Abstract
Mulvad and Stahl challenge the claim that parliamentary democracy is inherently ‘bourgeois’, identifying the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek as the most prominent contemporary proponent of this misguided idea. The chapter proceeds in three parts. First, it explores how the introduction of parliamentary democracy—defined as the ‘constitutionalisation’ of state power under a legislative body, with regular elections and universal suffrage—was everywhere a result of the activity of social movements working against the aspirations of both conservatives and liberals. Second, a rereading of Marx reveals that he actually wanted to radicalise representative democracy, not abolish it. Third, it is argued that Leninists and liberals have colluded in sustaining the myth of parliamentary democracy as a bourgeois invention. The conclusion asserts that the left’s task today is to defend existing representative institutions from persistent attacks, not abandon them.
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Summarised by Olin Wright (2010, 304) as: ‘attack the state’ and ‘confront the bourgeoisie’ vs. ‘use the state’ and ‘collaborate with the bourgeoisie’.
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The in-depth analysis of Marx’s works in this chapter does not imply that we view him as an infallible voice of trans-historical philosophical authority on issues of theory and strategy. Rather, this approach is chosen because of a discontent with the fact that fragments of his thought are distorted and used to support strategic conclusions which would have been quite foreign to Marx himself. Furthermore, we actually think that Marx (and Engels)—if read with proper contextual understanding—actually provides useful points of orientation (but not, of course, a definitive guide) for the organisational and intellectual challenges of our generation.
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Benjamin Constant describes this ‘modern liberty’ of liberalism as essentially the right to ‘peaceful enjoyment and private independence’, as opposed to ‘the liberty of the ancient’, which consisted in political participation (Constant 1988[1816]).
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The main method was the introduction of qualification on the vote. Most often this took the form of property qualification, but even Mill’s inclusive model gives extra votes to the educated and informed (which included owners of property) and restricts it from servants and recipients of public relief (Mill 2010 [1861], Chap. 8, Sects. 1–2).
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In making this argument, we are indebted to the insights of Hal Draper (cf. Johnson 2011).
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Or even—dare one say it—the socialist workers’ movement lacking the ability (because of its dogmatically hostile attitude towards the ‘petit bourgeoisie’ and to peasants) to make itself the head of an anti-oligarchic movement with a popular backing solid enough to decisively tip the balance of social power against capitalist interests.
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Domènech (ibid.) furthermore contends that: “neither for [Edward] Bernstein, nor for Rosa Luxembourg, and nor for the Lenin of ‘What is to be done? (1902)’ […] did ‘bourgeois democracy’ refer to a form of state or government introduced by the bourgeoisie and characteristic of an entire epoch of capitalist political dominance and triumph—as it later would to the main part of vulgar and de-memorised twentieth century Marxism. Even less did it refer to a political ‘superstructure’ which necessarily emerges out of the development of capitalist economic life. To encounter Marxists willing to give away ‘democracy’—and the workers movement’s long and painful struggle of to obtain it—so cheaply to the ‘bourgeoisie’ and to an inveterately anti-democratic liberalism, one would have to await the ending of the Great War and to the desperate Bolshevik propaganda.”
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For an investigation of the role of (parts of) the German grand bourgeoisie in funding Hitler, see, for example, Domènech (2004, 340–350).
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Claus Offe (1983, 25) has described how this compromise as ‘mass participation through a competitive party system makes democracy safe for capitalism and Keynesianism and the welfare state makes capitalism safe for democracy’.
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Mulvad, A.M., Stahl, R.M. (2018). The Myth of Bourgeois Democracy. In: Geelan, T., González Hernando, M., Walsh, P. (eds) From Financial Crisis to Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70600-9_10
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