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John Quiggin 
@Megan
Some people say that Russia is a democracy. Some people say that it isn’t. Why is that? It could be because they disagree about the facts, but it could also be because they disagree about how to use the word ‘democracy’ (and there are other possibilities, including the one where some people are lying). I was trying to find out how you were using the word ‘democracy’ to clarify what you meant by your statement that Russia is a democracy. So far you haven’t explained. I now know that ‘having elections’ is part of what you mean by ‘democracy’, but only part, and you still haven’t explained the rest of your meaning.
In my experience, when people can’t explain their meaning (and I definitely include myself in this) it’s often an indicator that they don’t themselves understand what they mean. But it’s also my experience that people, although able to explain themselves, sometimes don’t do so when first asked because it genuinely fails to occur to them that they may not have been fully understood immediately.
It is genuinely the case that I do not understand what you mean when you say that Russia is a democracy. When I ask you to explain your meaning it is a sincere attempt to learn something. I am not saying you are wrong, because without knowing the meaning of your statement there is no way I can judge its accuracy.
Of course, even if you are able to explain your meaning, you are under no obligation to do so. All I can do is ask you politely and hope for the best. Please.
@JKUU
Well, notwithstanding recent failings of the AEC in WA, the big difference between the US and Australia is that the mechanics of elections aren’t wide open for corrupt practices.
The big reform that is needed both here and in the US is equality of access to the means of propaganda. In other words, flat limits on political advertising.
@J-D
Maybe we should back up a bit.
The comment which started this was my one about Herbst’s interview on RT the other night about Ukraine.
I can’t find a transcript but I did find a piece about it and this extract concords with my recollection of what I saw:
I don’t claim to know the Russian electoral system intricately, but they do have elections. They have a constitution and a separate legislature and executive. Please don’t take these things as constituting an attempt at an exhaustive definition of “democracy”.
I think it is wrong to say that Russia is NOT a democracy.
@Megan
Well Megan, withing that context then of course it is wrong to deny that Russia is a democracy. If it has the formal structures of democratic elections, then it passes as a democracy.
It wasn’t so long ago that critical discussions of democracy raised issues to do with equality of presence and participation as key issues. Underlying this was the need for a state that guaranteed the minimum material conditions necessary for participation: free education, universal health care, housing, work.
But now the AEC stands as a beacon of democratic light even if it is only procedural light. We should rally to defend fair process.
@Megan
Repeating that you think it’s wrong to say that Russia is not a democracy does not explain to me what leads you to think that. Whatever merit your assertion has, a bare reiteration of it adds none.
If the facts you mention about Russia do not constitute the standard by which you judge whether a country is a democracy, then you still haven’t explained what you mean by that term, which is what I was asking you to do.
On the other hand, by the standard suggested earlier by Jungney, in response to a separate request for clarification from me, there is nothing wrong about saying that Russia is not a democracy, although, as I mentioned earlier, by that standard no country is a democracy.
@Fran Barlow the alternative was control by party barons and party conventions as prior to the 1970s.
most progressive candidates in the US use primaries to get around elite control of who is suitable and who is not to run. McGovern in 1972 was an example.
they alos allow outside to run without having to accumulate a bank of favours.
primaries require you to appeal to the party base rather than the median voter.
@J-D
Without saying as much, you seem to be challenging the idea that Russia is a democracy.
Wouldn’t it be easiest if you spell out your definition of the term?
@Megan
You are the one who is asserting that Russia is a democracy, and you’re saying just that much in just so many words. So why wouldn’t it be easier still if you spelled out your definition of the term? What’s your problem with that? Why are you challenging me to do what you won’t do yourself?
@J-D
By corollary you are asserting, obliquely, that it is not.
It is clear that I invited, rather than challenged, you to set out the definition you are using to view this discussion.
We could work from the Oxford definition of “democracy”:
“government by all the people, direct or representative”.
Representative there can mean ‘elected’ rather than actually representing, and I imagine many would argue they are one and the same.
Using the simplistic “they have elections” whereby you argued that therefore the country to have the most elections is the most democratic – could be turned around to measure not the frequency of elections but the degree to which the eligible voters participate (fortunately in Australia we have compulsory voting which leads to a high turnout).
OK, this is from Wikipedia, but still:
In Russia voter turnout is about 61% for urban and 70% for rural voters.
