tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8732662769765511163.post8055668481000177298..comments2023-07-31T11:06:29.485+02:00Comments on Transition: I'll Not Vote Brown's LabourD. Mario Nutihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17319653816487296802noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8732662769765511163.post-91389751572897109002010-09-06T05:10:30.213+02:002010-09-06T05:10:30.213+02:00Dr. Nuti, you should probably make a whole blog on...Dr. Nuti, you should probably make a whole blog on your comment on "the crisis of social democracy."<br /><br />Have you looked into various democratic theories which all go beyond liberal democracy? There's everything from the communal power model to the delegative democracy model to Burnheim's demarchy model to the Paris Commune model to the workers councils model. Of course, there should be some synthesis of all of the above.<br /><br />That first point on not being secret is important, coming from personal experience: Westminster systems everywhere use numbers marking both ballot paper and counterfoil.<br /><br />In any event, I do think the working class itself, as much of a whole as possible, needs to take political action and become the ruling class itself in order for even the slightest of structural reforms to be long-lasting.<br /><br />Whether being the ruling class actually means politically disenfranchising big-time hirers of labour for profit and other class opponents like the 1918 Soviet constitution did (in spite of the Bolshevik coup d'etat that same year when leftist but anti-Bolshevik soviets were elected then shut down) is up in the air, and up to the actions of those opponents.Jacob Richternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8732662769765511163.post-87970834866351675202010-05-07T19:27:18.247+02:002010-05-07T19:27:18.247+02:00Mario, time for an election post-mortem?
AshokMario, time for an election post-mortem?<br /><br />AshokAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8732662769765511163.post-24091744752789566112010-04-21T09:15:36.255+02:002010-04-21T09:15:36.255+02:00It's not just a crisis of social-democracy, As...It's not just a crisis of social-democracy, Ashok: the whole democratic system is in crisis. And not just the Italian perversion of democracy. The UK, considered the Mother of All Democracies, is not democratic: <br /><br />(1)the vote in the UK is not secret, it can be identified by the electoral returning officer by a number marking both ballot paper and counterfoil, which allegedly has the purpose of allowing the elimination after the election of improperly cast votes;<br /><br />(2) it takes on average roughly 50,000 votes to elect a Labour member of parliament, 70,000 to elect a Tory MP and 120,000 to elect a Liberal Democrat MP - not because of the 'first past the post' system but because of manipulation of constituency borders, intensified instead of being corrected by Labour;<br /><br />(3) The UK Parliament is elected also by Scots, in spite of Scotland being governed by its own government and Parliament; moreover the current UK Premier is a Scot elected in a Scottish constituency, whose party was wiped out in the Scottish elections and who was not elected as leader even by the not very democratic rules of his own party...D. Mario Nutihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17319653816487296802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8732662769765511163.post-60752599903021043612010-04-20T21:07:22.741+02:002010-04-20T21:07:22.741+02:00Yet another great post....indeed, it calls for a b...Yet another great post....indeed, it calls for a broader and deeper look (a paper perhaps, Mario?) at the dilemma facing voters in country after country....between, if not Scylla and Charybdis, then certainly Tweedledum and Tweedledee....<br /><br />AshokAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com