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
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.
Communal society: Electoralism is cringe.
Slave society: Electoralism is cringe.
Feudal society: Electoralism is cringe.
Liberal society: noooooo, electoral democracy portents the end of history elections are based nooooo
Socialist society: Electoralism is cringe.
Communist society: Electoralism is cringe.
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.
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.
im gonna voooooote!!!
I think I may have BLUE myself
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?
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.
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
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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.
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.
Arrested Development was literally a satire of the Bush family/administration, whom are now being rehabilitated by usonian liberals.
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.
Meanwhile, “insight” or “inspiration” is something that you do yourself […]
Good edit, this is a better word choice.
:)
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
