Bourgeois Democracy: The Argument

[Ocean Seal]

So comrades. I have a question. I've often heard the right-wing argument we live in a democracy and we have "a revolution every four years" (as in each President is a revolutionary) so we don't need direct action/revolution and control is in the hands of the people who elect their leaders. The argument is that the people are voting for what they want and in their best interest. Also when people don't vote its their fault for not voting and not having their voice heard. So whenever politicians are bad its our fault for electing them or not voting.

Could I hear some arguments to tear this apart?

[HEAD ICE]

Sit back and watch the magic happen:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1922/democratic-principle.htm
http://signalfire.org/?p=9473

[Red Commissar]

So comrades. I have a question. I've often heard the right-wing argument we live in a democracy and we have "a revolution every four years" (as in each President is a revolutionary) so we don't need direct action/revolution and control is in the hands of the people who elect their leaders. The argument is that the people are voting for what they want and in their best interest. Also when people don't vote its their fault for not voting and not having their voice heard. So whenever politicians are bad its our fault for electing them or not voting.

Could I hear some arguments to tear this apart?

I've heard this argument before and there's really not much you can do to convince people who are too deeply rooted in this thought. It's one of the cushier ways of justifying "democracy" by appealing to the more cynical behaviors of "voting out the bums" approach.

I mean a revolution, at least in the way we see it, entails a significant change in the way things are run. In many cases in social relations and class go through an upheaval- France was different before and after its revolution since it was a first slam into the ancien regime. Or the American Revolution moving from a colonial settlement to its own market. And the tons of other revolutions that while not aiming at social relations, effected differences in the way things happened.

Let us look at the last few presidents, starting with Reagan

Reagan
-Began to encourage more intervention in foreign countries and backing dictators
-Supply-side economics
-Free Trade on a global scale
-Rich

Bush I
-Gulf War I
-Backing some other dictators
-Supply-Side economics
-Free Trade
-Rich

Clinton
-Balkans and Somalia
-Backing some dictators
-Supply-side economics
-Free Trade (NAFTA, WTO)
-Rich

Bush II
-Iraq and Afghanistan
-Backing some dictators
-Supply-side economics
-Free Trade (NAFTA and WTO upheld)
-Rich

Obama
-Iraq and Afghanistan
-Backing some dictators
-Supply-side economics
-Free Trade (expanding other agreements with Latin American and Asian partners)
-Rich

Where is the revolution? By their logic we shouldn't have seen such a difference between all these presidents. People who aren't voting aren't voting because they've seen this- there is no point. No man (or woman) who gets a presidential ticket is unlikely to improve their livelihood. Why bother?

[CHEtheLIBERATOR]

Yes it is bourgeois democracy

1. It's not a revolution every 4 years, you have 2 parties go back in forth every 4 years and ultimately the parties have the same agenda with different (unimportant) fiscal issues
2. It's also not a direct revolution because we use electoral votes, so in the case of 2000 election more people voted for al gore but bush won. WHAT REVOLUTION IS THAT!?
3. Every time you vote for a president you vote for everything they do, every president has a high body count on there hands, so your voting for the deaths of people in other countries as well as some in our own. If you vote you vote for murder

Personally I feel presidents are puppets so your votes don't count

Hope that helps

[mikelepore]

So comrades. I have a question. I've often heard the right-wing argument we live in a democracy and we have "a revolution every four years" (as in each President is a revolutionary) so we don't need direct action/revolution and control is in the hands of the people who elect their leaders. The argument is that the people are voting for what they want and in their best interest. Also when people don't vote its their fault for not voting and not having their voice heard. So whenever politicians are bad its our fault for electing them or not voting.

Could I hear some arguments to tear this apart?

In a way, it is the people's fault. Political democracy contains the potential for revolution any time the people want one. However, most people are incapable of thinking about ideas that they have not already heard other people generally discussing. If you are born into an age when slavery is considered normal by most people, and discussion of any alternative is rare, this near unanimity in the intellectual environment is enough to prevents the average individual from thinking about the possibility of abolishing slavery. If you let the slaves vote on the question, they will vote to continue their own enslavement. This is what is happening today with capitalism, which is wage slavery. The institution of polling the people to determing what they want has the potential to mandate revolutionary changes at any time, but, if most people are refusing to consider the necessary changes, then going to vote is a waste of your shoe leather.

***

Excerpt from Daniel De Leon, "As To Politics", 1907:



Not everything that capitalism has brought about is to be
rejected. Such a vandal view would have to smash the giant machine of
modern production as well. Among the valuable things that capitalism
has introduced is the idea of peaceful methods for settling disputes.
In feudal days, when lords fell out, production stopped; war had the
floor. The courts of law have become the main fields of capitalist,
at least internal capitalist battle, and production continues
uninterfered with. It matters not how corrupt the courts have become,
or one-sided against the working class. The jewel of civilized or
peaceful methods for settling disputes is there, however incrusted
with slime. Capitalism, being a step forward, as all Socialists
recognize, can not help but be a handmaid, however clumsy, to
civilized methods. Of a piece with the court method for the peaceful
settlement of disputes is the political method. The organization that
rejects this method and organizes for force only, reads itself out of
the pale of civilization, with the practical result that, instead of
seizing a weapon furnished by capitalism, it gives capitalism a weapon
against itself.

