The two texts in this pamphlet are communist critiques of democracy. Not just “bourgeois democracy”
but democracy as such. Democracy implies the separation of people into isolated, warring individuals.
This isolation will be overcome in struggles against capitalism (and thus democracy). These struggles
will need to be organised but not by a mass of atomised individuals voting on decisions, then acting.
Most struggles do not happen because a mass of citizens vote to take action but because a determined
minority of troublemakers take bold action – such as going on wildcat strike, blocking a highway or
bricking the pigs. Hopefully others then follow their good example.
Democracy is the ideal form of capitalist rule. Of course capitalism can and does quite happily
exist under various forms of undemocratic rule, whether fascist, military dictatorship, monarchy or
“Communism”. But “one man, one vote” corresponds to the abstract equality of capitalism where my
dollar is worth just as much as Kerry Packer’s. It is no coincidence that in the last 30 years during
which life has been subordinated to monetary relations like never before that more and more states
have become democratic. There are no military dictatorships left in Latin America. Since 2000 the US
has sponsored democratic rebellions in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kirgizstan. The neo-con ideologues
really believe that they are bringing democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. Sure the US military slaughters
civilians en masse and at will in those places but this is merely what we are tending towards in the long
established democracies. The death squads of the “War on Terror” are killing Brazilian electricians on
the London Underground as well as Iraqi demonstrators.
Other texts by Against Sleep and Nightmare can be found at: http://www.againstsleepandnightmare.com.
Other texts by Wildcat can be found at: http://www.againstsleepandnightmare.com/wildcat/SUBSPAGE.html#_ftn1
Canberra, Australia
August 2005
Comments