My point being that just because the criteria for what is democratic will never receive universal assent doesn't mean that we have to grant perpetual privilege to a bad status quo. In fact, abject failure of the status quo may be sufficient grounds for experimentation even given the understanding that there is no guarantee those experiments will succeed.
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Tom Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm not sure that I would agree that a constituent assembly is a > "structure." David. It seems to me it is an action: constituents assemble > at the behest of initiatives undertaken by broad popular participation. > That action may eventually congeal into a structure. Whether or not such a > structure is deemed 'democratic' would be essentially contested. > > Is a plebiscite -- conceived, administered, financed and manipulated by > elites -- "democratic" as long as the majority of the population is > "eligible" to register a choice between two offered candidates? > > On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 5:58 PM, David Shemano > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Carroll Cox writes: >> >> "Anti-capitalist movements at least in principle can/could overthrow >> capitalist regimes, leading to democratically organized constituent >> assemblies." >> >> There are two statements here. The first is that anti-capitalist >> movement can overthrow capitalist regimes (i.e., anti-capitalist >> revolutions can occur). The second statement is that such revolutions can >> lead to democratic political structures. >> >> I am curious about the second statement. In your view (the generic you), >> what is the evidence for the second statement? This is not intended as a >> contentious question. The fact that I may disagree with you about whether >> any specific post-revolutionary political structure is democratic, or an >> improvement, is irrelevant to the question. The questions is, from your >> perspective, what is the evidence that supports the statement that >> anti-capitalist revolutions can lead to democratic political structures? >> >> David Shemano >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> > > > > -- > Cheers, > > Tom Walker (Sandwichman) > -- Cheers, Tom Walker (Sandwichman)
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