Willy Greenfields wrote:
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> > >America is *not* a democracy
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> Is so! Five SC justices can still outvote four, no?
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>
I think it exhibits too platonic a view of democracy to deny that the U.S. is one. There are inherent limits in principle and not merely in practice to the extent which democracy (however defined) can exist within capitalism, and the actuality is bound to always fall short. There has never been a time in the U.S. (or in any other capitalist state) in which at least some large proportion of the population did not suffer serious repression that violated even the letter of constitutionally guaranteed rights. Police in the U.S., for example, have always been able to impose an immediate death penalty for misdemeanors as well as felonies) with impunity. (How many police have _ever_ been seriously punished for a killing allegedly "in the line of duty"?) And the ideological and material weakness of labor in the u.s. in contrast to UK, France, & Germany has always been the basis for more brutal and overt suppression of union activity here. (Doug once posted the number of deaths in connection with labor activity in several European countries and the U.S. The death toll in the U.S. was much larger.)
But I am writing this post, and there is no serious likelihood of the police breaking down the front door, shooting several of us, and smashing the computers. And (though the repression has intesified, as news from Oakland, New York, and Chicago revealed) we are still holding mass demos without the fear that would accompany attempting such in Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, or many other nations.
The U.S. is a democracy. A capitalist democracy, with all that capitalism entails even at its most "liberal."
Carrol