>What's your alternative? Which of:
>
>competitive elections
>universal suffrage
>extensive civil and political liberties
>democratic decisionmaking (as opposed to imposition of
>someone's idea of the good life will-we-nil-we)
>
>would you give up? What would you replace them with?
Why do you see it as a zero-sum game? Why do you assume we have to give up political democracy (what you mean by "democratic decisionmaking") in exchange for economic democracy?
The right to elect political governments which have little real economic decision-making capacity is clearly better than nothing, I grant you. But I would prefer a form of "democratic decisionmaking" that applied to the important matters that effect the majority of people. It seems to me that in the context of genuine economic democracy, political democracy as we know it would be less relevant, if not altogether irrelevant. Simply because economic democracy would dramatically reduce the irreconcilable social conflict that the political state has evolved to deal with.
At present capitalists are happy to concede political democracy in exchange for economic dictatorship, where all important economic questions are outside the scope of the democratic process. Logically, the interests of the working class are roughly the opposite.
However, I don't think it necessarily follows that political dictatorship is a necessary condiment to the economic democracy dish. Couldn't we just have it straight, without any political government at all?
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas