benedict moore

Today on NPR Michael Moore said: "If the concepts of democracy were applied to an economic system, that would be a much better economic system."

Looks like Moore has decided to jump onto the socialist bandwagon with his newest film, Capitalism: A Love Story. I just wonder how long it'll take him to stab socialists in the back like he did Ralph Nader after the 2000 election.

Sigh. I really hate this guy. But being the masochist that I am, I'll probably still rent it.

america is turing into a third world country

Last Friday, economist Paul Krugman was a guest on Real Time with Bill Maher. During the program, he said that, "On bad mornings I wake up and think that we are turning into a Latin American country," and then went on to basically explain how in some ways we're turning into a third world country.

While I think the term "third world" is rather out-dated, what he said reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine back in May. We were discussing GM, Chrysler and the offshoring of our manufacturing, and I mentioned that the way I see it:

[W]ithout greater government involvement or worker participation in the decision-making process, we're never going to keep the jobs we still have or get the ones we lost back. Unless, of course, the U.S., becomes more like a developing nation than a developed one, with high rates of unemployment, and the jobs get shipped back here due to the massive pool of cheap labour and lower taxes, which will mean things like our quality of life and social safety nets (e.g., Medicaid and Medicare, Social Security, unemployment etc.) will take even more of a beating. From my vantage point, the economic future of the U.S. doesn't look pretty.

I think the fact that Ford is building another new assembly plant in China in order to compete with GM helps to illustrate my point. As I said in an earlier part of the same conversation:

One of the main problems I see is the fact that U.S. based multinational corporations are beyond borders. They can pack up and ship their capital and resources, like manufacturing and tech support, to almost anywhere in the world with cheaper wages and and lower taxes while still technically being headquartered in the U.S. One thing we need to do is to make this more difficult, otherwise there won't be anything left to outsource. It may be good for a company's profit margins, but it is devastating to our economy as a whole.

But I don't think that government ownership via stocks, such as in the case of GM, will stop outsourcing. In fact, it hasn't. When I said "greater government involvement," I was referring to things like tariffs, stricter trade policies and outright nationalization, not simply ownership of stock in a given company.

The problem is that, when owning stocks, the main focus is on returns, so whatever makes a profit is seen as a good thing from that point of view. And if a company can make more profit by offshoring its manufacturing, all the better. The stockholders benefit regardless of where those manufacturing jobs are located, i.e., there's no real incentive for stockholders to keep them here, and even less so if it means a better return on their investment.

The way I see it, giving workers direct control and ownership is the best way to ensure that manufacturing and other product based jobs stay here, regardless of the industry, because it's in their best interest. And while people often assume that workers can't make good decision because they're too dumb, I disagree. Management can be just as dumb, or even dumber. Take GM, for example.

In 1990, GM designed an electric car. In 1996, they started mass-production and began leasing them in California. But the bigwigs at the top decided that it wasn't profitable enough, and since they could make more money with SUVs, they scrapped the car. Literally.

I doubt the engineers who designed the car wanted to see their design sent to the scrapyard and crushed. I also doubt that the people who worked hard assembling them wanted to see their plants shut down and the cars scrapped either. Of course, there's no guarantee that the workers themselves wouldn't have made the same decision, but I don't think they would've killed the electric car so easily. And look where they're at now.

Beyond that, I think stricter trade policies need to be enacted and enforced, and the outright nationalization of certain industries if worse comes to worse, because what's the alternative? Letting all of our manufacturing jobs get outsourced and replaced with ones at Walmart?

I'm no economist, but I have agree with Krugman that we're not in good shape. From my vantage point, the economic future of the U.S. still doesn't look pretty.

congressman: same sex marriage part of push for socialism

From the TheHill.com:

Congressman: Same sex marriage part of push for socialism

According to Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), same sex marriage is part of a socialist agenda to undermine "the foundations of individual rights and liberties." And here I was thinking it was about marriage equality.

Damn socialists. Always running around undermining individual rights and liberties by fighting for the individual rights and liberties of minorities and victims of discrimination. Fuckers.

