JB wrote: << it's the usual warping that occurs when a straightforward thought enters the twisty ravines of your serpentine thought -- especially the last segment of your interpretation of my question. O where is the Democracy of wei-en-lin? does it echo in the musty dungeons of his imagined Confucianism or in the trembling reminisces of the Name-of-the-Father? >> You may or may not know, that in Chinese culture, the serpent or the snake (along with the dragon) can have very positive associations. To speak of serpentine thought is, in one sense, complimentary. So I thank you for this compliment, intended or not. As to your specific question, I am asking you to flesh it out a bit, to be a bit more specific. I have already explained my idea of democracy several times, in many areas of discussion. In the area of labor and economic organization, it is best illustrated in the anarcho-syndicalist thought of Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Chomsky; and in the practices of the early Spanish anarchosyndicalists of the revolution of 1936, who were successful in putting such ideas into practice in many areas of Spain, until Franco suppressed the social forms they had created. Some have developed since then, quietly and effectively, in Mondragon (Basque country). See http://www.mcc.es Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, which is a democratically run, democratically worker owned, worker managed cooperative, the largest in the world. In France there was the Paris Commune of 1871, in China the Shanghai Commune, which arose and was suppressed during the Cultural Revolution in China. During the first year of the Russian revolution there was genuine democratically controlled industry; the anarcho-syndicalists, and council communists were a very powerful force until Lenin and Trotsky suppressed them. Nestor Makhno, in Ukraine, helped lead one of the most profound syndicalist revolutions in history, but his work was also supressed and destroyed after Trotsky and Lenin betrayed their alliance with him against the Whites in the Russian Revolutionary struggle. During the French Revolution of 1789-1794 numerous genuinely democratic tendencies and movements were born. As Zhou En Lai once said, when asked to explain the overall significance of the French revolution, "It is still too early to tell." But if you read French history, particularly that of the French Revolution (and the Commune of 1871) you will find numerous developments and encouraging acheivements which have become signposts on the path leading to the eventual realization of democracy. Democracy is a work in progress on this planet. In France and Scandinavia, I would argue, the most progress has been made. In the US the best hope lies in the new youth movement which is spreading like wild fire across campuses, through sections of the labor and environmentalist commmunity, and the new Alliance. Thanks to the development of the World Wide Web, the possibilities for democracy are opening up to a far greater degree than would have been believed possible five years ago. Not since the 60's, in Europe and in the US, has there been such optimism among the youth, the environmentalists, and labor. I recommend such web sites as the Independent Media Center, and A-Infos http://www.indymedia.org http://www.ainfos.ca I was present in Washington DC for the recent demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank (which was a follow up to the Seattle demonstrations). Many of the people present there were present at Seattle. I spent two days there and talked to scores of committed youth, labor activists, and many people from around the world, from India, Latin America, and Europe. Democracy is being created. The process is slow, will take hundreds of years, but the movement now appears on a sort of cusp, where motion can be made in the right direction. So you ask me "where is the democracy of Wei En Lin?" There is no such thing. There is only democracy of the people. When struggles succeed in making structures More accountable to the people, or better yet, in creating new structures which are in essence more accountable to the people, there is democracy. In Bolivia there was a people's victory recently when massive popular demontrations forced the government to go back on water privisation deal (selling Cochabamba's water supplies to Bechtel, a large US arms firm), and compelling the elected leader rescind martial law, and return control of the water supply to the publicly controlled board. Democracy -- or movement toward greater democracy and away from tyranny --- triumphed in that moment. Democracy is not one system which exists in one place for all time, perfected and complete. Democracy is a process, requiring new systems, and people's participation. People need to be educated; and forms of social organization need to be improved. Of all the political parties which are on the stage right now, the Green Party and Ralph Nader appear to be the ones who are closest to advocating and working for genuine democracy, in my view. Certain intellectual figures, like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, as well as some popular talk figures like Jim Hightower and Michael Moore make very clear statements about what needs to be done to make the movement toward greater democracy possible. You asked. And that is my opinion stated as briefly as possible. But each of the topics mentioned in each of the above paragraphs merits volumes of discussion. You say you have "never seen democracy." I can appreciate that. No pure democracy exists, and no pure democracy, as we might imagine, will ever exist. But there is movement towards and away from the ideal; there are practical and theoretical strivings which take the person closer to and further away from the realization of a more just social order. Pound is very relevant to this discussion (but mostly by negative example). ---Wei ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com