RW ONLINE:Bob Avakian on Illusions of Democracy

Illusions of Democracy

by Bob Avakian
Revolutionary Worker #1058, June 11, 2000
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA announced last year its plan for forging a new Programme--a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Programme--for making and winning revolution in the United States.
The RCP is calling on people to help produce this new Programme. The Party wants to work with people to do research and investigation into the class structure and social fabric of the U.S. It wants to engage people in discussion, wrangling, and debate: about issues of analysis, about its vision of a new society and about its strategy for creating such a new society. The Party wants to hear people's opinions and observations about the current (1981) Programme, and their suggestions for the new one.
To assist people in taking part in this project, the Revolutionary Worker is running a special reprint series which includes excerpts from the current Programme, from writings by the Chairman of the RCP, Bob Avakian, and from articles that have appeared in the Party press. The idea is to provide a background and grounding in certain Marxist-Leninist-Maoist principles, and in the Party's developing analysis of society and the revolutionary process.
We continue the series this week with an excerpt from the book by RCP Chairman, Bob Avakian, Democracy: Can't We Do Better Than That? This section looks at the political structures of capitalism, analyzes the class nature of "democracy" and shows how the political institutions and the official political processes of this society--like elections --reflect the needs and interests of the ruling class.
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It is conventional wisdom in countries like the U.S. that democracy and dictatorship are the complete opposite of each other: where there is democracy there is not a dictatorship and where there is a dictatorship there is of course no democracy. But in fact democracy is a form of dictatorship. In any state where democracy is the form of political rule, democracy is really only practiced among the ranks of the ruling class, while dictatorship is exercised over the oppressed class (or classes). In the present-day self-proclaimed "democratic countries" this is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat (and other oppressed strata and groups).
Lenin gave this comprehensive and concise definition of what is meant by classes:
"Classes are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated in law) to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it."

The division of society into classes is not a universal and inevitable feature of human society, and an examination of the earliest forms of society reveals that they are not characterized by a division into classes, as defined by Lenin --that there is not a situation where there are "groups of people one of which can appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy." But as the social economy develops, the social division of labor further develops to the point where, once surpluses can be accumulated (beyond what is required for mere survival) by distinct individuals or groups within the society, then antagonistic class divisions emerge.
In stressing that class antagonism and class distinctions generally "will fall as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage" because "we are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive hindrance to production," Engels also stresses that where and so long as society is divided into classes, there will of necessity be a state apparatus:
"The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the split of society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split."

The state here means something very precise--it is not the same thing as government in the most general sense. A state, wherever it exists and whatever the form of government, is "essentially a machine for keeping down the oppressed, exploited class." The essential parts of this machinery are not legislatures and other similar vehicles of public discussion and nominal decision-making--these can be dispensed with when necessary, as they often have been--but are the executive power and the bureaucracy, the courts, and in particular the armed forces. These armed forces are the concentration of the power of one class over another: they represent a monopoly of force by the ruling class, and their purpose is to forcefully guarantee its interests (both within the country and, especially in this era of imperialism, anywhere else in the world those interests are contested).
All these things--the armed forces, the courts and laws, the executive and the bureaucracy (and the legislatures and so on, where they exist), the political institutions in general--belong to the superstructure, which in any society rests upon and reinforces the economic base. "In the social production of their existence," Marx wrote,
"men enter into definite, necessary relations, which are independent of their will, namely, relations of production corresponding to a determinate stage of development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which there arises a legal and political superstructure and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness."

