GUEST BLOG: Dave Brownz – Democracy for Dummies
Bravo Rachel Stewart for taking on the ‘sour Old Men’. It is true that a few ‘grown-up boys’ chose to lecture her in public. That is their problem. Not that I mind being a sour old man. What I am sour about is not the end of ‘democracy’ but the general ignorance about ‘democracy’. That is not confined to any particular gender or generations, but to all those in thrall of what passes for democracy in capitalist society.
For historical reasons explored below most people actually believe in bourgeois democracy, and it is not a personal failing, but one which is imposed in the popular culture like baby milk powder. These are not the dummies. They are those who have a professional/intellectual stake in defending bourgeois democracy against all the odds. They include those criticise Rachel for diagnosing its deathly state, and not Rachel herself who is asking the question of why democracy is not working.
But what is this democracy and why are those who defend it when they should know better dummies? For me, dummies are like useful idiots, they glorify their ignorance of the social reality and make do with superficial common sense platitudes because they do it for a living. They are the contemporary priests. So, democracy is the weapon of goodness we use to destroy badness. Sounds like a religion because when you analyse its origins it has the same roots.
Copernicus proved that the Earth was not the centre of the universe. Darwin proved that humans evolved and were not the progeny of any ‘intelligent design. Einstein overturned our dogmas about space and time. And Karl Marx proved that ‘democracy’ in capitalist society was a ruling class idea and part of the ruling class state. Those who are paid to challenge these new scientific discoveries and promote the defence of bourgeois democracy as the solution to capitalism’s problems are dummies.
Maybe it is news to Rachel, but she is not the first to predict the death of ‘democracy’. Marx did so after 1848 when the revolutions in Europe began to go into reverse. The French Revolution gave birth to ‘democracy’ as the political ideology of the bourgeoisie who rose up to overthrow the feudal state and impose a bourgeois state. Equality, Fraternity! What better slogans for the new society based on a new class division of the bourgeoisie as property owners who exploit landless workers. Because workers would accept their exploitation if they believed themselves to be the equal of their employers – as sovereign citizens capable of contesting power in a ‘democracy’.
Bosses had good reason to believe this would work since they cynically promoted capitalism as an equal opportunity society. You see, they worked hard for land because they or their forebears had acquired it by abstaining from consumption and saving up their capital. As Marx wrote, they willfully suppressed history as one of merciless rape, plunder and genocide in the ‘original’ accumulation of their land and wealth. If workers did not accept this bourgeois myth of the origins of capitalism when confronting by class inequalities, most would remain trapped in the ‘false consciousness’ of ‘democracy’ as capable of reforming capitalism.
So while capitalism was of its nature based on class struggle, it survived as long as it could escape the blame and point the finger at either landlords, employers or workers as exceeding their fair share of wealth. This meant rejigging he system not overthrowing it. If workers were equal citizens they could vote a majority of their representatives into parliament and equalise incomes. Bourgeois democracy therefore was the solution to all the problems of capitalist inequality. But such democracy was a fraud, because while on the surface democracy could legislate equal distribution in income, it could not cancel surplus value, so that workers would never be citizens equal to employers.
Marx explains this in his theory of commodity fetishism. Most of the best scientific discoveries are simply because they resolve anomalies. Marx discovered that capitalism is a society in which commodities sell at their price, but that in the case of one commodity, labour-power, produced more value than the value of its wage. Commodities produced for sale in the market embodied a total value comprising the value of the wage, all the value used up from machinery etc in the process of production, and surplus-value. Thus the capitalist paid the wage, retained the invested value used up in production, and then pocketed the surplus-value as profit. So how could workers who were exploited by producing surplus-value, and were thus by definition unequal in production, become equals with their employers in politics?
Having discovered that workers were exploited in production Marx explained how this unequal relation of production was automatically inverted as an equal relation of exchange. Because the commodity incorporated value and was appropriated by the employer, the existence of surplus-value was masked within the total value of the commodity. This inversion of unequal production relations into equal exchange relations Marx calls ‘commodity’ fetishism. The value appeared to be inherent in the commodity and not in the labour-power that created it. Moreover this value appeared to distribute naturally into what Marx called ‘revenue’ classes, depending on their fair share of value earned as rent, wages and profits.
Arising from this fetishised appearance of equal exchange, the ideology of bourgeois democracy emerges, complete with the state that belongs to all citizens. That is why Marxists call bourgeois democracy the “democratic dictatorship” of the bourgeoisie because it fetishises individual citizenship as sovereign, and masks a class exploitative state and destructive society. As mentioned above, bourgeois democracy came under challenge early in its life when the class war against workers drove down wages and conditions and threatened to destroy the working class as the basis of capitalist profits.
