Ideology and the conditional nature of bourgeois democracy

In response to Ed Weick:

Canada's relatively liberal court system is only a temporary situation, as
is the case in all class societies. The Canadian ruling class, (the richest
capitalists), like the U.S. capitalist class, the British, the Italians etc.
are able to tolerate political dissent because it does not pose any serious
threat to their power. Like the British, Italians, U.S., etc., they have
been more than willing, on various occasions, to lend important support to
murderous fascist regimes in other countries -- demonstrating that their
commitment to " tolerant, liberal democracy" is not a universal principle
for them, but rather a tactic which they turn off when their profits are
threatened.

And this is not just related to imperialism. When I was very young, I was
told that the two countries in South America which would never have
dictatorships, because they were so Europeanized and had long,
constitutional, democratic traditions, were URUGUAY and CHILE.  Well,
fascist governments took power there and murdered tens of thousands. Then
there is the "world's oldest democracy" the so-called "birthplace of
democracy" -- Greece, which endured a fascist military that murdered
thousands as recently as the 1970's. And Argentina's foray into mass murder
and disappearances of thousands, defended by Jeanne Kirkpatrick --U.S.
Secretary of State, who said: "At least they aren't atheists." or something
like that.  These countries aren't even the ones most often discussed, like
Rwanda or the Congo in the early 1900's. These are relatively Europeanized
(or European) countries. And who can forget the CANADIAN government's
journey into a police state, under the pretext of stopping the FLQ in the
early 1970's resulting in a suspension of the rules of liberal democracy in
Canada as many were arrested without evidence. In the U.S. they have been
doing it more subtly, jailing the victims of capitalism such that there are
now nearly two million people in jail -- in some places, 30% of the black,
male population now have serious criminal records while the police protect
drug houses with the consent of local politicians.  What I call "liberal,
bourgeois democracy" is only a temporary tactic of capitalism -- it is not
rooted in the value system of the mass murderers who run the system.

----
As to ideology, it would be interesting to examine how the Nazis were able
to hold onto power. Was it because the great masses of German people were
won to a deep understanding of the complex, contradictory mythology that was
Nazi philosophy? Or was it because PRAGMATISM -- the opposite of strong
philosophical beliefs -- the result of only trying to get through the day
rather than understanding social processes -- in other words the PRACTICAL,
positivist, "I'll just go along with it." attitude that is being taught
today in our schools -- that attitude is what left the working class and
other anti-fascists intellectually disarmed and unable to combat the
fanatics?

Does philosophy come from our experiences with the world, especially our
social relations? Or does it come from some type of structure in the human
brain that makes us want to make other people agree with us so that we can
dominate them?  Marxism, with all its weaknesses, has as its great strength,
its attempts to locate the source and development of social processes and
ideas within the realm of social practice and social interaction.

If you locate it somewhere else, that is when you open the door to
irrationalism, fanatical philosophies, even the ones that pose as being
"level-headed" and sensible, while their killing machines murder millions
and set up the murders of hundreds of millions more.

Alan Spector




----- Original Message -----
From: Ed Weick <eweick@istar.ca>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 26, 1999 8:30 AM
Subject: Re: Rev Int Movement (fwd)


>       mine writes:
>
> >>>communist parties have a legitimate right to exist even >>>though they
> use violence. their violence is against capitalism, which is >>>okey for
me.
> i believe that there is a legitimate right to use violence >>>on the part
of
> the oppressed against the oppressers.
>
> Ed Weick responds:
>
> I would never question the right of communist parties to exist.  I would,
> however, question that they have a legitimate right to use violence to
> attain their ends.  Who, other than they themselves, would have given them
> this right?  Once a group believes it has that right, it can rationalize
any
> action it feels is necessary.  The actions of the Communist Party of the
> early Soviet Union against peasants and others it identified as obstacles
to
> its reforms caused tremendous dislocation and the deaths of millions, all
in
> the name of the ends being justified by the means.  Pol Pot, has I
believe,
> been mentioned on this list   again, millions died on the killing fields
> because of the belief that a society had to be reorganized into something
> more ideologically correct.
>
> It is not, however, communism or any other specific ideology that is the
> problem, it is ideology itself.  Any ideology, when carried to the level
of
> a true belief, becomes something that deprives other points of view of
> legitimacy.  The insistence that things be seen in only one way, that only
> one path is correct and all others are in error, has occurred many times
in
> history.  Early Christians were martyred for their beliefs in ancient
Rome.
> They in turn persecuted other faiths when they became the official church.
> In medieval times, their brutality toward Jews and infidels knew almost no
> bounds.  Following the Reformation, Christians brutalized Christians:
> witness Calvin's Geneva.
>
> In our secular age, this insistance that things can be viewed in only one
> way, that all others are in error, has been moved, very largely, into the
> political sphere.  I believe that what Gert Koler was saying in pointing
out
> that the differences between the extreme left and the extreme right are
not
> that great referred not so much to ideology but to behaviour.  The
specific
> characteristics of beliefs matter little when beliefs are extreme.
Anything
> that is extreme is dangerous.  Hitler was responsible for the deaths of
some
> six million Jews and perhaps at least as many Slavs.  According to people
I
> talked with in Russia a few years ago, estimates of Stalin's toll range
from
> twenty to sixty million Soviet citizens.
>
> But to justify extreme actions, scapegoats are needed.  Christians had
Jews
> and infidels, Catholics had Protestants and Protestants had Catholics.
> Currently, communists and other true believers have capitalists.  This is
> not to say that capitalists are innocent.  However, it is to say that one
> has to be very careful about who one labels as a wrong doer, and about
what
> is being done wrong.  Being a Canadian, I am used to a good, if far from
> perfect, system of laws enforced by strong courts.  If I am accusing
someone
> of something, or being accused myself, I prefer to rely on those laws and
> those courts.  I don't want to have to take matters into my own hands.
>
> However, I do recognize that much of the world does not operate the way
> Canada does, that many people worldwide do not have rights under the law,
> and even if they have them, they exist in name only, not in practice.  In
> such cases, people may have to use violent means to protect or assert
> themselves.  My one wish is that they do so in a pragmatic way, without
> clothing what they are doing in some grand ideological mishmash.  I
recently
> posted something to this list on garrison towns in Jamaica.  People in
these
> towns have organized themselves into self-protective gangs, which, because
> of their size and strength, can not be dismissed by the establishment.  In
> the absence of strong laws and courts, and without an impartial police,
this
> is what people feel they have to do, and it does seem to work for them.  I
> saw much the same thing in the slums of Sao Paulo a couple of years ago,
> where laws are also weak, courts are so slow as to be non existent, and
the
> police is an army of the establishment.  My point is that the people who
> have organized themselves have done so practically, not ideologically.
They
> are not labeling or scapegoating anyone, but simply protecting what they
see
> as their rights and interests.
>
> Hope this helps to explain my position.
>
> Ed Weick
>
>
>
>
>