Remember, the social Democrats sided with the Nazis over the socialists. They’ve done it every time they’ve been given the opportunity, and will continue to do so as many times as people fall for their shtick.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
-Audre Lorde
What is true democracy anyway? The government always doing the will of the people? I don’t think that can really happen under any circumstances.
The people directly controlling the society collectively, rather than private ownership of said societies social wealth.
True democracy requires democracy at all levels of society. Workplace democracy, state democracy, community democracy, etc. Democratizing the electoral system but maintaining private ownership of production merely results in exactly the situation we are in now, with an illusion of democracy, where we choose from a pool of candidates selected by the elites in control of production in order to maintain control of their production.
There are different elites, and they have differing goals, but one thing they all have in common is they believe in the subjugation of the working class and the hoarding of the products of the labor of the working class. That’s why imperialism is non-partisan in the US. It serves capital.
That’s why there’s no meaningful changes to the status quo for the working class unless on the back of a social movement. They don’t serve us, they keep us placated while they serve the people who pay them.
Does anyone else (like a dictionary) agree with your definition? Personally, I think it’s a bit extreme.
Yeah hundreds of millions of people across the last hundred years have felt the same. We’re called communists. I’m An anarcho-communist myself, but there’s many different flavors. You can look to Professor Richard Wolff for a prominent US voice who often speaks of the inherent anti-democratic nature of private business and capitalism.
But what is democracy? Is it just equality? Or having an equal say in what’s being done?
The people controlling the society collectively, rather than private individuals maintaining ownership and control of society. Production is part of society. It is one of the most important and powerful parts of society. It influences every other aspect of society, in a way no other part does. Such an integral part of our society being privately and anti-democratically controlled is how we end up where we are, where the world is literally boiling and we’re still expanding emissions, where the majority of people are living paycheck to paycheck, and not even our “pro-labor” party tries to help them…. Etc…
How equality does society need to be controlled in a ‘true democracy’? Completely equally? I’d rather have competent people controlling more of it than incompetent people.
What are you even advocating for here? You seem hung up on some weird definition you have in your brain, and ignore what I said.
If it’s controlled by a small group of people, while there is a larger group of people who a disaffected and incapable of direct participation in governance, then it’s not a Democracy, as simple as that.
I’m trying to nail down what democracy is, because you seem to be excluding ownership by your definition. If you use that definition, I can’t argue with you, since we’re talking about different democracies.
I think a democracy is a government that does the will of the people as much as practical. (No constant mind reading etc) (But we also can’t have total democracy because of the tyranny of the majority.) It seems like you’re defining it more broadly.
I think well regulated economies are an effective way of giving greater control to component people in order to effectively do what people want. I don’t think economies invariably must lead to a small group of people in control of the government to the exclusion of everyone else.
How do you have private ownership of enterprise and the means of production without then allowing those individuals to make What should be collective decisions? The factory owner, unregulated, polluted. With regulations under a capitalist system, he still pollutes, but he has to put a muffler, and the area where his factory is has been designated a sacrifice zone and those living there less important than the profits of the owner.
Where do the rights of the people fit in when you give property itself rights? How do you maintain private property without violent enforcement? How do you then prevent those with private property from co-opting the very violent enforcers for their own means (such as the regular use of police to bust union activity), or purchasing the regulators and regulatory bodies and using them to create regulations that don’t restrict them, but instead raise the bar for entry into the market?
There’s not yet been a capitalist society invulnerable to market and regulatory capture. In fact, there’s entire books that show, with the math to prove it, that this is an inevitable outcome of the system, and that all our regulations and reforms do is stave off the inevitable for a short while longer.
If you heavily regulated companies, nationalize every major public service, place an upper cap to overall wealth for any one individual, eliminate inherited wealth and redirect all available resources to public education, health care, housing and UBI … then democracy could exist in a capitalist system.
But chances are we’ll more likely start WWIII with nuclear weapons than do any of that.