(All sarcasm aside, here's an interesting fun fact: In 1922, the Bolshevik Party decriminalized homosexuality, as well as legalized abortion and no-fault divorce. In fact, a Russian court even recognized a same-sex marriage in 1927!)

faux news

All I ever hear about lately is FOX News. Thankfully, I don't have cable so I don't have to worry about accidentally watching any of their shows and having what little intelligence I actually have sucked clean out of my skull, but it seems to be all the rage on the right.

To be honest, I used to laugh at these people, but not anymore. It's actually quite frightening once you stop to think about it because it's getting to the point where some people turn on the TV or radio and believe whatever they're told.

Thanks to "news" organizations such as FOX News and hosts like Glenn Beck, people on the right honestly think that Obama is some kind of racist Marxist.

Thanks to "news" organizations such as FOX News and guests like Michele Bachmann, people on the right honestly believe that information collected by the Census Bureau might be used to put Americans in concentration camps.

Sadly, a census worker was recently found hanging from a tree with the word "fed" on his chest, and while they haven't said whether the possible murder (suicide hasn't been ruled out yet) was motivated by his census work, I don't think it's hard to make that connection.

This has stopped being funny because now we need to ask ourselves what won't these people believe?

And just to get a picture of how bad news organizations like FOX can actually be, all one has to do is check out the appeals court ruling in New World Communs. of Tampa, Inc. v. Akre. From Project Censored:

FOX appealed the case, and on February 14, 2003 the Florida Second District Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the settlement awarded to Akre. The Court held that Akre’s threat to report the station’s actions to the FCC did not deserve protection under Florida’s whistle blower statute, because Florida’s whistle blower law states that an employer must violate an adopted “law, rule, or regulation.” In a stunningly narrow interpretation of FCC rules, the Florida Appeals court claimed that the FCC policy against falsification of the news does not rise to the level of a “law, rule, or regulation,” it was simply a “policy.” Therefore, it is up to the station whether or not it wants to report honestly.

The bottom line? The media can legally lie and they know it! I guess FOX News really does deserve its nickname after all.

wealthcare

The New Republic has an interesting article by Jonathan Chait, which is a review of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right and Ayn Rand and the World She Made, two books about Ayn Rand, as much as it is a critique of her political philosophy and her influence on the right:

Wealthcare

From my perspective, Ayn Rand's political philosophy can be quite seductive on the surface, but gets problematic on a deeper, more ethical level.

Jeff Walker, a biographer, found this entry in one of her personal journals: "One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one's way to get the best for oneself. Fine!" To me, that's the core of Objectivism. Of course, publicly she put it more poetically. In Atlas Shrugged, for example, she writes, "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Same idea, but the latter is far more attractive. Hell, I'd even agree with it if I didn't understand what it actually boiled down to!

I agree with Rand to a certain extent about personal responsibility and the idea that we're responsible for making good decisions and should reap the fruits of our labour. But I also think that, as a society, we have a collective responsibility to one another as well. We should work together in the spirit of social cooperation, helping each other make good decisions along the way in support of the common good. I think Edward Bellamy summarizes this idea quite well in his 1887 novel, Looking Backward, with the passage:

"Who is capable of self-support?" he demanded. "There is no such thing in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of society so barbarous as not even to know family cooperation, each individual may possibly support himself, though even then for a part of his life only; but from the moment that men begin to live together, and constitute even the rudest sort of society, self-support becomes impossible. As men grow more civilized, and the subdivision of occupations and services is carried out, a complex mutual dependence becomes the universal rule. Every man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support; and that it did not in your day constituted the essential cruelty and unreason of your system."

For what it's worth, I don't see one political ideology as inherently right or wrong, I've simply sided with the one I think is geared more towards taking the needs of society as its primary focus. I used to be more of an individualist, but for whatever reason I found myself unable to not take the needs and suffering of others into consideration. Everyone's mileage may vary, of course.

what the current crisis teaches us about capitalism or why I'm not a libertarian

(A review of past thoughts on the economic crisis one year later.)

From my perspective, the current economic crisis reinforces the idea that, barring a revolutionary economic transformation, capitalism needs to be regulated in order to prevent, or at the very least limit, the exploitation of labour, the negative effects of externalities and, of course, economic crises. The current financial crisis itself could've been avoided, and, using them as an example, so could AIG's near failure.

