The Forum > Article Comments > Why is the West different from the rest? > Comments
Why is the West different from the rest? : Comments
By Ellen Goodman, published 20/5/2008An outline of the centuries-long, tortuous and often fortuitous route by which 'democracy' became established in the Western world.
- Pages:
-
- 1
- Page 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
-
- All
The struggle for union rights and the vote shows in fact that our rulers opposed democracy for all (at least in Britain and even in the US where the revolution from below did not see blacks as equal).
The development of British and European capitalism was built on exploitation at home - eg driving the peasants off the land and into the factories, turning them into wage slaves - and exploitation abroad - the process of colonisation which saw the British especially but also the Spanish, Portuguese and French plunder the riches of the world and suppress the local populations for cheap products.
And there is no mention of working class revolutions like the Paris Commune and the 1917 Russian revolution, revolutions from below which saw the most democratic form of government established - workers councils with the right of automatic recall, the average wage for representatives, elected through the workplace with constant debates going on there and in the workers' councils and so on. The rise of Stalinism represented the counter-revolution and the destruction of these ideals.
The magnificent revolutions in eastern Europe to overthrow Stalinism show that the thirst for freedom and democracy lives on in the heart of working people everywhere. In fact I would go so far as to say the very process of capitalist production hot wires this thirst for freedom and democracy into workers.
That is why, like the twentieth century, the twenty first century will also be the century of revolution.