The great lie of liberal democracy is the idealist notion that literally anything can be voted in if enough people vote for it, and that this will have political supremacy over those in power. This analysis puts the state outside of class struggle, above it, and not as the mutually reinforcing superstructural aspect of society. The role of the state is to reinforce the base, ie the mode of production, and it does so through propagating ruling class ideology (ie, liberalism), and through a monopoly of violence.
Electoralism is a sham. The lessons of the failures of electoralism scar the global south, the coup against comrade Allende taught us all too well. The state is not outside or above class struggle, but is mired in it. Without replacing the bourgeois state with a socialist, proletarian one, the ready-made levers for reinforcing the bourgeois mode of production will cause a reversion. The Paris Commune was the first such example of this failure in action, and it has happened again, such as with the coup against Allende and the installment of Pinochet.
What is there to do, then? Organize. Build up parallel structures that take the place of existing capitalist mechanisms. Join a party, read theory, and solidify the politically advanced of the working class under one united banner. Build a dedication to the people, defend and platform the indigenous, colonized, queer, disabled, marginalized communities, and unite the broad working class. It is through organization and revolution that we can actually move on into a better world.
Without replacing the bourgeois state with a socialist, proletarian one, the ready-made levers for reinforcing the bourgeois mode of production will cause a reversion. The Paris Commune was the first such example of this failure in action.
The Soviet Union was one of the latest. Yeltsin taking office, failing to get his way, and then shelling parliament into surrender being the most prominent example of the failures of electoralism, even in an ostensibly proletarian state.
Gaza also a great instance of the wages of strict electoralism. You rally your people behind a more militant political body (Hamas in 2006) and the end result is your heavily armed neighbors using the results of an election as causa belli. Hell, the American Civil War is another great example, what with a Southern coup government rising up after a Presidential election defeat.
It is through organization and revolution that we can actually move on into a better world.
It gives us a fighting chance, at least. But it is also hard, painful, and requiring enormous self-sacrifice particularly among the early adopters.
We are sometimes inclined, I think unwisely, to treat democracy and dictatorship as two mutually exclusive terms, when in actual fact they may often represent two aspects of the same system of government. For example, if we turn to the Encyclopedia Britannica, to the article dealing with “Democracy,” we read: “Democracy is that form of government in which the people rules itself, either directly, as in the small city-states of Greece, or through representatives.”
But the same writer goes on to say this: “All the people in the city-state did not have the right to participate in government, but only those who were citizens, in the legal and original sense. Outside this charmed circle of the privileged were the slaves, who had no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toiled. They had no political and hardly any civil rights; they were not ‘people.’ Thus the democracy of the Greek city-state was in the strict sense no democracy at all.”
The Greek city-state has been cited time and again by historians as the birthplace of democracy. And yet, on reading the Encyclopedia Britannica, we find that in fact this was a democracy only for a “charmed circle of the privileged,” while the slaves, who did the work of the community, “had no voice whatever in the making of the laws under which they toiled.”
The classical example of democracy was, then, a democracy only for certain people. For others, for those who did the hard work of the community, it was a dictatorship. At the very birthplace of democracy itself we find that democracy and dictatorship went hand in hand as two aspects of the same political system. To refer to the “democracy” of the Greek city-state without saying for whom this democracy existed is misleading. To describe the democracy of the Greek city-state without pointing out that it could only exist as a result of the toil of the slaves who “had no political and hardly any civil rights” falsifies the real history of the origin of democracy.
Democracy, then, from its origin, has not precluded the simultaneous existence of dictatorship. The essential question which must be asked, when social systems appear to include elements both of democracy and dictatorship, is, “for whom is there democracy?” and “over whom is there a dictatorship?”
Two more quirks of Athenian democracy: Only males were allowed to vote, and soldiers, mostly lower class salarymen, couldn't vote if they were in service.
These liberals really need to read Lenin before commenting. A certain OP may have even read it aloud for them so they can just listen to it if reading is too hard.
In bourgeois 'democracy', electoralism serves to legitimize and perpetuate the interests of the ruling class. Should laborers become the ruling class, I don't have a problem with it doing the same.
Seeing CA propositions get rigged with misinformation and tricky language suggests to me that direct democracy might also not work without proper safeguards.
Seeing how many selfish and uneducated people there are, I think we'd be beat off if the majority of people doesn't get a say, and the (communist) party just takes the decisions for the greater good of the people.
I struggle to find the points in your posts. Yes capitalism has a great many problems. I agree about doing something about it, but are you also suggesting democracy is bad?
Bourgeios "democracy" isn't actually a people's democracy, even though its sold as one. Its really an oligarchy/aristocracy/capitalist dictatorship.
We shouldn't allow capitalists to define democracy as bourgeios parliamentarism, especially when that form of government works against the interests of the vast majority of people.
Socialist / people's democracy. It takes different forms in different countries, and many countries in the global south that are currently capitalist are starting on that socialist road.
The fact that there are not two classes in communism is the primary reason. When you don't have a powerful minority with opposed interests to those of the powerless majority, the majority becomes powerful.
Right, you say that, and that's a lovely aspiration, but how is it implemented? I don't have a magic wand here that eliminates class, but even if I did, how do you prevent demagogues from influencing the majority? Erasing established power at one point in time does not prevent it from rising again in a new form. You're just trading capital interest for charismatic manipulation.
Now you have a system with class interests + charismatic manipulation. I want to move to a system with only charismatic manipulation. That would already be significantly better, and I have no answer as to how to remove charismatic manipulation politically
Erasing established power at one point in time does not prevent it from rising again in a new form
By changing the material and historical conditions you can change that, though. Europe has spent centuries without slavery or absolutist monarchy within its borders, because the material conditions that favored such regimes have expired. The material conditions enabling capitalism class society are also expiring.
