Parliamentary Democracy

[Rafiko Bingo]

Hello comrades,


I've been around this forum for a while, reading the more possible to understand and learn the basic of Marxism but I've often heard attacks on ''parliamentary democracy'' system. What's so bad about it, because it is the most used political system within the occident and furthermore, some wars are declared on its name ( Install Democracy, Liberty, etc... you know the pattern).

Since I've been to High School, no one dared to discuss about that system (maybe because of the Bourgeoisy's brainwash is hitting the perfection) and It is rarely debated.

So basically, what's wrong with Parliamentary Democracy.

-Rafiko Bingo

[Lord Hargreaves]

If you want Marx's own view on this, the essays to read are his 'Critique of Hegel's Doctrine of the State' and his 'On the Jewish Question'. These texts are easily accessible so they don't really need much explanation from me.

Incidently, I think the Penguin edition of Marx's Early Writings (with these essays in) is definitely worth buying. Lucio Colletti's introduction to the book goes through all these topics extremely well.

[Durruti's friend]

It's easy. Parliamentary democracy is only a cover-up for a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. We have the "right" to vote every 4, 5, whatever, years and choose our "representatives". Now, those representatives usually don't differ from each other at all, the left-right dichotomy is false in a parliamentary system.

Basically, the problem is that there's not enough democracy in a parliamentary system. We choose dictators for 4 years and they rule over us without us having the chance to question their authority.

And the "wars for liberty" usually have a much deeper, more sinister reason.

[Clarion]

Parliamentary democracy is only a cover-up for a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

It is not a "cover-up" for anything; Parliamentary democracy is no sham, it is the most stable and developed form dictatorship of the bourgeoisie can take


We have the "right" to vote every 4, 5, whatever, years and choose our "representatives". Now, those representatives usually don't differ from each other at all, the left-right dichotomy is false in a parliamentary system.

Communists are free to run in those elections, the reason they are not successful is because the they have no support among the working class.

[#FF0000]

Communists are free to run in those elections, the reason they are not successful is because the they have no support among the working class.

Guess it depends on what you mean by "successful". Folks have a problem with parliamentary democracy because they have a problem with the idea that communism can be established via the ballot box.

[Durruti's friend]

It is not a "cover-up" for anything; Parliamentary democracy is no sham, it is the most stable and developed form dictatorship of the bourgeoisie can take
Fair enough.


Communists are free to run in those elections, the reason they are not successful is because the they have no support among the working class. Most of the (parliamentary) communist parties of today are reformist and wouldn't change anything if they come to power. Fringe parties that aren't reformist don't have a chance of coming to power because the bourgeois have a better propaganda machine and can always make smaller parties illegal.

Even if a communist party would win the election, it would have a hard time trying to install communism. There's also the threat of the party turning authoritarian. I'll quote myself from another thread:

2) Parliamentarism isn't really the best way of achieving victory because the people think you will change everything, while that is, in fact, the job of the people themselves. The voters think you are responsible for everything and that their responsibility starts and ends with voting. It's something of a moral factor, if people actually fight for change, they will feel that fight is theirs. That doesn't happen in parliamentarism.

3) The opposition is very strong after every parliamentary elections and it will do anything to stop social changes. And that could lead to a more and more authoritarian stance of the party, which could end in a dictatorship.

[#FF0000]

3) The opposition is very strong after every parliamentary elections and it will do anything to stop social changes. And that could lead to a more and more authoritarian stance of the party, which could end in a dictatorship. I think these are, uh, kinda silly. Winning an election and having to deal with an opposition party is gonna make a party authoritarian, but organizing full on insurrection and defending a revolution won't?

Either way, I think people who advocate for elections or, rather, think a "gradual" path to communism is a good idea, let alone workable, are kind of naive in thinking that a full-on and radical shift from one mode of production to another in a peaceful and orderly fashion is possible.

[Durruti's friend]

I think these are, uh, kinda silly. Winning an election and having to deal with an opposition party is gonna make a party authoritarian, but organizing full on insurrection and defending a revolution won't?
Yeah, it would. But if I'm not mistaken a marxist revolutionary party is democratic in essence, while a parliamentary party which takes control over a country can rather easily become dictatorial and impose its laws on people who didn't really want that to happen. When I said dictatorship, I didn't mean "of the proletariat".

In the end, we get to a discussion on vanguardism.

It sounds confused, and I am aware of that, but I don't have time to think right now. :o

[Dear Leader]

I think parliamentary democracy can be used as some sort of tool by revolutionaries, but it is dangerous to think it can be THE way to socialism. I know Chavez used parliament after his revolution, and was able to maintain the socialist state though.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Yeah, it would. But if I'm not mistaken a marxist revolutionary party is democratic in essence, while a parliamentary party which takes control over a country can rather easily become dictatorial and impose its laws on people who didn't really want that to happen. When I said dictatorship, I didn't mean "of the proletariat".

except it has to go through parliament (hence parliamentary democracy) before they're implemented, being voted over by the other parties.

To say that brougeois democracy is just a dicatorship dressed in pretty clothes is to over-simplify it. As Clarion said, it's one of the most effective forms the bourgeois rule can take. Even to say that it's not "real" democracy is to stretch it. I think to get to the core of it, we need to get rid of the democratic/authoritarian dichotomy for a second.

[#FF0000]

... and was able to maintain the socialist state

I don't think so, dude.

[Dear Leader]

I don't think so, dude.
What do you mean?

