Talk:Formal democracy

Marxism
Dear Whoever:

'Formal democracy' is an old Marxist expression going back to the 19th c. It is from Marxism that Chomsky learned the expression. Although I believe I have seen it in Marx's writings, I cannot find them there at the moment. However, here is Trotsky using the expression in the 1919 English translation From October to Brest-Livovsk (History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk)

As Marxists, we have never been worshippers of formal democracy. In a society split into classes, the democratic institutions, far from abolishing the class struggle, only lend the class interests a highly imperfect form of expression. The possessing classes have always at their disposal thousands of means to, pervert and adulterate the will of the labouring masses. In time of revolution democratic institutions form a still less perfect apparatus for the expression of the class struggle. Marx called Revolution “the locomotive of history.” The open and direct struggle for power enables the labouring masses to acquire in a short time a wealth of political experience and thus rapidly to pass from one, stage to another in the process of their mental evolution. The ponderous mechanism of democratic institutions cannot keep pace with this evolution – and this in proportion to the vastness of the country and the imperfection of the technical apparatus at its disposal.

It will not be out of place here to note in a few words the difference between the political r6le of the Soviets and the democratic organs of self-government. Philistines have more than once pointed out to us that the new Municipal Councils and Zemstvos elected by universal suffrage are incomparably more democratic than the Soviets, and possess a more valid right to represent the whole population. This formal democratic criterion, however, has no real meaning in revolutionary times....

As the general political evolution of the preceding months of the Revolution had been marked by the growing influence of the Bolsheviks at the expense of the Coalitionist parties, it was quite natural that this process should have been reflected most clearly and fully on the Soviets the Town Councils and Zemstvos, in spite of all their formal democratic character, expressing not so much the sentiments of the masses today as those of yesterday....

The proletariat led the army and lower masses of peasantry. These classes were in a state of direct and fierce revolt against the Right Socialist Revolutionaries. Yet, thanks to the cumbrous machinery of democratic elections, this party obtained a majority in the Constituent Assembly, representing the pre-November phase of the Revolution. This was a contradiction which could not be solved within the framework of formal democracy, and only political pedants, who do not clearly realize the revolutionary logic of the relations of classes, can, in face of the situation resulting from the November events, preach to the proletariat banal truths concerning the advantages of democracy for waging the class war.....

You can find the expression everywhere in Marxist writing, going back at least this far if not farther.

146.96.130.201 (talk) 22:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've redirected this piece of unsourced OR to criticism of capitalism where it belongs. Viriditas (talk) 03:37, 21 May 2013 (UTC)