On 2013-03-08, at 6:29 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote:
> Michael Smith writes: >> Democracy, on any informed understanding of the term, is the negation of >> ‘rights’... > > ...I'd say that democracy involves majority rule _and_ > minority rights...The current US "democracy" involves the domination of > majority rule by > the rights of a very specific minority, the big property owners. The implication in each comment is that there are no democratic rights - freedom to assemble, to speak out, to publish, to organize, to vote - to defend in a bourgeois democracy dominated by big property owners. Michael and Jim suggest that the system either fully "negates" these rights or reserves them only for the rich and powerful. The Left, very broadly defined, has historically understood and acted otherwise. It fought fascism in defence of the majority's hard-won democratic rights in bourgeois democracies. A popular democracy is necessary to transcend the limits of capitalist democracy, but that is not to say that there are no democratic rights in capitalist democracies, such as those exercised on this list, which need to be defended and deepened. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