In a society whose basis is capitalist relations of production, with its fundamental class antagonism between the bourgeoisie--the capitalist exploiters--and the exploited class of propertyless wage-workers (the proletariat), the legal and political superstructure (and the dominant forms of social consciousness) serve to maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat and to preserve and protect those relations of exploitation. This truth, and its underlying basis, as made clear by Marx, is of such fundamental importance and bears so significantly on the class struggle between exploiters and exploited --on the whole question of how society and the possibility of radically transforming it is viewed--that it is not surprising that it is denied and distorted by defenders and apologists of the existing order. It would be extremely surprising if they did not do so.
Many will say: how can the political system in a democratic country like the U.S. "serve to maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat" when everyone has the right to choose the political leaders by participating in elections? The answer to this is that elections in such a society, and the "democratic process" as a whole, are a sham--and more than a sham--a cover for and indeed a vehicle through which domination over the exploited and oppressed is carried out by the exploiting, oppressing, ruling class. To state it in a single sentence, elections: are controlled by the bourgeoisie; are not the means through which basic decisions are made in any case; and are really for the primary purpose of legitimizing the system and the policies and actions of the ruling class, giving them the mantle of a "popular mandate," and of channeling, confining, and controlling the political activity of the masses of people....
On the most obvious level, to be a serious candidate for any major office in a country like the U.S. requires millions of dollars--a personal fortune or, more often, the backing of people with that kind of money. Beyond that, to become known and be taken seriously depends on favorable exposure in the mass media (favorable at least in the sense that you are presented as within the framework of responsible--that is, acceptable--politics). These mass media are called that because they reach and influence masses of people daily and constantly. But they are certainly not controlled by the masses, nor do they reflect or serve their fundamental interests. They are themselves key pillars of the power structure: they are owned by major financial interests (where they are not owned by the state) and are in any case closely regulated by the state. By the time "the people express their will through voting," both the candidates they have to choose among and the "issues" that deserve "serious consideration" have been selected out by someone else: the ruling class. Small wonder they are more than willing to abide by the results!
Further, and even more fundamentally, to "get anywhere" once elected--both to advance one's own career and to "get anything done"--it is necessary to fit into the established mold and work within the established structures. This is partially because those already entrenched in positions of power and influence are thereby in a position to make others conform and work through the accepted avenues, but more basically it is because, once again, the political system must serve the underlying economic system. This is not a mere theoretical abstraction, it has concrete meaning: policies and actions which work against or undermine that economic system will in fact cause disruption, disorder, chaos, breakdowns in the more or less orderly functioning of things--and unless you are prepared to see the entire order overthrown, with all that implies, you can only view such disruption, disorder, and chaos as something to be avoided or kept to the minimum where it cannot be avoided. But if you are prepared to see--and work for--the overthrow of the existing order, and if you say so openly, you will never be allowed to hold any real position of power; or, if, on the other hand, you have this perspective but hide it and attempt to "get in the power structure and work from within," you will be swallowed up--or chewed up and spit out--by that structure. There is an abundance of historical experience to demonstrate this--and none which disproves it.
If, however, the electoral process in bourgeois society does not represent the exercise of sovereignty by the people, it generally does play an important role in maintaining the sovereignty--the dictatorship--of the bourgeoisie and the continuation of capitalist society. This very electoral process itself tends to cover over the basic class relations--and class antagonisms--in society, and serves to give formal, institutionalized expression to the political participation of atomized individuals in the perpetuation of the status quo. This process not only reduces people to isolated individuals but at the same time reduces them to a passive position politically and defines the essence of politics as such atomized passivity--as each person, individually, in isolation from everyone else, giving his/her approval to this or to that option, all of which options have been formulated and presented by an active power standing above these atomized masses of "citizens." It is not infrequently said, as a major selling point of this electoral process (in the USA specifically), that, regardless of everything else--and in particular, regardless of admittedly immense differences in wealth and economic power and social status--the ballot box is the great equalizer...that once you step into that polling booth, the vote of a common wage-worker and the vote of a Rockefeller count for the same thing. And, fundamentally, this is true--neither of these votes counts for a damn thing; Rockefeller (or the class of Rockefellers) doesn't need to vote to exercise political power, and the common wage-workers will never exercise political power under this system no matter how many votes they cast or for what. There never has been and never will be "a revolution through the ballot box," not only because the powers-that-be would forcibly suppress any such attempt, but also--and this touches on a very important function of elections in bourgeois society--because the very acceptance of the electoral process as the quintessential political act reinforces acceptance of the established order and works against any radical rupture with, to say nothing of the actual overturning of, that order. In sum, then, the electoral process and the notion that this process represents the expression of the popular will serves not to set or to fundamentally influence the politics that govern society but to reinforce the shackles binding the masses of people to the political--and underlying economic --interests and dictates of the governing dominant class.
Similarly, the much-vaunted freedom of expression in the "democratic countries" is not in opposition to but is encompassed by and confined within the actual exercise of dictatorship by the bourgeoisie. This is for two basic reasons--because the ruling class has a monopoly on the means of molding public opinion and because its monopoly of armed force puts it in a position to suppress, as violently as necessary, any expression of ideas, as well as any action, that poses a serious challenge to the established order. What Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto is more true than ever in today's conditions: "The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class."
The control of the mass media by finance capital has already been mentioned: this is so obvious that anyone honestly looking into it will be immediately struck by this fact. What is more important--and more concealed--however, is that the media constitute an instrument of the ruling class in general in putting over its point of view and discreting or outright suppressing views opposed to it--in molding people's minds and exercising dictatorship in the realm of ideas as part of its overall dictatorship. But it remains a fact that on any really significant issue (and, for that matter, most not very significant ones) the men (and the few women) of the media put forward the same viewpoint--and to a great degree seem to be reading from the same prepared text. Where they do disagree--with each other, or with a particular government policy at any given time--this too is from the point of view of the general interests of the ruling class and the established order as a whole. In part, this occurs more or less "spontaneously"; that is, these people--especially those who have climbed up the ladder to any position of real influence--can overwhelmingly be counted on to know what the basic interests of the ruling class are and how to present them as effectively as possible. But on any occasion where the system and its rulers are put to a severe test or find their interests threatened, then there is a marked "pulling together" around an orchestrated official line --which is often all the more insidious because it is done without the acknowledgment that it is an official line--and generally with the denial that such an official line even exists.

This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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