Teori: Mariátegui om demokratins kris

Som en del av vårt försök att ge bidrag till en riktigt förståelse av det nuvarande läget i landet publicerar vi idag ett kort utdrag av en föreläsning som José Carlos Mariátegui höll den 25 september 1923. Vi tror den problematik som JCM beskriver i citatet till stor del även idag är gällande. Läs hela föreläsningen här.

"Bourgeois democracy has ceased to correspond with the organization of the productive forces which have changed and grown formidably. That's why democracy is in crisis. Democracy's typical institution is the parliament. The crisis of democracy is a crisis of parliament. We have already seen how the two great contemporary forces are capital and labor and how, beyond parliament, these forces clash or struggle. Democracy's theorists might suppose that these forces are, or should be, proportionaly represented in parliament. But it is not so. Because society is not split cleanly between capitalists and proletarians. Between the capitalist class and the proletarian class there are a series of amorphous and intermediary layers. Besides, just as the whole proletarian class does not have a precise awareness of its historical and class necessities, the whole of the capitalist class is not gifted with a precise class consciousness. The mentality of the big industrialist or the banker is not the same as the mentality of the medium rentier or retail merchant. This disperison of social classes is reflected in parliament which thus does not exactly reflect the large interests in play. The political State turns out to be the representation of the all the social layers. But the conservative force and the revolutionary force polarize into singular interest groupings: capitalism and proletariat. Within the parliamentary order there cannot be but coalition governments. Today, the tendency is toward factional governments."