The most enlightened capitalists like Robert Owen, or the Cadbury family, reinforced the fetishism of bourgeois democracy by supporting reforms like the 10 hour act and better wages and conditions. Ever since, liberal bourgeois like William Pember Reeves, Chomsky, or Piketty, despite growing inequalities, crises and world wars driven by falling profits, have staked their reputations on defending the democratic principles of commodity fetishism. That is, whatever is wrong with capitalism is due to an aberration in which one or other class, sometimes workers, but mainly bosses, have used their power to increase their income share at the expense of the other.
Yet, nothing comes of attempting to reform the capitalist state that acts to defend private property and to reproduce the working class as alienated, exploited bourgeois subjects. The dummies, priests of capitalism, pretend that the inherent evils of capitalism can be resolved by voting for one or other faction of the ruling class, right, centre or left, to legislate the further exploitation and inequality in the name of bourgeois democracy, equality and liberty.
The good thing about Rachel Stewart’s charge that ‘democracy’ is dying is that it invites a further questioning of bourgeois democracy as the solution when it is very much part of the problem. The real solution is the end of capitalism and the beginning of ‘workers’ democracy’.
Dave Brownz is TDBs guest Marxist blogger
Jones if you want to know what Marx said about consumption read the first section of the ‘Grundrisse’. Consumption starts with consuming capital by investing it in production and finishes with the commodities produced being sold (for individual consumption) realising a profit in the sale.
As for material gains in the USSR there are plenty of stats to show that planning (even in its bastardised form of bureaucratic plan) exceeded the GDP growth of comparable capitalist countries. What would have been possible had the German revolution succeeded would have left us in a much more advanced and much less destructive world.
Hi David
I don’t know how long we are supposed to go on discussing this on the daily blog but it’s an interesting and vital subject so we’ll see if they continue to indulge me.
The differences in our views may be semantic; I think of capitalism as a system of free enterprise in which anyone can set up a business and compete in the marketplace with his or her product or service on an equal basis to everyone else, and the classical questions of “Why What and for Whom ” are decided by a multitude of people making these choices for themselves individually.
This has to take place within a framework of rules that society puts in place through elected government to keep the options open to everyone and the system fair and equitable. This essentially means protecting against the development of monopolistic control of resources etc; The opposite of what governments have been doing for the last 30 years.
You seem to be defining “capitalism” as the extreme lasses faire version, or distortion of capitalism that has been in existence for this period, and the period leading up to the 30’s depression.
The catastrophe of WW2 , and the economic circumstances that led to it were a wakeup call to leaders and economists and they examined the history that had led to that disaster and greatly improved the framework that capitalism operated within, with cooperation from all the western democracies, and did a pretty good job . It worked pretty well for 2 generations till people forgot what can happen to capitalism when it gets out of hand , and neoliberalism is the result. Same all over again.
The weakness of democracy is that when everything seems to be going OK people don’t engage in it. They focus on things more immediate to their daily lives, this allows political parties to be quietly taken over by vested interests and subverted as you and Marx describe. But when it goes badly enough awry enough of the right people can get involved and improve it as after (not during) WW2.That would be my evidence to your question.
I have in the past had the idea of a non elected administration chosen by random ballot to govern, with one third being subpoenaed every year and serving 3 years. Some would of corse be useless (what’s new?) but enough might have enough clues to make sensible decisions without bias and little opportunity to be predisposed to serve any particular interest but the countries’. Just a thought.
Do we really disagree?
D J S
David, yes, and if you go back and reread the main post you will see why. The way capitalism behaves is not an aberration. Underlying the events of decades, is the long-term dynamic of capitalism from it origins on the ruins of feudalism, through a series of inevitable depressions and wars, to its current terminal crisis and impending collapse. There is no room or time for tinkering in whatever sense, only wholesale social revolution.
Thanks, and while I enjoy debate in your case there is no meeting of minds.
Patrick the whole world thinks as capitalists want them to think so long as they think that capitalism can be reformed to solve all the problems we face.
So why can’t all those who want change agree on what changes are necessary and how to go about it with a new form of direct democracy without becoming is needed without becoming brainwashed cyphers?
The French didn’t invent democracy, the Greeks did.
Patrick, you are talking about the market vs socialist planning as the best way to organise production to meet human needs and prevent the collapse of civilisation and nature. No?
