[lbo-talk] Europe's soft coup

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Thu Feb 23 05:29:33 PST 2012


Re" So if political parties get a booty"

It was supposed to read "get a boot" - a rather different connotation.

Wojtek

On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 8:27 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is a qualitative difference between  bourgeois democracy falling
> to a fascist power grab, and one variant of bourgeois democracy being
> replaced by another.  I do not see political parties being more
> democratic than an executive committee.  In fact, the former can be
> fairly reactionary, as the case of the United States demonstrates.  A
> similar case has been made for the UK as well (cf. Theda Skocpol,
> "Social policy in the United States") .
>
> I have to admit that I have a bias against political parties. I
> believe that they tend to be a parasitic element that thrives on
> mediating citizen's access to government services, and thus tend to
> make this access as cumbersome as possible to extract higher premium
> for this access.  So if political parties get a booty I do not lose
> much sleep over it as long as the system remains democratic i.e.
> guaranteeing a certain minimum of civil rights.  In other words, I do
> not equate party politics with democracy.
>
> Wojtek
>
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 5:28 AM, James Heartfield
> <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>> James: " Italian and Greek people needed to deal with the problems they faced, they were robbed of the chance."
>> [WS:] C'mon James, as if bourgeois democracy gave them that chance.
>>
>> Hmm. That sounds like one of those Third Period Stalinist arguments about not defending democracy because it is all a sham, Wojtek
>> ___________________________________
>> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
> http://wsokol.blogspot.com/

-- Wojtek http://wsokol.blogspot.com/



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