You'll need to educate yourself on the history of socialist states yourself, I can't do that for you.
I asked because you said there were multiple variations.
I ask because the qualifications seem to be more idealistic and aspirational than mechanistic. None of the descriptions I've seen present significant obstacles to the corruption that plagues our current system. A "solemn declaration" doesn't do much against emergent behavior. The founding fathers were against political parties too, that didn't prevent them.
Every system is corruptible. The form of corruption changes to suit the underlying system, but given enough time every system can be compromised. Even pure direct democracy can be manipulated by popular demagogues.
I'm asking, specifically, what part of whichever variation of a "people's democracy" you specifically have in mind makes that democracy invulnerable to corruption and manipulation? Not intentions, but actual structural features.
That's not smug or rhetorical, I'm legitimately curious. If I'm mistaken, and there is some fundamental property that achieves what I'm asking, I'd like nothing more than to know what it is.
You're asking a question with a loaded premise, no system is immune to problems like corruption. At the same time, the various systems of socialist democracy have been far better than capitalist democracy, and the reasoning common to all is that the working class is in control, rather than capitalists. Structure varies from state to state, but having a system where the input and direction of the working class is paramount is far superior to capitalist democracy.
In capitalism, it's democracy for the capitalists, dictatorship for the workers, in socialism it's democracy for the workers, dictatorship for the capitalists.
There's a lot of research and reading you can do on how socialist states function, and a lot we can learn from them.
Liberal democracy isn't democratic, and electoralism as a means of systemic change doesn't work. Socialist democracy does work, and delivers far higher rates of approval and perceptions of democracy being effective.
I think I agree with you, but your messaging could use some work. I feel like most people who aren't already in the same groups as you might struggle with the terms you use. It might be simpler to say "capitalism corrupts democracy" because my original read of the post made it seem like its anti democracy.
It's not really that capitalism "corrupts" democracy, it's that all states serve the ruling class, and the political formation reinforces that. Capitalist democracy is democracy for capitalists, dictatorship for workers. In a socialist state, the political power is held by the workers, it becomes democracy for the working class and dictatorship for capitalists, landlords, etc.
i suspect that "messaging" only works if you're sufficiently conservative.
liberals and leftists alike agree (to different levels) that conservatives; especially maga; are less educated and entitled and that's why easy messaging slogans like "stop the steal" and "there are only 2 genders" works so well for them since it doesn't require them to get off their asses to do sufficientlyvigorous research to educate themselves on how that messaging oversimplifies the issue.
also, liberals complain that the democratic party needs to improve it's messaging to broaden their appeal to american voters. the problem with this seems to be that that american voters share some degree of academic laziness when it comes to understanding the issues, but they're still generally more educated than maga so slogans don't work as well. you can see examples of this over and over again on social media when people complain that nobody "reads beyond the headlines."
i'm learning that one of the key differences between leftists and liberals is the effort to self-educate with ANY kind of academic rigor (ie more than google searches) and doing so enables them to see past any sort of messaging and that most of the messaging that has been successfully adopted has been created by people with with a political agenda in mind.
i think that pushing the democrats to improve their messaging is a misdirection because any messaging for liberals is going to automatically contradict the education any better educated crowd (compared to maga) has received.
i also think that the biggest barrier for any liberal to understand why they're stuck in neo-liberal fascist late-stage capitalist world is doing their own research with SOME kind of academic rigor since it take A LOT of effort to not only change the way most of us have been taught to live, but also been educated and inculcated since birth.
Both plato and aristotle, but aristotle thought that any election-based state turned out in practice, to be an oligarchy or aristocracy, not a democracy (which he define as rule by the poor, with random selection by lot).
Aristotle's politics books 4-6 talk a lot about this:
Socialist democracy. The political structure is a way to reinforce the economic base, so by moving onto socialism, the working class is in control of the state. The issue isn't with voting, period, but the idea that we can escape capitalism just by doing so.
Social democracy is capitalism with safety nets, I mean socialism. Rather than private ownership being principle, ie covering the large firms and key industries with the state dominated by capitalists, public ownership should be principle and the working class should dominate the state.
Your response is rational, informational, based in fact, and measurable.
The original image is uncited incendiary garbage. This is not a time where we need more division and infighting. If you can't be nice, please just stick to the facts.
I really like the idea of randomly elected representatives. Sure, they will try to better their situation for afterwards but with enough corruption control (which is probably easier to implement), this will only ensure that they support their kind of workers a bit more than the rest.
If Mamdani wins and keeps his mandate strong to the point that opposition to him is career suicide, he can implement some amazing improvements.
Bernie's success in Burlington was never going to translate to broader America, but NYC is hard to ignore.
The real test will be what Democrats do nationwide in response to a Mayor Mamdani administration. If they do the same old New Democrat/Third Way bullshit they've been doing since Bill Clinton won* in 1992, they'll continue to be irrelevant in the face of populist hucksters like Trump.
keep in mind that Socrates might not have been as nice as you think, his students ended up doing a coup and their government collapsed in 8 months, their reign was so violent that ended in about the death of 10% of Athens. The tyrants run away amd they put Socrates on trial, and in his defense, Socrates refused to denounce his disciplines and just said it was a whitch hunt because they are mad that he is smarter than everyone else.
So, Socrates might have been more of a Reactionary grifter like Peterson than a wise kind humble man.
I think your capacity to think is irrelevant or even played against you when the elites pour obscene amounts of money to change your perception of reality. Even the greatest minds can't escape this.
I feel like the belief that intelligence somehow grants immunity to propaganda has utterly devastated media literacy and subsequently our political landscape.
When people started taking memes and blogs as legitimate sources of information we were cooked.
I have come to dislike the word "education" as it refers to plato's cave analogy in such a way that somebody else leads you out of it.
"Education" is therefore not something that you do yourself, but that somebody else does on you. It is therefore objectifying and puts the humans in a passive position.
Meanwhile, "insight" or "inspiration" is something that you do yourself as it is you who brings up the interest to learn something. Therefore it is a much better word.
Yeah I kind of didn't like that word as I was writing it. Similar to how "tutoring" literally means to "straighten" or basically to inculcate to normativity.
Meanwhile, “insight” or “inspiration” is something that you do yourself [...]
If such discussion takes place – an increasingly rare thing – there is no need to individually ”differentiate good candidates from bad candidates” and each voter’s intelligence certainly isn’t of consequence. In a functioning democracy, who to vote for, should follow naturally from your participation in public discourse.
yeah that's what i meant. still, people have to be engaged in a way that i don't see them being engaged in. And that's still the central issue, i'd say.
Very few modern states are settler states based on native eviction: only the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel.
The major colonialist powers of the last few hundred years were a tiny number of european nations.
But unlike a dictatorship, the democracies improved
The US and other capitalist states based on representative democracy aren't democracies, and you'd be hard-pressed to find ppl saying they're improving.
Even off the top of my head, there's japan as well. So your first statement is explicitly wrong. I'm sure I can find numerous more examples if I care to start digging.
The US and other capitalist states based on representative democracy aren't democracies, and you'd be hard-pressed to find ppl saying they're improving.
Improved. I didn't use the present tense. Backslides happen. They're alarming and need to be stopped. So, you're advocating for pure democracy. Do you believe every rule and regulation should be decided by majority vote? Personally, I believe some form of representative democracy is the only practical way to run a country/collective. Otherwise, constant votes will prevent people from paying attention
Things got better after unified monarchies ordained by God superceded quarreling petty kingdoms. Things got better with constitutional monarchies with aristocrat parliaments. Things got better with suffrage and classic liberal democracy.
Each system has its limitations and contradictions, and each of them were superceded when those became incompatible with the current reality.
Yup. Capitalist liberal democracy is the best system we've ever had at scale. It's shite for numerous reasons, but it's better than what came before. We can acknowledge the benefits while simultaneously acknowledging that we can do better.
Capitalism was in many ways progressive as compared to feudalism, but came with new devastation and greater imperialism on a massive scale. Socialism has been far better for the people than capitalism has been, though, and as imperialism crumbles and socialist countries are rising this is becoming clearer and clearer.
Let's not muddy the waters...the orange turd we can't name is the type of ism we don't want ever again. We also don't want George Bush or another repeat of any of the political families currently in power or their friends. We want direct vote not college vote. WTF is an electoral college doing now that we have communication technology? Its an old and stupid idea.
Ie this take sometimes but I don't know what the alternatives are. When you win your revolution, what system will you put in place?
ITT I've seen "random elections", and plenty of people saying "socialism", plus someone (I hope) is thinking "anarchism", but how is it managed? What takes the place of elections for public office?
On the contrary, voting helps install your enemy of choice. I'd rather fight Democrats than Republicans, and I vote accordingly. Actual progress requires non-electoral action, but electoral action makes that fight more favorable.
There's no actual evidence that the DNC treats leftists any differently. Both parties did the Red Scare, both parties root out communists, both parties bomb and sanction socialist countries.
Yes, because everything is easier for the left when Republicans are in power 🙄. I swear, it's going to be easier to radicalize liberals than to convince you lot to stop shooting yourselves in the foot. Have fun circle jerking over your ideological purity, I guess. We'll be over here actually trying to make things better, if you feel like helping.
Uh, are you feeling okay? What you just posted is devastating to your point. I'm saying to try to keep the ratchet on the stationary stage line enough to actually push left, you're saying "Lol just let it spin right". This is so incredibly stupid, what idiot thought that the ratchet effect supports such a stupid argument? I feel like I'm in a room full of toddlers shouting nonsense catchphrases.
ngl I do hate this kind of nhilism in terms of democracy. Like I agree with that one quote from that greek guy which says that a democracy needs smart people, but democracy is the best system we've come up with that to a small extent, makes politicians meet the peoples needs.
But its about working with the system we have. We can always advocate for the system being not broken, but intentionally taking advantage of minorities and increasing wealth for the rich whilst doing the opposite for the poor.
Even though I agree that any democracy in the west isn't truly democratic, with outright bribery in the form of lobbyist, and a two party duopoly. Even though I acknowledge this, everyone must vote for the less bad party, whilst also spreading the word for what they would truly want.
Even if the system is inevitably going downhill, slowing it down and pushing every means, through voting for the less evil option, and protesting, spreading word about socialism is the best option.
No, the best option is to organize directly and agitate against the system. This historically has protected marginalized groups far better, it's how the Civil Rights movement passed. Simply "spreading the word" about socialism does absolutely nothing about the existing levers of power we can and cannot pull, we must do so in the context of broader organizing.
The ancient greeks did not consider electoralism to be democracy. They used a combination of direct democracy and sortition. And it should be apparent now that they were right, and we've been played for fools for 200 years by the capitalist class who holds all of the true power in our states.
The ancient Greeks are by no means someone to look for in terms of democracy. Aristotle believed slaves were naturally less human and needed masters, and they didn't let women, or those who didn't own land vote.
Democracy can and will work once a simple rule is implemented. Namely: no one who wants the power to rule should ever be allowed anywhere near power. Of course the rich won't allow such a law to be passed, and enforcing it is the stuff of thought crime dystopic nightmares, but I'm sure we can overcome those small issues.
Your use of "work" is doing a lot of heavy lifting and is very reductive. I'd recommend reading theory until you properly understand the issue, Dessalines.
See, the problem with Dessalines' meme is that it uses "work" as a binary category. As in, something either has no effect or it completely restructures society. It is absolutely true that electoralism can't completely restructure society, and there are many valid explanations for why that is in communist theory. However, Dessalines reveals his lack of understanding by equating completely restructuring society with "working".
If we were to construct a true binary between working and not working, it would be between having zero effect, and having any effect, no matter how small. The beating of a butterfly's wings has some effect on the world, and could theoretically contribute towards a tornado that sucks up all the bourgeoisie and allows the workers to democratise the means of production. So obviously voting has some tiny effect, since it's stronger than a butterfly's wings. Voting works, in other words. But that's a virtually meaningless statement if we're constructing a binary as Dessalines did.
The correct approach is to ask "how much can voting accomplish", and with that question we can actually arrive at an answer with some nuance and a justification from within the theory. But the binary question Dessalines asks can afford no nuance, and is obviously not supported by theory or anything else. Which proves that even if Dessalines read theory, he didn't understand much of it.
I think the fundamental issue is that "works" doesn't have a good measurable metric and so when discussing it tends to fall into that false binary that you correctly identified.
The best I've seen that attempts to work around this problem was this paper from back in 2014^1^. Unfortunately their results showed that while you're correct that causitive impact is not zero that <5% correlation, especially for a field with as high a signal/noise ratio as political science, is an incredibly disheartening answer for "how much can voting accomplish?"
So while you are likely correct that it's not nothing, it does suggest reality is much closer to the meme than your attempt at "nuance".
If you have any sources that cite measurable and non-anecdotal impact that tell a different story I'd love to read them.
^1 linking the preprint because it's not paywalled^
Closer than my attempt at nuance? I didn't know I made an attempt at nuance yet. I thought I just vaguely gestured towards the nuance and said it exists. Can you please explain what my position is on how much I think voting can accomplish so I'm all caught up with the conversation?
The correct approach is to ask "how much can voting accomplish", and with that question we can actually arrive at an answer with some nuance
I'm with you here, you're "just asking questions" and I provided context on my understanding of the answers to those questions.
But the binary question Dessalines asks can afford no nuance, and is obviously not supported by theory or anything else.
A "theory" is a reductionist model that is falsifiable, by claiming that the level of nuance you suggest proves Dessalines understanding is "not supported by theory" you explicitly state that nuance as an empirical contradiction of the theory.
Either:
A. You have some measure or metric which wasn't clearly communicated showing how that nuance falsifies the theory. ^Which was my initial understanding and was hoping to clear up the miscommunication there.^
B. You're doing a tiresome argument from ignorance thing and simply muddying the waters because the "theory" conflicts with your pre-formulated understanding of reality and you haven't put in any effort to actually validate your own understandings.
You claim, rather rudely I might add, that "Even if Dessalines read theory, he didn't understand much of it." Don't do the glib, spineless, two-faced "I didn't make any claims yet".
Lmao I read that whole entire comment, and it wasn't easy, and it's all frantic backpedaling.
For the record I think the study you're citing makes a methodological mistake by applying an issues based measurement framework in a representative democracy, but I have no intention of elaborating because you're not arguing in good faith and you're just going to waste everyone's time.
Anyway next time post the version of the study that actually passed peer review and got published, not a draft.
I think the study you're citing makes a methodological mistake by applying an issues based measurement framework in a representative democracy
I don't necessarily disagree. It's definitely not a holistic view, but I haven't found much else that even asks that question much less has any real methodology behind it. Have you?
What would be the correct methodology in your opinion?
I have no intention of elaborating
You're not communicating anything other than the vaguest of concern trolling. You clearly have thoughts and opinions, this is a place to share those.
You can't both be upset when you are misunderstand and refuse to communicate.
Quit backpedaling and say it with your chest.
Anyway next time post the version of the study that actually passed peer review and got published, not a draft.
You do know how to use sci-hub right? You have the title, or if you're morally opposed to that option a quick Google and you can pay $30 here for it.
However, before you gish-gallop into concern trolling the source I linked why don't you provide one, or multiple, of your own that supports the concerns you have surrounding "nuance".
Yeah... IMO it is important to fact check especially when someone tries to push views that seem extreme and missing the nuance I would expect from reality. But fact checking with AI might be too lazy.
Hi, I've trained machine learning models. I've been creating and studying them for over six years.
ChatGPT is not capable of fact checking. It stylistically outputs data based on the input data it was trained on, and it's important to understand why that's different to fact checking even when it can sometimes state facts.
Real liberal democracy has never been tried
It's just the outside forces that have made it fail. In theory it's perfect system
The great lie of liberal democracy is the idealist notion that literally anything can be voted in if enough people vote for it, and that this will have political supremacy over those in power. This analysis puts the state outside of class struggle, above it, and not as the mutually reinforcing superstructural aspect of society. The role of the state is to reinforce the base, ie the mode of production, and it does so through propagating ruling class ideology (ie, liberalism), and through a monopoly of violence.
Electoralism is a sham. The lessons of the failures of electoralism scar the global south, the coup against comrade Allende taught us all too well. The state is not outside or above class struggle, but is mired in it. Without replacing the bourgeois state with a socialist, proletarian one, the ready-made levers for reinforcing the bourgeois mode of production will cause a reversion. The Paris Commune was the first such example of this failure in action, and it has happened again, such as with the coup against Allende and the installment of Pinochet.
What is there to do, then? Organize. Build up parallel structures that take the place of existing capitalist mechanisms. Join a party, read theory, and solidify the politically advanced of the working class under one united banner. Build a dedication to the people, defend and platform the indigenous, colonized, queer, disabled, marginalized communities, and unite the broad working class. It is through organization and revolution that we can actually move on into a better world.
If anyone reading wants a place to start with theory, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, aimed at absolute beginners. Give it a look!
The Soviet Union was one of the latest. Yeltsin taking office, failing to get his way, and then shelling parliament into surrender being the most prominent example of the failures of electoralism, even in an ostensibly proletarian state.
Gaza also a great instance of the wages of strict electoralism. You rally your people behind a more militant political body (Hamas in 2006) and the end result is your heavily armed neighbors using the results of an election as causa belli. Hell, the American Civil War is another great example, what with a Southern coup government rising up after a Presidential election defeat.
It gives us a fighting chance, at least. But it is also hard, painful, and requiring enormous self-sacrifice particularly among the early adopters.
—Pat Sloan, in the Introduction to Soviet Democracy
Two more quirks of Athenian democracy: Only males were allowed to vote, and soldiers, mostly lower class salarymen, couldn't vote if they were in service.
These liberals really need to read Lenin before commenting. A certain OP may have even read it aloud for them so they can just listen to it if reading is too hard.
https://www.marxists.org/audiobooks/archive/lenin/1917/staterev/index.htm https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-IkmzWbjoatUez9-2vaAvB78afoKNRC
In bourgeois 'democracy', electoralism serves to legitimize and perpetuate the interests of the ruling class. Should laborers become the ruling class, I don't have a problem with it doing the same.
Seeing CA propositions get rigged with misinformation and tricky language suggests to me that direct democracy might also not work without proper safeguards.
Seeing how many selfish and uneducated people there are, I think we'd be beat off if the majority of people doesn't get a say, and the (communist) party just takes the decisions for the greater good of the people.
I struggle to find the points in your posts. Yes capitalism has a great many problems. I agree about doing something about it, but are you also suggesting democracy is bad?
Bourgeios "democracy" isn't actually a people's democracy, even though its sold as one. Its really an oligarchy/aristocracy/capitalist dictatorship.
We shouldn't allow capitalists to define democracy as bourgeios parliamentarism, especially when that form of government works against the interests of the vast majority of people.
What alternative do you propose to "bourgeois parliamentarianism"?
Socialist / people's democracy. It takes different forms in different countries, and many countries in the global south that are currently capitalist are starting on that socialist road.
And what is the difference that makes it invulnerable to the weaknesses encountered in bourgeois parliamentarianism?
The fact that there are not two classes in communism is the primary reason. When you don't have a powerful minority with opposed interests to those of the powerless majority, the majority becomes powerful.
Right, you say that, and that's a lovely aspiration, but how is it implemented? I don't have a magic wand here that eliminates class, but even if I did, how do you prevent demagogues from influencing the majority? Erasing established power at one point in time does not prevent it from rising again in a new form. You're just trading capital interest for charismatic manipulation.
Now you have a system with class interests + charismatic manipulation. I want to move to a system with only charismatic manipulation. That would already be significantly better, and I have no answer as to how to remove charismatic manipulation politically
By changing the material and historical conditions you can change that, though. Europe has spent centuries without slavery or absolutist monarchy within its borders, because the material conditions that favored such regimes have expired. The material conditions enabling capitalism class society are also expiring.
You'll need to educate yourself on the history of socialist states yourself, I can't do that for you.
A good place to start is the PRC's five dont's, a list of things to avoid at all costs from bourgeois democracy.
I asked because you said there were multiple variations.
I ask because the qualifications seem to be more idealistic and aspirational than mechanistic. None of the descriptions I've seen present significant obstacles to the corruption that plagues our current system. A "solemn declaration" doesn't do much against emergent behavior. The founding fathers were against political parties too, that didn't prevent them.
Every system is corruptible. The form of corruption changes to suit the underlying system, but given enough time every system can be compromised. Even pure direct democracy can be manipulated by popular demagogues.
I'm asking, specifically, what part of whichever variation of a "people's democracy" you specifically have in mind makes that democracy invulnerable to corruption and manipulation? Not intentions, but actual structural features.
That's not smug or rhetorical, I'm legitimately curious. If I'm mistaken, and there is some fundamental property that achieves what I'm asking, I'd like nothing more than to know what it is.
You're asking a question with a loaded premise, no system is immune to problems like corruption. At the same time, the various systems of socialist democracy have been far better than capitalist democracy, and the reasoning common to all is that the working class is in control, rather than capitalists. Structure varies from state to state, but having a system where the input and direction of the working class is paramount is far superior to capitalist democracy.
In capitalism, it's democracy for the capitalists, dictatorship for the workers, in socialism it's democracy for the workers, dictatorship for the capitalists.
There's a lot of research and reading you can do on how socialist states function, and a lot we can learn from them.
Liberal democracy isn't democratic, and electoralism as a means of systemic change doesn't work. Socialist democracy does work, and delivers far higher rates of approval and perceptions of democracy being effective.
I think I agree with you, but your messaging could use some work. I feel like most people who aren't already in the same groups as you might struggle with the terms you use. It might be simpler to say "capitalism corrupts democracy" because my original read of the post made it seem like its anti democracy.
