You need a congealed working class before you can have a democracy. Right now, we have a fractured and alienated working class, so all we get are the motions.
Gigantic voting districts where elected officials are lucky to know one constituent in 10,000.
Systematic disenfranchisement of young voters, poc, and the internally displaced.
Strict limits placed on individual bureaucrats who must pander to the broadly empowered private business interests.
A fully captured court system that can tip the scales of an election.
No regional autonomy. No public civil defense. No guarantee of political education. No right to free association of labor.
How do you engage with a democracy on those terms? What democracy is there to engage with? An election that is simply another consumer choice isn’t democratic. You still have no control over what you’re being offered and no participation on how the system is administered.
What you’ve listed are critiques. I agree with many of them. What I’m asking specifically is if not democracy, then what instead?
On paper, the United States is a federal republic, that votes for representatives for a bicameral parliamentary system that derives jurisprudence from English Common Law.
In practice, it’s a plutocratic oligarchy.
For context, I consider myself to be a market socialist who still wants a representative
federal republic for the United States.
I have my own ideas for re-enfranchisement for the working class:
abolish “first-past-the-post”
restructure gerrymandered voting districts
implement ranked choice voting
constitutional amendment for term limits for every elected position
allow cross-party voting in primaries
abolishing Citizens United (what a cynically ironic name for what it actually allows for)
These points are only achievable by voting for candidates who advocate for such policies which is admittedly a long shot, given the average citizen’s knowledge of civics, political theory, economics, and statistics but it’s what I believe can work.
Or would you prefer autocracy? The “dictatorship of the proletariat”? Monarchy? Theocracy? Anarchy? Oligarchy? Syndicalism?
My ultimate point is that you seem to still want “democracy”, but you want it in practice, not just on paper, despite your claim of the point of democracies is to “keep capitalists in power”.
Again, My question to you is if not democracy, then what? Or do you actually want democracy? Please propose your alternative to democracy, given your claim about its purpose in “keeping capitalists in power”.
You can’t get good policy without democracy because democracy is part of all good policy. Non-democracy violates inalienable rights, which makes it inherently bad policy
Put two policies on a coin and flip it. Half the time you’ll get good policy. No democracy required.
Democracy grants input from a broad base of social perspective. But if that persective is polluted by propaganda and haunted by historical bigotry, you’ll get out what you put in.
An apartheid democracy is less preferable than revolutionary anarchy, even if you didn’t all get to line up at a voting booth and decide to overthrow the corrupt establishment
Non-democracy violates inalienable rights
If you can consistently violate a set of rights, they aren’t inalienable. Pretending social obligations and taboos are written into the stars is what gets us some of the more destructive social impulses (abortion clinic bombings, white power marches, etc).
The coin flip is inherently part of policy, and it is bad policy to decide on policies with a coin flip
Inalienable rights are moral rights that can’t be given up or transferred. It doesn’t mean that the legal system can’t fail to enforce the right such as by legally treating it as alienable like capitalism does in the employment contract. If the legal system doesn’t grant it, that’s a bad legal system.
Moral concepts have an objective sense that is unknowable.
So instead of democracy, then what, in your opinion?
Democracy is the answer, democrats are not.
We need a real progressive party
You need a congealed working class before you can have a democracy. Right now, we have a fractured and alienated working class, so all we get are the motions.
How do you engage with a democracy on those terms? What democracy is there to engage with? An election that is simply another consumer choice isn’t democratic. You still have no control over what you’re being offered and no participation on how the system is administered.
What you’ve listed are critiques. I agree with many of them. What I’m asking specifically is if not democracy, then what instead?
On paper, the United States is a federal republic, that votes for representatives for a bicameral parliamentary system that derives jurisprudence from English Common Law.
In practice, it’s a plutocratic oligarchy.
For context, I consider myself to be a market socialist who still wants a representative federal republic for the United States.
I have my own ideas for re-enfranchisement for the working class:
These points are only achievable by voting for candidates who advocate for such policies which is admittedly a long shot, given the average citizen’s knowledge of civics, political theory, economics, and statistics but it’s what I believe can work.
Or would you prefer autocracy? The “dictatorship of the proletariat”? Monarchy? Theocracy? Anarchy? Oligarchy? Syndicalism?
My ultimate point is that you seem to still want “democracy”, but you want it in practice, not just on paper, despite your claim of the point of democracies is to “keep capitalists in power”.
Politics is the art of the possible. The entire job of political leadership is to advocate for policy change.
Again, My question to you is if not democracy, then what? Or do you actually want democracy? Please propose your alternative to democracy, given your claim about its purpose in “keeping capitalists in power”.
I want good policy.
If my democracy is producing bad candidates and bad policies, what purpose does it serve?
Capitalism is serviced by the illusion of choice in a functional monopoly. The solution is to break up the monopoly.
But that’s a Herculean task.
You can’t get good policy without democracy because democracy is part of all good policy. Non-democracy violates inalienable rights, which makes it inherently bad policy
@politicalmemes
Put two policies on a coin and flip it. Half the time you’ll get good policy. No democracy required.
Democracy grants input from a broad base of social perspective. But if that persective is polluted by propaganda and haunted by historical bigotry, you’ll get out what you put in.
An apartheid democracy is less preferable than revolutionary anarchy, even if you didn’t all get to line up at a voting booth and decide to overthrow the corrupt establishment
If you can consistently violate a set of rights, they aren’t inalienable. Pretending social obligations and taboos are written into the stars is what gets us some of the more destructive social impulses (abortion clinic bombings, white power marches, etc).
The coin flip is inherently part of policy, and it is bad policy to decide on policies with a coin flip
Inalienable rights are moral rights that can’t be given up or transferred. It doesn’t mean that the legal system can’t fail to enforce the right such as by legally treating it as alienable like capitalism does in the employment contract. If the legal system doesn’t grant it, that’s a bad legal system.
Moral concepts have an objective sense that is unknowable.
@politicalmemes
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