Those voters elect a legislature and an executive. It is all conducted under electoral laws and a constitution.
As I said, I won’t be held to that being an exhaustive definition of a democracy nor will I be held to that being a measure of the quality of such a democracy – however measured – but I will say that this qualifies Russia to be described as a democracy in my view.
As an interesting by-product of my visit to Wikipedia I found this:
That doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me!
@Jim Rose
Both systems are simply alternative means for various fractions of the boss class to effect control. Primaries are political beauty contests where candidates jockey for the favour of bourgeois notables.
What’s needed is a process that is beyond the reach of the boss class to manipulate with certainty.
the question, i saw being asked a lot last night is whether the ukrainian army will follow the orders of the acting ukrainian government.
they’ve lost their admiral already:- Crimea forms its own fleet as Ukraine Navy chief sides with region
there is also a report that the flagship of the ukrainian navy – hetman sahaidachny – returning from the gulf of aden, has refused to follow orders of the acting government in kiev, and is returning to the black sea flying the russian flag. if true, could be counter revolutionary – bourgeois – elements in the fleet, eh? -a.v.
That’s right av. Watch out for bourgeois revanchistas! Strewth, what a mess.
Oh, for those who think Pilger’s said it all before, here is Adam Goodes, Australian of the Year, on Pilger’s Utopia
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/hostility-to-john-pilgers-film-a-denial-of-nations-brutal-past-20140302-33ttx.html
The point is that it still needs to be said, over and over.
@Megan
I am interested by what appears to be your difficulty in grasping the difference between querying an assertion and denying it.
I am treating the question ‘Is Russia a democracy?’ as an open one. You are treating it as closed.
What I invited you to do, and what you still seem intriguingly reluctant to do, was to explain the meaning of your own assertion.
If you are confident that Russia qualifies as a democracy on the basis of the criteria you have listed, why would you not confirm that you consider any country that meets those criteria to qualify as a democracy?
I mentioned earlier that all but a dozen or so countries have elections. Just a few of those that do are Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroun, and both Congos. Would you be prepared to say that all those countries qualify as democracies on the basis of having elections? If yes, why are you reluctant to confirm that ‘having elections’ is your criterion for defining democracy? If no, what additional criteria are you applying to make that distinction? Or perhaps you would say that you can’t be sure which of those countries are democracies because you’re not sufficiently well-informed about them? But in that case, isn’t it possible that you’re also not sufficiently well-informed about Russia?
That’s not the impression of this disinterested observer.
In fact, with each new comment you’re sounding more and more like a troll.
@J-D
You might have missed this part of my last comment:
There are many countries that would technically qualify by a broad definition as ‘democracies’. But they might also be badly governed, corrupt, lawless etc..
Elections alone might not even meet a broad definition, for example if they are corrupted, rigged etc.. or in states that allow only one political party to run.
It really would be helpful, I think, if you could provide the definition of “democracy” you have been applying throughout this discussion.
@Megan
Are you confident that elections in Russia are not corrupted, rigged, etc?
It really would be helpful, I think, if you could provide the definition of ‘democracy’ you have been applying throughout this discussion.
Ever since a recent PM was lambasted by our ABC for not having good enough opinion polls I’ve had the view they (the ABC) secretly take their cues from News Ltd. Find out why here. The ABC is now heading online articles with either little information or a question. Examples
…..Is this the best the selfie ever taken?
…. Croc battles snake; find out who won.
Perhaps ABC journos fear News Ltd will get the national public broadcasting contract and they are preparing to jump ship. I think it’s a bit puerile and they should go back to the old style. ABC faces soul searching; is it real or imagined?
@J-D
How would you define “confident” in that context?
As I understand it recent Russian elections were not widely considered to have been corrupted or rigged. Of course, a core of neo-cons and media would have it otherwise.
Do you have any view on them one way or the other?
I have given you some factors that I considered qualify Russia as a “democracy”.
I’d be interested in whether you disagree, and if so the basis for that.
@Hermit
I’ve noticed the slide of the ABC to an appendage of News Ltd.
Not just corporate media. Specifically News Ltd. If they absolutely must mention something from Fairfax they hardly ever name the source, it’s just “some media are reporting…”. News Ltd gets mentioned by name (or masthead) all day long.
On ABC local radio I’ve often wondered what they would fill their day’s broadcast with if their local News Ltd paper didn’t arrive one day.