It's not really that capitalism "corrupts" democracy, it's that all states serve the ruling class, and the political formation reinforces that. Capitalist democracy is democracy for capitalists, dictatorship for workers. In a socialist state, the political power is held by the workers, it becomes democracy for the working class and dictatorship for capitalists, landlords, etc.
i suspect that "messaging" only works if you're sufficiently conservative.
liberals and leftists alike agree (to different levels) that conservatives; especially maga; are less educated and entitled and that's why easy messaging slogans like "stop the steal" and "there are only 2 genders" works so well for them since it doesn't require them to get off their asses to do sufficientlyvigorous research to educate themselves on how that messaging oversimplifies the issue.
also, liberals complain that the democratic party needs to improve it's messaging to broaden their appeal to american voters. the problem with this seems to be that that american voters share some degree of academic laziness when it comes to understanding the issues, but they're still generally more educated than maga so slogans don't work as well. you can see examples of this over and over again on social media when people complain that nobody "reads beyond the headlines."
i'm learning that one of the key differences between leftists and liberals is the effort to self-educate with ANY kind of academic rigor (ie more than google searches) and doing so enables them to see past any sort of messaging and that most of the messaging that has been successfully adopted has been created by people with with a political agenda in mind.
i think that pushing the democrats to improve their messaging is a misdirection because any messaging for liberals is going to automatically contradict the education any better educated crowd (compared to maga) has received.
i also think that the biggest barrier for any liberal to understand why they're stuck in neo-liberal fascist late-stage capitalist world is doing their own research with SOME kind of academic rigor since it take A LOT of effort to not only change the way most of us have been taught to live, but also been educated and inculcated since birth.
Which greek philosophers said that? and what did they say? do you have any sources to confirm?
Both plato and aristotle, but aristotle thought that any election-based state turned out in practice, to be an oligarchy or aristocracy, not a democracy (which he define as rule by the poor, with random selection by lot).
Aristotle's politics books 4-6 talk a lot about this:
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.4.four.html
In other words, what today we call "representative democracy", the ancient greeks correctly identified as oligarchy.
Did the greeks suggest any replacement?
I see electoralism weaknesses, but what other systems are less prone to power capture and then raw authoritarianism?
If people don't choose their representation, then who does? Or is representation the flaw?
Socialist democracy. The political structure is a way to reinforce the economic base, so by moving onto socialism, the working class is in control of the state. The issue isn't with voting, period, but the idea that we can escape capitalism just by doing so.
That is more clear. I think I should have better defined "electoralism". Social democracy sounds much better than raw unfettered capitalism.
Social democracy is capitalism with safety nets, I mean socialism. Rather than private ownership being principle, ie covering the large firms and key industries with the state dominated by capitalists, public ownership should be principle and the working class should dominate the state.
Your response is rational, informational, based in fact, and measurable.
The original image is uncited incendiary garbage. This is not a time where we need more division and infighting. If you can't be nice, please just stick to the facts.
Are you not familiar with the concept of a meme?
The original image is a meme designed for humor over rational argument...
Cool
We want unity, around correct political lines. The point of agitprop is to get people talking and coming to a consensus on the correct line to follow.
I'm on the instance that I own and operate, Redlemmy.com. If I interact with you it's because I choose to.
I really like the idea of randomly elected representatives. Sure, they will try to better their situation for afterwards but with enough corruption control (which is probably easier to implement), this will only ensure that they support their kind of workers a bit more than the rest.
If Mamdani wins and keeps his mandate strong to the point that opposition to him is career suicide, he can implement some amazing improvements.
Bernie's success in Burlington was never going to translate to broader America, but NYC is hard to ignore.
The real test will be what Democrats do nationwide in response to a Mayor Mamdani administration. If they do the same old New Democrat/Third Way bullshit they've been doing since Bill Clinton won* in 1992, they'll continue to be irrelevant in the face of populist hucksters like Trump.
keep in mind that Socrates might not have been as nice as you think, his students ended up doing a coup and their government collapsed in 8 months, their reign was so violent that ended in about the death of 10% of Athens. The tyrants run away amd they put Socrates on trial, and in his defense, Socrates refused to denounce his disciplines and just said it was a whitch hunt because they are mad that he is smarter than everyone else.
So, Socrates might have been more of a Reactionary grifter like Peterson than a wise kind humble man.
Democracy has as a necessary precondition that people are intelligent enough to differentiate good candidates from bad candidates.
The real question therefore is whether the people are intelligent enough. That decides their fate.
I think your capacity to think is irrelevant or even played against you when the elites pour obscene amounts of money to change your perception of reality. Even the greatest minds can't escape this.
I feel like the belief that intelligence somehow grants immunity to propaganda has utterly devastated media literacy and subsequently our political landscape.
When people started taking memes and blogs as legitimate sources of information we were cooked.
I would replace intelligent with well educated, at least
I have come to dislike the word "education" as it refers to plato's cave analogy in such a way that somebody else leads you out of it.
"Education" is therefore not something that you do yourself, but that somebody else does on you. It is therefore objectifying and puts the humans in a passive position.
Meanwhile, "insight" or "inspiration" is something that you do yourself as it is you who brings up the interest to learn something. Therefore it is a much better word.
Yeah I kind of didn't like that word as I was writing it. Similar to how "tutoring" literally means to "straighten" or basically to inculcate to normativity.
Good edit, this is a better word choice.
:)
yeah that's what i meant. still, people have to be engaged in a way that i don't see them being engaged in. And that's still the central issue, i'd say.
