire campaign funding and private/corporate media.
You seem to have a feeble grasp on reality. American political leaders are appointed by the American people. In a free vote. There isn't much evidence that campaign funding is decisive to the overall outcome and in any case American voters are also ultimately responsible for the political decision to permit such extravagant and blatant bribery of politicians. If your argument depends so much on a transparent misrepresentation, your conclusions are obviously going to suffer.
>In fact, I don't think American democracy has really changed much since Marx
>& Engels wrote: "the executive of the modern state is a committee for
>organising the common affairs of the bourgeoisie."
The political state is still merely a political animal. It does not organise the economy, which is the private affair of the private capitalists who own the means of production. But there have been some significant changes, American women get the vote and American blacks. They have the secret ballot now. There has been progress, but the quality of the American voter needs a major upgrade I would say.
>It's interesting that
>Marx's vision of the "higher stage" of communist society included direct
>democracy; his vision did not include the present-day travesty called
>"representative democracy".
Of course not. Marx envisaged economic democracy, the present system is political democracy. Nevertheless, Marx recognised that political democracy represented an improvement on political dictatorship.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas