Hard Times for Democracy

Freedom prevents not the proletarian from eating but the tyrant from sleeping. —Edgar Morin

What is the use of deluding ourselves or trying to delude others? The recent destruction of democracy in India is a severe political blow to people of our persuasion—even if that destruction proves to be only temporary. It does not, of course, invalidate our general argument that democracy is essential, not only to any possible movement toward socialism, but even for rudimentary social progress; but it certainly becomes considerably harder to present that argument persuasively. Throughout the world, at the present moment, democracy is in retreat: which is another way of saying that socialist hopes are also in r...