It's rather complicated to explain exactly what happened with AIG, but the bottom line is that AIG's financial sector was paid by investment companies to back up securities that were in turn backed by pieces of mortgages. AIG effectively promised to make up the difference if the investments failed. So where did they go wrong?

It seems that AIG, thanks in part to Gary Gorton, the finance professor who designed AIG's risk models, figured that being paid to take on these risks was "free money" because they never thought they'd have to make any payments to cover actual defaults. What they apparently didn't take into consideration, however, was the potential write-downs or collateral payments to trading partners (How AIG Failed). But specific regulations dealing with these securities and mortgage default swaps could've possibly prevented all of this. This is where both the company and the government failed.

David Swensen, the person who's credited with creating derivatives or "swaps," eventually paved the way for an entire industry to be built around creating and trading derivatives based on mortgage payments of homeowners (Inventor of the "Swap" blames regulators for Financial Crisis). In the case of AIG, they basically insured these mortgage-backed securities. But the government was seemingly reluctant to regulate these derivatives and the industries that had developed around them, and traders eventually abused them to the point of financial collapse. Part of this was due to the perceived benefit of these swaps by people like former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. As Bob Moon notes, "... he called credit default swaps "probably the most important instrument in finance," because they were supposed to spread risk around and stabilize the market" (Banks deep into unregulated 'gambling').

The sad fact is that stricter regulations and oversight on the part of the government, plus more transparency and less greed on the part of financial institutions, could've prevented much of this from happening, including what happened with AIG. Swensen himself says that he supports "requiring swaps and other derivatives to be traded openly on an exchange" since it'd reduce the risk, but surprisingly, this very proposal was "torpedoed by both the Clinton and Bush administrations." Why? Swenson theorizes that, "Financial institutions that deal in these things have resisted that because it would make the market more transparent and less profitable" (Inventor of the "Swap" blames regulators for Financial Crisis).

With respect to the banks that where involved in this, I think that stricter regulations and oversight on the part of the government would have helped prevent much of their irresponsible behavior as well. The banks themselves didn't keep proper track of who actually held all the risks, and essentially thought they were spread the risk to other institutions, but in fact they were just spreading it amongst themselves. It can be argued that this wasn't due to regulation or deregulation so much as stupidity on their part, but I agree with Marcus Baram and others that the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 "reduced decades-old regulations separating banking, insurance and brokerage activities" and "helped to create the current economic crisis" (Who's Whining Now? Gramm Slammed By Economists).

As Mark Sumner points out in his article, "John McCain: Crisis Enabler," the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 made it possible for large commercial banks to become even larger, as well as to become "directly involved in the stock market, bonds and insurance," and that the Commodity Futures Modernization Act "expanded the scope of futures trading" creating "new vehicles for speculation and sheltered several investments from regulation." And I think it can be reasonably argued that this is one of the main ways financial institutions that were 'too big to fail' were able to get into the position of failing.

That's why I'm convinced that, at the very least, the U.S. must adopt an economic model similar to those that have taken shape in Europe — with a mixture of capitalist and socialist aspects — out of sheer pragmatism.

For example, in a broader context, I've found some of Karl Kautsky's concerns regarding the drawbacks and weak points of the capitalist system amazingly prescient, especially in regard to commerce and credit, although the fact that he was decidedly biased against it seems to have blinded him to the potential ability of future generations to solve some of these problems. Nevertheless, I've found many his arguments against the capitalist method of production to be rather strong, even eye-opening.

The beginning of chapter three of Kautsky's The Class Struggle, for example, provides a simple yet excellent overview of one of the main causes contributing to the current world-wide economic crisis. In regard to credit, he notes that, "Credit is ... much more sensitive than commerce to any disturbance. Every shock it receives is felt throughout the economic organization" (47). Besides making a strong argument for why this type of system makes it increasingly more difficult for small production (e.g., small farmers, small business owners, etc.) to succeed, he stresses that this credit based system ultimately renders modern industry "more and more complicated and liable to disturbance, to carry the feeling of uncertainty into the ranks of the capitalists themselves and to make the ground upon which they move ever more uncertain" (48).

