Since 1945 the US has been involved to one degree or another in overthrowing fifty governments and crushing thirty liberation movements worldwide. A work mate asked me once why all these poor countries did not solve their own problems rather than getting "aid" from the US. I explained that this "aid" was, in the main help to the governments in these poor countries to buy US weapons to keep down their own people in the interests of the US corporations. But then I also explained that every time such countries tried to solve their own problems the US would intervene. Solving their own problems inevitably meant stopping the major corporations from the advanced capitalist countries such as the US from looting their resources so what would happen was that the US would intervene and stop this by overthrowing governments and crushing movements and murdering leaders and activists. Their invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are to try and get control over the oil and gas and natural resources of central Asia. They have nothing to do with supporting democracy. In fact they support any undemocratic force, any undemocratic action, invasion, murder, torture, whatever they think helps their cause. No the US is not democratic nor a force for democracy on the world stage.
This is widely understood. What is not so widely understood is that the US is not a democracy at home either. Look at the debates raging in the US at the moment. You would never guess the real opinions of the US masses from what you see on the capitalist profit addicted privately owned mass media.
More than two thirds of the US population say the government should help those who cannot help themselves, 64% say they would pay more taxes to guarantee health care for all, 60% are favourable to unions, 70% want nuclear disarmament, 72% want the US completely out of Iraq and Afghanistan. These opinions show that the clear majority of the US population are to some extent on the left.
But this is not reflected on the political scene. The main reason for this is that the leaders of the unions with their millions of members will not take on the corporations and the corporations' parties the Republicans and Democrats and build a mass workers party. The result is these two bosses parties have a monopoly over US politics and the politicians of these two parties are bought and paid for by the corporations. The mass media, the mass political parties are in the hands of the capitalists and are able to defy and act against the opinions of the majority of the population. In other words they are not democratic. There is the vast army of lobbyists who are hired only to bribe politicians, to make sure the system works for the capitalists as it should. These bribers play a huge undemocratic role. All bribing should be banned. It should be made a criminal offense. The way to influence politicians is through mobilizing mass forces. Put tens of millions, hundreds of millions on the streets, into action in the workplaces, use the power of the working class. "Working class lobbying."
The corruption of these bribers and the willingness of the politicians to be bribed is such that it has created a whole joke industry of its own. The devil went to Washington and asked a major politician to dinner. He proposed that he would get him elected at every election if he would just vote as he suggested on all issues. The politician asked the devil: "What is the catch?"
Talking about democracy here I am only talking about democracy in the narrow sense of capitalist democracy. Capitalist democracy is where lots of things can be discussed and small details can be decided democratically but certain things are off limits. The most important of these is that it is the tiny capitalist class who owns the wealth in society, and who makes the decisions about how society runs and this cannot change. It is fixed. Capitalist rule and ending it is off limits. This is the limit of capitalist democracy. In other words it is not democratic.
When apartheid was trying to hang on to power it was trying everything. One of its representatives was on US TV and said his regime was trying to transform itself into the type of regime that existed in the US. The commentator, a well known experienced news anchor was genuinely indignant as he did not know what this racist meant. He refused to accept there was anything to what the apartheid guy said. So the South African racist explained. Your Senate is made up of two Senators from every state. It does not matter how big the state. California with up to thirty million people has only the same number of Senators as tiny Idaho. This is what the apartheid representative said he wanted in South Africa. Of course they would have pushed the Black people into one or two big population states and divided the white people into five or six small population states and low and behold the white minority would have still been in power and "democratically" just like the US.
The US system is pretty close to this but in terms of class not race. The big urban mainly working class states are discriminated against. They only have the same number of Senators as the small rural states. The whole point is to keep the working class down. The electoral college that elects the President has this same undemocratic system built into it. Electoral votes. These also give extra weight to the small mainly rural states.
When was the last time you heard this undemocratic aspect of the US regime discussed on the bosses mass media. I venture to say never. A conspiracy to cover up its undemocratic nature, this is what the US system perpetuates. Then of course there are the other stunts they pull, people with a felony cannot vote. These are mainly poorer working class people. Then if necessary like in Florida they go to the Supreme Court an unelected, that is undemocratic body of mainly old white men and get their preferred candidate "elected."
Then of course the most undemocratic part of it all. The giant financial and industrial corporations, the giant military industrial complex, the giant media, are privately owned, run by right wing capitalist reactionaries and addicted to profit. For this country or any country to be truly democratic the main industrial and financial sectors have to be publicly owned, collectively owned, and run democratically by working people. Not as here owned and run by a tiny handful of capitalists.
To return to the lobbyist or bribery system and the mass media. Capitalism pays swarms of lobbyists to sit in Washington and state capitals and bribe politicians to make sure they vote for the legislation the corporations want and vote against the legislation they do not want. This bribery is completely legal but of course utterly corrupt. And at every election the corporations get behind the candidates, quite often financing both major candidates so no matter who gets in they will be okay. This is pure corruption and it is undemocratic. Unfortunately the labour leaders have bought into the capitalist ways so much that they also hire lobbyists or bribers. Instead they should be mobilizing their millions of members on the streets and in the workplaces, this is working class lobbying. Let the capitalists compete with that.
The mass media should be publicly owned and access to it should be based on the proportion of votes a party gets. With the internet ideas can now be spread on a mass scale as never before and this can weaken the privately owned profit based mass media. But it has to be taken into public ownership, collective ownership, if it is to be a force for democracy. And there has to be mass workers parties to take advantage of this.
While understanding this we also have to understand that the capitalist class are absolutely opposed to genuine democracy. They will and can never accept it. A tiny minority cannot rule the great majority if the system is genuinely democratic. In a genuine democracy their looting of the economy and their exploitation of the working class and their monopoly of power would not be tolerated. So the closer the working class majority get to genuine democracy the closer the capitalist class will try to build a military force of one kind or another to stop this movement to genuine democracy and impose a an open military dictatorship of capital of one kind or another. So while we struggle for genuine democracy and this is our objective, we must not close our eyes to reality. We must guard against and protect our movement and prepare for capitalism's historically proven track record of using military and fascist means to establish undemocratic regimes, open dictatorships, not just the capitalist dictatorships with democratic trimmings to protect its wealth and power which exist in countries like the US today but open military dictatorships.
Sean.
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