Bold of you to assume that the burguerstates are functioning or a democracy
That’s where class analysis becomes important. Every state is a democracy for the class that holds power in society, and capitalist states are democracies for the capital owning class. As Lenin famously put it:
In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favorable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave owners.
I don’t think Hartmann is ever going to get there: he’ll never stop believing in liberal democracy. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it — Upton Sinclair
indeed
“functioning” (I need some comically large quotes.)
I chuckled at that bit as well