If you picture the political compass, where the y axis is how how democratic the society is(where the top is tyranny and the bottom is anarchy) and the x axis is how socialized it is (where the left is communism and the right is capitalism), OP claimed that ancap (the bottom right quadrant) doesn’t exist, and that those who claim to be ancap tend to be authoritarian right instead. You argued that democracy could exist in a socialist (leftist) society. You are not disagreeing with OP, because what you described is not a capitalist (right leaning) society.
But that’s not capitalism, that’s market socialism
socialism, by definition, means that “companies” are publicly owned. so while this would be a good start for a socal democratic society, its nowhere near democratic socialism or even communism
I thought regulated capitalism and market socialism were the same thing
the difference between capitalism and socialism is whether companies are privately or publicly owned, so while it looks similar, it’s really not the same. this would be a social democratic society, and therefore not socialist
So European brands of socialism aren’t socialism in your view?
what do you mean, European brands of socialism?
Stop spreading false narratives, the social democrats did NOT side with the Nazis, they were one of the final frontiers against them, and many of them died for their efforts of trying to keep the german republic alive.
The SPD used the Proto-fascists to murder their enemies. This is undebatable. It happened.
Yeah remember, democracy can only exist in a single party state
No True Scotsman: the thread.
It’s sorta refreshing seeing the normal roles reversed
So, what definition of Capitalism are you working with here?
If you’re basing this on the theoretical concepts of capitalism and communism, remember to also base it on the theoretical concept of democracy. It’s kind of stupid otherwise
Great idea to not align yourself with the social democrats - the closest thing we’ve ever gotten to a functional communistic society.
“There is no alternative to capitalism, but damn, social democracy sure does come close”
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Yeah, if I believe in the march of progress it seems like I would be aiming at social democracy. I feel like in europe, this is just vibes btw, they have more social governments but the people in power are sort of pissed about all of these checks and balances and protections. Like they just want to rule the way the US does and be evil and vitriolic, or maybe even worse than in the US, but they can’t. So theoretically you could have people in power who aren’t really social democrats? But OP probably knows the history better than I do.
What about all the non-USA countries? They are all mostly capitalist but are more regulated (like Canada in NA and most of the European Union) while also having true healthy démocraties?
You think Canada is a healthy democracy?
A lot of fucked up shit happens here. For example, did you know that almost all of America’s worst Nazis all came from Canada?
Yes, it is pretty healthy. Of course there are issues to fix such as under/overrepresentation of certain areas but otherwise it is generally considered (not just by me) to be a pretty healthy democracy
By people on the outside?
Oh, I didn’t realize it was the will of the people to fail to meet their climate commitments. I was pretty sure the majority of people thought that governments should be doing more. Was it also the will of the people to raise the pension age in France? And the people of Canada support the slow privatization of their public health system? That’s kosher to them?
The general public is incredibly stupid on average. They absolutely vote for climate commitments and against change. You should have heard the whining coal mine workers on television when Germany decided to close them in a decade. The French pension system is out of balance due to longer, healthier lifes and needs a rebalance - but is not allowed to change because “it has worked so far”. There was never a winning change in policy. Trying to save money on public services by privatization is a philosophy shared by many “free market” enthousiasts and sadly always takes preference over evaluation of money streams in public funding.
You should look at polling more deeply. If you chuck an easy question like ‘Are humans responsible for climate change?’’ you’ll barely get 50%. But if you then actually pose a piece of actionable policy like ‘Would you support banning the sale of ICE cars in 2035?’ You’ll get 30%. So no. The will of the people is not meeting their climate commitment.
This will probably be the case for your other examples too. Public opinion is never as unified as you’re making it seem.
You know what this means? The people don’t care. If the majority of people really cared, they would have voted for parties that put this issue front and center. But that didn’t happen because we live in democracies and the people chose another party that had a different mission
So what? You think the people are the good ones and the political class are the bad ones? Who did you think voted them into office and who’s responsible for the rise of right wing power? That just materialized itself? Get a grip of yourself and stop trying to divide the world just so you can have an easy time understanding. The world is complicated and not black and white. Stop dividing.
they do not have healthy democracies.
