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The history of electoralism (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/memes@lemmy.ml
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Greek philosophers in 300 BC: Hey, so electoralism is a rigged game, because only wealthy and prestigious families have enough money to finance the popularity contest to get themselves or their puppet candidates elected. Marxists in the 1800s: Electoralism is a rigged game. Capitalists stack every election with their puppets. Political power is subservient to economic power. Liberals in the 2020s: No, electoralism has never worked. But it might work for us this time.
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[–] 9 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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?

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  • [–] [S] 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    how long did it take Europe to shed absolute monarchism? Centuries

    Yes, but history progresses at accelerating rates as societies develop. Humanity spent tens of thousands of years being hunters-gatherers, the neolithic and agricultural revolution brought forth much faster changes, then feudalism, and ultimately capitalism and the industrial revolution.

    The USSR was a nice idea, but it took less than half a century for it to succumb to bureaucratic corruption

    I'm not sure what you're talking about, care to explain?

    Arguably, it was even deeper autocratic corruption than in Western democracies.

    Only arguably so if you go against material evidence, in my opinion. Universal free healthcare and education to the highest level, guaranteed right to housing, abolishment of unemployment, high level of worker rights, respect and promotion of the local cultures and languages to an extent unparalleled until that point in history, women's rights (more Soviet female engineers by the 1960s than in the rest of the world combined and highest rates of female representation in organs of power), extremely high rates of unionization, quality of public transit and urban planning... None of that points, in my opinion, towards deep autocratic corruption. If there had been a deep autocratic corrupted regime, politicians would have had higher wages than professors of universities, artists or researchers, wealth inequality wouldn't have been the historical lowest in the region and the lowest in the world. So, what do you mean by autocratic corruption?

    We could achieve, incrementally, the same results as through toppling and rebuilding society

    That's not how historically systems have changed. The owning class will not let you remove exploitation by voting, in as much as the kings and queens of old went through the guillotine to remove them from power. When you get massive leftist voter turnout, you either get an Allende situation (I'm Spanish, we had a similar thing during the Second Spanish Republic in 1936), or a Syriza situation, historically. You can also check the case of Mosaddeq in Iran for that matter, the list is endless. The western global empire won't allow a peaceful, democratic transition to socialism.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago

    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.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    I would argue the core issue is more fundamental. Liberalism holds the rights of private property as inviolable, thereby placing them beyond public debate. It's a system that establishes an economic structure where the critical decisions over resources and labor are made by the few who own the means of production. Such an arrangement is irreconcilable with any meaningful definition of democracy.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    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.

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