The "filling of the bucket" must be done by the million-masses.
The agitation for force only clips the wings of the agitation for the
"filling of the bucket". The inevitable result is that the agitation
has to degenerate into "conspiracy"; conspiracy can be conducted in
circumscribed localities only, such localities exclude the masses -
and the wheels of time are turned back. The bringing together of the
physical force organization becomes impossible. Political agitation
equips the revolution with a weapon that is indispensable. Political
agitation enables the revolution to be preached in the open, and
thereby enables the revolution to be brought before the million-masses
- without which there can be no "bucket" fashioned to do the
"filling".

In short, political agitation, coupled with the industrial
organization able to "take and hold," or "back up" the political
movement, or "fill the bucket," places the revolution abreast of
civilized and intelligent methods - civilized, because they offer a
chance to a peaceful solution; intelligent, because they are not
planted upon the visionary plane of imagining that right can ever
prevail without the might to enforce it.

[Rafiq]

Chomsky, although Idealist, makes good sense when he calls the United States a 'Polyarchy', which can be described as a single party state in which two factions compete for dominance every four years.

[Thirsty Crow]

So comrades. I have a question. I've often heard the right-wing argument we live in a democracy and we have "a revolution every four years" (as in each President is a revolutionary) so we don't need direct action/revolution and control is in the hands of the people who elect their leaders.
A revolution every four years? How is it nice to hear this gem!
The democracy in wich we live is foremost formal, in that people do not have at their disposal institutional mechanisms which would make representatives accountable. There is no guarantee that the platform of a party which won the elections will be exercised (an instructive example is Labour during the post-WWII boom and the welfare state: the threat of capital flight made the implementation of certain social policies impossible). That's one thing.

The other thing is that the institutions of liberal democracy are inherently class institutions - bourgeois institutions. The constitution, which functions as the supreme law of a country, enshrines the right to private property. The hierarchical administrative and managerial functions correspond to needs of capitalist accumulation. These kind of institutions in themselves simply cannot function as basis for economic, social and political transformations which enable the creation of global classless society/ies.

As for this shit regarding revolutionary presidents - these people are simply engaging in rhetorical mystification.
Let's see what does he dictionary say: Britannica Concise says that a revolution is "...In politics, fundamental, rapid, and often irreversible change in the established order. Revolution involves a radical change in government, usually accomplished through violence, that may also result in changes to the economic system, social structure, and cultural values." (http://www.answers.com/topic/revolution; scroll down!)

So, even by the methodological principles (or lack thereof) of common sense, we can see that this claim is simply not true. Did Obama's administration transform the US political system into something other than iit is? Did this administration nationalize huge portions of the economy and commenced structural changes within the structural forms of state enterprise thus expropriated? No and no.

From a Marxist viewpoint, we can talk about a political revolution and about a social revolution (which prefigures political revolution). So, this right-wing bullshit is false in any case.






The argument is that the people are voting for what they want and in their best interest. Also when people don't vote its their fault for not voting and not having their voice heard. So whenever politicians are bad its our fault for electing them or not voting.

Could I hear some arguments to tear this apart?People are voting for what seems like the best option for their own lives and interests (and do notice that criteria for establishing what is best can vary wildly). But they get to choose from a predetermined set of possibilities.

When people do not vote, it is most likely a silent, private protest at the futility of liberal dmocracy. In other cases, it may be attributable to apathy. But what about developing other venues for your voice to be heard? It seems to me that this argument is based on almost total exclusion of any other kind of political practice than through meager established institutions.

[La Peur Rouge]

So comrades. I have a question. I've often heard the right-wing argument we live in a democracy.


The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S.A., the USA, or America) is a FEDERAL CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC


and we have "a revolution every four years" (as in each President is a revolutionary) so we don't need direct action/revolution and control is in the hands of the people who elect their leaders.The argument is that the people are voting for what they want and in their best interest.

I hear this all of the time and it's just ridiculous, a revolution implies a radical change. When someone votes in the US they vote for different sides of the same bourgeois center/right coin. The fact is, the only "control" the people have is which name they choose at the voting place, after this point what control do we have?

How can someone be sure that their vote is in their best interest if they have absolutely no control once the politician is elected? Especially since the best interests of the ruling class are not the best interests of the proletariat.


Also when people don't vote its their fault for not voting and not having their voice heard.

This is the argument of someone who is upset over how an election/whatever went, it's just scapegoating.

[eric922]

The reason that argument is false is because you have false choices. Every president is vetted to make sure he represents the ruling elites and not the working class. No one who cares about the working class will get the nomination from either major party. Hell, look at Dennis Kucinich, I may not agree with all his views, but he at least cares about the working class and the ruling class does everything they can do to destroy him, hell last election NBC wouldn't even let him come to their debate because he got so popular after the CNN debate.

[El Rojo]

there is a british phrase coined by a lord halisham that the UK (it can be applied to any rep democ nation) is an "elected dictatorship"

this dude was a Lord remember, hardly a revolutionary