Top-down dictatorship of some sort may be the only option in poor &
dependent countries (either IMF-imposed tame democracy or nationalist
one-party dictatorships). On the question of what to do about that, we have
to ask the leftist residents of those countries rather than imposing
answers from afar. But, as far as I'm concerned, the only way a leftist
revolution can persist and deepen, while serving the people and building
the basis for democracy, is to mobilize and educate the working people to
allow them to rule themselves. A party's dictatorship is justified in the
end only if it uses it to build popular power. Unfortunately, the US and
other imperialist powers consistently push these parties to make the
decisions that make the most sense militarily rather than democratically.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
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CB: Ditto.
Marx had realistic insight when he formulated both the notion that the working class
as the ruling class is democracy, and yet foresaw the profound contradiction that the
form of this democratic rule would be the dictatorship of the proletariat for a long
period until all bourgeois states are destroyed by their own peoples.
In an analogy , the fact that the U.S.'s democratic revolution did not end slavery or
genocide against indigenous Americans or male supremacy does not mean that it was not
a step forward for democracy in the world overall, as contradictory as that is.
