A lot of people are saying that bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
BBC, 2014: Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.
So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.
This is not news, you say.
Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here’s how they explain it:
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
Well yeah, bourgeois “democracy” is only really democratic for capitalists and not workers.
We need direct democracy tbh.
Democracy: Dictatorship of the majority. Mob rule.
The capitalist class, Walter Lippmann, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission’s The Crisis of Democracy would be proud (emphasis mine):
Al Smith once remarked that “the only cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.” Our analysis suggests that applying that cure at the present time could well be adding fuel to the flames. Instead, some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy […] Needed, instead, is a greater degree of moderation in democracy.
Game theory would like a word.
Considering the smallest non-fragmented group has resulted in the current 2-party system in most western countries, and results in tribalistic xenophobia, I’m quite content stating democracy is not the egalitarianism it is purported to be.
And I quite resent the insinuation I’m a lapdog.
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Ah, yes, the Athenian Method.
The problem with democracy is that people can be manipulated.
that’s why education of the people is a core pillar of a democratic nation.
It’s still the best way even if it’s bad. Ranked choice voting would make it better.
It’s demonstrably not, but westerners just keep clinging to their failed system lacking the courage and imagination to try anything different.
What’s better?
Proletarian democracy
What definition of proletarian democracy? It’s not well defined and means vastly different things to different people.
Democracy in which the bourgeoisie are denied political agency as class relations are in the process of being dissolved. The problem isn’t actually democracy, the problem is that in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (democracy where capitalists are in control) capitalist interests override democracy.
Not that democracy doesn’t have problems inherently, but they’re pretty minor compared to the problems we are facing.
But the alternatives that people are proposing leaves people with no representation at all. You can’t have representation when you aren’t even allowed to discuss ideas that the government already disagrees with.
The people of China and Vietnam have vibrant discussions of ideas, and they democratically steer their governments. Their voices have more effect on their states than ours here at home. There isn’t a ban on Winnie-the-Pooh in China, and the people are generally vastly better informed on the 1989 Tian’anmen Square riots than we are.
- The Tian’anmen Square ‘Massacre’: The West’s Most Persuasive, Most Pervasive Lie.
- 1989 Tian’anmen Square riots
- A Note on the Tiananmen Protests
- Images from Tiananmen 1989 the West never shows (NSFW / CW: violence and death)
- Tank Man video footage. Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1989
.
You seem to have uncritically accepted every single thing you’ve been told, which, to be fair, I largely had as well, until I witnessed in real time how obviously fabricated the justification for the Iraq War was, and how seemingly credulously the media propagated it. It took me the last 20 years of investigation to dig myself out from under a lifetime of imperial core propaganda.
Democratic centralism 👀
That’s not a political system at all. It’s a process that could be implemented in many styles of government. It is not incompatible with representative democracy either. It is a bad idea though. It means that a government has a hard time changing course, even when it needs to. Because it silences people from questioning decisions.
It’s literally how communist states are organized, how is it not a political system?
It’s it though. It’s a principle applied to Chinese communism. It’s not a required part of communism and it isn’t form of government on its own. It’s not even the most major part of a government system.
It’s not required for communism per se, but it’s certainly a form of government organization. It’s how the People’s Congress works?
Ask the people of El Salvador, and they’ll say having a dictator is better because democracy has demonstrably failed them.
El Salvador under a dictator actually has less gang violence than Mexico under a democracy.
Westerners will blind themselves to this reality, though. They always do.
When dictatorships go badly, they go extremely badly. Far more badly than even a broken representative democracy. The odd of having a sold string of reasonably good dictators are vanishingly small. A good dictator is the best form of government. Good luck maintaining that though.
When a bourgeois democratic state goes badly, it tears off its liberal mask and reveals the fascism beneath. The capitalist class dispenses with democratic theater and rules by naked dictatorship. Western liberals shouldn’t wonder why fascism is on the rise in the West: it’s because Western monopoly capitalism is increasingly going mask-off. Monthly Review, 2014: The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism
China is totalitarian and becoming more autocratic by the year.
Of course we’re told that: it’s a given that the US will call a country it wants to browbeat or regime change “authoritarian,” and corporate media will repeat it.
The Western concept of “totalitarianism” was constructed by Hannah Arendt, who came from a wealthy family and so unsurprisingly was anticommunist. Her work was financially supported and promoted by the CIA. It’s a bourgeois liberal, intentionally anticommunist construct that lumps fascism and communism in the same bucket.
Monthly Review, The CIA and the Cultural Cold War Revisited
U.S. and European anticommunist publications receiving direct or indirect funding included Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, New Leader, Encounter and many others. Among the intellectuals who were funded and promoted by the CIA were Irving Kristol, Melvin Lasky, Isaiah Berlin, Stephen Spender, Sidney Hook, Daniel Bell, Dwight MacDonald, Robert Lowell, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, and numerous others in the United States and Europe. In Europe, the CIA was particularly interested in and promoted the “Democratic Left” and ex-leftists, including Ignacio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Raymond Aron, Anthony Crosland, Michael Josselson, and George Orwell.
LMFAO
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That could be a nice improvement to the US’s representative democracy also. The nice thing about ranked choice voting is that it forces people to have more than one choice. People may only approve of exactly their favorite choice.
As Churchill once famously said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
I guess one of the nicest things about democracy is that it has a built-in mechanism for removing a government. It may not be reliable at getting good leaders in place, but at least when there’s a bad one it has a way of getting them back out again without having to go in shooting.
I’m not seeing anyone removing Biden or Netanhitler from power though?
The fact that you think that genocidal scumbag had good ideas means your opinion can be safely discarded.
Lol, what?
Churchill oversaw one of the biggest genocides in history in India ignoramus.
That means everything he says is false?
ignoramus
Oh, the irony.
the only irony here is you comment 😂
Not really.
it’s clearly what you believe
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Any chance you can share your ideas without personal insults?
It makes you look flustered and insecure.
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For real though, please dial it back. You didn’t have to turn Churchill into an attack on someone who may not even be aware of Churchill’s crimes, and then continue to ratchet up the personal insults. It’s bad even by Reddit debate bro standards, and it doesn’t invite anyone to explore alternatives to bourgeois democracy.
I think it’s awesome how on Lemmy the mods actually treat their users like people to correct and not like subjects to control.
fair enough
No I didn’t.
I spent way more time than i’m willing to admit trying to figure out what swear the filter was removing.
