Democracy: for what class?

“It is natural for a liberal to speak of ‘democracy’ in general; but a Marxist will never forget to ask: ‘for what class?’”

-Vladimir Lenin

Liberal democracy: government for the rich

Marxists love democracy. But as opposed to the traditional liberal view taken by Western governments, Marxism takes a very substantive view on democracy. This means it seeks to go beyond being satisfied with the mere existence of certain institutions that are supposedly “democratic”; it questions the results and outcomes such institutions produce. Let’s take the liberal “right to free press.” In theory, anybody is supposed to be able to create a media source and freely distribute information to the people. In actuality, owning an information source such as a magazine, TV station or newspaper capable of broadcasting to millions of people is a privilege left only to an extremely small and wealthy group of citizens. Given this, the Marxist approach to what liberals interpret as free press is that it is a “right” that solely serves the rich, and is therefore not democratic at all.

Cuban immigrants: “fleeing communism”?

Many use the fact that many Cubans immigrate to the US every year as evidence that the Cuban people are opposed to the socialist government, and are fleeing its tyranny. “If Cuba is so great,” as it goes “why are they all trying to come here?” This claim makes many logical errors and false assumptions, one being that it generalizes the few who do immigrate as representative of the whole Cuban population of 11 million.