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?
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.
Real liberal democracy has never been tried
It’s just the outside forces that have made it fail. In theory it’s perfect system
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.
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.
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.
15·5 days agoWe 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?”—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.
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.
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.
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
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.
A good place to start is the PRC’s five dont’s, a list of things to avoid at all costs from bourgeois democracy.
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.
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.
The prevalence of your type of reasoning is why democracy doesn’t work.
The problem is that the whole point of democracy is to align decision-making with the will of ”the people”. That puts the impetus on citizens to actually manifest a will and constitute their interpretation of who the people are. Politics and culture.
That is, people need to actively engage in public discourse about their respective interests. Such discourse demands a lot of things, freedom of speech for one, but most importantly it requires all participants to frequent avenues for discussions among those that share interests outside narrow social groups like friends and families (i.e. in spheres of the ”public”). For example, in political party organizations, trade unions, business groups, pubs and town squares, and, possibly, virtual spaces for disembodied discussion, such Lemmy (however, the disembodiment is more likely to result in discussion for the sake of discussion between people that don’t actually share living conditions or other froms of unity of interest, but I digress).
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.
It is clear that the scale of the political project complicates the formation of public opinions – though Pete Hegseth no doubt would like to try, you cannot run a country of 300+ million people on spirited bar stool banter – however, the principles remain the same. By definition, you can’t approach democratic decisions like a consumer does choosing a brand of toothpaste – the core principle of democracy is to eliminate any individual’s power, in favor of the collective (e.g. majority).
Democracy is a high effort process that terminates in the poll booth. Voting is foremost a formality that should not be fetishized.
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.
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.
Meanwhile, “insight” or “inspiration” is something that you do yourself […]
Good edit, this is a better word choice.
:)
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Arrested Development was literally a satire of the Bush family/administration, whom are now being rehabilitated by usonian liberals.
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.
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?
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