But they’re not, and if you believe that, you’re falling for leftist propaganda.
They are a far-right corporatist party with core party lines of Nationalism, xenophobia, militancy, and class colaborationism. What boxes are they missing checkmarks for?
Yes, both parties serve their donors, but both parties are made up of individual citizens whose first loyalty should be to upholding the Constitution. If they don’t believe a candidate will uphold the law of the land, they should refuse to allow them to win the nomination. That’s one of the central messages of the book I linked.
We aren’t talking about what people should do if everyone is morally upstanding. We are specifically talking about power structures as they materially exist, in the real world. The very fact that the only parties in power must be the parties that can gain funding from the wealthiest Americans means they must continue to represent their interests to retain power. You are speaking of an idealistic fantasy land.
Look at where socialism has been tried. In the USSR, Stalin abused his power to send undesirables to the gulags, and there are plenty of books from first and second-hand sources about how that worked. Or look at the Cultural Revolution in China. Both states claimed to be socialist in some sense, and both resorted to extreme violence to establish their systems. Any system that relies on violence against dissidents to establish itself is morally bankrupt.
Yes, both the USSR and PRC had violent revolutions. The US also uses violence against dissidents, and has the highest prison population in the world per Capita.
What we can also see is that the USSR and PRC drastically reduced poverty and drastically increased life expectency. For all of their well-documented problems, there are also well-documented success stories, and a large amount of nostalgia for the USSR in most Post-Soviet countries. Make of that what you will.
I disagree. High government approval rates can easily be manufactured, especially in a one-party state.
They can also be easily manufactured in a two-party state, that doesn’t change that the actual approval for government is the necessary metric.
The way it should work is if one party is knocking it out of the park, the other party(s) will reform their policies to adopt the good parts of the party that’s in power and attack the bad parts, which will make them more attractive to voters. That’s why the policies of Democrats and Republicans essentially flipped around the Civil War. Also, the definition of “liberal” used to mean small government, limited entitlements, and now it generally means “progressive.” Parties change as public sentiment changes, and that’s a good thing, since that means they’re adapting to what constituents want.
If both parties have low approval rates, what then?
I think this process could be way more efficient, which is why I push for proportional representation and eliminating first past the post.
Better than what we have now, sure.
Keeps the party that’s in power honest and constantly evolving to keep their constituents happy.
You don’t need an opposition party, just democratic control within the party and state. Again, see what the citizens actually want, there’s plenty of room for diversity of thought even within a single party.
None of them hold water. I could point you to Wage Labor and Capital, or Value, Price and Profit, or even Capital, but if I don’t know what specifically you find disagreeable with the LTV, I can’t answer. Do you want me to go through the entire Wikipedia article for you? I specifically didn’t want to throw books at you because you aren’t going to read them just for a Lemmy argument, which is why I asked you personally to offer an explanation. In absence of any specifically stated criticism on your part, here is a good general article supporting the Labor Theory of Value in contemporary time.
Because it’s a one-party state. If you give a simple majority all of the power, you’re leaving out almost half of the total, and what happens if people in that simple majority end up changing their mind? The whole point of the dictatorship is to prevent people from changing their minds, hence the dictatorship.
You’re misreading quite a few things here. A one-party state doesn’t mean no elections, councils, ballot measures, minority protections, or so forth. The point of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat is to simply prevent Capitalists from corrupting the state.
Marx didn’t write a ton about it, but we can see the repression in the USSR and Maoist China as examples of reasons to avoid it.
Both the USSR and Maoist China were more democratic than Tsarist Russia and Nationalist China, and the Russian Federation is less democratic than the USSR was.
Sure. IIRC, he advocated for dissolving state functions until a small committee of people orchestrates the economy (i.e. reallocate resources and whatnot).
Not necessarily, he just argued for the elements of government that oppress other classes, what he referred to as the “state,” to whither away. This is a necessary consequence of eliminating classes themselves.
I just don’t see a strong government ever giving up power voluntarily. Who would actually do that? A lot would say they would, but that just doesn’t happen in practice. It never happened in the USSR, and doesn’t seem to be happening in China. There is no evidence that anyone in power would willingly give it up, especially if it’s run by a group instead of an individual (a kingdom might yield power if a particular king/queen felt so inclined).
See the previous point. The government doesn’t “relinquish power,” the structures themselves become redundant. Do you see lamp-lighters lighting oil street lanterns anymore? No, because they are electric now. We do not maintain structures that have no use.
None of my concerns here have anything to do with Capitalism vs Socialism, but centralization of power (i.e. the political side, not the economic side). I just don’t see a reason for the kind of person who works their way up the ranks of a political party to ever willingly cede power.
Again, it isn’t about ceding power. You can read Critique of the Gotha Programme for more information, since you want links.
Capitalism is an economic system, not a political system. Socialism is both (generally speaking). The political side most often paired with capitalism is most often liberalism, because liberalism is all about the separation and limiting of both.
Economics and politics cannot be divorced from one another. Democracy within a Capitalist system means Capitalists have outsized power, and the state will serve the Capitalists.