Arrested Development was literally a satire of the Bush family/administration, whom are now being rehabilitated by usonian liberals.
The world and society have explicitly gotten far better since and because of the advent of serious representative democracy.
The US and Britain genocided entire continents using representative "democracy" (IE capitalist dictatorship).
You don't know what a dictatorship is. So far there isn't a form of government that hasn't. But unlike a dictatorship, the democracies improved
Very few modern states are settler states based on native eviction: only the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel.
The major colonialist powers of the last few hundred years were a tiny number of european nations.
The US and other capitalist states based on representative democracy aren't democracies, and you'd be hard-pressed to find ppl saying they're improving.
Even off the top of my head, there's japan as well. So your first statement is explicitly wrong. I'm sure I can find numerous more examples if I care to start digging.
Improved. I didn't use the present tense. Backslides happen. They're alarming and need to be stopped. So, you're advocating for pure democracy. Do you believe every rule and regulation should be decided by majority vote? Personally, I believe some form of representative democracy is the only practical way to run a country/collective. Otherwise, constant votes will prevent people from paying attention
Russia too. To some extent Sweden and China too.
Also plenty of settler states out there but they didn't evict indigenous people as much.
Things got better after unified monarchies ordained by God superceded quarreling petty kingdoms. Things got better with constitutional monarchies with aristocrat parliaments. Things got better with suffrage and classic liberal democracy.
Each system has its limitations and contradictions, and each of them were superceded when those became incompatible with the current reality.
Yup. Capitalist liberal democracy is the best system we've ever had at scale. It's shite for numerous reasons, but it's better than what came before. We can acknowledge the benefits while simultaneously acknowledging that we can do better.
Capitalism was in many ways progressive as compared to feudalism, but came with new devastation and greater imperialism on a massive scale. Socialism has been far better for the people than capitalism has been, though, and as imperialism crumbles and socialist countries are rising this is becoming clearer and clearer.
Let's not muddy the waters...the orange turd we can't name is the type of ism we don't want ever again. We also don't want George Bush or another repeat of any of the political families currently in power or their friends. We want direct vote not college vote. WTF is an electoral college doing now that we have communication technology? Its an old and stupid idea.
The Liberals got wrecked so hard Peter Dutton lost his seat.
We need a digital liquid democracy platform. We have the technology and infrastructure for it now, and it’s time for the people to rule themselves.
Ie this take sometimes but I don't know what the alternatives are. When you win your revolution, what system will you put in place?
ITT I've seen "random elections", and plenty of people saying "socialism", plus someone (I hope) is thinking "anarchism", but how is it managed? What takes the place of elections for public office?
OK, it's been about a week with no replies. I am starting to suspect that perhaps there is no plan.
I remember being so excited to vote my first time. I've now concluded that it's a complete waste of time.
On the contrary, voting helps install your enemy of choice. I'd rather fight Democrats than Republicans, and I vote accordingly. Actual progress requires non-electoral action, but electoral action makes that fight more favorable.
You wanna pick and choose between all the different flavors of suck go right ahead. I'm not wasting my time voting for these idiots.
I wish you'd reconsider, you're just making things harder for the rest of us. We're on the same side here.
There's no actual evidence that the DNC treats leftists any differently. Both parties did the Red Scare, both parties root out communists, both parties bomb and sanction socialist countries.
Oh yeah, I'm totally making things harder for everybody else 🙄
"We're on the same side" my ass. Fuck the Democrats.
Yes, because everything is easier for the left when Republicans are in power 🙄. I swear, it's going to be easier to radicalize liberals than to convince you lot to stop shooting yourselves in the foot. Have fun circle jerking over your ideological purity, I guess. We'll be over here actually trying to make things better, if you feel like helping.
Sure, whatever you say 🤡
Uh, are you feeling okay? What you just posted is devastating to your point. I'm saying to try to keep the ratchet on the stationary stage line enough to actually push left, you're saying "Lol just let it spin right". This is so incredibly stupid, what idiot thought that the ratchet effect supports such a stupid argument? I feel like I'm in a room full of toddlers shouting nonsense catchphrases.
No, you're on the side of genocide
What a joke, are you 15?
ngl I do hate this kind of nhilism in terms of democracy. Like I agree with that one quote from that greek guy which says that a democracy needs smart people, but democracy is the best system we've come up with that to a small extent, makes politicians meet the peoples needs.
Electoralism =\= Democracy
The problem isn't democracy, it's democracy under capitalism, and the idea that we can actually transition to socialism via electoralist means.
But its about working with the system we have. We can always advocate for the system being not broken, but intentionally taking advantage of minorities and increasing wealth for the rich whilst doing the opposite for the poor.
Even though I agree that any democracy in the west isn't truly democratic, with outright bribery in the form of lobbyist, and a two party duopoly. Even though I acknowledge this, everyone must vote for the less bad party, whilst also spreading the word for what they would truly want.
Even if the system is inevitably going downhill, slowing it down and pushing every means, through voting for the less evil option, and protesting, spreading word about socialism is the best option.
No, the best option is to organize directly and agitate against the system. This historically has protected marginalized groups far better, it's how the Civil Rights movement passed. Simply "spreading the word" about socialism does absolutely nothing about the existing levers of power we can and cannot pull, we must do so in the context of broader organizing.
Yes, and vote as well.
The ancient greeks did not consider electoralism to be democracy. They used a combination of direct democracy and sortition. And it should be apparent now that they were right, and we've been played for fools for 200 years by the capitalist class who holds all of the true power in our states.
The ancient Greeks are by no means someone to look for in terms of democracy. Aristotle believed slaves were naturally less human and needed masters, and they didn't let women, or those who didn't own land vote.