It would appear that democracy benefits the rulers, as democracy alone has provided the most consistent means for those formerly in power to sleep and die in peace. And the same holds for the courtiers, nomenklatura, and apparatchiks. These sycophants need no longer dread midnight’s knife and muffled cries, and the subsequent crowning of a new king. The elite and bureaucracy can retire to their farms and while away their passing years without fear — their riches and posterity intact. As I see it now, democracy is not to the advantage of the demos, it is to the advantage of the power elite. Something to think about.
Is this your thoughts or a part of a larger quote? I appreciate it, even if I don’t necessarily agree with it.
Part of a larger quote, but I agree with it.
I don’t like representative democracy.
I like representative democracy in theory, our current implementation in the US‡ has a few major issues in that each representative doesn’t represent the same amount of people. And we should have a lot more representatives for the people.
Not everyone can dedicate the necessary time to be fully engaged and informed about all the intricacies that come from running a government, so some form of representation is needed. But ~500 people representing around 300 million people is not nearly enough for the national stage IMO.
‡ I’m talking about the US here because that’s where I live, but I’m sure other countries have similar issues though.
Agreed on your second sentence haha
As much as Lorde didn’t like capitalism, she was talking about the idea of using division and difference in minority movements, enforcing a rigged view of a shared black experience or a shared woman experience. White feminists were the majority of feminists, and often left little room for minoritized women to share the way their racial identity and gender identity intersected. Lorde didn’t want Black feminists to be relegated to their own groups and separated from the white feminists. She wanted them to have a voice in the feminist movement. To work with her white peers on liberation from patriarchy. She just wanted them to acknowledge that the experience shared by the majority of white feminists didn’t speak for all of them. She wanted them to no longer look at differences in their midst as vice, but as a virtue. Setting one experience as the norm is the master’s tool, and it would never dismantle the master’s house.
If there’s one thing we don’t need when fighting fascism, it’s leftists purity testing people who use the levers of power at their disposal. I don’t give a fuck if a person thinks capitalism just needs limits and liberal democracy is a great system. If you stand with me in opposing fascists, I’m not going to say that you can never be my ally.
I don’t like people like you who think current day China is great. Lorde certainly wouldn’t like a queerphobic authoritarian state that paves over cultural divisions and crushes dissent. However, if you actually stand with me in defeating fascists, and won’t use this fight as an excuse to mandate your ML agenda, I will work with you. I will stand with you against our common enemy. I will not ignore our disagreements, but fascism is an existential threat. Everyone from Joe Biden to Noam Chomsky must work together to defeat these fuckers.
If you refuse to work with capitalists because you think you can also grab a chunk of a country the fascists are taking, don’t be surprised when they invade you and kill of most of a generation. Fascists must die.
No I feel you entirely. I think what you’re missing is that a country is a product of its material conditions. The Chinese government isn’t forcing anti gay laws onto the Chinese people. It’s reacting to the citizens, who are homophobic and transphobic. China also doesn’t pave over dissent, they have one of the most robust protest movements in the world. There are literally nearly constantly protests taking place in China. Hell, it literally only took TWO weeks of protest to entirely end Zero-Covid(which has lead to thousands of excess deaths, but if the people prefer that over zero-covid, that is their right). What I would give to have protest movements succeed in two weeks haha. We had the largest protests in the history of the world after George Floyd, and an absolute majority of the population supported defunding the police, and yet both the federal and local governments put record amounts of funding into police. We are not the constituency of the Us government. We are merely the cattle used to feed their real constituency, corporations and oligarchs.
I appreciate your info on Audre Lorde, that all jives with what I know about her also. I just thought it was a great quote, and I like to share quotes when I post here :)
Also, I agree, fascists must die. Trying to play respectability politics while they’re rigging the game won’t kill them though, and it seems that’s all the non-fascist elements of our government are capable of doing.
