Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On May 9, 2007, at 9:14 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> > It was bourgeois democracies that reduced Africa to its present
> > status. It was a bourgeois democracy that superintended the
> > genocide of
> > Indians in the u.s. It was a bourgeois democracy that that created the
> > situation summarzied in the phrase, "the open veins of Latin America."
>
> How democratic were the countries that colonized Africa and Latin
> America, actually? They were capitalist, but how widespread was the
> franchise? This is a real question, not some rhetorical trick.
Yes. It's a legitimate question. The u.s. was defintely a democracy. I'm thinking of the last two centuries, not of Spain's original savaging. There are complexities re Africa -- but no one in England or the U.S. or France did anything to stop Leopold. And France continued his ravishing of Africa even after the overthrow of N.III and the establishment of democracy. France even bears some responsibility for Rwanda I believe. And so forth. One _can_ say that 20th-c bourgeois democracy was better than 195h-c -- but I don't know if that really helps.
Carrol
Doug
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