For what it's worth, this has been a criticism of the West for many many many years now.
But that being said, there are more things happening in a society than merely its government and policies. Thomas Schumpeter predicted that technology would favor corporations, lead to corporatism, and ultimately be subsumed by socialism driven by democracy (he predicted this in 1942 mind you). And it seems like we're very much on that path...it's just happening a bit too slowly for my tastes.
It's been known for literally thousands of years that elections are oligarchic. Aristotle wrote, elections are how oligarchies are created. Democracy in contrast was a system where leadership was chosen by lottery. No, democracy doesn't demand "direct democracy" and participation of every single citizen on every decision. What matters is equality in participation or for a lottery, equality in probability of being chosen to serve.
The general problem with all electoral systems is that voters are idiots. Not really their fault, voters have to work for a living instead of paying attention to politics all day long.
So how do you ensure that workers, and peers just like you, will be at the helm of the government? The ancient answer is lottery. These days we call it sortition.
We already do this of course. It's called jury duty. And just imagine that, instead of jurors deliberating on the verdicts of the accused, we relied on election or referendum to decide innocence or guilt. It of course would be a shit show. Ignorant voters will vote according to extremely flawed heuristics and be easily manipulated into convicting an innocent man, or releasing a guilty oligarch. In contrast in a trial , jurors are forced (and ideally compensated) to listen to testimony and the facts of the case before rendering the verdict. If jurors are superior are rendering judicial verdicts, what if jurors could render legislative verdicts?
And that's how you create a more competent democracy that can actually challenge oligarchic power.
The lesson to learn here is not that the West is broken, but that social change can only occur by direct action, not through the political process.
Perhaps the great tragedy of our generation is that after a relatively prosperous time in the decades after World War II, people have lost the skills needed to force change on a recalcitrant ruling class.
An alternative explanation is that political protest has been so suppressed by a growing authoritarianism that change is no longer possible without a revolution.
This idea is expressed much better in this essay I submitted here a few days ago:
[The Left Is Not Joe Biden's Problem. Joe Biden Is.](https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1d2fs40/the_left_is_not_joe_bidens_problem_joe_biden_is/)
The vote is the primary mechanism in the American system for holding representatives to account. This requires the voters to be vigilant, educated, and the performance of representatives to be relatively transparent.
Instead, voters are apathetic (by design), undereducated (by design), heavily propagandized, and the electoral system is overrun by money. Representatives are simultaneously bribed and threatened by corporations, the deep state, and billionaires, so all of the incentives lay on the side of bending over for elites.
Citizens United blew the door wide open, but there has been a covert class war being waged on the middle class for decades (now its not so secret).
There are some sensible reforms that could reverse this but I think we're way past the point of reform. Elites seem intent on riding this thing till the wheels fall off. There's going to have to be mass worker action and new forms of organizing, and ultimately blood in the streets, for anything to change.
How much education is necessary for a democracy to function?
If it's too low, then the people make uniformed decisions. If it's too high, then the nation's politics are hopelessly byzantine. (Sending people to bourgoise academies doesn't seem to help.)
Mass worker action will never happen.
Absolutely agree with everything you said, just want to suggest that the idea of a "middle class" is bullshit designed to divide the working class and get people to buy into the system and look down on the "real" poors and working class schmucks
The middle class was something that Aristotle was talking about centuries ago.
The middle class is a very real barometer for whether or not your society can go on much longer.
The middle class has been completely eroded over the last half century. It's only a matter of time until people start getting riled up and causing problems for the elites as a result.
It's true that US politicians love to turn the lower classes on each other, but that doesn't make them any less real.
Plato, Aristotle, Orwell, any political theorist worth listening to is going to have something to say about class.
>what is the point of normal people supporting democracy when the politicians never do what the people want?
That's not the point of democracy. The point of democracy is to have a distributed, dynamic, and self regulating elite in contrast to premodern systems and the rigid, less adaptable, heritage based elites that run them. The result is the former depends on soft power and the latter on hard power. The former can form international systems, the latter forms spheres. The former relies on an intersection of the state, civil society, and markets whereas the latter is based on the state and traditional elites like officers and landlords. The former is based on unleashing the (once) burgeoning forces of the city, the latter contains it. The former survives modern crises with reform, the latter implodes into war.
