In Italy, as in most European countries, there is proportional representation and one of the country's leading monopoly capitalists, Silvio Berlusconi, is the Prime Minister. It's not the solution, it's part of the problem.

The debate over AV, PR etc. is not relevant to our struggles. First past the post, alternative vote and proportional representation are represented to us as if they comprise the entire spectrum of political possibilities. But really voting reform is just a matter of minor technical changes to the present system.

As the previous poster points out, there is no reason to suggest that PR is likely to produce a better political culture: just look at Italy where it affords the racist Lega Nord party significant power.

What could we expect after voting reform? The same exploitation, the same hierarchies, the same racism, the same patriarchy.

Let's not waste our effort on pointless reform. Let's not invest parliamentary politics with undeserved legitimacy.

We need radical change that does away with the current political system altogether, not just a modest change to management structure.

If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.

:)

ped fullscale with help of PR in fact, its definetely not the only thing we are asking for, direct democracy like Switzerland without economic democracy isnt enough either.
This a good start though, well done Purple tide, keep it up, you need more info on some kind of universal constitution, but this demo is arguably better than all the single issue campaigns.


above critics
Whats your unified cohernet plan then basically? si vous play,
you gotta understand that many people on this demo do much more than just reformism,they go on demo's& work in community plus, much more

Please could you explain your claim that proportional representation stopped Italian fascism?

With regard to purple protests...

No one is casting aspersions on the personalities of the people involved, the comments above are just about the politics of this campaign. Whether or not these individuals do loads of good volunteering is neither here nor there.

I don't think having a 'unified coherent plan' for system-wide political change is a prerequisite for pointing out flaws in particular approaches. In fact, I don't think that the shape of any better future society is going to be worked out in advance in some plan, but instead will be determined in the course of struggle.

However, I think we can say that positive political change will involve people taking back power over their own lives. I maintain that even if this campaign for PR succeeds completely, we'll be no closer to this. Instead we'll be left with authoritarian rule in the interests of capital, albeit slightly reconfigured. The campaign for PR is a distraction which has no capacity to seriously challenge present power structures but some potential for wasting people's time and energy.

I also think it's delusional to think that we could try to piggyback on these protests with a push for direct democracy. The push for PR is coming from members of liberal mainstream political parties who want to make some changes in order to restore the veneer of legitimacy to Westminster politics (and in the case of Lib Dems to increase the influence of their own party). There is no common ground to be found between these parties and people (like yourself) seeking to do away with representative democracy and replace it with bottom-up ways of organising society that don't involve politicians.