But the type of careful direction that is needed to insure the uninterrupted operation of this modern system of production is hindered by the very institution of private property on which it is founded. As Kautsky summarizes: "While the several industries become, in point of fact, more and more dependent upon one another, in point of law, they remain wholly independent. The means of production in every single industry are private property; their owner can do with them as he pleases" (50-1).

So for these reasons, among others, it's apparent to me that to be able to effectively manage a world-wide, credit based economy, a certain amount of outside interference is unavoidable because without a certain amount of intervention, whether in the form of stricter regulations and oversight or outright nationalization, the market system is extremely vulnerable to abuse and disruption. And even these steps may not be enough.

manson got fat, and i love him for it

In one of those rare moments in life when the stars seem to align just right and everything falls into place as if it was meant to be, I found out that Marilyn Manson, one of my all time favourite artists, was going to be playing a show in Portland on my birthday. Suffice it to say that I was thrilled.

I'd recently downloaded his new album, The High End of Low; and the more I listened to it, the more it grew on me. And I definitely wasn’t disappointed. The show itself was awesome, even though Manson himself is now forty and slightly out of shape.

Shakespeare famously wrote, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players," but what does it really matter in the end if you're not being true to yourself? Whether you've tried to act like a saint, or played the part of a sinner, why bother wasting time trying to be something you're not, something you don't even want to be, when the world will just as likely turn on you either way?

A few years ago, people hailed Manson as an iconic antihero reflecting our all-American hypocrisy back at us, saying he didn't "pull any punches." These same people now criticize him as a fat, washed up has-been who should quietly slink away from the spotlight—as if they've done anything remotely noteworthy their entire, pathetic lives and possess some kind of self-appointed authority over when other people should stop being themselves.

And all the while Manson, now noticeably older and slightly overweight, is still doing what he does best — challenging society's ideas of what's acceptable while defiantly giving the world the same two middle fingers — with the attitude of, in his own words: "What're you going to do, punish me? Is there something worse than where I'm at now? Is there a prison that is worse than the one I'm in, that I put myself in?"

Yes, the once tall and slender "god of fuck," the symbol of rebellion for a whole generation of young social outcasts, has gotten fat. And I love him for it.

conservatives enraged over obama school speech

From CNN:

Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer released a statement this week accusing Obama of using taxpayer money to "indoctrinate" children.

"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology," Greer said.

"The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans ... is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power."

Nonsense, the White House replied.

"The goal of the speech and the lesson plans is to challenge students to work hard, stay in school and dramatically reduce the dropout rate," an administration spokesman said. "This isn't a policy speech. It's a speech designed to encourage kids to stay in school."

Seriously, what in the hell is wrong with people? I mean, does Florida GOP Chair Jim Greer really think that Obama is going to "indoctrinate" children with his back-to-school address and his completely NONEXISTENT "socialist ideology"?

And how come conservatives weren't all up in arms when Reagan called taxes "such a penalty on people that there's no incentive for them to prosper ... because they have to give so much to the government" in a speech delivered to students in 1988? Or when Bush delivered one in 1991 encouraging students to say no to drugs and work hard? Hypocrites, much?

defending marx (edited version)

(Note: Gender specific terms such as "man" and "fellow man" in reference to humanity were originally taken from the comments of the person I was rebutting — as well as Marx's writings — and since I was lazy and couldn't think of better, gender neutral terms to put in their place, I've left them as they are. Apologies in advance to anyone who might actually read this and find them distasteful.)

Now, I'm not a "Marxist" by any means, but I find myself defending Marx more and more recently. There seems to be a lot of misinformation out there about what socialism really means and represents as an economic system, and this is especially true with Marx's writings.

The majority of people who take issue with Marx appear to do so based upon his association with "communist" countries that supposedly put his theories into practice, but few of these critics seem to have actually read anything Marx himself wrote (there are exceptions, of course). Reading things like The German Ideology and Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, for example, make it clear to me that Marx would be absolutely horrified by what authoritarian countries like China and Russia have done in his name.

