Communism, democracy and the left
Soundings - ISSN 1362-6620
Volume 2017 Number 65
Communism, democracy and the left
pages -
Abstract
There is currently a lot of frustration with the failures of liberal democracy, and a turn by some on the left towards a politics that eschews liberal democracy in favour of a radical politics based on ideas similar to those of communism. But a key lesson from the history of communism is that one of the main causes of its failure was its attitude towards democracy. In countries ruled by communist governments, the party was seen as embodying the working class and hence democracy, and all other standpoints were repressed. Waite analyses how the repressive structures of state communism arose, before going on to discuss ways in which Gramscian communists sought to rethink issues of democracy and to shape new communist oppositional practices within liberal democracies.
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To cite this article
(2017) Communism, democracy and the left, Soundings, 2017(65), -