You could say this about all western "democracies"
Democracy can and will work once a simple rule is implemented. Namely: no one who wants the power to rule should ever be allowed anywhere near power. Of course the rich won't allow such a law to be passed, and enforcing it is the stuff of thought crime dystopic nightmares, but I'm sure we can overcome those small issues.
I have never heard the word electoralism in real life.
Your use of "work" is doing a lot of heavy lifting and is very reductive. I'd recommend reading theory until you properly understand the issue, Dessalines.
Is your "theory" originating from three letter organisations or have you never actually read it yourself?
See, the problem with Dessalines' meme is that it uses "work" as a binary category. As in, something either has no effect or it completely restructures society. It is absolutely true that electoralism can't completely restructure society, and there are many valid explanations for why that is in communist theory. However, Dessalines reveals his lack of understanding by equating completely restructuring society with "working".
If we were to construct a true binary between working and not working, it would be between having zero effect, and having any effect, no matter how small. The beating of a butterfly's wings has some effect on the world, and could theoretically contribute towards a tornado that sucks up all the bourgeoisie and allows the workers to democratise the means of production. So obviously voting has some tiny effect, since it's stronger than a butterfly's wings. Voting works, in other words. But that's a virtually meaningless statement if we're constructing a binary as Dessalines did.
The correct approach is to ask "how much can voting accomplish", and with that question we can actually arrive at an answer with some nuance and a justification from within the theory. But the binary question Dessalines asks can afford no nuance, and is obviously not supported by theory or anything else. Which proves that even if Dessalines read theory, he didn't understand much of it.
I think the fundamental issue is that "works" doesn't have a good measurable metric and so when discussing it tends to fall into that false binary that you correctly identified.
The best I've seen that attempts to work around this problem was this paper from back in 2014^1^. Unfortunately their results showed that while you're correct that causitive impact is not zero that <5% correlation, especially for a field with as high a signal/noise ratio as political science, is an incredibly disheartening answer for "how much can voting accomplish?"
So while you are likely correct that it's not nothing, it does suggest reality is much closer to the meme than your attempt at "nuance".
If you have any sources that cite measurable and non-anecdotal impact that tell a different story I'd love to read them.
^1 linking the preprint because it's not paywalled^
Closer than my attempt at nuance? I didn't know I made an attempt at nuance yet. I thought I just vaguely gestured towards the nuance and said it exists. Can you please explain what my position is on how much I think voting can accomplish so I'm all caught up with the conversation?
I'm with you here, you're "just asking questions" and I provided context on my understanding of the answers to those questions.
A "theory" is a reductionist model that is falsifiable, by claiming that the level of nuance you suggest proves Dessalines understanding is "not supported by theory" you explicitly state that nuance as an empirical contradiction of the theory.
Either: A. You have some measure or metric which wasn't clearly communicated showing how that nuance falsifies the theory. ^Which was my initial understanding and was hoping to clear up the miscommunication there.^
B. You're doing a tiresome argument from ignorance thing and simply muddying the waters because the "theory" conflicts with your pre-formulated understanding of reality and you haven't put in any effort to actually validate your own understandings.
You claim, rather rudely I might add, that "Even if Dessalines read theory, he didn't understand much of it." Don't do the glib, spineless, two-faced "I didn't make any claims yet".
Prove it pot, say it with your chest.
Lmao I read that whole entire comment, and it wasn't easy, and it's all frantic backpedaling.
For the record I think the study you're citing makes a methodological mistake by applying an issues based measurement framework in a representative democracy, but I have no intention of elaborating because you're not arguing in good faith and you're just going to waste everyone's time.
Anyway next time post the version of the study that actually passed peer review and got published, not a draft.
Kettle
I don't necessarily disagree. It's definitely not a holistic view, but I haven't found much else that even asks that question much less has any real methodology behind it. Have you?
What would be the correct methodology in your opinion?
You're not communicating anything other than the vaguest of concern trolling. You clearly have thoughts and opinions, this is a place to share those.
You can't both be upset when you are misunderstand and refuse to communicate.
Quit backpedaling and say it with your chest.
You do know how to use sci-hub right? You have the title, or if you're morally opposed to that option a quick Google and you can pay $30 here for it.
However, before you gish-gallop into concern trolling the source I linked why don't you provide one, or multiple, of your own that supports the concerns you have surrounding "nuance".
The socialist alliance party is working with Israel? Wowzers, I didn't know that! Can you provide a source, or are you making things up?
Counterpoint, acturally I dont even need to make a counterpoint you literally just posted an AI screenshot
Yeah... IMO it is important to fact check especially when someone tries to push views that seem extreme and missing the nuance I would expect from reality. But fact checking with AI might be too lazy.
There is no such thing as fact checking with AI.
Fuck off
Why? What fact checking did you do?
Hi, I've trained machine learning models. I've been creating and studying them for over six years.
ChatGPT is not capable of fact checking. It stylistically outputs data based on the input data it was trained on, and it's important to understand why that's different to fact checking even when it can sometimes state facts.
It CAN fact check. You just have to prompt it to
For those downvoting
https://chatgpt.com/share/68fb4d04-9960-8001-91f3-b8ab0e4f1808
For the inquisitive
Who to believe - a random image online or a neural net with the ability to search a few pages online?
Neither, think and research for yourself.
Not to mention that to everyone else your comment is the random image online.
You literally could have just read the sources posted by the OP when someone asked, 3 whole hours before you posted this
We're so doomed, the idiots are using the garbage generator as fact checking on lemmy too...