The cancer infecting the political Left

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-09-2020, 06:58 AM)Einzige Wrote: All bourgeois politicians have cults of personality behind them.

All democratic politicians have to attract the voters, and thus form a positive relationship with the people.  The communist dictators don't.  They can rule through force and fear.  I don't consider this a plus for the communists.

Calling serving the people a cult of personality rather than a gathering of personal power?  Are they not nigh on inevitably both?   Is this different between an Lincoln, FDR or Churchill than a Trump?  Is working for the people distinguished from organizing force against them?

I guess it would be in how you define the link with the people.  I would just compare the relations the good democratic politicians have with the people as not a bad thing.

You touch on the difference between Marxist theory and reality.  You have to form a positive relationship with the people.  You have to provide a way that the people can check through means other than violence the tendency of a winner of a revolution to form a new group of elites that controls the means of production and oppresses the worker.  Do that, and Marxism might become a viable candidate again.

But do that and it might be barely recognized as Marxism.  The problem is that democracy is the best way so far to give the people some way of checking the government and elites without violence.  You have yet to propose an alternative.