oliver craner said:
Curbing tyranny – curbing actual tyranny, that’s throwing
dissenters in vats of boiling water-style tyranny,
one-party-plus-lethal-technology-rule-type tyranny – is not
insubstantial, as yesterday's queues and large turnout and street parties paid
testament too. You may not value that, but you’ve yet to have your
right to political debate or dissent revoked.
Yes, apologists for kapital always seem to discount kapital's 'actual tyranny' as actual tyranny. When the US throws ppl out of helicopters, shore up corrupt regimes (like, needless to say, Saddam's when it was more expedient to do so), illegally bomb children, that's not ACTUAL tyranny. It's Ok, it's a regrettable means to end, but it isn't ACTUAL tyranny, because it's done by GOOD people, people like us.
If there’s an inflexible law that conditions Democracy Everywhere
then be clear about the inflexible flaw: say it in one clear sentence.
Once, you said, train drivers and coal minors could run the country, but
now it’s run by Oxbridge Lawyers. Presumably, it still counted as a
democracy when run by coal minors and train drivers: as you implicitly
argue, more of a democracy, a better democracy. The flaw with democracy
is, then, the fact that right now, in the UK, it’s run by Oxbridge
Lawyers. (Well, a few Oxbridge Lawyers.) Sorry, this is beyond me.
What’s the inflexible law again?
The inflexible law is to do with a tendency towards subordination to the necrotic structure of bourgeois representationalism. So there was a time when the working class thought it was worthwhile investing in the structures of your class, on the mistaken but understandable belief that they could change them. But 'you think you know how to play the game, but one day the game starts to play you' (Mark Stewart) - working class ppl realise, after defeat after painful defeat, compromise after inevitable compromise, that this silly parliamentary parlour game is not worth the effort and leave it to the Oxbridge debating team to have their inconsequent rhetoric contests, which, by design, change nothing.
All political systems are run and ruled by elites, and I challenge you
to find me a legitimate exception. Elite: whether the philosopher-kings
of Socrates and Plato or the Tikriti thugs of Saddam’s court or the
Bolshevik and Menshevik circles who pushed the Communist Revolution into
reality in Russia, then proceeded to squander it and fall prey to a more
vicious version of ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’…
It’s not politics that’s the concern of an elite…it’s political
systems that are run by elites, whatever that ‘elite’ means.
Only if you defined political systems in terms of what the elite does.
Power
is always concentrated. Power can only be concentrated before being
dispersed.
Read some Foucault mate....
communism
by its fatalism is old and old and old
again: it’s easy to define anything by its worst aspects and its
side-effects.
There where worse things to battle than ennui, anxiety,
and depression in the Soviet Bloc.
Before deciding to banish our right to vote democratically and debate
openly and challenge things in court openly, describe an alternative
political system that would maintain these fundamental things…as well as
increase the sum of human happiness, not misery.
I'm not banishing it, I'm saying it is a necessary evil. Nothing to be celebrated, and a sign that things are wrong, that ppl are oppressed and live in a fundamentally iniqutious system.
Plus one of the assumptions of your argument - that democracy brings peace - is ludicrous. The ethocide in Iraq, like that in the former Yugoslavia, is inevitable once you impose kapitalist parliamentarianism on ethnically divided populations.
The objective law of politics…sounds quite sinister to me. Ask yourself
whether Badiou’s grasp of political philosophy and history is strong
enough to discard democracy so easily. I doubt it. His analysis of 9/11
and Afghanistan was just junk, for example.
Hmmm, can we substantiate our 'arguments' with reasons I wonder? I certainly wasn't citing Badiou as an authority - that would be a fallacy - merely as an illustration of a pretty obvious point. I would suggest that only someone capable of the most absurd ideological contortions could deny that democracy has an innate tendency towards structural inertia, i.e. towards shoring up the existing order.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that low voter turnout in one
country or a bad education system in one country or the death of fine
art should somehow condemn the intricate and flexible foundation of
democracy, which is far richer than you give credit for, or realise.
So it would seem. But could we have evidence for these assertions, perhaps? You realise of course that your arguments are structurally identical to those presented by corrupt state socialist regimes.... No, any ACTUAL example of really existing democracy cannot be taken as evidence against its IDEOLOGICAL purity.. The fact that ALL democracies end up as talking shops for the ideologues of kapital.. that's not allowed to count as evidence against the 'intricate and flexible' nature of 'real' democracy, which, as you say, is beyond the ken, outside the experience, of those of us not lucky enough to be in your class.
Democracy is not a “hazy ideal” – I don’t think people who
support it actually see it so:
That's a straightforward fallacy, as you must be aware, like:
God is not an 'ideological construct' - I don't think people who have faith in Him see Him as such.
it’s an imperfect system that,
nevertheless, adapts itself to different States more or less
effectively, whether that’s here or in Israel or South Africa or
(we’ll soon see) Afghanistan.
Why? How? Again, tell me what is POSITIVELY good about having a right to ratify the decisions of professional bureaucrats and rhetoricians?
You want to avoid this, or assert that it can be avoided, by subsuming
it to 'Global Kapitol'.
No, no, I don't want to subsume anything under global kapital. It is global kapital that subsumes everything, with the assistance of kapitalist parliamentarianism.
So, now, how do you banish global capital? How do you banish global
capitalism? As far as I'm aware, it's called trade, and mankind would
require a collective lobotomy to abolishthe impulse to trade.
Your experience of capitalism is obviously somewhat limited, and, since you have detailed knowledge of history, you are obviously somehow blinding yourself to its lessons. Trade has happened in all cultures, it is far from unique to capitalism. Capitalism is a system of anti-markets (Braudel/ De Landa). If you doubt that, think about Windows and $Bill Gates...