I think Marx was wrong about a lot of things, and I certainly don't agree with all of his conclusions, but I don't think he's the monster that many people often make him out to be.

To begin with, Marx wasn’t a big fan of private property. In fact, he advocated the abolishment of private property (as in the means of production, not personal property) and the placement of the proletariat (i.e., the majority of the working-class population—not a single person and/or political party who simply claims to represent the proletariat) in direct democratic control of production. And because of this, some say that Marx was simply a troublemaker—that the whole point was to convince the proletariat they'd be better off if they have a revolution, seize the means of production and institute socialism, that he wasn't appealing to their compassion for their fellow man and was essentially advocating authoritarianism with his “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Of course, a selective reading of Marx can support this, but I have to disagree that he was wasn't also appealing to their compassion for their fellow man, or that democracy wasn't a part of Marx and Engels' vision of socialism — the transitory phase between capitalism and communism — from the very beginning.

While encouraging a proletarian revolution was certainly one of things Marx was trying to do with his writings, he also stressed that he believed the self-emancipation of the proletariat would ultimately bring about the emancipation of all classes. In the words of Erich Fromm, "His concept of socialism is the emancipation from alienation, the return of man to himself, his self-realization."

According to Marx, all individuals in capitalist society are essentially alienated, from their labour as well as from each other. The reason Marx singled out the working class was because he saw in the working class the means by which capitalism could be transformed. It was his hope, however, that once this economic transformation was underway, the alienation of each individual would gradual be eliminated via a more socialized means of production, which, in turn, would sow the seeds for the "resolution of the antagonism between man and nature, and between man and man."

As Marx wrote in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844:

[T]he emancipation of society from private property, from servitude, takes the political form of the emancipation of the workers; not in the sense that only the latter's emancipation is involved, but because this emancipation includes the emancipation of humanity as a whole. For all human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and all types of servitude are only modifications or consequences of this relation.

As for the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” it’s true that Marx did say that "the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat" and that "this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society." However, I still believe that democracy was a part of Marx and Engels' vision of socialism.

For example, even though I'm sure there are things that can be found within Marx's numerous writings that can be used to contradict this view, Engels, in his 1847 programme The Principles of Communism (the precursor to the Communist Manifesto), writes:

Above all, it [the proletarian revolution] will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

He continues by stressing that, "Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat."

In addition, Marx, in his 1871 pamphlet The Civil War in France, writes about the Paris Commune (notice the parts about "universal suffrage" and "revocable at short terms," i.e., characteristics of direct democracy):

The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of “social republic,” with which the February Revolution was ushered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague aspiration after a republic that was not only to supercede the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that republic.

Paris, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at the same time, the social stronghold of the French working class, had risen in arms against the attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to restore and perpetuate that old governmental power bequeathed to them by the empire. Paris could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army, and replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men. This fact was now to be transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.

The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.

To which Engels, in his 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France, states:

Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

So, from just these few references, it's clear to me that Marx had a great deal of compassion for his fellow man and that democracy was an essential part of Marx and Engels' vision of socialism, including the "dictatorship of the proletariat." Nobody would confuse Marx for the Dalai Lama, but his compassion definitely comes through in his idealism — as well as his hopeful vision for humanity's future — and it's hard to believe that he would approve of what authoritarian countries under the banners of "communism" and "socialism" have done in his name.

defending marx

Now, I'm not a "Marxist" by any means, but I find myself defending Marx more and more recently. There seems to be a lot of misinformation out there about what socialism really means and represents as an economic system, and this is especially true with Marx's writings.

The majority of people who take issue with Marx appear to do so based upon his association with "communist" countries that supposedly put his theories into practice, but few of these critics seem to have actually read anything Marx himself wrote (there are exceptions, of course). Reading things like The German Ideology and Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, for example, make it clear to me that Marx would be absolutely horrified by what authoritarian countries like China and Russia have done in his name.

I think Marx was wrong about a lot of things, and I certainly don't agree with all of his conclusions, but I don't think he's the monster that many people often make him out to be.

On freeratio.org, for example, someone wrote:

[R]ead Marx. The whole point was to convince the proletariat they'd be better off if they had a revolution, seized the means of production for themselves, and instituted socialism. He wasn't appealing to their compassion for their fellow man.