I have a hunch that the rot goes back even before Howard stacked the board with them, Qld ABC TV & Radio started going bad somewhere in the mid 1990s and has only got worse.
A favourite moment was ABC612 Brisbane morning host Madonna King having a gushing interview with the editor of the Courier-Mail, David Fagan, about their exciting new easy to manage “compact” format.
The fact that they are married to each other apparently wasn’t worth a mention.
john kerry said this with a straight face on “meet the press”:-
now for something completely different. someone on a thread at “the vineyard of the saker” has posted this picture of the acting prime minister of ukraine, arseniy yatseniuk, giving the nazi salute:-
https://twitter.com/ZeroCoolGR/status/440174634739449856/photo/1
yatseniuk, prime minister & current leader of julia tymoshenko’s party “fatherland”, is set, on the insistence of euromaidan lobbyists, to give a place in his cabinet to dmytro yarosh. that’s right, to be appointed to the cabinet, probably as deputy to the head of the national security council, is one dmytro yarosh, leader of right sector, an openly neo-nazi group, rabidly anti-semeitic & anti-russian . yarosh is the guy, this last weekend, who posted on his party’s website an invitation to the chechen terrorist leader, doku umarov, to join ukraine’s war against russia. -a.v.
@alfred venison
And Tymoshenko arose from the ‘Yellow’ event with Yushchenko whose wife is Chicago born and educated and worked in the Reagan White House.
on the other hand, we don’t know whether rear admiral denis valentinovitch berezovsky is married, or the character of his wife if he is, or anything much about him, except:-
(1) in july 2007, president yushenko awarded him the presidential medal “for irreproachable service”, 3rd degree.
(2) 7 years later, in march 2014, in command of the navy, he refused to carry out the orders of interim (acting) president oleksandr turchynov. -a.v.
and putin continues to out fox the americans who appear surprised & on the back foot. in chess they’d be said to have lost the initiative, they are not forcing the moves. not yet.
and today in proposing a fact finding mission to merkel, putin takes the initiative to simultaneously (1) reassure the germans et alia that there are ways though this by which they can continue to get cheap natural gas & (2) give the eu a way to save face & (3) isolate the americans from the europeans.
http://www.dw.de/putin-agrees-to-ukraine-fact-finding-mission-after-talk-with-merkel/a-17468591
alfred venison,
Let’s be careful here. There are no good guys amongst the main protagonists. Russia is a Chekist/Oligarch state. The USA is also a Secret Agency/Oligarch state. A proportion of the latest Ukraine “revolution” does appear to be fascist aided by Western destabilisation agents. They overthrew a very corrupt but possibly democratically elected government. One cannot be certain of anything like the truth in this situation.
But in terms of Realpolitiks the West has been stupid and clumsy. Why interfere in Ukraine? Why destabilise it? Why provoke Russia? Russia is still a nuclear superpower whatever its other weaknesses. It was obvious Russia, especially under Putin, would not take this meekly. I am sorry for the Ukrainians who live on a fault line between two Empires, Russia and the West. But the West should not play brinkmanship stakes just to pull another 52 million people into an EU which is failing economically anyway and which (EU) needs Russian oil and gas. It is geostrategic idiocy of the first order.
If the failing EU and over-stretched US push Russia, China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation into a closer alliance then the West will come off second best. The SCO is potentially the most powerful bloc on the planet by a wide margin due its huge resource advantage (land, people and natural resources). The West needs to tread very carefully. The poles of power are changing. The rest of the world has no reason to think kindly of us.
@Ikonoclast
The US is under the control of “crazies”.
I call them fascists but ‘neo-cons’ is probably more palatable to most.
It doesn’t matter what name we use – they are dangerous and they are trying to blow up the world. Luckily they only understand “PR” and are therefore justifiably terrified of “the people” – i.e. us.
@Megan
I think you need to stop watching “Dr. Strangelove” so often.
To be serious, Putin’s bold invasion of the Crimea, places Obama in a “defining moment” of his presidency. The next move is up to him and the EUnachs (whoops, I said “serious”). The next few days will be very interesting …
@JKUU
The US didn’t provoke this situation at all. (sarc/)
Putin’s “bold invasion” is something of a fiction.
The next few days will be very interesting indeed. But I think the neo-cons are going to get their teeth kicked in. Of course, they deserve that, but sadly we will bear the consequences of their stupidity.
