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?
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.