After the formation of the Soviet Union there was a big debate about the relative merits of both systems. Advocates for the free market like the Austrian school of von Mises and Hayek talked about the superiority of something that no longer existed because of monopoly capital, while proponents of socialist planning had to face the fact that you cannot build a successful socialist plan in one backward country without the possibility of international trade.
So neither can claim a win in that debate. But we can easily settle it today. There is no going back for capitalism to the free market. Therefore the mainstay of the free market case that the market sets prices is a utopia. We are talking about a tiny ruling class that owns us and set prices and suppresses our abilities to create a new society. Fast forward to doomsday.
Small business is just collateral damage as capitalism throws workers out of production so they have to work for themselves providing super cheap services to the monopolies. Small businesses in NZ beginning with farming are notorious for their short life span at the win of the banks. Wealthy capitalist farmers are a small minority. No one would serious argue that our future is in the hands of small business.
On the other hand we can argue that there is a socialist alternative and that the conditions that brought about the failure of socialism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere were not inevitable but the result of being surrounded and squeezed by global capitalism. The logic of the plan is vastly superior to even the most fabled free market. Prices are not set by supply and demand which inevitably (despite the good Keynes man) leads to disequilibrium and crises, but rather by direct democracy which sets which needs are prioritised, and allocates the necessary resources.
Taken on a global scale we have a socialist globalisation where comparative advantage actually works because the advantage is collectivised as the property of all. Modern computers and communications would make a global socialist plan, and the democratic checks and balances necessary to run it, a piece of cake compared to the anarchy of today’s casino capitalism and its inevitable destruction of all human potential to create a new sustainable society.
David Brown
Like some others the soviet union had enough resources and population that it did not need international trade or interaction to succeed . The problem was that the planed economy has so far only been possible under a military dictatorship such as soviet Russia was. When such an option comes into existence in a democracy, and remains under consecutive democratically elected administrations it will have legitimacy. As a hypothetical theory that can never be tried except by force on a population it has none.
It’s basic problem is that it suffocates the opportunity of man to gain for himself/herself any reward for superlative effort , skill , natural gift, effort , dedication or invention. These are the gifts that make us human .
Capitalism needs to be controlled by societies’ rules which need constant work as much of the above mentioned characteristics are constantly being applied to circumvent them, and to persuade elected governments to weaken them. The world’s capitalist democracies are at a crisis point at the moment for want of effective control of capitalist’s excesses and especially because of a monetary system that is completely out of control.
But the answer is to improve capitalist democracy, there is nothing remotely acceptable with which to replace it.
D J S
David you really are a confused and if you a paid to promote your confusion I would call you a dummie.
Capitalism is dying on its feet because the tiny 1% who own and control the global economy are only interested in profits even if that means the destruction of humanity and nature. Where is the alternative where capitalism can rescue itself by “improving capitalist democracy”?
For example, don’t you see that capitalism is responsible for global warming and cannot reverse or mitigate this impending catastrophe unless it is replaced in the next 1 or 2 decades by a society which puts the survival of people and nature before profits?
You definition of ‘humanity’ is timeless and doesn’t understand that capitalism is by definition inhumane when one class lives of another. Capitalism cannot eliminate that human deficit without ceasing to be capitalism! Humanity will only be realised when a society exists that can create plenty for all and humans return to living harmoniously in nature.
Again, Soviet Russia is not the last word on socialism as an alternative to capitalism. It didn’t even make it to socialism despite Stalin declaring it open in 1936. What the USSR proved is that a country full of resources cannot develop in isolation if it doesn’t have the technology to reduce work time and by sharing in the ‘plenty’ meet the needs of all without destroying nature.
The Bolsheviks always said that the USSR would need the revolution to succeed in Europe so that e.g. Russian grain could he harvested by German tractors. Without it the isolated revolution turns back on itself. Scarcity throws up the “gendarme” to police the queues of people facing shortages of basic goods. A privileged bureaucracy employing the gendarmes arises to rule society creating the ‘dictatorship’ you speak of, despite calling this counter-revolution in the revolution, ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’.
We are back to the only choice facing us, first popularised by Rosa Luxemburg, either socialism or ‘barbarism’. Only today, time is short and the choice is existential: it is either capitalist extinction or socialist survival.
Hi again David
I would like to respond a paragraph at a time starting with no2
Capitalism isn’t dying yet but it is ” Killing The Host” so it is in for a major crisis. Not much disagreement there. Capitalism won’t rescue itself but democracy has the potential to rescue it from itself as it did after the second world war. The 1% are society’s most self interested section and indeed they cannot be looked to to look after the rest of us. Elected government must do that. Over the last 30yrs govts have been “persuaded” to serve the interests of the 1%, but this doesn’t have to be the case.
