On Sep 23, 2009, at 8:43 PM, Marv Gandall wrote:
> "Face it. The US political system is plutocracy, not democracy.
> Always has been."
> ========================
> It's both. We've lived in a world of capitalist states for
> centuries. All
> have been "plutocratic" instruments of class rule
Absolutely not so. All of their ruling classes included a huge aristocratic, landowning element, whose monetary wealth beyond a certain limited level was as irrelevant to their social power as a Roman Senator's. The USA started as plutocracy in its purest form because it was designed by the richest element in an entirely commercial society.
> The suggestion seems to be that the fact capitalist states are all
> plutocracies
> renders their political character as parliamentary democracies
> superfluous;
> the only democracy worth defending, by implication, being socialist
> democracy. But it's only necessary to point to fascism, the extreme
> expression of the antidemocratic capitalist state, to illustrate the
> crucial
> distinction between the two forms of capitalist rule.
As I pointed out in the original, this is and always has been a *liberal* plutocracy. As such it involves permitting, as a necessary evil, some democratic rights to the lower (and eventually lowest) classes. The essence of radical politics, as Ralph Nader never tires of pointing out, is the struggle of democracy against plutocracy, the counterposition of people's power to corporate power, the unceasing struggle to defend and extend our democratic liberties.
> And to recall that the old labour and socialist movement shed much
> blood to win and defend so-called bourgeois democratic rights -
> particularly those pertaining to the right to vote and organize and
> to form political parties and unions...
Shane Mage
> This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it
> always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,
> kindling in measures and going out in measures."
>
> Herakleitos of Ephesos