So it is finally about to happen – some citizens of the USA will get to vote over the minimal differences between two men who want to run that fading superpower. Thankfully the whole sordid show will be over soon, the shining example of ‘liberal democracy’ in action, for all to emulate. Of course, the desperate and overdone efforts to represent them as sharply opposed to one another betray the truth: they offer minor variations within a one-party state. I hardly need to point out what that party is, with factions such as the Republicans and Democrats.
6 November, 2012
Voting in the world’s most deluded one-party state
Posted by stalinsmoustache under politics | Tags: Obama, one-party state, Romney, USA |[10] Comments
6 November, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Roland- I have been having this argument with some of my more “orthodox” Marxist colleagues. The difference between Obama and Romney are between liberal (keynesian) capitalists and conservative (laissez-faire). There are very substantive differences like social welfare expenditures, military spending, environmental policies (global warming), social issues (abortion, gay rights) and yes even foreign policy- whether to bomb Iran. Most of the left will vote for Obama since we have no place to go. We have lived under Reagan and the Bushes and do want want to cede control to economic and social conservatives- like Murdoch and the Koch Brothers.
7 November, 2012 at 2:06 am
Warren, I have heard these and similar arguments made about most liberal/bourgeois democracies, but they are all constrained by the limits of the system itself which allows no real alternative (as in abolish bourgeois democracy itself). Granted ,these are differences, but they are rather small for they boil down to different ways to make capitalism operate more smoothly and the for benefit of pretty much the same groups.
7 November, 2012 at 2:41 am
Granted Keynesianism leaves capitalism in tact but it makes it more tolerable- for the poor, sick, elderly, etc. I think the Republicans through deregulation have a tendency to throw the system into crisis more readily. I am not one of those hoping in the great deluge (like what just happened on NYC) as a necessary precondition for the revolution. More often than not, people just become more miserable, wretched, and hopeless.
7 November, 2012 at 2:52 am
Actually, it’s more realistic to throw that into reverse: crisis is the normal state of capitalism and the mildly differing approaches attempt to forestall the state of crisis and find short periods of relative stability with their methods. All of this puts anyone on the genuine left into that perennial dilemma: support modest measures that actually enable the system to operate less harshly for some and thereby support the system itself, or withdraw such support in the name of principle. But I’m not into some kind of kairological and cathartic fiat, characteristic of a spate of desperate Western Marxists such as Badiou, Zizek, Agamben etc. That simply neglects the need for organisation and yet more organisation (Lenin), thereby organising for the spontaneous. But it also neglects the wealth of experience, both in terms of mistakes and successes, of what is now a long history of successful communist revolutions.
8 November, 2012 at 12:37 am
Maybe in this context, Obama is the true Leninist
.
8 November, 2012 at 10:50 am
If only … but somehow I have a strange feeling that he isn’t. Not quite sure why.
9 November, 2012 at 3:48 am
Surely not. But a Leninist might have something to learn from him (or David Axelrod).
9 November, 2012 at 4:44 am
You jest, do you not?
Actually, I was really hoping Sarah Palin would run and win. Ah well, the world will be a boring place for a while.
Meanwhile, China has a new general secretary, affirms its current five-year plan and the outgoing secretary says they will never adopt western-style bourgeois democracy. Wise words.
9 November, 2012 at 5:11 am
Me jest? Never.
Bourgeois democracy would work if the masses were politically more educated and the ground rules were changed (i.e. campaign financing, proportional representation). But then it would cease to be a bourgeois democracy.
The day Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann or one of those moves to the White House is the day I go into exile.
9 November, 2012 at 8:16 am
Make sure you don’t send a tweet like Kristen Neel: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/confused-so-was-kristen-neel-20121108-28zhi.html
But it’s important to use a qualifier with ‘democracy’, as in ‘Greek democracy’, ‘bourgeois democracy’, ‘socialist democracy’…