I would say the US was a liberal democracy when formed, but that ship has long since sailed. Liberalism is all about individual rights and equality before the law, and those are both being trampled left and right. So what we’re seeing today has little to do with pure capitalism, it’s honestly getting closer to mercantilism, which is the marriage of government and the economy with a veneer of free markets. Look at the tariffs of Chinese EVs and whatnot, which are protectionist policies, which goes against the whole point of capitalism.
You’re again attaching idealism to reality. Reality does not care what people believe about it.
No, my point is that we should be limiting the interaction between the government and the economy, while also ensuring that the people generally benefit from any exclusivity granted to individuals in the economy. This means, in general:
higher property taxes and negative income taxes - i.e. a minimum standard of living for the poor
removal of most corporate legal protections - owners of corporations should be criminally liable for actions of their company
dramatically limit IP protections - e.g. copyright law should last 10-15 years, not 90
Why? How would this maintain itself in Capitalism? Why would either party move in this direction? Why would the donors pivot to weakening their power?
And so on. Basically, the government should not be in the business of selecting who in the economy succeeds or fails, it should merely be in the business of collecting a distributing tax receipts, as well as protecting the populace militarily. Whether the economy booms or busts should be none of its concern. The main interaction between governments and the economy should be piguovian taxes, like carbon taxes and whatnot, and those should be strictly redistributed to the public to avoid any kind of favoritism in how they’re assessed. Oh, and maybe trust-busting, monopolies help no-one.
Again, why? This seems like it sounds cool to you, but you’ve done no thought on how to make reality reflect it. A lot of “shoulds,” as usual from you, with no analysis of why things are the way they are.
In other words, capitalism shouldn’t be eliminated, but quarantined, and stripped of any political power. It’s an economic system, and it should remain as such.
It can’t, because Capitalists control the state, and will not change just because they should. Read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific to understand why people who focus on what the ruling class should do (referred to as Utopians) have failed every time.
They are a far-right corporatist party with core party lines of Nationalism, xenophobia, militancy, and class colaborationism. What boxes are they missing checkmarks for?
We aren’t talking about what people should do if everyone is morally upstanding. We are specifically talking about power structures as they materially exist, in the real world. The very fact that the only parties in power must be the parties that can gain funding from the wealthiest Americans means they must continue to represent their interests to retain power. You are speaking of an idealistic fantasy land.
Yes, both the USSR and PRC had violent revolutions. The US also uses violence against dissidents, and has the highest prison population in the world per Capita.
What we can also see is that the USSR and PRC drastically reduced poverty and drastically increased life expectency. For all of their well-documented problems, there are also well-documented success stories, and a large amount of nostalgia for the USSR in most Post-Soviet countries. Make of that what you will.
They can also be easily manufactured in a two-party state, that doesn’t change that the actual approval for government is the necessary metric.
If both parties have low approval rates, what then?
Better than what we have now, sure.
You don’t need an opposition party, just democratic control within the party and state. Again, see what the citizens actually want, there’s plenty of room for diversity of thought even within a single party.
None of them hold water. I could point you to Wage Labor and Capital, or Value, Price and Profit, or even Capital, but if I don’t know what specifically you find disagreeable with the LTV, I can’t answer. Do you want me to go through the entire Wikipedia article for you? I specifically didn’t want to throw books at you because you aren’t going to read them just for a Lemmy argument, which is why I asked you personally to offer an explanation. In absence of any specifically stated criticism on your part, here is a good general article supporting the Labor Theory of Value in contemporary time.
You’re misreading quite a few things here. A one-party state doesn’t mean no elections, councils, ballot measures, minority protections, or so forth. The point of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat is to simply prevent Capitalists from corrupting the state.
Both the USSR and Maoist China were more democratic than Tsarist Russia and Nationalist China, and the Russian Federation is less democratic than the USSR was.
Not necessarily, he just argued for the elements of government that oppress other classes, what he referred to as the “state,” to whither away. This is a necessary consequence of eliminating classes themselves.
See the previous point. The government doesn’t “relinquish power,” the structures themselves become redundant. Do you see lamp-lighters lighting oil street lanterns anymore? No, because they are electric now. We do not maintain structures that have no use.
Again, it isn’t about ceding power. You can read Critique of the Gotha Programme for more information, since you want links.
Economics and politics cannot be divorced from one another. Democracy within a Capitalist system means Capitalists have outsized power, and the state will serve the Capitalists.
You’re again attaching idealism to reality. Reality does not care what people believe about it.
Why? How would this maintain itself in Capitalism? Why would either party move in this direction? Why would the donors pivot to weakening their power?
Again, why? This seems like it sounds cool to you, but you’ve done no thought on how to make reality reflect it. A lot of “shoulds,” as usual from you, with no analysis of why things are the way they are.
It can’t, because Capitalists control the state, and will not change just because they should. Read Socialism: Utopian and Scientific to understand why people who focus on what the ruling class should do (referred to as Utopians) have failed every time.