Of course, a selective reading of Marx can support this, but I have to disagree that he was wasn't also "appealing to their compassion for their fellow man."

While encouraging a proletarian revolution was certainly one of things Marx was trying to do with his writings, he also stressed that he believed the self-emancipation of the proletariat would ultimately bring about the emancipation of all classes. In the words of Erich Fromm, "His concept of socialism is the emancipation from alienation, the return of man to himself, his self-realization."

According to Marx, all individuals in capitalist society are essentially alienated, from their labour as well as from each other. The reason Marx singled out the working class was because he saw in the working class the means by which capitalism could be transformed. It was his hope, however, that once this economic transformation was underway, the alienation of each individual would gradual be eliminated via a more socialized means of production, which, in turn, would sow the seeds for the "resolution of the antagonism between man and nature, and between man and man."

As Marx wrote in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: "... the emancipation of society from private property, from servitude, takes the political form of the emancipation of the workers; not in the sense that only the latter's emancipation is involved, but because this emancipation includes the emancipation of humanity as a whole. For all human servitude is involved in the relation of the worker to production, and all types of servitude are only modifications or consequences of this relation."

Nobody would confuse Marx for the Dalai Lama, but he certainly had a great deal of compassion for his fellow man, and I think that comes through in many of his works. He may not have expressed it directly, but it definitely comes through in his idealism, as well as his hopeful vision for humanity's future.

Additionally, the same person also said (albeit in a different context):

[T]here's no contradiction in being a socialist dictator and a socialist robber. Marx said there was supposed to be a dictatorship for a while -- and he didn't put a time limit on it. He advocated seizing property. These are inevitable when you decide to go the revolutionary route. "Socialism" doesn't mean just the specific ideal society you happen to have in mind; it's a category. Every society that satisfies the defining criteria is socialist, regardless of what else it does. So unless the definition of "socialism" includes democracy -- and it clearly does not -- whether a society has a dictator is just immaterial. There's a reason the dominant political faction in western Europe originally called itself the "Democratic Socialists": the phrase is not redundant.

To begin with, Marx did say that "the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat" and that "this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society." However, I disagree that democracy wasn't a part of Marx and Engels' vision of socialism — the transitory phase between capitalism and communism — from the very beginning.

For example, even though I'm sure there are things that can be found within Marx's numerous writings that can be used to contradict this view, Engels, in his 1847 programme The Principles of Communism (the precursor to the Communist Manifesto), writes:

Above all, it [the proletarian revolution] will establish a democratic constitution, and through this, the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat. Direct in England, where the proletarians are already a majority of the people. Indirect in France and Germany, where the majority of the people consists not only of proletarians, but also of small peasants and petty bourgeois who are in the process of falling into the proletariat, who are more and more dependent in all their political interests on the proletariat, and who must, therefore, soon adapt to the demands of the proletariat. Perhaps this will cost a second struggle, but the outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

He continues by stressing that, "Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat."

In addition, Marx, in his 1871 pamphlet The Civil War in France, writes about the Paris Commune (notice the parts about "universal suffrage" and "revocable at short terms," i.e., characteristics of direct democracy):

The direct antithesis to the empire was the Commune. The cry of “social republic,” with which the February Revolution was ushered in by the Paris proletariat, did but express a vague aspiration after a republic that was not only to supercede the monarchical form of class rule, but class rule itself. The Commune was the positive form of that republic.

Paris, the central seat of the old governmental power, and, at the same time, the social stronghold of the French working class, had risen in arms against the attempt of Thiers and the Rurals to restore and perpetuate that old governmental power bequeathed to them by the empire. Paris could resist only because, in consequence of the siege, it had got rid of the army, and replaced it by a National Guard, the bulk of which consisted of working men. This fact was now to be transformed into an institution. The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.

The Commune was formed of the municipal councillors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time.

To which Engels, in his 1891 postscript to The Civil War in France, states:

Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

So, from just these few references, it's clear to me that democracy was an essential part of Marx and Engels' vision of socialism, including the "dictatorship of the proletariat."