RepubloCrat conventions: What kind of democracy is this?


29 July 2000 - Imperialist politicians, meeting in Philadelphia 
and Los Angeles to decide how to better oppress and befuddle the 
oppressed, have sicced the media and cops on protestors in order 
to marginalize and silence them. 

Reporters, bourgeois politicians, and cops have told some whopping 
lies over the last few months to play up the threat of violence on 
the part of protestors. Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan referred 
to "Violence Training Camps" in an editorial to the Los Angeles 
times -- but they were actually clearly named "Non-violence 
Training Camps." Los Angeles television news stations have been 
ridiculously inventive. A story about a random hijacking in New 
York suddenly became a story about how travelers are worried that 
black-clad terrorists are shipping bombs into town for the 
Democratic convention (even though none of the travelers 
interviewed said anything to that effect).

Of course, there is a threat that there will be violence at the 
protests. But it's not the protestors who pose the threat. It's 
the pigs. In Philadelphia, the cops have re-opened the notorious, 
dilapidated Holmesburg Prison to accommodate the protestors they 
expect to arrest. And in Los Angeles, police have ordered 
paintball guns that shoot pepper spray at 240 feet per second. 

All this is exemplary of the bourgeoisie's view of "democracy" and 
"free speech." Looks pretty on paper, but when it comes to 
suppressing real dissent it stinks of repression and violence. 
Protestors are restricted from getting closer than several hundred 
yards from the convention centers; they're intimidated and 
lambasted by rich capitalist media.

As Lenin wrote 82 years ago: 



<Quote>

Take, for example, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. 
The [capitalists and social-democrats] assure the workers that the 
present elections to the Constituent Assembly in Germany and 
Austria are "democratic." That is a lie. In practice the 
capitalists, the exploiters, the landowners and the profiteers own 
9/10 of the best meeting halls, and 9/10 of the stocks of 
newsprint, printing presses, etc. ... The present "freedom of 
assembly and the press" in the "democratic" (bourgeois democratic) 
German republic is false and hypocritical, because in fact it is 
freedom for the rich to buy and bribe the press, freedom for the 
rich to befuddle the people with venomous lies of the bourgeois 
press, freedom for the rich to keep as their "property" the 
landowners' mansions, the best buildings, etc.. The dictatorship 
of the proletariat will take from the capitalists and hand over to 
the working people the landowners' mansions, the best buildings, 
printing presses and the stocks of newsprint.

</Quote>



He elaborated in ITAL The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade 
Kautsky END:



<Quote>

Freedom of the press ceases to be hypocrisy [after socialist 
revolution], because the printing stocks have all been taken away 
from the bourgeoisie. The same thing applies to the best 
buildings, the palaces, the mansions and manor houses. The Soviet 
power took thousands upon thousands of these best buildings from 
the exploiters at one stroke, and in this way made the right to 
assembly -- without which democracy is a fraud -- ITAL a million 
times END more "democratic" for the masses.

</Quote>



As we discuss in the article on electoralism on page 6, Amerikan 
social-democrats and populists still get tripped up in the 
formalist trappings of "democracy" and miss the class distinction 
between bourgeois and proletarian democracy. Under Amerikan 
imperialism, the majority -- the middle classes including the 
labor aristocracy -- are usually getting what they want, so some 
confusion is to be expected. But this "democracy" is not working 
for the majority of its subjects: the oppressed minority in the U$ 
and the vast majority across the oppressed nations of the world, 
which are ruled directly or indirectly by the imperialists.

In the MIM Congress Resolution reprinted on page 7, we discuss in 
detail how "free speech" would be far, far more extensive under 
the dictatorship of the proletariat than it is under the 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. We do this to give our readers 
the tools needed to cut through all the demagoguery denigrating 
Communism as "undemocratic." Socialism saved the lives of hundreds 
of millions in China and Russia who would have died of disease and 
starvation under capitalism and placed the means of production in 
their hands -- what could be more "democratic" than that?

We encourage those who agree with us to work with us towards the 
dictatorship of the proletariat.