[l'Enfermé]

I think parliamentary democracy can be used as some sort of tool by revolutionaries, but it is dangerous to think it can be THE way to socialism. I know Chavez used parliament after his revolution, and was able to maintain the socialist state though.
What revolution? Chavez was elected on a mild center-left platform. What does this revolution consist of? The proletariat is still a dispossessed class, private property is still the foundation of Venezuelan society, the bourgeoisie has not gone anywhere, crime and corruption plague the country, and so on. Just because Chavez was forced by American business interests in Venezuela to move to the left after they tried to oust him, doesn't mean there was a revolution.

[Crabbensmasher]

What revolution? Chavez was elected on a mild center-left platform. What does this revolution consist of? The proletariat is still a dispossessed class, private property is still the foundation of Venezuelan society, the bourgeoisie has not gone anywhere, crime and corruption plague the country, and so on. Just because Chavez was forced by American business interests in Venezuela to move to the left after they tried to oust him, doesn't mean there was a revolution.

Whether inadvertently or not, he laid down the framework for a real revolution though. The working class and poor have undergone a radical transformation since Chavez taking power. I don't think you could say they have a class conscious, but they do feel empowered. They know what their capable of.
...Which is something completely unheard of in the West. So Bravo.

As for parliamentary democracy, the reason they use it today is for two reasons.

1) Stability
2) It works.

Nobody said that it works well, but it definitely works, and people like that.

[Nevsky]

"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich--that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”--supposedly petty--details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,--we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analyzing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

But from this capitalist democracy--that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through--forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards "greater and greater democracy", as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way." (V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, Chapter 5)

[Poison Frog]

People say parliamentary democracy as if the choices people get to make are genuine. I see no real choice at all. The media controls what everyone thinks, and the media only gives exposure to the main, right wing parties.

In the UK, we have the Tories, who are seen as right of centre, and Labour, who are seen as left of centre. Here's an example of the "differences" between them:

The Tories have been forcing people to work full time hours for months on end, just to continue receiving their welfare payments. That's about 70 quid every two weeks or some shit. What right do they have to force the poorest in society to work for 7 pounds a DAY, when those people would earn that every hour if the employer had actually employed them instead of taking parts in this government "strategy"? How dare they continue to pretend there is a "minimum wage" to protect the poorest from the exploiters?

They were found guilty recently by a court, of illegality in this case, and they were ruled to owe hundreds of thousands of people compensation for, effectively, enforced (and practically unpaid) labour.

The Tories are now rushing through a bit of legislation that will mean they don't have to pay their debt to those hundreds of thousands of poor people at all, despite their illegal actions.

The Labour party, the party that "stands up for the working class"? They are vowing not to oppose this legislation.

So what choice do the people have? Neither of the only two parties to receive enough oxygen in the media will stand up for the working class, or introduce any meaningful change.

I don't want to listen to the guitar, I want to listen to the piano. Parliamentary democracy is someone telling me "no, you have to listen to the guitar, but you can choose which of these two c**ts gets to play it."

[The Idler]

The winning of universal suffrage and the franchise are extremely important victories for the working-class. They result in part from the struggles of the Chartists and massacres such as at Peterloo. It would be foolish to prefer the barricades, just as it would be foolish for a withering ruling-class to oppose a majority of class-conscious workers building socialism.

[magicshoemonkey]

Parliamentary democracy, at best, dilutes the needs and wants of the working class.

To give an example, if you study the history of parliamentary democracy in France through the 20th century, you find that parliament exists as a means to buttress the status quo against revolutionary change. When workers took over factories and enacted a general strike in 1936, with hopes of a socialist revolution, the newly elected socialist prime minister, Léon Blum (whom I actually have a decent amount of respect for), forced them to settle for pay raises and vacation days (granted, many of their lives improved, but it was chicken feed, in the long run).

Even when groups of the radical left took control in parliament they tended to move to the right almost immediately upon assuming power, to say nothing of what they had to give up when negotiating with right-wing parties. That has been the overwhelming pattern of parliamentary procedure in history, at least from what I understand of it.

That said, I don't have a problem with voting ones own interests in elections, knowing that little will be gained, but it's not a particularly effective tool for social change (which always happens through popular struggle, with the parliament/congress only running in at the end to play the hero).

[Crabbensmasher]

I don't think there's a problem with the idea of parliamentary democracy in a philosophical sense. The problem I have is what it's devolved to.

As everybody knows, to have a functioning democracy, you need educated voters. I think John F. Kennedy said this one, but ah what the hell "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all". That's very true, until you realize that different societies have different meanings for the word ignorance. Quite frankly, I think the vast majority of people are too misled, uneducated, lazy, biased, uninformed, emotional, and propagandized to be able to vote. And that's just my opinion.

Secondly, a parliament is used on the basis of representing the people. But as anyone here will tell you, politicians have the nasty habit of seemingly disconnecting from reality. Not to mention, being a politician is a career. Such a career is mostly taken by a specific type of person, from a specific background and even a specific family history. That's a lot of specifics, isn't it? Maybe that's why the average parliament is filled by age 65 + white capitalists. Soon enough, this becomes the norm. The old white men are the ones who "know what they're talking about". they use their influence to constantly reaffirm this.

Obviously, you could counter this "disconnect" with constant checks called "referendums" or "plebiscites", but honestly, how often are these used?
And this is why, whenever somebody advocates for a more direct democracy, the politicians will call him a communist, an anarchist, or even perhaps a satanist.

Now, I'm only criticizing the theory here. It's my opinion, nothing more.