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Marv Gandall wrote: It is easy to condemn these parties for not mobilizing the masses and pushing back against these pressures, but this fails to take into account that the balance of power between the classes and the level of consciousness of the masses in bourgeois democracies have never provided the necessary conditions for such struggles to unfold. It?s only in conditions where democratic rights are absent and the masses don?t have peaceful electoral channels to vent their grievances, or where wars and other catastrophes lead to a breakdown of social order and mass deprivation, that the property and power of the bourgeoisie has been challenged through insurrection. And these insurrections have been more often quashed by the armed forces of the state than have succeeded. I don?t like to sound these notes, but this is the course history has taken to date. *************************** You no doubt dislike sounding these notes because they imply that there is no way forward: thoroughgoing reformist initiatives are bound to be defeated by bourgeois reaction, and revolutionary attempts to mobilize the masses against reaction are impossible because the masses, under bourgeois democracy, refuse to be mobilized. Both reformist and revolutionary politics, in other words, lead to a dead end. This has been true up to now, but, in the case of a democratic country where revolution came closest to happening--France, 1968--the established party system had become dysfunctional because there was no one to play the role of the Democrats or Social Democrats. DeGaulle monopololized bourgeois politics to the extent that the only alternative was the PCF (which ultimately played a role akin to social democracy, but was never trusted by the ruling class). It can be argued that bourgeois democracy, for different reasons, is becoming dysfunctional today. Never has the "political class" of all major parties, in all Western contries, been perceived as so remote from the realities and concerns of ordinary people, and as so beholden to "moneyed interests". Might this not present new opportunities for exposing the limitations of electoralism? Jim Creegan . _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