You can live in a made up reality that uses lies and half truths to justify regimes. It’s really annoying and disgusting, but it’s not the biggest problem right now. What is even less tolerable is you using those strategies to divide the resistance to fascism for the purpose of growing your tankie movement. Not all people on the liberal spectrum will side with fascism. Many side with leftists over fascists throughout history. If anything, Stalin trying to take part of Poland, only siding against the Nazis after getting stabbed in the back, shows just how hollow your arguments in favor of MLs and against social democrats are.
I can provide documents from both western and eastern sources that verify what I said about China. Harvard University itself found well over 90% approval by the people of the Chinese government. If we want to talk about appeasement, we can talk about how the USSR tried to form a three way defense pact over Poland with Britain and France, but instead the western nations refused. It was only after that that they signed a non-aggression pact, and that pact only lasted long enough for them to build up their industry to prepare for the inevitable invasion by the Nazis. You can read the letters between Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Hitler, they’re available online. You can see how western leaders preferred appeasement to defense. You can see how many western leaders not only didn’t dislike the Nazis or Mussolinis fascists, but admired them for their privatization and suppression of working class movements. If Hitler would have kept his genocide to Germany, the west would never have cared. They really didn’t even care about it during either, as evidenced by the wests refusal to take Jewish refugees, a large majority of which were taken in by the Soviet Union.
Under TRUE capitalism the market is free but regulated as needed.
We don’t live in real capitalism, there is no regulation, the oligarchy has captured the agencies that were supposed to regulate the market.
I don’t even know what to call what we have, plutocracy?
True capitalism is what we live in. Competition has winners, those winners gain outsized advantages. They use those advantages to purchase regulatory frameworks which benefit them. This is inevitable, and has happened in every single capitalist society in the history of the ideology. Monopoly is the natural end state of capitalism. (Actually, fascism is, but monopoly happens along the way also)
I found this interesting tidbit in Wikipedia trying to find where I read my source.
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Capitalism 1.0 during the 19th century entailed largely unregulated markets with a minimal role for the state (aside from national defense, and protecting property rights)
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Capitalism 2.0 during the post-World War II years entailed Keynesianism, a substantial role for the state in regulating markets, and strong welfare states
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Capitalism 2.1 entailed a combination of unregulated markets, globalization, and various national obligations by states
You’re right … It sounds like we need another paradigm shift. Fuck web 3 … we need Capitalism 3 …
Given Web 3 was a shithole of a collective delusion, maybe don’t.
Or how about we just stop using capitalism?
If version 1.0 didn’t work, version 2.0 didn’t work and version 2.1 didn’t work, then maybe the problem is capitalism itself.
or we finally move past capitalism. It had 200 years, and it just keeps generating worse and worse crises, let’s just finally accept it’s not working.
not a bad idea, what is your suggestion? Socialism seems to be working well for the European people, but we’d need some kind of check and balance so it doesn’t descend into the clusterfuck they seem to be going thru (not unlike ours)
what do you mean, socialism in Europe? afaik no European country is socialist
That’s what cryptobros were trying and it went about as well as you can imagine.
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capitalism is a broad term. if the means of production and distribution are privately held, then its capitalism
Under TRUE capitalism the market is free but regulated as needed.
The market can’t be free if it’s regulated. Any intromission of the State in any voluntary exchange is stepping in the natural rights of its citizens.
We don’t live in real capitalism, there is no regulation, the oligarchy has captured the agencies that were supposed to regulate the market.
The agencies are the oligarchy. The politicians and lobbyists benefit each other by the existence of regulations, taxation, subsidies, FIAT money, intellectual property, public licenses, monopolical privileges, etc.
Yes, we don’t live in “real capitalism” (that is, in a free-market setting), we live in a corporatocracy.
Quibble: They use a definition of democracy which isn’t all that democratic: Liberal democracy AKA dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It’s the same trick neoliberals use with freedom (when they say freedom they mean “of markets” NOT “of people”) because they know people will assume.
Which is why it’s so fucking hilarious that when they don’t use a heavily doctrinal definition of democracy the US manages to get their ass completely handed to them by the very countries that this marks as “Authoritarian regimes” because even they represent their people more.
