I’m watching the DNC, and it’s made me even more aware of the power of liberal bourgeois democracies to let out a little revolutionary energy whenever it gets close to the edge, through concessional policies, like New Deal policies or whatever Kamala might do if she wins, or even the act of voting and campaigning itself. Do they have to go through a fascism phase first, or has there been a liberal bourgeois democracy that has successfully had a socialist revolution? Will it take new theory to figure it out?
Technically Russia was under a short lived liberal provisional government when the Bolshevik revolution happened and not the Tsar’s regime. The Spanish Civil war is a strange case where both a fascist insurgency and a socialist revolution broke out from a liberal government at the same time, unfortunately the fascists ended up coming out on top there. China too is kinda similar where both the CPC and Chiang’s nationalists splintered out from the liberal Beiyang government.
I don’t believe that the Beiyang government warrants the term liberal, if I’m being honest… what justifies the label?
it hardly even warrants the term government either
It’s a warlord-nation area, essentially…
I suppose it’s a bit murky perhaps as China at the time simply wasn’t at a stage of development where it could be clearly designated between capitalism and socialism, and the Beiyang government during it’s time mostly just had it’s hands full bringing about very basic rights and reforms that were deprived during the Qing era. I’ve heard that there is still debate within China if Sun Yat-Sen’s vision for China was more in line with socialism or liberalism, I simply deemed Beiyang China as liberal since it couldn’t clearly be designated as socialist.
I forgot about the fact that the Tsar was down by the time the Bolsheviks took over. I thought they took it over from other socialists, though, because he was an SR. I’m still getting to that point in the Revolutions podcast admittedly lol, and need to do more reading on that period lol.
I also didn’t realize Spain had a liberal government before the Civil War. I guess I always figured it was a monarchy like everywhere else, but a quick read on Wikipedia shows it was a democratic liberal government and the monarchy was deposed 5 or so years earlier. Thanks for that interesting fact and unique case.
Between this and the Russia example, I wonder if the beginning of a liberal bourgeois democracy is it at its weakest. Socialism feels so hopeless now in the US, with how strong and entrenched it’s liberal bourgeois institutions are now. But then the Roman Republic fell after hundreds of years, and we haven’t really had capitalism that long yet, so maybe it’s possible with the right conditions.
We should really focus on who holds economic power, and what the primary mode of production was. And in both Russia and China, it was feudalism, and feudal landlords who held power over a largely peasant population.