No 3
The rampant Laissez faire capitalism we have now is indeed peculiarly unsuited to looking after the environment. The costs of environmental degradation appear on no corporations books or bottom line. Capitalism won’t address this it has to be done by making laws.
No 4
Capitalism is probably as old as humanity and infinitely older than democracy. Humanity like happiness is not a place, it’s a method of traveling. A continuum. In sickness and in health.
No 5
Entirely agreed the firs part, but I don’t accept they lacked technology; they were first into space wit the sputniks.
No 6
O K
No 7
How do you bring this about? If you can persuade an electorate to vote a socialist , totally managed economy into existence I won’t argue, but a majority have to want and believe in it or it is a dictatorship, and even more subject to the abuse of greed and corruption than the present pass of capitalism is in that there must be a ruling elite that tells everyone else what they have to do.
Capitalism is like fire , A good servant of society and a bad master.
For the last 30 years it has been the master, but that must change .But like fire uncontrolled it will burn itself out of fuel which is where it’s at now. It has to be controlled to serve society, at the moment society is serving capitalism but it doesn’t have to be like this. I am pretty sure democracy and some form of capitalism are inseparable . I don’t think any population is ever going to vote to be completely controlled.
Cheers D J S
David, democracy as we understand it today cannot rescue humanity from capitalism because it is the mask for dictatorship. It is the specific to capitalism because it serves capitalism. Capitalism is not as old as humanity but a new class society that arose after the bourgeoisie came to power.
I asked where is the evidence that bourgeois democracy can take power from the 1%. Every attempt to do so has seen the state employ the military and mercenaries to suppress it own ‘democracy’.
That is why I referred to Marx as saying already after 1848 that bourgeois democracy was being used against the majority working class as a dictatorship. The Paris Commune proved him right.
I don’t agree that ‘democracy’ was the victor in WW2. It was an imperialist war in which the majority working class was enlisted to kill one another to defend the profits the dominant capitalist states.
A new democracy is needed not based on capitalism but based on direct democracy and delegates who are re-callable. How we get there is the question.
I doubt it’s as simple as that. Unemployment is way higher than Statistics NZ is currently letting on. Since they “re-jigged” unemployment definitions, the stats have been much lower than they really are: https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/2016-ongoing-jobless-tally/
You should be embarrassed Jones, as Marx saw capitalism as progressive for this very reason. But since the end of the 19th century, monopoly capital supplanted market capitalism and has suppressed most inventions, or borrowed them from state funded R&D in war or space, adopting only those that allowed it to spread its monopoly control. By contrast, in the few years that a healthy Workers State existed in Russia before power was usurped by the Stalinist bureaucracy (assisted by counter-revolutionary imperialist invasions) and the violent suppression of the German Revolution, there was a huge outpouring of avant garde ideas from economic planning for use instead of profit, to cultural expressions including films by those such as Sergei Eisenstein.
This round of patch up dying “Capitalism” is about to blow apart Dave Brown just as sure as the rotting ones that held it together for 115yrs is crumbling.
Consider that when real capitalism begun in the early 20th century particularly in USA the average worker was self employed as a small businessman to the tune of close to between 80 to 90% of the able worker then.
Now we see the small bossiness dying as large corporations grow, as we see in the farming sector that the farming leaders are raising as a serious future threat to single men trying to get into share-miking to buy their first farm as was the norm is now almost extinct now.
Same with trucking we see large companies eating up small companies so we will end up as a few large combines that control the business community and cost of services will be cartelled to maximum profit and cost of services will be higher with less competition.
This is the reverse to the reason why “Capitalism was invented for as a source of competition back then.
Result is that capitalism is dead sooner than we will ever know.
All through I was wondering just what your replacement of democracy was going to be.
Given the comprehensive criticism of democracy as we know it, the preferred alternative demanded infinitely more attention than you have afforded it.
What is “worker’s democracy” ? Is it democracy in which some sections of society are excluded?
More explanation please.
D J S
“Workers democracy” is the class equivalent of “bourgeois democracy”. The difference is when the working class rules it will be the vast majority (some say 99%) and democracy will be the means of planning productdion to fulfill workers’ needs on the basis of their ability and preventing the bourgeoisie from staging a come-back to destroy humanity. For the first time in history, democracy will mean the rule of the majority class. Workers democracy will disappear when class rule disappears along with the state when it it becomes redundant in a non-class society.