>Anyone can set up a business or a political party, just ask a member of the
>Libertarian Party or even a Green. In fact, a successful political party tends
>to be a business which supports business and in turn, successful businesses,
>corporations and landlords support major political parties. The ruling class
>supports the major political parties. It's in their class interests to do so.
And if the Greens, or the Libertarian party, were more successful, the ruling class would buy whatever influence they could with them too. But its only influence, not control. In the final analysis, the working class have the power to sweep them all out and elect someone new. That's control.
>It is in their class interests to control the State.
But the state is controlled by politicians elected (in the main) by the working class and the capitalist class are only a tiny percent of the voters, so they can't exercise direct control of the state. However the capitalist class do own the economy, its their personal property.
> The overwhelming majority
>of the electorate are treated and act as consumers of the
>commodified political
>process.
> But consumers no more control the political process in a bourgeois
>democracy than wage-slaves control the process of commodity production under
>capitalism.
That's not true though is it? The electorate is free to elect anyone it chooses, however workers aren't free to elect new bosses. The manufacture of goods and services isn't a democracy. The economy is a totalitarian dictatorship.
> After all, if there is a ruling class, there is a ruled class--even
>in Australia. ;P
There's no argument from me about there being a ruled class, The argument I'm making is about how the ruling class rule us. They rule through their ownership of the economy, not their ownership of the state. Its important to understand that clearly if we're to do anything about changing it. Because your interpretation implies that the capitalist class would be defeated if working class interests merely democratised the state. My interpretation suggests that this would be useless, that emancipation requires the democratisation of the means of production.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas