[D66] Guarantees in politics

[Antid Oto]

Guarantees in politics
by Adam Kotsko

One question I had in the wake of Jodi Dean's lecture on communism was 
why people thought that communism was uniquely dangerous, that it 
carried unique risks. We know, for instance, that liberal democracy can 
easily give way to dictatorship, even with the constitution being 
formally in force. We know that liberal democracy is compatible with 
chattel slavery and racial discrimination -- and indeed that the first 
modern democratic republic ever established, the United States, spent 
over half a century with a significant enslaved population and a further 
century with a disenfranchised population subject to mob violence. 
Liberal democracy is compatible with the equivalent of secret police, 
with extra-legal assassinations, with undeclared wars of aggression, 
with vast and increasing economic inequality, with mass unemployment and 
homelessness, with child poverty and hunger, with a huge prison 
population resulting from a racist approach to law enforcement, with 
essential public functions being handed over to private individuals for 
private gain, etc., etc., etc.

Yet essentially no one says, "No, we can't afford to try liberal 
democracy because it will lead straight to chattel slavery!" or "I 
admire the high ideals of democracy, but it always ends up with 
able-bodied adults begging on the street!"

Adam Kotsko | Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at 11:10 am | Categories: 
politics | URL: http://wp.me/p2IRQ-2g7