ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a night-long conversation between Derber and the Marx's ghost on true democracy. According to Marx's ghost overcoming alienation means achieving a real democracy rather than the pseudo-forms run by big money that people take for democracy. He rejects capitalism because it is incompatible with true democracy. Capitalism is designed to stifle true democracy, all in the name of democracy. Participatory democracy is partly what the localists are doing. In the United States, and around the world, there are experiments in 'participatory budgeting', as in Bolivia and Porto Allegre in Brazil. Marx views economies based on direct democracy as the key to human liberation. Americans follow Lady Gaga far more than they follow politics. Marx describes Gaga's case as life reduced to 'egotistical calculation', a life of unabashed alienation. Personhood ultimately allows corporations to spend billions on candidates to rig the democratic system in the name of freedom and free speech.
