Re: Ideology and the conditional nature of bourgeois democracy

>Alan Spector 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.

I do accept that we do have very rich capitalists in Canada, but whether
these people comprise a "ruling class" is something that is a little beyond
me.  To the very best of my knowledge, I do not take orders from them, nor,
as far as I know, do my friends except perhaps when they work for them.  I
know that the capitalists try very hard to exploit them by getting them to
work as hard as possible for the least pay, but I also know that there is a
large body of legislation which protects people as workers, and that, in
many cases, working people have unions to protect their interests as well.

In Canada, working people, and indeed all citizens, have access to the
courts.  We do have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms in our Constitution.  I
do not believe that it was not put there by our rich capitalists for their
own nefarious purposes.  Indeed, the rulings of our Supreme Court have
suggested that the Charter is there for the benefit of all Canadians.  Are
our courts temporary?  I rather doubt it.  They have been there for a very
long time, and their role in Canadian society does seem to be growing, much
to the chagrin of some of our politicians who have been critical of our
judges for being too "activist".

And yes, our government has made some pacts with devils.  What we tolerate
at home and how we behave abroad are often different things.  I can't
explain this and do not like it.  For example, I and many other Canadians
were opposed to the bombing of Serbia, yet bomb it we did.  All I can say is
that the people who hold political power use different criteria from my own.
If I don't like what they are doing, I will have to work hard to replace
them.

I grant that it is possible that Canada could change and become less
democratic.  However, we do not have some of the linkages in our society
that have precipitated military dictatorships in other countries.  In South
American countries, there have often been strong links between the
propertied classes and the military.  When threats were posed to property,
whether land or capital, the military tended to go on alert and if necessary
take over, as happened in Brazil in 1964 and in Chile in the 1970s.  Canada
is simply not like that.  The links are not there.  And besides, our
military is kept in a perpetual state of poverty.  Where other countries
give their soldiers real weapons, ours carry popguns. I'm not objecting to
this, merely commenting.

>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?

I don't know the answer to this.  In my opinion, the only thing about Nazism
that was unqualifiably evil was its scapegoating of Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and
other "antihuman" or "inferior" peoples.  Whether this was peculiar to the
Nazi political philosophy or whether it was endemic in the German mentality
is a matter of controversy.  I tend to go along with Goldhagen and share his
view that it was already well embedded in German society, long before the
Nazis.  All the Nazis had to do was use it and twist it to suit their ends.

>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.

Yes, but there is a further question.  This is whether the social
interactions which Marx studied are themselves a product of the limitations
of being human   whether, in human society it is inevitable that people will
form themselves into classes and exploit each other.  Anthropologists tell
me that this does not happen in hunting-gathering societies.  However, in
recent decades, those societies, at least in Canada, have undergone
tremendous change.  They have acquired land and wealth, as these are
understood in mainstream society, and have tended to divide themselves into
classes and even to exploit each other, though not yet as nakedly and
obviously as we have done.  From this, I gather that the moment you
introduce complexity and scarcity into a society, you also introduce the
probability of exploitation.  Some groups, such as the Hutterites, have
consciously resisted inter-personal exploitation on Biblical injunction, but
this has cost them in other ways.

>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.

At one time I read Marx and accepted his social analysis.  I still regard it
as basically correct.  It is the translation of it into political action
that has been the problem.  Need that really have been so poorly conceived
and brutal?  I will not go further here because I've already commented on
this in a previous posting.

Ed Weick