DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

Class 1. Bourgeois democracy

Reading

a DSP, Program of the Democratic Socialist Party, Part I, Section 1, pp. 14-19 (6 pages)

b Novack, The Mystifications of Bourgeois Democracy (53 pages)

Supplementary reading

c Novack, The Bourgeois Revolutions: Their Achievements and Limitations

Points for discussion

1 "… in the historical sequence of social philosophies in the Western world, the genealogy of democracy takes its place as a secularised offspring of the Christian teaching on the abstract equality of all men." (Novack; b, 5) What was the progressive side of Christianity? What was its conservative side, and how did it enable Christianity to be used as an ideological instrument of the exploiting classes?