We want unity, around correct political lines. The point of agitprop is to get people talking and coming to a consensus on the correct line to follow.

.worlder, can’t see your comment.

Social democracy is capitalism with safety nets, I mean socialism. Rather than private ownership being principle, ie covering the large firms and key industries with the state dominated by capitalists, public ownership should be principle and the working class should dominate the state.

Kinda!

The liberal idea is that supply and demand meet at price, and they try to obfuscate value by wrapping it up into supply. However, Marxist economics provides a more grounded and coherent answer, that value is the real center and that fluctuations in supply and demand merely bring price above or below value. Value is best represented as the socially necessary labor time to produce a commodity, and is what forms the basis of price.

You’re linking a propagandist that doesn’t speak mandarin nor Uyghur, and is walking around trying deliberately to manufacture propaganda. The entire channel seems dedicated to propogating western exceptionalism and demonization of non-white nations.

Did he? He gets walked off by civilians in the tank man video, was there confirmation of that happening?

The way people voted or not did not cause the mess the US Empire is in, capitalism did, as well as it’s evolution into imperialism and now the decay of imperialism. This is just standard leftism.

The problem isn’t democracy, it’s democracy under capitalism, and the idea that we can actually transition to socialism via electoralist means.

You’re asking a question with a loaded premise, no system is immune to problems like corruption. At the same time, the various systems of socialist democracy have been far better than capitalist democracy, and the reasoning common to all is that the working class is in control, rather than capitalists. Structure varies from state to state, but having a system where the input and direction of the working class is paramount is far superior to capitalist democracy.

In capitalism, it’s democracy for the capitalists, dictatorship for the workers, in socialism it’s democracy for the workers, dictatorship for the capitalists.

There’s a lot of research and reading you can do on how socialist states function, and a lot we can learn from them.

There’s no actual evidence that the DNC treats leftists any differently. Both parties did the Red Scare, both parties root out communists, both parties bomb and sanction socialist countries.

Socialist democracy. The political structure is a way to reinforce the economic base, so by moving onto socialism, the working class is in control of the state. The issue isn’t with voting, period, but the idea that we can escape capitalism just by doing so.

The people who “love every country that calls itself communist, or voices opposition to the US” don’t really exist. MLMs that support Gonzalo and Pol Pot are fringe, and moreover don’t support China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. When I say “communists support,” I am aware that there are outliers, but the idea that people on Lemmy in any significant number have views akin to what’s described here is false.

Capitalism was in many ways progressive as compared to feudalism, but came with new devastation and greater imperialism on a massive scale. Socialism has been far better for the people than capitalism has been, though, and as imperialism crumbles and socialist countries are rising this is becoming clearer and clearer.

Great work, and good luck on the new site! 🫡

Oh I’m aware, that’s why I said he’d have to adopt genuinely leftist politics, rather than sheepdogging for imperialism.

Absolutely. It’s democracy for the few, dictatorship for the many.

There’s a split in liberalism, between true believers and those disillusioned but who can’t see a way out. I believe the latter are more common these days, and are the target of the meme. The cure is organizing and reading theory, becoming a leftist in the process, but right now they still cling to faux-progressivism and electoralism.

It’s not really that capitalism “corrupts” democracy, it’s that all states serve the ruling class, and the political formation reinforces that. Capitalist democracy is democracy for capitalists, dictatorship for workers. In a socialist state, the political power is held by the workers, it becomes democracy for the working class and dictatorship for capitalists, landlords, etc.

Liberal democracy isn’t democratic, and electoralism as a means of systemic change doesn’t work. Socialist democracy does work, and delivers far higher rates of approval and perceptions of democracy being effective.

The great lie of liberal democracy is the idealist notion that literally anything can be voted in if enough people vote for it, and that this will have political supremacy over those in power. This analysis puts the state outside of class struggle, above it, and not as the mutually reinforcing superstructural aspect of society. The role of the state is to reinforce the base, ie the mode of production, and it does so through propagating ruling class ideology (ie, liberalism), and through a monopoly of violence.

Electoralism is a sham. The lessons of the failures of electoralism scar the global south, the coup against comrade Allende taught us all too well. The state is not outside or above class struggle, but is mired in it. Without replacing the bourgeois state with a socialist, proletarian one, the ready-made levers for reinforcing the bourgeois mode of production will cause a reversion. The Paris Commune was the first such example of this failure in action, and it has happened again, such as with the coup against Allende and the installment of Pinochet.

What is there to do, then? Organize. Build up parallel structures that take the place of existing capitalist mechanisms. Join a party, read theory, and solidify the politically advanced of the working class under one united banner. Build a dedication to the people, defend and platform the indigenous, colonized, queer, disabled, marginalized communities, and unite the broad working class. It is through organization and revolution that we can actually move on into a better world.

If anyone reading wants a place to start with theory, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, aimed at absolute beginners. Give it a look!