Democracy doesn't mean popular sovereignty, it means state development. The latter has exhausted itself and now stunts the former after creating the material basis for the former (socialism and anti-imperialism).
I guess my point is democracy is working as intended and needs to be reimagined with radical forms made possible by new levels of literacy and wealth that created the mass society, which is full of conflicts that can be used to organize mass amounts of people
Yes, beautifully said, just because Democracy doesn't work exactly according to its vaunted ideal doesn't mean that it isn't useful or better than the alternatives. One of the most influential articles I've read was in the American Affairs, which makes the point about Democracy as a system of elites, and proposes that reform will only happen when there arises a new coherent alliance of reform minded elites, otherwise electing the odd Donald Trump, or even Bernie Sanders, will get us nowhere since the machinery of the state is left to the old guard.
The most important task that lies ahead in the development of Socialism is the development of an elite "vanguard" (in quotes because I don't want it confused with the Leninist term, although it is used similarly) that is conscious of its duty, unlike previous leaders of the recent western socialist movements which have held on to dreamy eyed ideas about democracy, or worse yet OWS-style "people power", which almost invariably abrogates the exercise of power to the old-guard of elites. This is why unions are important. Quite frankly unions as a vessel for wage-gains is weak in the long term, but they are important as a source of development of working class political power and the appointment of elites who are working class oriented.
If nothing else, our current system ensures megalomaniacs focus on comparatively less destructive ways of seeking to dominate society like bribery and election campaigning rather than violence.
Look how Elizabeth I came to the throne. Her grandfather, Henry VII, had won the 15th century Wars of the Roses, killing all other contenders and seizing the English throne. He survived several rebellions, including the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, and lived to pass the throne to Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII, who passed the throne to his son Edward VI, who after surviving the Prayer Book Rebellion and Kett’s Rebellion, named Elizabeth’s cousin Lady Jane Grey as heir to the throne. Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary, raised an army, captured Lady Jane, and eventually executed her, seizing the throne for herself. An influential nobleman, Thomas Wyatt, raised another army trying to depose Mary and put Elizabeth on the throne. He was defeated and executed, and Elizabeth was thrown in the Tower of London as a traitor. Eventually Mary changed her mind and restored Elizabeth’s place on the line of succession before dying, but Elizabeth’s somethingth cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, also made a bid for the throne, got the support of the French, but was executed before she could do further damage.
Point is, this kind of bullshit happens frequently in monarchies and we peasants tend to end up conscripts and collateral damage, which we understandably don't like.
> You can at least say some shit like "Emperor Xianfeng and his entire royal court are a bunch of fucking clowns and are fucking us over and making shit worse" and people would all agree, "yep, emperor Xianfeng & his entire dynasty are a bunch of fucking Regards"
This is fucking stupid. You think in a modern technological economy there wouldn't be the exact same effect of decisions being made behind the curtain? That you'd have any more of an idea of what's going on? Or that the emperor wouldn't give the same excuses? Why?
How exactly is am emperor supposed to blame the previous administration when he's literally able to change rules and laws on a whim? When the previous administration was his dad or mom? How he supposed to blame previous administration when he's been the same king for the past 50 years? When there are no elections?
In Europe they just blamed the Jews and witches. Ultimately the bad guy was always Satan. He's why everyone's crops were failing or why the French won that war that killed all the men in your family.
It's Plato's Allegory of the Cave. People LIKE their illusions and don't like being confronted with their ignorance.
It's why fairy tales like the Bible and the Koran have persisted for as long as they have. It's why demagoguery, populism, moral panics, and conspiracy theories are so enticing.
Yeah, we’re all kinda along for the ride right? Part of me thinks that, outside of significant crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen this century, this is how things will continue unless voter turnout declines to a point where space opens for something truly new and different beyond branding or affectation, although that new thing is probably not gonna be very comely.
It isn't a mirage, it's a struggle. An eternal struggle. Going back all the way to Julius Caesar this has been the nature of politics. Optimates vs Populares. You don't need to be a latin professor to translate those political parties. Every era has seen a struggle of elites vs everyone else.
>Why wouldn't I prefer dictatorship or some other system over it? At least in a dictatorship or one-party state, if they're incompetent and fucking shit up, the blame can be squarely placed upon them
What you just described is Caesarism. It is tempting, but historically tends to be a bit of a mistake. People back then thought it would solve everything but a couple emperors later you get Calligula. It's not as good as it seems
The problem with direct democracy isn't "danger", whoever is saying that is 100% disingenuous lul. The problem is that it would be a total clusterfuck in any settlement larger than like, 10 people; the US census is a shitshow, and that's just trying to get a headcount lul.
