Workers' Liberty 17, January 1994. Socialism and Democracy

Socialism and Democracy: democracy, direct action and the class struggle

Submitted on

Was advocating extra-parliamentary direct action to bring down the elected Thatcher government anti-democratic? Are 'by democratic means' and 'by parliamentary means' identical concepts?

Socialism and Democracy: Workers' Liberty special issue (no.17), January 1994

Download the pamphlet as a PDF:

  • Debate from 1982 between Michael Foot, then Labour Party leader, and John O'Mahony (Sean Matgamna), with a 1994 introduction
  • Appendices, including texts on socialism and democracy by James P Cannon, Max Shachtman, V I Lenin, and Hal Draper.

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Read it online:
Introduction: Democracy, direct action, and the class struggle
Michael Foot: My kind of democracy (part 1)
Michael Foot: My kind of democracy (part 2)
John O'Mahony: Introduction
Chapter 1: Is Direct Action Against Thatcher Undemocratic?
Chapter 2: The Appeal to History
Chapter 3: The Scarecrow of Stalinism
Chapter 4: Superstition or Struggle?
Appendix 1. Labour Party: the sham of "one member, one vote" - John Bloxam and John O'Mahony
Appendix 2. PR, democracy, and socialism - John O'Mahony
Appendix 3. Marxism and democracy - James P Cannon
Appendix 4. The movement of the majority - James P Cannon
Appendix 5. 1917 was a democratic revolution - Max Shachtman
Appendix 6. Lenin on Democracy and Dictatorship
Appendix 7. Democracy in the Russian Revolution - Leon Trotsky (1918)
Appendix 8. An Eyewitness Account of the Russian Revolution - Hal Draper

Appendix 7 and appendix 8, included here, were not in the printed version of January 1994.

Labour Party: the sham of "one member, one vote"

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By John Bloxam and John O'Mahony

"After the rising of the 17th of June [the East Berlin workers uprising of 1953] the Secretary of the Writers Union had leaflets handed out in the Stalinallee in which it can be read that the people had forfeited the confidence of the government, and could only win it back by redoubled efforts. Would it not be simpler if the government dissolved the people and elected another?"

Democracy, Direct Action and Class Struggle: the Defects of Bourgeois Democracy

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Pinochet
Author: 
John O'Mahony

The malaise of bourgeois democracy in Britain is now a subject of much discussion and concern. The discussion on democracy, early in 1982, between Michael Foot, then leader of the Labour Party, and Socialist Organiser, a forerunner of AWL, may help readers form a clearer picture of the issues beyond small-scale financial corruption.