[lbo-talk] Democracy: A Flexible Authoritarianism

[Carrol Cox]

Whenever powerful elites saw the necessity for serious repression, neither
the Constitution nor Congress nor the abstract belief of most citizens to
democratic 'values' proved the least barrier to that repression. The
Haymarket  hangings were only the most visible episode in a decade of
repression. (Teddy Roosevelt felt that strikers should be treated as the
French treated the Commnards, but that really was not necessary for the
defeat of almost all union efforts from 1890 to the mid-30s.) The Wagner
Act, presented as pro-union, proved all that was needed to suppress without
repression the Union Movement of the '30s, turning that Movement or at least
embryonic Movement into the respectable path of cooperation. When repression
became necessary again, PATCO was easily destroyed. Progressives were of
course angry about this. That is what Progressives are for: to substitute
passive anger and disappointment for attempts at organization. (Of course
during most of this period there was a brutal suppression of Blacks in the
South (and some northern areas) which could not have been carried out any
more ruthlessly by a Franco or Mussolini. The American Legion also operated
as a Death Squad in some local areas. And all of this without any change in
the formal laws of the nation. 

Police brutality, often in effect the operations of a Death Squad, has never
been brought under control, and prisons today are organized Torture. There
is now underway a massive attack on the livelihoods of a huge part of the
work force, the teachers. This is a logical culmination of the process which
began with PATCO,  continued with the destruction from inside of the Post
Office, and has steadily reduced the number and working conditions of social
workers, forcing them (often it is true willingly) into the role of cops.

Democracy (as we know it) is an inherently authoritarian, even terrorist,
form of the state. Anyone who doubts this, or believes that these features
can be changed by normal political processes, is living in a dream world.

Carrol