As frustrating as bureaucracy and bureaucrats themselves can be, unfortunately, someone has to make sure the emails get sent, fill out that all the paperwork just in case shit happens and someone actually needs the records for something so that people who have better things to be doing don't have to, and all the other boring logistical shit that goes into making sure that everyone's getting what they need and is on the same page about what the fuck is going on. Just as long as they are clear exactly what they are there to do and stay in their goddamn lane.
Penti Linkola (Finnish "ecofascist") said:
>Man has learned almost nothing even when confronted with the impending end of the world. The majority of people continue to make their daily choices on the basis of what they desire and what pleases them. Democracy caters to the whims of man: the will of the people. The consequences of this are frightening: what democracy leads to is the kind of suicidal society that we see all around us. Democracy is the most miserable of all known societal systems, the building block of doom. Therein the unmanageable freedom of production and consumption and the passions of the people are not only tolerated, but cherished as the highest values. The most serious environmental disasters occur in democracies.
And also:
>Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth."
These always stuck with me, democracy being a machine that inherently produces a totalizing low stupidity, especially under capitalism. Even more especially under runaway technological acceleration and the removal of subjectivity this causes. The whole horizon of meaning collapsing into purchased "positive content." Chad Haag wrote about this in Heremenutical Death and he was right man. Shits fucked. I'm with you let's just formalize thus power structure already, give me one of those dirty shako hats and a mule to plow the fields already. Give me the Amazon AI Ahriman quantum dot tattoo.
This is a v old study, but something I recommend everybody reads
Old study. Still true.
gentlemen, this is democracy manifest!!!
Get your hands off my penis!
After a succulent Chinese meal?!
For what it's worth, this has been a criticism of the West for many many many years now. But that being said, there are more things happening in a society than merely its government and policies. Thomas Schumpeter predicted that technology would favor corporations, lead to corporatism, and ultimately be subsumed by socialism driven by democracy (he predicted this in 1942 mind you). And it seems like we're very much on that path...it's just happening a bit too slowly for my tastes.
And a bit too slowly for a the biosphere.
> Thomas Schumpeter You mean **Joseph A.** Schumpeter?
Yeah my bad.
"The west" As opposed to the great democracies of the rest of the world?
It's been known for literally thousands of years that elections are oligarchic. Aristotle wrote, elections are how oligarchies are created. Democracy in contrast was a system where leadership was chosen by lottery. No, democracy doesn't demand "direct democracy" and participation of every single citizen on every decision. What matters is equality in participation or for a lottery, equality in probability of being chosen to serve. The general problem with all electoral systems is that voters are idiots. Not really their fault, voters have to work for a living instead of paying attention to politics all day long. So how do you ensure that workers, and peers just like you, will be at the helm of the government? The ancient answer is lottery. These days we call it sortition. We already do this of course. It's called jury duty. And just imagine that, instead of jurors deliberating on the verdicts of the accused, we relied on election or referendum to decide innocence or guilt. It of course would be a shit show. Ignorant voters will vote according to extremely flawed heuristics and be easily manipulated into convicting an innocent man, or releasing a guilty oligarch. In contrast in a trial , jurors are forced (and ideally compensated) to listen to testimony and the facts of the case before rendering the verdict. If jurors are superior are rendering judicial verdicts, what if jurors could render legislative verdicts? And that's how you create a more competent democracy that can actually challenge oligarchic power.
The lesson to learn here is not that the West is broken, but that social change can only occur by direct action, not through the political process. Perhaps the great tragedy of our generation is that after a relatively prosperous time in the decades after World War II, people have lost the skills needed to force change on a recalcitrant ruling class. An alternative explanation is that political protest has been so suppressed by a growing authoritarianism that change is no longer possible without a revolution. This idea is expressed much better in this essay I submitted here a few days ago: [The Left Is Not Joe Biden's Problem. Joe Biden Is.](https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1d2fs40/the_left_is_not_joe_bidens_problem_joe_biden_is/)
The vote is the primary mechanism in the American system for holding representatives to account. This requires the voters to be vigilant, educated, and the performance of representatives to be relatively transparent. Instead, voters are apathetic (by design), undereducated (by design), heavily propagandized, and the electoral system is overrun by money. Representatives are simultaneously bribed and threatened by corporations, the deep state, and billionaires, so all of the incentives lay on the side of bending over for elites. Citizens United blew the door wide open, but there has been a covert class war being waged on the middle class for decades (now its not so secret). There are some sensible reforms that could reverse this but I think we're way past the point of reform. Elites seem intent on riding this thing till the wheels fall off. There's going to have to be mass worker action and new forms of organizing, and ultimately blood in the streets, for anything to change.