Data says no what? That capitalism and democracy are incompatible? Or are you seriously applying the inherently flawed view that the US is a functional democracy? A country where it has been definitively been proven that the citizens support or lack of support for any policy has literally no effect on whether or not it will pass…. A country where literally 99% of our daily lives exists in dictatorships and oligarchies called corporations, who privately determine the use of all public goods and materials, and who have prioritized personal wealth generation over sustainability and the welfare of the population…
Where 70% of the population has no savings, 30% can’t read beyond a middle school level, almost a million people live on the streets… all while literally more food than is needed to feed all of Americas children every day three times a day is thrown away purely to ensure profit margins by corporations.
Anyone calling the US a Democracy is mistaken at best, deluded more likely.
@BartsBigBugBag Yeah, US is pretty fucked up. Still, all the countries which rank high in the democracy index are pretty capitalist.
And under which ideology was that democracy index created? Why would liberal Democratic countries have a material interest in convincing their populations that they are Democratic in nature, while functioning entirely and scientifically proven as an oligarchy?
@BartsBigBugBag Yes, people with money have a lot of influence on elections. How do you think we should fix it? Otherwise the index looks pretty accurate to me, the most democratic countries seem to be on the top, the most authoritarian countries are on the bottom.
There are examples of countries that prioritize the desires and needs of their population above the desires of capital, they’re heavily demonized in the west though. If you actually go to them, you might find out most of what you learned is literally completely bullshit, because it is.
Where?
Russia, China, Noth Korea, I bet.
Going by the “demonized in the West” part they’re probably talking about North Korea, Russia, Eritrea, and the like.
I already made this point in another post, but you ever stop to think about why that might be the case? Think maybe there’s some bias?
Yeah, that’s not true is it? The SPD fought against the Nazis all the way up until the end and were the largest force against them in the Reichstag. It was the communist that refused to ally with them against the Nazis as the Stalin enforced policy was to not collaborate with “social fascists” (i.e. any party not taking orders from Moscow) and directed far more opposition to them than to the Nazis until it was too late.
The SPD voted for WWI, betraying the communists. The government, with the support of the SPD, then dismissed the chief of police and had the GKSD murder dissidents and communists, including Rosa Luxemburg, among other Spartacist members, in cold blood.
The murder had been ordered by Waldemar Pabst, first general staff officer of the GKSD, who claimed responsibility for the killings in a series of notorious 1960s interviews, stating that “times of civil war have their own laws” and that the Germans should thank both him and Gustav Noske, the SPD defence minister, “on their knees for it, build monuments to us and name streets and public squares after us!”
The SPD betrayed the people, sided with the bourgeoisie, and then led Germany straight into the material conditions that produced the Nazis while still playing at reformism in the face of literal fascism.
Sort of like how Social-Democrats like Bernie and AOC are playing at reform in the face of literal fascism today. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
All I’m getting out of this is that the German communists didn’t oppose the Nazis because of grudges and spite, instead of swallowing their pride to prevent actual fascists from seizing power. Typical accelerationist ends-justify-the-means bullshit. No wonder the United States had to bankroll the Soviet war effort, communists can’t accomplish a damn thing without purity testing everyone who could help, doing their best to cut off the nose because it will at least spite the face.
Have you not heard, first they came for the communists? They were literally the first people taken out, specifically because they violently opposed both the traitorous social democrats who sent thousands of working class men to die in a rich man’s war, and the later developed Nazi party. It was social democrats, which are by definition capitalist and not communists, who murdered their Allies and sided with the nationalists.
They were taken out first because they were easier
I think it’s because they were more dangerous. There’s a reason the Nazis kept the socialism in their party name. Communism and socialism were immensely popular in Germany. Without that corruption, or with a more informed working class, it’s unlikely the Nazis would have been govern the opportunity they needed to consolidate power under their rule.
I’ve heard your theory, too, for sure. I’ve just never seen a book to back it up. Do you have one? I’m always looking for more books about German pre-WWII history, it’s one of my favorite topics.
Communists were easier because they were further out to the left. Easier to destroy the extreme first
Are you trying to refute my point by agreeing with me? Bold move.
