[lbo-talk] Stalin, democrat

Travis Fast tfast at yorku.ca
Sun Dec 4 11:44:36 PST 2005


andie nachgeborenen wrote: aka Justin Schwartz


>Well, at a minumum by democratic I mean a set of
>procedures in which the majority rules through voting
>or some equivalent expression of its preferences, and
>I'd add, since I am a liberal democrat, that there has
>to be some approximation to universal suffrage,
>competitive elections or (if there are not elections,
>as in some smaller societies) effective ways for
>diveregent interests to express thjeir views without
>repression, amd an extensive set of political and
>civil liberties. Since you ask.
>
I do not know how anyone who calls themselves a liberal democrat can refuse to include in their definition of Liberal Democracy some nod to the necessity of private property sitting alongside the formal equality of universal suffrage. Or are you just a Democrat? Liberals do not have the corner on free competitive elections with universal suffrage. Last time I checked it was one of the demands articulated in the Communist Manifesto. So what you really meant to write must have been "since I am a democrat" since the status of of the modifier liberal has no purchase sans a nod to free markets and Bentham.

Travis



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