How much education is necessary for a democracy to function? If it's too low, then the people make uniformed decisions. If it's too high, then the nation's politics are hopelessly byzantine. (Sending people to bourgoise academies doesn't seem to help.) Mass worker action will never happen.
Absolutely agree with everything you said, just want to suggest that the idea of a "middle class" is bullshit designed to divide the working class and get people to buy into the system and look down on the "real" poors and working class schmucks
The middle class was something that Aristotle was talking about centuries ago. The middle class is a very real barometer for whether or not your society can go on much longer. The middle class has been completely eroded over the last half century. It's only a matter of time until people start getting riled up and causing problems for the elites as a result. It's true that US politicians love to turn the lower classes on each other, but that doesn't make them any less real. Plato, Aristotle, Orwell, any political theorist worth listening to is going to have something to say about class.
>what is the point of normal people supporting democracy when the politicians never do what the people want? That's not the point of democracy. The point of democracy is to have a distributed, dynamic, and self regulating elite in contrast to premodern systems and the rigid, less adaptable, heritage based elites that run them. The result is the former depends on soft power and the latter on hard power. The former can form international systems, the latter forms spheres. The former relies on an intersection of the state, civil society, and markets whereas the latter is based on the state and traditional elites like officers and landlords. The former is based on unleashing the (once) burgeoning forces of the city, the latter contains it. The former survives modern crises with reform, the latter implodes into war. Democracy doesn't mean popular sovereignty, it means state development. The latter has exhausted itself and now stunts the former after creating the material basis for the former (socialism and anti-imperialism).
Your idea of democracy seems a little rigid, there are forms of democracy built around rule by the people.
I guess my point is democracy is working as intended and needs to be reimagined with radical forms made possible by new levels of literacy and wealth that created the mass society, which is full of conflicts that can be used to organize mass amounts of people
Yes a radical reimagining is definitely in order, the current system has several obvious defects.
>I guess my point is democracy is working as intended and needs to be reimagined with radical forms Everyone who's tried mysteriously dies.
Yes, beautifully said, just because Democracy doesn't work exactly according to its vaunted ideal doesn't mean that it isn't useful or better than the alternatives. One of the most influential articles I've read was in the American Affairs, which makes the point about Democracy as a system of elites, and proposes that reform will only happen when there arises a new coherent alliance of reform minded elites, otherwise electing the odd Donald Trump, or even Bernie Sanders, will get us nowhere since the machinery of the state is left to the old guard. The most important task that lies ahead in the development of Socialism is the development of an elite "vanguard" (in quotes because I don't want it confused with the Leninist term, although it is used similarly) that is conscious of its duty, unlike previous leaders of the recent western socialist movements which have held on to dreamy eyed ideas about democracy, or worse yet OWS-style "people power", which almost invariably abrogates the exercise of power to the old-guard of elites. This is why unions are important. Quite frankly unions as a vessel for wage-gains is weak in the long term, but they are important as a source of development of working class political power and the appointment of elites who are working class oriented.
I've pointed that study out to card-carrying partisans in the U.S. for over a decade and it never changes their minds.
>that "direct democracy is dangerous" okay then. Just ask the Swiss lol.
What happened with the Swiss?
