[lbo-talk] Gulag query

[Brad DeLong]

>CB: Germany had universal (?)suffrage, competitive elections, and 
>civil and political rights before WWI, no ?

Not really. With a government not responsible to the parliament, it's 
unclear what suffrage means--the Kaiser picks the ministers, not the 
Reichstag. And there is this weird Prussian three-class franchise 
which means that for the Prussian Land government the bottom 90% of 
taxpayers elect only 1/3 of the members of the Prussian 
legislature--and Prussia is 2/3 of Germany at this point.

To claim that Imperial Germany was "democratic" is to fall into one 
of the traps that Bismarck set.

Brad DeLong