Re: [Marxism] Should socialists call for democratic structural change? Was Wassup?

[Intense Red <intnsred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

   I think your thoughts are spot-on Brian.

   Sure, we can all bemoan the shortcomings of our democratic republic and 
bourgeois electoral politics.  That's all too easy.  The key is to imagine 
what sort of society we want to live in and then plan on how to get there.

   Marxists should be working towards both short and long-term improvements to 
the situation of the working class and the majority of the country.  That 
work will automatically involve education and a political activation of the 
working class.  The idea that we should bide our time while waiting for 
things to get worse and then joyfully support the uprising that results from 
that situation is the worst application of anarchist thought.

   Today, we face a grave situation as the fragile elements of what little 
democratic processes we do have are under attack from fascists who seek to 
control the world and reshape the world's economy into an imperial fantasy of 
laissez-faire capitalism.  Today, to take a position of not advocating 
progressive reform of bourgeois democracy is worse than doing nothing -- it 
could pave the way for the firm establishment of fascism.  As such, your 
positions are very sound.

 >>Issue 1:  The Senate functions exactly as the “founders” intended,
 > It works as the founders intended over 200 years ago, but many
 > constitutions have been created since then.

   I don't disagree with either of your statements about the undemocratic 
nature of the Senate -- both in design and in practice -- but I would like to 
add one thought:

   Perhaps one could imagine a role of the Senate in representing the states 
in the original 1780s era of the US republic.  In that era, the Senate fit 
into the idea of states rights and of a union or confederation of states with 
those states having distinct rights and powers.

   Today, the 10th Amendment has long been defacto abolished.  Today, states 
only have whatever rights and privileges that Washington allows them to have.  
Whatever vestiges of legitimacy the Senate ever had are long, long gone.

 In solidarity.

-- 
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- 
George Orwell

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