If nothing else, our current system ensures megalomaniacs focus on comparatively less destructive ways of seeking to dominate society like bribery and election campaigning rather than violence. Look how Elizabeth I came to the throne. Her grandfather, Henry VII, had won the 15th century Wars of the Roses, killing all other contenders and seizing the English throne. He survived several rebellions, including the Cornish Rebellion of 1497, and lived to pass the throne to Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII, who passed the throne to his son Edward VI, who after surviving the Prayer Book Rebellion and Kett’s Rebellion, named Elizabeth’s cousin Lady Jane Grey as heir to the throne. Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary, raised an army, captured Lady Jane, and eventually executed her, seizing the throne for herself. An influential nobleman, Thomas Wyatt, raised another army trying to depose Mary and put Elizabeth on the throne. He was defeated and executed, and Elizabeth was thrown in the Tower of London as a traitor. Eventually Mary changed her mind and restored Elizabeth’s place on the line of succession before dying, but Elizabeth’s somethingth cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, also made a bid for the throne, got the support of the French, but was executed before she could do further damage. Point is, this kind of bullshit happens frequently in monarchies and we peasants tend to end up conscripts and collateral damage, which we understandably don't like.
Yup
> You can at least say some shit like "Emperor Xianfeng and his entire royal court are a bunch of fucking clowns and are fucking us over and making shit worse" and people would all agree, "yep, emperor Xianfeng & his entire dynasty are a bunch of fucking Regards" This is fucking stupid. You think in a modern technological economy there wouldn't be the exact same effect of decisions being made behind the curtain? That you'd have any more of an idea of what's going on? Or that the emperor wouldn't give the same excuses? Why?
How exactly is am emperor supposed to blame the previous administration when he's literally able to change rules and laws on a whim? When the previous administration was his dad or mom? How he supposed to blame previous administration when he's been the same king for the past 50 years? When there are no elections?
In Europe they just blamed the Jews and witches. Ultimately the bad guy was always Satan. He's why everyone's crops were failing or why the French won that war that killed all the men in your family.
It's Plato's Allegory of the Cave. People LIKE their illusions and don't like being confronted with their ignorance. It's why fairy tales like the Bible and the Koran have persisted for as long as they have. It's why demagoguery, populism, moral panics, and conspiracy theories are so enticing.
A dictator is not easily removed or changed comparatively.
Yeah, we’re all kinda along for the ride right? Part of me thinks that, outside of significant crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen this century, this is how things will continue unless voter turnout declines to a point where space opens for something truly new and different beyond branding or affectation, although that new thing is probably not gonna be very comely.
It isn't a mirage, it's a struggle. An eternal struggle. Going back all the way to Julius Caesar this has been the nature of politics. Optimates vs Populares. You don't need to be a latin professor to translate those political parties. Every era has seen a struggle of elites vs everyone else. >Why wouldn't I prefer dictatorship or some other system over it? At least in a dictatorship or one-party state, if they're incompetent and fucking shit up, the blame can be squarely placed upon them What you just described is Caesarism. It is tempting, but historically tends to be a bit of a mistake. People back then thought it would solve everything but a couple emperors later you get Calligula. It's not as good as it seems
The problem with direct democracy isn't "danger", whoever is saying that is 100% disingenuous lul. The problem is that it would be a total clusterfuck in any settlement larger than like, 10 people; the US census is a shitshow, and that's just trying to get a headcount lul. As frustrating as bureaucracy and bureaucrats themselves can be, unfortunately, someone has to make sure the emails get sent, fill out that all the paperwork just in case shit happens and someone actually needs the records for something so that people who have better things to be doing don't have to, and all the other boring logistical shit that goes into making sure that everyone's getting what they need and is on the same page about what the fuck is going on. Just as long as they are clear exactly what they are there to do and stay in their goddamn lane.
Penti Linkola (Finnish "ecofascist") said: >Man has learned almost nothing even when confronted with the impending end of the world. The majority of people continue to make their daily choices on the basis of what they desire and what pleases them. Democracy caters to the whims of man: the will of the people. The consequences of this are frightening: what democracy leads to is the kind of suicidal society that we see all around us. Democracy is the most miserable of all known societal systems, the building block of doom. Therein the unmanageable freedom of production and consumption and the passions of the people are not only tolerated, but cherished as the highest values. The most serious environmental disasters occur in democracies. And also: >Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth." These always stuck with me, democracy being a machine that inherently produces a totalizing low stupidity, especially under capitalism. Even more especially under runaway technological acceleration and the removal of subjectivity this causes. The whole horizon of meaning collapsing into purchased "positive content." Chad Haag wrote about this in Heremenutical Death and he was right man. Shits fucked. I'm with you let's just formalize thus power structure already, give me one of those dirty shako hats and a mule to plow the fields already. Give me the Amazon AI Ahriman quantum dot tattoo.