I think the difference is, you’re saying the communists were infighting. The communists were United, they had their internal conflicts, (direct action vs parliamentarianism) but they were together. It was the CAPITALIST Social Democratic Party that murdered them. CAPITALISTS murdered them. Not other communists. Bernie Sanders isn’t a communist. AOC isn’t a communist. Neither was the SPD.
In other words, yes, you are. I almost wish you could see how funny this is from the outside. You just don’t get it at all, do you?
Gustav Noske, the “Bloodhound of the SPD”, used Freikorps (proto-fascist and/or monarchist) militias to kidnap and murder communists, who at the time were more influential than the SPD in many parts of the country.
So you’d like to damn them for murdering the communists, but also damn modern social democrats for not dealing with fascists in an extra-legal fashion? I understand you’ll never accept the communists weren’t exactly shining paragons, but you must see the irony here.
Lmao. They murdered their political opponents that were fighting for the working class, and collaborated with the ones who were destroying it. Hmm… sounds kinda familiar. Which party put more money into policing than any other in history when they were most recently elected?
Which party released a memo (that thankfully leaked or we wouldn’t know) telling journalists and officials not to call for Israel to stop their genocide?
It’s almost as if they both serve capital and use us as pawns while they make money and kill people both domestically and abroad.
Communists famously improved the quality of life for every russian/russian citizen, how silly of me to forget.
Are you trying to equate american democrats to social democrats of europe? We hate our democrats, they’re just the best option under the first past the post voting system.
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Very nearly, yes. Unironically, look up life expectancy for citizens of the Russian Czardom pre-revolution. It literally more than doubled under Soviet rule. The Soviets had many problems, at least 40 big ones, but they succeeded in turning a peasant and slave society into an industrial society, doubled life expectancy, provided homes to everyone, provided vacations to everyone, and more.
They had issues, certainly. The criticisms that apply to them often apply to the US also though, and other liberal democracies. For example, the USSR couldn’t have dreamed of having a surveillance state even half as effective or powerful as the one in the United States. The gulag system at its peak, wasn’t even close to the current American prison system, either in terms of per capita or total numbers. And 40% of the population was freed every year. Most of the things we’ve been taught to fear about the Soviets we experience far more viscerally than they did. We have secret police, we just call them “undercover” or “plainclothes”. Hell, in 2020 people were literally being grabbed off the streets by un-uniformed police and stuffed into unmarked black cars. I could literally go on for hours, and provide hundreds of pages of books with data verifying, just the ways that the US is definitively more totalitarian and more violent than the Soviet Union at even its height of oppressive action.
We couldn’t strive to replicate the errors of the Soviets, but that doesn’t mean we should neglect the successes, either.
The USSR was better for Russia than what came before, for all the satellite states they annexed and stole resources from they were worse.
If the US is disappearing people into forced labor camps and working them either close to death or to death now doesn’t make it a good thing when the USSR did it.
No, neither would be good, certainly. And yes, the US utilizes forced labor in nearly every prison in the country. Likely all of your license plates, and probably much of your office furniture, were made by prisoners. Involuntary servitude and slavery is prohibited, except as punishment for a crime.
The point is to point out that the belief that the USSR was some unbelievably oppressive society with instant gulags and that did nothing for its people is objectively wrong, and in fact it was at even its worst Significantly less oppressive both domestically and abroad than the current United States. It objectively lifted millions of people out of poverty, though. It objectively lifted the life expectancy in most of the allied SSRs. In fact, the majority of citizens in post soviet states today preferred life under socialism.
What specific satellite states are you referencing? I’d love to look up more.
The idea of the USSR being an objectively better entity than what came before and after itself is a hard pill for many to swallow. Even from a cold, pragmatic, and critical position it can be hard to reconcile, even decades after the Cold War proper.
No. Social Democrats protected democracy again both nazis and communists. Communists don’t want democracy. They want dictatorship of workers over everybody else. Nazis want the dictatorship of their people iver everybody else. Social democrats want a democracy of free and equal people.
more *like there can never be true capitalism under democracy *
