Diary of a Walking Butterfly
“The U.S. isn’t Iran, where say candidates are vetted by the clergy before you can vote for them and then you get a democratic vote. In the United States they’re vetted by concentrations of private capital, and then you get a vote. It’s a difference. But not a very substantial one.” – Noam Chomsky, SUNY New Paltz, Sunday 4 December 2011, at an event with Anthony Arnove, honoring the legacy and work of historian Howard Zinn
“The struggle for socialism is the struggle for proletarian (working class) democracy. Proletarian democracy is not the crown of socialism. Socialism is the result of proletarian democracy. To the degree that the proletariat mobilizes itself and the great masses of the people, the socialist revolution is advanced. The proletariat mobilizes itself as a self-acting force through its own committees, unions, parties, and other organizations.” – C. L. R. James
(via Paul Le Blanc’s excellent piece: “What Do Socialists Say About Democracy?”
Further Reading:
The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution by C.L.R. James
“One of the signs of the present time is the idea of participation, the right that all persons have to participate in the construction of their own common good. For this reason, one of the most dangerous abuses of the present time is repression, the attitude that says, ‘Only we can govern, no one else; get rid of them.’” – Óscar Romero, 10 July 1977, born 15 August 1917 – assassinated 24 March 1980
“(…even the most radical constitution could be exploited by the Revolution’s enemies and hence the necessity for the dictatorship, i.e., a power not limited by fixed and written laws).” – Antonio Gramsci, Q3§56
“Consensus is imposed on everyone. The Constitution is sacred and it absolutely unimaginable that it is possible to replace it with another one (which is not the case in Europe!) and private property provides the inviolable foundation for the permanence of this mode of social organization (no horizon beyond capitalism is imaginable).” Samir Amin, “Consensus or Inventive Democracy?”
Here in the United States we must deal with an incessant worship of the Constitution. Upon this document rests a whole load of claims of the exceptional nature of the nation and its people, who, through divine inspiration, forged the most libertarian document of governance ever conceived. Having reached the ideal form of government, the constitution is worshiped and change is seen as both impossible and undesirable.
As Gramsci points out in the above note, whatever advances the U.S. constitution ushered into the world, it has been used primarily as a tool by reactionaries to prevent further progress. In revolutionary periods, only a new power not limited by the rigid and formalistic methods of operation can successfully ensure the success of the Revolution, the suppression of its enemies, and the permanent stability of a new society.
Only this new power – a democracy of the vast majority, i.e. a “dictatorship of the working class / proletariat” over and against the old exploiting classes and in the interests of the immense majority – can ensure the stabilisation of a new form of socialist democracy and the destruction of all forms of oppression and exploitation which comes along with the current dictatorship of capital.
All of us must struggle against the fetish of outdated forms, of documents and habits of old, if we wish to see birth of the final and most emancipatory stage of human history.
It is worth repeating that for all their praise of “orderly transitions” the bourgeoisie came to power through some of the most tumultuous revolutions in history.
“Under a socialist system every nation will be the supreme arbiter of its own destinies, national and international; will be forced into no alliance against its will, but will have its independence guaranteed and its freedom respected by the enlightened self-interest of the socialist democracy of the world.” – James Connolly
“When George Bush says “you’re either with us, or you are with the terrorists” we can say “No thank you.” We can let him know that the people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs. Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, if you very listen carefully, you can hear her breathing.”
- Arundhati Roy, “Confronting Empire“, Speech at the World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 27 January 2003
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Who is Arundhati Roy?
Arundhati Roy is an extremely talented Indian novelist, essayist, and social justice activist. She has received numerous awards, including the Booker Prize, for her works such as the God of Small Things, as well as for her social justice advocacy. Her most recent work, Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshopers, is available from U.S. socialist publisher Haymarket Books.
“Liberal democracy is not authentically pluralist because it avoids conflict and seeks consensus. The latter is the only means to prevent competition between individuals, the fundamental principle around which liberal society is built, from degrading into chaotic and criminal anarchy. Recognition that there is no alternative to the existing world as it is, i.e. capitalism, is expressed through consensus. Conflicts of interest are thus only conflicts of particular and partial interests that can and must be reconciled. The good technocrat is able to offer solutions, after having heard the lobbyists advance their arguments. Radical political parties hinder more than contribute to the achievement of consensus. Consensus assumes that all subversions can be diluted and ultimately absorbed. The ideal is thus “bipartisanship” as found in the United States, in which the two parties are joined together on the main principles even if they address different supporters (above all not social classes!) with different tastes. Consensus is imposed on everyone. The Constitution is sacred and it absolutely unimaginable that it is possible to replace it with another one (which is not the case in Europe!) and private property provides the inviolable foundation for the permanence of this mode of social organization (no horizon beyond capitalism is imaginable). In contrast, the very definition of democracy is the right to innovation, invention, and imagination. Since nothing in the current social organization is sacred, democracy becomes subversive by nature. Subversion is the driving force of social transformation. Radical democrats do not like consensus, and when it appears to be operating in their society – in situations of war, for example – they are suspicious of its destructive effects on the critical spirit.” - Samir Amin, The World We Wish To See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century.
“Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” – Friedrich Engels, Introduction to Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France (1891).
by V. I. LENIN
from “Trade-Unionist Politics and Social-Democratic[Socialist] Politics: The Working Class As Vanguard Fighter for Democracy” in What Is To Be Done?: Burning Questions of Our Movement.
“…the Social-Democrat [Socialist]’s ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all their socialist convictions and their democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat”.
by V. I. LENIN,
“The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination.”
“The proletariat cannot be victorious except through democracy, i.e., by giving full effect to democracy and by linking with each step of its struggle democratic demands formulated in the most resolute terms. It is absurd to contrapose the socialist revolution and the revolutionary struggle against capitalism to a single problem of democracy, in this case, the national question. We must combine the revolutionary struggle against capitalism with a revolutionary programme and tactics on all democratic demands: a republic, a militia, the popular election of officials, equal rights for women, the self-determination of nations, etc. While capitalism exists, these demands—all of them—can only be accomplished as an exception, and even then in an incomplete and distorted form. Basing ourselves on the democracy already achieved, and exposing its incompleteness under capitalism, we demand the overthrow of capitalism, the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, as a necessary basis both for the abolition of the poverty of the masses and for the complete and all-round institution of all democratic reforms. Some of these reforms will be started before the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, others in the course of that overthrow, and still others after it. The social revolution is not a single battle, but a period covering a series of battles over all sorts of problems of economic and democratic reform, which are consummated only by the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It is for the sake of this final aim that we must formulate every one of our democratic demands in a consistently revolutionary way. It is quite conceivable that the workers of some particular country will overthrow the bourgeoisie before even a single fundamental democratic reform has been fully achieved. It is, however, quite inconceivable that the proletariat, as a historical class, will be able to defeat the bourgeoisie, unless it is prepared for that by being educated in the spirit of the most consistent and resolutely revolutionary democracy.”
Socialist Politics:
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