On
a small scale, direct democracy is great, the problem is when you try
to scale it up, direct democracy transforms into its opposite and
becomes the greatest hindrance to democracy.
The problem is, and I know leftcoms don’t like to hear this, but regular
people are not omniscient! The large the scale of the election, the
more difficult it is for a person to even grasp the full scale of what
they’re voting for.
Take, for example, the US presidential election. If Joe Biden had a 5
minute conversation with every single American of voting age, it would
take almost 2000 years to complete. It’s not physically possible for
regular people to come to know a candidate on an election of this scale
organically.
How do they come to know them, then? Simple, through media institutions.
You cannot vote for someone without knowing who they are, and hence,
whoever is placed on the media will be the first step in the nomination
process to decide who can get elected, since it will be impossible for
voters to even know who they are voting for without the media.
Who ran for president in the US last election? You can probably say Joe
Biden, Donald Trump, maybe if you followed it closely you’d know some
less known candidates like Bernie or Howie.
In reality, 1,216 people ran for president in 2022. Yet, you don’t know
of almost any of them. Because you only know of who the media told you
about. And it’s even worse in the US because the media is controlled by
money so a candidate’s viability is directly linked p with how much
money they raise to appear in the media.
In practice, large-scale direct democracy always just devolves into a
dictatorship of the media. Whatever small group has control over the
media will control all of society, because regular people are not
omnipotent and won’t understand how to run a country as big as China
with over a billion people, and will rely on the TV to tell them how to
vote, not because they’re not smart, but because nobody is that smart.
You aren’t either, nor am I.
With some exceptions like national referendums on issues people might
actually generally know about, in general, all elections should be very
small in scale, or else they will be easily susceptible to manipulation.
Yes, for a large society, this requires many layers of elections, but it
originates from small scale direct democratic elections at the base,
and every layer going up is subject to the right to recall by the one
below it. Each election is small enough so that people know who they are
voting for at every step, so it is a rational system and not a chaotic
one, producing efficient government that has its roots in the public.
This is far more functional than some chaotic direct democracy where 1+
billion Chinese people vote on every single issue. Such a thing would be
a complete disaster and not democratic at all.
It also adds a benefit of making it rather difficult to climb to the
top. To be president, you have to constantly prove yourself on every
layer. You have to start small, directly elected at the root, and prove
yourself at a local level, and eventually work your way up until you
eventually prove you can manage towns, cities, whole provinces, until
you can even be considered to be at the helm of the entire nation.
Adding these layers not only makes it more democratic and rational as a
system but it also has a benefit of inherently injecting merit into the
process.
The obsession over direct democracy for everything needs to go. It works
well for somethings, small-scale elections at the base for the first
layer of representatives, and occasionally on natural referendums where
certain issues affect everyone. But it is not some cure-all
silver-bullet for everything and is in fact a complete disaster if you
try to apply it to everything.
God fucking damn it, even if you’re a bit account don’t fedpost like this. Democracy is not the problem, liberalism (i.e. the allowance of capital to be the dominant force in society) is the problem. The position of communists is one of trying to bring about a democracy that is not dictated by media ownership, lobbying, and various other vectors of control used by capitalists.
Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor. It is this truth, which forms a most essential part of Marx’s teaching, that Kautsky the “Marxist” has failed to understand. On this—the fundamental issue—Kautsky offers “delights” for the bourgeoisie instead of a scientific criticism of those conditions which make every bourgeois democracy a democracy for the rich.
One of the problems is that the term “democracy” has been completely hijacked by liberal democracy and its media arms so that only democracy that looks like western bourgeois democracy is real democracy and everything else is authoritarianism.
You can even see the definition shift back and forth depending on how libs feel about the country in question. Japan is a democracy, except when a rich westoid is being put on trial for corruption, then it’s a all sorts of unfair and authoritarian and their conviction rates are too high.
I think it’s flimsy compared to simply making public office less appealing to people who want to be rich. It’s one of the few places where I think Plato was on to something, minus the caste part.
Honestly I like it as an idea, I have no idea how you’d make it work in practice, but I find the idea of “anyone could become an official, so everyone needs to be educated to a high standard” appealing. I like the idea of a society that greatly values education, and I like the idea of the people being ready and capable to take on an important role whenever required? Practicality? I could see it working for devolved government dealing with local issues, but higher levels of organization probably wouldn’t work well.
That’s not really a criticism of democracy but a criticism of the absolute stupidity of Nazism and white supremacism. Sure, if Nazis become the majority, then they would rule a democratic society. But they can only come out of mommy’s basement so often…
It’s a criticism of liberal democracy, and a fair one at that, because those will always be ultimately ruled by the wealthy elite. Hence the term dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It’s why abortion is once again illegal in much of the US, it’s why the US doesn’t have universal healthcare despite it being very much wanted by a large majority of the population. It’s why France is still upping the age of retirement despite essentially no one wanting that and has become a de facto police state to suppress that population from protesting it. Nazis absolutely do not have to be a majority for a liberal democracy to quickly become a fascist state.
They’re not stupid they’re reproducing the centuries of genocide they sprouted from.
You can pretend to punch down all you want, they’re the slave catchers that protect private property as police, the intelligence agencies began as union busting Pinkerton, and the genocidal settler state that began as a genocidal settler state.
