Karl Marx
...n power ensues like Marx describes. Those who own the means of production often keep them with the government’s assistance. Political power often relies on the wealthy, and the wealthy is often those who own the means of production. Legislation, and policies will develop not to assist the worker’s emancipation from economic captivity, but rather to aid the bourgeoisie into further strengthening their economic security, and increasing the inequalities between the two. But because the proletariats believe they are protected under the shield of democracy, they become cloaked from the alienation that capitalism promotes. This is why revolutions can’t, and don’t happen, because those who are disadvantaged, often don’t realize it, and hence, aren’t able to do anything about it. The economy they so much support, is driven too much by the motivation of profit rather than the satisfaction of human need. And through the rapid improvement of production instruments and the improving, powerful means of communication, even the most underdeveloped nations turned, and evolved into civilizations focused on production. Capitalism, would then evolve into globalization. This, Marx argues, is the major reason why all other systems, communism included, found themselves chasing the idea of wealth through production. (Teeple, 1984, 44) Western democracy, through its emphasis on accumulation, and market expansion, has taken the next step towards globalization, and has moved it to the forefront of its political agenda. The specific nature of oppression in Western democracies occurs in three major ways according to Marxian ideology. One is the simple systematic theory of the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat. The rich controlling the poor, the rich profiting from the poor, and the rich exploiting the poor as much as it is legally possible within the set guidelines created by the government who wish to increase economic inequality while simultaneously upholding democratic principles. The second is the breakdown of the worker in order to have more control. Workers fear the people they work for, therefore they don't demand the necessities they need to work. They fear the non-worker and don't demand what they need because they have been broken down, dehumanized, and forced to fight their internal feelings as opposed to their outer conditions. (Teeple, 1984, 15) The final way that capitalism breeds or causes oppression is through its growth and profit potential. Just as when the capitalist idea was first imagined, it still moves amazingly fast. Money can make more money easier and quicker than people with no money trying to make it. This is why the bourgeoisie have stayed in control and, why the proletariats have remained in their positions. It is these ideas that are so crucial to why Western democracy continues to be popular among the powerful, and why a proletariat revolution will not occur as Marx predicts. Marx’s theories emerged through the interaction and conflict of the various radical and revolutionary outlooks that emerged from the dual experience of the French revolution and the industrial revolution in England in which he lived in. (Levi, 1991, 82) He combined a passionate commitment to popular democracy and a socialized economy with an understanding that only the working class, through its self-activity, could bring into being a new society of freedom and abundance. Perhaps, at that time, his ideas of revolution were applicable but ideas of democracy differ substantially compared to today’s, and it is here where his contributions to democracy can be most appreciated. Marx didn't see any value in the bourgeois democracy of his own time because it didn't distribute power all that much, and included gross inequities and inequalities. This is why he began to develop and establish how, and why class struggles would emerge, and remain. And evidently, his ideas stood as democracy evolved, and class conflict continued to be apparent. However, theories of revolution slowly became obsolete as inequalities would persist, and the human will to revolt decreased. Even the origins of democracy itself in Athens, Marx concluded, were really a plutocracy, and even the democracy of our own time remains highly flawed and not much different from plutocracy. (Change, 1965, 3) If Marx were alive today, he would say that most Western democracies today do not adhere to democratic principles, and that contemporary political theories of democracy focus more on the theoretical aspect, and less on its practice. He would believe that state power is completely independent in relation to society even in the most democratic of democratic republics. The United States, for example possess two main parties who trade state powers, and exploit them for selfish purposes while the nation is powerless against them because of the veil of democracy. It is the economy which drives these parliamentary democracies of the major capitalist countries when it should indeed be the people of whom they are suppose to be responsible for. Accountability is lost because all powers have inherently the same interests. -The stealing of the 2000 US presidential election by George Bush, with the Supreme Court and the military playing key roles, and the attacks on democratic rights by the Bush administration in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, is only the most graphic expression of processes under way in all the so-called capitalist democracies. (World Socialist Website, 2002, 1) These anti-democratic political tendencies are rooted, in the final analysis, in economic processes. The world’s resources and wealth are controlled and exploited by vast transnational corporations, driven not by human needs but by the struggle for profits. Living reality is confirming the analysis undertaken by the Marxist movement that democracy is incompatible with the profit system, and the corporate ownership of the means of production. The establishment of genuine democracy, the political rule of the working class, which forms the overwhelming majority of the population, is only possible when the productive forces, they themselves have created, are brought under social ownership and subject to their conscious control. An idea, that remains far-fetched, and almost impossible to attain without nothing less then a complete transformation from a society driven by economics, to a society built on democratic principles. States would have to genuinely represent the community according to individuals’ private aims, and acknowledge that class relationships are exploitative, their interests are fundamentally different, and that it is these differences that have defined their social, and political lives. (Held, 1996, 130) They would have to re-invent laws on private property in the means of production , and revise them as such to incorporate all of society. Much of Marx’s works were a response to Hegelianism...