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Cake day: April 17th, 2019

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  • As @[email protected] mentioned, PSL (and a few other socialist parties), are the only real opposition, since they’re a working-class party that’s consistently anti-war and anti-capitalism.

    From crash course socialism:


    Socialists view democracy under capitalism to be impossible. Most current-day systems are better labeled as Bourgeois Democracy, or democracy for the rich only, which socialists contrast with proletarian democracy. Under capitalism, political parties, representatives, infrastructure, and the media are controlled by capitalists, who place restrictions on the choices given to workers, limit their representative options to vetted capitalist puppets, and limit the scope of public debate to pro-capitalist views.

    Bourgeois democracies are in reality Capitalist Dictatorships, resulting in legislation favorable to the wealthy, regardless of the population’s actual preferences. The Princeton Study, conducted in the US in 2014, found that the preferences of the average US citizen exert a near-zero influence on legislation, making the US system of elections and campaigning little more than political theater. Multi-party, Parliamentary / representative democracy has proven to be the safest shell for capitalist rule, regardless of voting methods or differing political structures, for countries as diverse as Australia, Japan, Sweden, the UK, the US, South Korea, or Brazil.

    Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle more accurately defined Democracy as rule by the poor, and they considered states based on elections to be anti-democratic Aristocracies, since only the wealthy and ruling families have the resources to finance elections. They contrasted this with random selection / sortition, and citizen’s assemblies, as being the defining features of democracy, both of which are nonexistent in the countries listed above. Today, liberal / parliamentary “democracies” are dominated by wealthy candidates, and entrenched political families, with Capitalists standing above political power.

    This system of sham elections acts as a distracting theater piece, giving the illusion of democracy, whilst in reality it serves to platform capitalist views, make them appear more popular than they are, and manufacture consent for the system itself.

    Examples of restrictions include a media and news monopoly, 2, gerrymandering, long term limits with no way to recall unpopular representatives, restrictions crafted to disenfranchise poor and minority voters, bills directly crafted by lobbyists and bourgeois lawmakers, voter suppression, electoral fraud, unverifiable closed source electronic voting systems, capitalist campaign financing, low voter to representative ratios, inconvenient voting locations and times, and most importantantly, candidate stacking. Most elections are performed before we ever get to the polling booth. In short, political democracy can’t exist without economic democracy, and true democracy is only possible when workers control production.

    The impossibility of Capitalist democracy to make a transition to working-class democracy is best shown by the phrase: Capitalists will not allow you to vote away their wealth. Pacifism, and elections have never been an effective means of disenfranchising the ruling class.

    Communists propose building alternatives alongside of bourgeois democracy, with the goal of to replacing it with Proletarian democracy. Measures might include:

    • Replacement of bourgeois parliamentary bodies with broadly inclusive workers organizations, such as unions, councils, or syndicates.
    • Seizing land, productive facilities, and housing and putting them under democratic control.
    • Elimination of all debts, suppression of all private banks and stock markets.
    • Direct democracy in as many decisions as possible, often called cyber communism.
    • A democratically planned economy for human needs, with open participation.
    • Low-level workplace democracy.
    • Elimination of the standing army, and the substitution for it of armed workers.
    • An emphasis on universal education, health-care, child-care, care for the elderly, and human welfare, paid for socially.
    • Increase in productive technology.
    • Low levels of wealth and income inequality, often driven by a system of labor vouchers for compensation.
    • Experts (if any) elected by the working class through universal suffrage.
    • All representatives and officials (including police) are revocable at any time.
    • Public officials are paid worker’s wages.


  • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOPtoMemes@lemmy.mlOne more thing
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    4 days ago

    You have to kinda suspend your disbelief a little bit when watching the show, especially since its based in Los Angeles, in reality one of the most corrupt and racist police forces on the planet. IRL they would never go after rich socialites in the way Columbo does.

    Luckily in the show there’s barely any presence from his higher ups, you get the feeling that they just let this magic murder-solving troll do his thing and never interfere.









  • “The western world” in politics doesn’t usually refer to geography, but to the high income euro-amerikkkan countries who benefitted from hundreds of years of theft (much from the countries you mentioned), who based themselves on individualism, private property, and capitalism, and prided themselves on their opposition to the collectivist policies of eastern countries.

    This is why Cuba for example is not considered part of the western world, yet japan and south korea are.

    Marxists also generally use the term “global south” or “the periphery” to refer to lower-income / exploited via unequal exchange, even though there are some “middle” / lower income countries in the global north also. It gets confusing I know.



  • Dessalines@lemmy.mlOPtoWorld News@lemmy.mlWest refuses to condemn slavery at UN
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    16 days ago

    These are all incredibly weak justifications wrapped in legalese, that’s really just a thin posturing as to their position, which is white/western supremacy, and refusing to hold themselves accountable for hundreds of years of ongoing theft. The EU also refuses to vote for the condemnation of nazism using the same type of legalistic justifications.

    I don’t have time to go through each of their sentences, but someone easily could ala the style of Marx’s critique of the gotha programme, because there’s hidden meanings and psychology behind almost every sentence that requires a paragraph.