The notion that what is wrong with bourgeois democracy is the adjective rather than the noun was a brilliant innovation on the part of Marxist rhetoricians. If the problem with western democracies is that they are bourgeois (whatever that means), then internal critics constrained to live in such places may offer criticism risk-free: taking your distance from bourgeois democracy costs you little and hardly threatens the institution itself.
– Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century, Vintage, London, 2013, p. 53
… could one say equally the notion that what is wrong with capitalist democracy is the adjective rather than the noun is a brilliant innovation on the part of its critics? costing them little should they be constrained to live in such places: taking one’s distance from capitalist democracy hardly threatens the institution itself. Whereas the problem and risks of standing up against democracy in a post-communist world constitute for the Left its fatal genetic flaw and are as risks to be avoided where the problem is more easily denied.
… in which regard, laterally, check out David Kimelman and Earl Dax’s Weimar New York, in video:
… and in photos:
– Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser perform at Weimar New York for Obama, by David Kimelman
– Street Fight, Otto Dix, 1927
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