On Sat, Dec 13, 2025 at 04:31 PM, Charles wrote: > > Marv Gandall wrote: > >> a Bonapartist or fascist dictatorship would require the constitutional >> dismemberment rather than weakening of bourgeois democratic institutions. >> So long as these still function, the possibility exists that an opposition >> party can recover and regain power by electoral means. > > This view is fudged smudging. First, it confines the problem to a > Bonapartist or fascist dictatorship. In so doing, it hides > authoritarianism. After all, the capitalist republic ranges across a > spectrum from bourgeois democracy through authoritarianism to fascism. > >
There is a widespread and mistaken notion on the left, shared by Charles, that bourgeois democracies are inherently “democratic” and that the measures described above by John are uncharacteristically “authoritarian”. In fact, the deportation of immigrants, concentration camps, torture, war crimes, "i ncreased economic hardship for the overwhelming majority of Americans”, expansion of the federal debt, corruption, white racism, environmental degredation, and demagogic incitement have all been present in varying degrees in different historical periods in the United States. FDR deported immigrants and segregated Japanese-Americans in camps. Republican and Democratic presidents have bombed civilians and committed war crimes well before Trump and on a much larger scale. White racism and Christian nationalist supremacy have been a constant feature of US history, and the current witchhunts against pro-Palestine activists in the universities, the professions, and the entertainment industry pale in scope in comparison to the two red scares designed to root out Communist and other Marxist influence in those industries and the trade unions in earlier periods. Similar histories of injustice, violence, and repression can be traced in all bourgeois democracies since capitalism replaced feudalism and parliaments replaced absolute monarchies. What has distinguished Bonapartist and fascist regimes from even the most repressive bourgeois democratic governments is the dissolution of elected assemblies accompanied by the suppression of opposition political parties, independent trade unions, social movements and the media, together with the concentration of power in an individual such as Marx's Emperor Napolean III or in a more organized and broad-based one party fascist state under a supreme leader. Trump and some of his closest advisors may aspire to that status, but to date he is only the latest incarnation of a reactionary demagogic politician seeking to block or roll back the democratic and social rights won by the masses in centuries of struggle against capitalist class rule embodied in its political system. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39704): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39704 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116740237/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