@Megan
Do you consider reliable the reports of the international election observation mission of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe? If not, which observations do you consider more reliable, and why?
And why is is that you still haven’t provided the definition of ‘democracy’ that you have been using throughout this discussion?
@J-D
Before we argue about the definition of “democracy” we might want to heed the words of George Orwell, who said in “Politics and the English Language:”
Accordingly, all but about three nations of the world consider themselves “democracies.” Indeed, this is an over estimate.
Ikonoclast
i am not picking good guys, i’m picking good players.
it is entirely predictable that russia will defend its vital interests whether its a democracy or a checkist state or an empire. only a beady eyed neo-cons could miss that.
and yes there are outright fascists in the ukraine government and extreme volkisch nationalists. they add up to six in a 21 member parliament including state prosecutor, deputy prime minister and minister of the interior. you ought to read more carefully about that before holding me to some kind of account over the makeup the ukrainian parliament.
What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis
and did you even see this?
https://twitter.com/ZeroCoolGR/status/440174634739449856/photo/1
that’s the current prime acting minister of urkraine. i might up that count of neo-nazis & volksisch ideologues in the ukraine provisional government to seven in light of the fact the prime minister is at least a neo-fascist fellow traveller or an ignorant opportunist . -a.v.
@J-D
I have provided enough of a definition and now you are continuing to refuse to do the same or to set out any basis for disagreement with that.
As I said, you can find people who will say the elections were ‘bad’ and you can find those who will say they were ‘good’.
I have heard of the OSCE but do not know enough about it to say how reliable any particular report may be considered. There are any number of neo-con think tanks and NGOs who can be relied upon to say negative things about Russia.
@J-D
I looked at the OSCE report from the last Russian elections.
They found “On election day, voting was assessed positively
overall”.
Looks like they think Russia is a “democracy”.
@JKUU
Why did you not consider Orwell’s views before you made your assertion that Russia qualifies to be considered a democracy? Now that you have considered Orwell’s views, how do they affect what you think about your assertion that Russia qualifies to be considered a democracy? Orwell writes that calling a country ‘democratic’ is generally considered to be praise: do you think that by calling Russia a democracy you are praising it? Orwell writes that the defenders of every regime call it a democracy: when you write that Russia is a democracy, does that put you in the category of a defender of the Russian regime? Orwell writes of people fearing that if they are tied down to a definition of the word ‘democracy’ they may have to stop using it: do you fear that if you are tied down to a definition of the word ‘democracy’ you may have to stop using it? Orwell writes that words like ‘democracy’ are often used in a consciously dishonest way, with the user having a private definition but allowing the audience to think something different is meant: do you think that observation has any applicability to you?
I am more than happy to heed Orwell’s words, as you suggest; are you?
@J-D
I’m calling you out here. You’ve asked six rhetorical questions of Megan in one paragraph. This style is not designed to illuminate, but to obfuscate. No-one could address so many questions in one measly par. It’s unfair to argue in such a way.
Having said that I’ll chime in with my own view that free and fair elections are the minimum criteria for a democracy. If Russia achieves that, then its a formal democracy. After that issues to do with literacy, education standards, wages, freedom of association, a welfare safety net and gender equality, to name just a few matters, are key in guaranteeing equality of opportunity in democratic participation.
Elections are only a part of representative democracy which is the newcomer on the block of democratic practice.
@Megan
You have not provided enough of a definition. You have consistently refrained from confirming whether you consider criteria you have listed as constituting an adequate test for whether a country qualifies to be considered a democracy. If you wrote ‘Yes, I consider that every country which has elections qualifies to be considered a democracy’, that would be an adequate definition, but you have consistently backed away from doing that, indicating that there are other factors that you think need to be considered but never committing yourself to a definite position on what they are.
It is by the nature of things impossible for me to agree with you and equally impossible for me to disagree with you if I don’t know what you mean, and you won’t reveal what you mean. If you will disclose your meaning I will commit myself to a position on whether I agree with you and state my basis for it.
If you don’t know whether the OSCE is a reliable source, which sources do you rely on to judge whether Russian elections are corrupted, rigged, etc? Is your opinion formed on no basis whatever?
@Megan
Your reading of the views of the OSCE observer mission is incomplete and inadequate. The observers stated that ‘conditions were clearly skewed in favour of one of the contestants’, who ‘was given a clear advantage over his competitors in terms of media presence’; ‘state resources were mobilized at the regional level in his support’ and ‘overly restrictive candidate registration requirements limited genuine competition’.
