> >we agree, I think on this, that many if not all of these awful things you mention are due to capitalism, not to lib dem. Recall taht I define lib dem as" universal suffrage, competritive elections, and extensive civil and political liberties. It's hard to see hwo any of those, or all in combination, leads to world wars, etc.
> CB: I think your definition of "liberal democracy" must add an exclusionary clause: "absence of capitalism". It is the capitalism in liberal democracy that leads to world wars and wars. Hmm. the world wars (I & II) were started by autocracies or dictatorships (Germany, Austro-Huna=gary in WWI, Germany, Japan & fascist Italy WWII). Of course liberal capiatlsit democracies played a role in the competition for empire that lead to those wars. > Further, we see in the actual history of liberal democracy, even in the 20th Century, that capitalism undermines the democracy had through universal suffrage, competitive elections , rights. Agreed, one more reason I'm a socialist. But that doesn't go tow hether it's lib dem or capitalsim that is the maion cause of the things we both abhor. > Everybody wants "democracy", but if and when the People really have gotten and get Power, it is not clear that their initial rule might not be infinitely more angry and harsh and vengeful ( "irrational" even) than we of the scribbling class ( and I include myself in that) have in our paternalism dared imagined. Perhaps Marx knew this when he formulated the "revolutionary _dictatorship_ of the proletariat".
>>As Hal Draper has documented at tedious length, that is not what Marx meant.
>CB: I''ve read quite a few of Marx's documents, and I don't know if Draper wins the argument. Marx seems to anticipate quite a bit of violence in revolution. Read Draper. He doesn't deny that Marx thought revolution would be violent, but he does argue with a great deal of detail that he didn't mean by "dictatorship" anything like what we mean by it, namely (as Lenin put it) a rule unconstrained by any law and resting on sheer force.
>>And if it were, I'd oppose it. I think it is silly to say that it is paternalist to oppose a vengeful bloodbath in in oneself and one's children may be murdered. If you really think that is what we are in for, explain to me why progressive intellectuals should support this?
^^^^^^^ CB: For one, we might avoid being murdered by not trying to lead the Party of the Revolution, or accepting lesser roles than top leaders. This might be good advice for people like us if the revo was coming, but if it's likely to be a murderous bloodbath directed especially at the likes of me, why shouldn't I do everything in my power to stop it from coming? > In general, the idea would be to learn from the first socialist revolutions and do better the next time. The challenge would be to truly become intellectuals organic with the working classes. We all must try to do better the next time around, but one can't _become_ an organic (in Gramsci's sense) working class intellectual. People like us from middle class backgrounds with lots oif higher education are not goping to fit organically into the proletariat. My group, Solidarity, has a lot of folks who have "industrialized" or become auto workers, truck drivers and the like -- the idea was that this would promote working class radicalism by helping thew orkers organize their own struggles from below. Well, it hasn't beena total flop, people have done good work in TDU, New Directions in AUto,a nd the like, but people like Mike Parker, autoworkers who went to college and write books, are still industruialized intellectuals, not organic memberrs of the proletariat. And for me, I fear, that's hopeless. Besides, why do you think that being autoworkers will keep us safe from the vengeance of the people?
jks
For another, the bourgeoisie are going to continually perpetrate bloodbaths if they aren't overthrown (see my synopsis of liberal history earlier) So, we may be between a historical rock and hard place.
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