Democracy sucks. You want the hivemind of neo-nazis voting in legalizing a random crime “for teh lulz” or voting in a random genocide? No thanks.
On a small scale, direct democracy is great, the problem is when you try to scale it up, direct democracy transforms into its opposite and becomes the greatest hindrance to democracy.
The problem is, and I know leftcoms don’t like to hear this, but regular people are not omniscient! The large the scale of the election, the more difficult it is for a person to even grasp the full scale of what they’re voting for.
Take, for example, the US presidential election. If Joe Biden had a 5 minute conversation with every single American of voting age, it would take almost 2000 years to complete. It’s not physically possible for regular people to come to know a candidate on an election of this scale organically.
How do they come to know them, then? Simple, through media institutions. You cannot vote for someone without knowing who they are, and hence, whoever is placed on the media will be the first step in the nomination process to decide who can get elected, since it will be impossible for voters to even know who they are voting for without the media.
Who ran for president in the US last election? You can probably say Joe Biden, Donald Trump, maybe if you followed it closely you’d know some less known candidates like Bernie or Howie.
In reality, 1,216 people ran for president in 2022. Yet, you don’t know of almost any of them. Because you only know of who the media told you about. And it’s even worse in the US because the media is controlled by money so a candidate’s viability is directly linked p with how much money they raise to appear in the media.
In practice, large-scale direct democracy always just devolves into a dictatorship of the media. Whatever small group has control over the media will control all of society, because regular people are not omnipotent and won’t understand how to run a country as big as China with over a billion people, and will rely on the TV to tell them how to vote, not because they’re not smart, but because nobody is that smart. You aren’t either, nor am I.
With some exceptions like national referendums on issues people might actually generally know about, in general, all elections should be very small in scale, or else they will be easily susceptible to manipulation.
Yes, for a large society, this requires many layers of elections, but it originates from small scale direct democratic elections at the base, and every layer going up is subject to the right to recall by the one below it. Each election is small enough so that people know who they are voting for at every step, so it is a rational system and not a chaotic one, producing efficient government that has its roots in the public.
This is far more functional than some chaotic direct democracy where 1+ billion Chinese people vote on every single issue. Such a thing would be a complete disaster and not democratic at all.
It also adds a benefit of making it rather difficult to climb to the top. To be president, you have to constantly prove yourself on every layer. You have to start small, directly elected at the root, and prove yourself at a local level, and eventually work your way up until you eventually prove you can manage towns, cities, whole provinces, until you can even be considered to be at the helm of the entire nation.
Adding these layers not only makes it more democratic and rational as a system but it also has a benefit of inherently injecting merit into the process.
The obsession over direct democracy for everything needs to go. It works well for somethings, small-scale elections at the base for the first layer of representatives, and occasionally on natural referendums where certain issues affect everyone. But it is not some cure-all silver-bullet for everything and is in fact a complete disaster if you try to apply it to everything.
by u/aimixin
I guess this is a case of “[sic]” but it should really be “omniscient”
yeah, you’re right. I am working from saved htmls of pastas, I will have to do some hand editing
God fucking damn it, even if you’re a bit account don’t fedpost like this. Democracy is not the problem, liberalism (i.e. the allowance of capital to be the dominant force in society) is the problem. The position of communists is one of trying to bring about a democracy that is not dictated by media ownership, lobbying, and various other vectors of control used by capitalists.
– Lenin, PRRK
One of the problems is that the term “democracy” has been completely hijacked by liberal democracy and its media arms so that only democracy that looks like western bourgeois democracy is real democracy and everything else is authoritarianism.
You can even see the definition shift back and forth depending on how libs feel about the country in question. Japan is a democracy, except when a rich westoid is being put on trial for corruption, then it’s a all sorts of unfair and authoritarian and their conviction rates are too high.
Personally though I favor sortition.
I think it’s flimsy compared to simply making public office less appealing to people who want to be rich. It’s one of the few places where I think Plato was on to something, minus the caste part.
Honestly I like it as an idea, I have no idea how you’d make it work in practice, but I find the idea of “anyone could become an official, so everyone needs to be educated to a high standard” appealing. I like the idea of a society that greatly values education, and I like the idea of the people being ready and capable to take on an important role whenever required? Practicality? I could see it working for devolved government dealing with local issues, but higher levels of organization probably wouldn’t work well.
That’s not really a criticism of democracy but a criticism of the absolute stupidity of Nazism and white supremacism. Sure, if Nazis become the majority, then they would rule a democratic society. But they can only come out of mommy’s basement so often…
It’s a criticism of liberal democracy, and a fair one at that, because those will always be ultimately ruled by the wealthy elite. Hence the term dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. It’s why abortion is once again illegal in much of the US, it’s why the US doesn’t have universal healthcare despite it being very much wanted by a large majority of the population. It’s why France is still upping the age of retirement despite essentially no one wanting that and has become a de facto police state to suppress that population from protesting it. Nazis absolutely do not have to be a majority for a liberal democracy to quickly become a fascist state.
They’re not stupid they’re reproducing the centuries of genocide they sprouted from.
You can pretend to punch down all you want, they’re the slave catchers that protect private property as police, the intelligence agencies began as union busting Pinkerton, and the genocidal settler state that began as a genocidal settler state.