‘Voting on election day was assessed positively overall’, the statement said, yes, but that sentence ended ‘but the process deteriorated during the vote count which was assessed negatively in almost one-third of polling stations observed due to procedural irregularities.’
The statement also quoted the head of the delegation from the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly as saying ‘voter’s choice was limited, electoral competition lacked fairness and an impartial referee was missing’.
The leader of the observers is quoted as saying: ‘There were serious problems from the very start of this election. The point of elections is that the outcome should be uncertain. This was not the case in Russia. There was no real competition and abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt.’
@jungney
Do you consider that Russia has free and fair elections? If so, on what do you base that conclusion?
I have quoted above the views of the international observer mission coordinated by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe; do you have any reason to doubt them, or to prefer another source of information?
@J-D
No, it is you who is misreading it.
“Overall” is the key word. It means that, apart from the criticisms in the report, the source you pointed to – OSCE – assessed the elections positively.
@Megan
No, ‘overall’ is not the key word. The predicate ‘assessed positively overall’ was attached only to the subject ‘voting on election day’. The report gave a positive overall assessment only to one part of the elections process, namely, voting on election day, but a negative assessment, in the terms I have quoted, to candidates’ access to the media, use of government resources, candidate registration requirements, the vote count, and the extent of genuine electoral competition and voter choice.
If you want to use the word ‘democracy’ in a way which is compatible with overly restrictive candidate registration requirements, abuse of government resources and skewing in the media in favour of one candidate, irregularities in counting of the votes, and absence of genuine electoral competition and voter choice, that’s up to you. All I’m saying about that is that such a usage is at odds with the way the word is more typically used and therefore almost certainly invites misinterpretation.
@J-D
It’s not that I “want” anything.
All those things apply to a greater or lesser extent to the last Australian Federal election but I do qualify Australia as a “democracy” nonetheless.
I disagree with your interpretation of the report as I said earlier. The report gives the elections a positive rating “overall”.
It’s like getting 60% on an exam and you seem to be setting a pass mark somewhere up near 100% as far as I can tell.
@J-D
No, I’m unimpressed with the Russian electoral process and especially the difficulties placed in the way of independent observers.
@jungney
I won’t risk putting up a full link, but the report is 28 pages of pdf and is pretty easy to read.
put the “W”s in front of this: .osce.org/odihr/elections/90461
if you’d like to read it.
The “assessed positively overall” is in the executive summary. The negative comments should be read in context.
sorry, Ikonoclast, i was a bit rude back there. i read in haste this morning, there are more points we agree on than disagree. it is clear that much of the most heavy violence against the police was carried out by trained cadres of the right sector. amerika has blundered. in addition to the acting prime minister of ukraine giving the nazi salute, there are photos of john mccain in kiev standing shoulder to shoulder in apparent solidarity with known ukrainian fascists – that is such a stupid act it makes me wonder if that man even think. -a.v.
@alfred venison
No problems. I just think the West is living in the past. The US thinks it can go on being a global hegemon forever. However, its reach is going to shrink over the next 20 years. It will go back to being “only” a hemispheric or regional hegemon (hegemony over the Americas, over the Atlantic and over maybe 3/4 of the Pacific.) The US (and the Americas) have the resources to sustain this (in a slow but definite decline caused limits to growth which will of course affect everyone).
The EU (European Union) and its big 3 (Germany, France, UK) will decline more rapidly. The EU has serious resource issues. It has little oil, gas or coal left on its own soil. The US and China will out-compete the EU for remaining global resources. Russia will remain a self-sustaining behemoth longer than any other large nation. With only 140 million people and masses of land and resources Russia is well placed for a relative resurgance over a long time span. China is heading for trouble (over-populated). It could take land and resources off Russia except for Russia huge nuclear arsenal. This will keep China at bay.
The Middle East, Africa and maybe parts of the Indian sub-continent will collapse out of calculations except as places for superpowers to steal remaining resources from. Australia will be vulnerable to China, Indonesia or India as they go looking for resources to put off the evil day of resource collapse. Realpolitiks will require that we remain under the USA’s nuclear umbrella and remain a vassal and tributary state to the USA.
