American leftists look to Canada’s more robust social-welfare state with envy. But all is not well north of the border: Canada’s richest families own 120 times their share of the country’s wealth. There’s never been a better time to introduce a wealth tax.
  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
    4•4 years ago

    As Lenin puts it

    Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich–that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”–supposedly petty–details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc.,–we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been inclose contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆OP
        1•4 years ago

        The State and Revolution, can highly recommend the whole thing. I find Lenin’s writing in general tends to be very good. It’s succinct, and gets the point across clearly.