I Against I

I have been reading a book called 'The Real World of Democracy' by C.B. Macpherson from the CBC Massey Lectures. It basically breaks down the three major democratic structures that exist in the world and their differences.



The most prominent and powerful of them is what we know as liberal democracy. This was truely the original western democratic theory. It has it roots deep within the foundations of the French Revolution, but make no mistake, liberal-democracy did not come about as a way for the people to have accountable government. Liberal-Democracy was simply a way to facilitate petty-bourgeois capitalism. It made it easier for those who were the productive cogs of the economy at the time to excersize control over the government. The factory owners who employed the French workers had all the real power, and they needed legislation to be put through so that they could extract as much profit as possible and keep their factories operating, so that the French would keep their jobs. This was the façade that was pulled over to make the exploitation look acceptable. What in essence happened was the transfer of power from the Monarchy and the Nobility to the factory owners and the merchant bourgeoisie-capitalists, not immediately down to the people.

But, petty-bourgeois capitalism and the French Revolution did bring with it some very important and very appropriate liberties. The freedom to make money, to spend money, and to save money. It was also the first time that self-determination was really brought into effect in peoples everyday lives. You can think of it as 'free-market democracy'. Liberal-democracy also brought with it an entire economic system, or rather, the economic system brought with it the seeds of liberal-democracy. Unfortunately though, the mere creation of petty-capitalism and the rights associated with it, necessitated the need to trickle those rights and freedoms down to the commoners. Chief among those freedoms was not only the right to self-determination, but more importantly the right to determine one's government. Historically prior that priviledge had been available only to a select elite of persons, and with the French Revolution... very little changed. It took some time before the vast majority of the citizenry had the actual right to determine their own interests in government.

What did change, however, was that the western world suddenly boomed with advancement. The economy thrived because those who had the most at stake in economic success were able to rebuke the barriers that a popular government, accountable to the people and the workers, would have created - i.e. fair and safe working conditions, job security, wage protection, etc etc. This changed eventually when the economies of Europe and North America started to become so large that they could accomodate a lifestyle that would be comfortable for most of the population, destitute workers and all. It was at that point that liberal-democracy encountered it's Loyal Opposition: the concept of the Worker's State.

Worker's Democracy, or what is also known - somwhat inaccurately - as non-liberal democracy or Communism, came from under the thumb of the capitalist doctrines. It was formulated in Germany by Chuck Marx in the middle of the 19th century. It was a total package of worker's rights, a worker's economy, and a blueprint for the installation of a worker's state deep within the existing framework of what they saw as the oppressive, capitalist society.

Although dreampt-up for implementation in Germany, a highly developed capitalist nation, the first Worker State emerged from the smouldering failure of Tzarist Rus' about 60 years later. A re-visionist revolutionary Vladimir Uylanov, known to the world as Lenin, brought the Communist revolution to Russia in late 1917. But the political atmosphere in Russia was quite different than in its neighbouring nations to the west. By 1917 Europe and North America had evolved to the point where nearly all citizens had the right to vote, they were comfortable in their living situation, and used the system to further their own individual agendas and success. They had stopped fighting against their government long ago, and now determined how their governments operated (more or less). Russians did not have this priveledge. They were surpressed by their Imperial Czarist regime, could not freely publish their views if they opposed the government, could not associate with like-mined dissenters on pain of exile or death. This coupled with lack of modern communication and transportational infrastructure made a revolt that was fueled by popular oppinion near impossible. This is where Lenin inserted his own chapter into the Manifesto. That chapter was called the Vanguard of the Revolution.

This is where the fundamental ideological differences lie.

In Liberal-Democratic thought, the government is commonly refered to as 'Of the People, For the People, By the People.'  In the Communist variant, Non-Liberal Democracy, during the Vanguard period of the development more of the emphasis is placed on the middle sentance: FOR the People, but not necesserely BY the People. Now this sounds like absolute non-sense when you have been raised and are familiar with living in a liberal-democratic capitalist environment, but we must remember that the French Revolution was conducted in much the same manour. The French Vanguard were the original revolutionaries in the late 1770s, the same way that the Russian Bolshevik-Soviets were in 1917.

Revolutions are born out of popular and widespread discontent, but they are facilitated and fueled by an elite crew on behalf of the people. The point that the Rus' Revolution became disassociated from it's French counterpart lies both in ideology, but more importantly in the era that each independantly developed. Those who fostered the Russian Revolution were educated and lived outside of Russia in the heart of liber-democratic Europe. They saw what the people of western Europe were reaping from what the petty-capitalists had sewn 150 years before, and fought hard against that ideology in their homeland Revolution. They sought to take their transformation into a direction that they hoped would be both more successful and morally superior to that of the Capitalist's.

Had the capitalist ideology been the only thing holding back the Russians from successfully creating a productive, thriving and moral alternative society, I believe that Socialism, and later Communism, really would have dominated the globe. But unfortunately not only was the ideology in stark opposition to the Worker State, but even more so were the ideologues. The governments and the societies and the economies that were so tied up and intertwined within the capitalist nervous system stood in the way of Socialist success. The emphasis on the collective society was a new concept in a world that was monopolised by self-interest and individual-first way of thinking.

Socialism and social-thinking threatened to cut into profits, and therefore into capital, and therefore into their fundamental doctrines of Imperialistic dominance over anything and everything. It opposed the school of thought that was anything that you can hold in your hands, and even some things that you couldnt, had a monetary value assigned to it. It opposed exploitation and perpetual expansion. It opposed a certain degree of sustainability, something that is totally out of groove with capitalism. It threatened to loosen the hold on power that those capitalists and businessmen had. And so now, in the 21st century, we see a resurgence of this ideology of expansion, of anti-sustainability, of self-interest over collective-interest. We see our leaders enacting a policy of 'democratisation' the world over, in some of the most inhospitible and incompatible places on the planet. We see the ignorance of those same policy makers thinking that quantum physics works in political endeavors also.

Eventually the child has to open it's mouth for the airplane-spoon.