Over all this, resource collapse, environmental collapse and climate change will wreak there devastation. All will decline, but some will decline slower than others. Those that decline slowest become relatively greater powers. Russia will do best of all provided it does not completely mis-manage its economy and its society. Such mis-management is always a possibility with Russia.
If the West pushes the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation into a full economic and political alliance then the West (or at least the EU will be badly eclipsed). The USA will hang on much better unless it takes internal inequity so far that it wrecks its own civil society. Such mis-management is clearly now a possibility within the USA given its hard right lunacy.
@jungney
Actually Jungney, J-D didn’t seem to realize that it was me (JKUU) who posted the Orwell quote to comment on his debate with Megan, and not Megan. I have not mentioned the word “Russia” in any post on this thread (up till this point). I don’t particularly care if Russia is a “democracy” (by any definition) or not. That is a matter for the Russian people to deal with.
J-D, remember when we were discussing misattributed quotes last week? You finished by saying “the merits of any remark, correctly attributed, misattributed, or unattributed, depend on its content and not on its source.” I agree completely, and it was in that spirit that Orwell’s words were offered.
Moving on: Just after I posted the Orwell comment I received this week’s issue of “The Economist.” The centerpiece is a 6-page essay on – what else but a topic we’ve been debating here – democracy. Under the headline “What’s gone wrong with democracy,” and by-line “Democracy was the most successful political idea of the 20th century. Why has it run into trouble, and what can be done about it,” this well-researched piece charts the rise in democracy after WW II, its plateau-ing towards the end of the century, and its partial decline with the rise of China and the global financial crisis. An interactive version of the essay can be found at economist.com/democracy (link works). I won’t editorialize, but I was pleased to find that primary elections, which Jim Rose and I advocated earlier in this thread, were discussed in the essay as a small but significant step in revitalizing the democratic process.
@JKUU
“The democracy that exists in Britain today was not handed down from above; it was won by centuries of struggle. Marxists insist that this democracy is profoundly limited. We call it “bourgeois democracy”, by which we mean elements of popular self-rule intertwined with and limited by the domination of the distinct minority that owns the means of production.”
The source I have attributes this statement to Trotsky. I have read no Trotsky so I can scarcely be a Trotskyite. However, the last sentence in particular is profoundly correct.
“We call it “bourgeois democracy”, by which we mean elements of popular self-rule intertwined with and limited by the domination of the distinct minority that owns the means of production.”
Surely, this is the situation in which we are enmeshed today. We do indeed have elements of popular self-rule in Australia and in the USA. But at the same time a distinct minority, the so-called “1%” in the USA, dominate our “democracy” because they own and direct the major tranches of capital and the means of production.
In Australia, we get sell-offs of public assets and utilities even when the majority of the people do not want that to happen. Each of our major parties follows the wishes of their capitalist donors in this matter. The will of the distinct minority prevails in the matters of capital and ownership. The masses get selected elements of popular rule by winning, for example, gay rights while overall losing their worker rights. Workers lose income share in the economy as the profit share rises. Workers lose industrial rights as they lose awards and are forced onto contracts and enterprise agreements. Rights of association (unionism etc.) are rolled back.
We can now hark back to the debate about democracy. It is not true democracy if you merely have elections and a parliament if at the same time the workplace and workplace relations are not democratic. In other words democracy will not exist fully and fundamentally until workers own and democratically direct each workplace. So, certainly there are no true democracies in the world. Progress towards true democracy ended in about 1970. After that workers rights, the rights of the people or the masses, have been rolled back.
Capitalism, the minority ownership of the means of production and its ability to dictate working lives to the masses, is the antithesis of democracy. State and crony capitalism, as it existed/exists in Russia and China with one party authoritarian rule is obviously not democracy either. All countries are now becoming more capitalist thus less democratic. Our partial democracy (bourgeois democracy) is in retreat. This is consistent with Marx’s theory of the direction late stage capitalism would take.
Dumb vs. effective. My guess is public servants winced with embarrassment having to explain the reasons for carbon tax repeal
http://www.environment.gov.au/topics/cleaner-environment/clean-air/repealing-carbon-tax
The explanation seems to be aimed at Neanderthals. Yesterday the PM spoke on why we should log national parks. No doubt the audience grunted their approval. I’ve yet to see an explanation how increased logging ties in with soil carbon under the Direct Action plan. Maybe logic doesn’t come into it. When all’s said and done the LNP stopped the boats and the ALP couldn’t.