• davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    A lot of people are saying that bourgeois democracy is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

    BBC, 2014: Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy

    The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

    So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

    This is not news, you say.

    Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here’s how they explain it:

    Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

  • Alsephina@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Well yeah, bourgeois “democracy” is only really democratic for capitalists and not workers.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      3 months ago

      It’s demonstrably not, but westerners just keep clinging to their failed system lacking the courage and imagination to try anything different.

          • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            That’s not a political system at all. It’s a process that could be implemented in many styles of government. It is not incompatible with representative democracy either. It is a bad idea though. It means that a government has a hard time changing course, even when it needs to. Because it silences people from questioning decisions.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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              3 months ago

              This is demonstrably false because in the real world Chinese system has proven itself to be far more flexible and adaptable than any western regime. That’s the reality. In fact, it’s obvious that multiparty parliamentary systems are the ones that have hard time changing course. They’re literally designed to prevent that. It’s not possible to do any sort of long term planning when governments keep changing and people keep pulling in different directions. The horizons for planning become very small. And of course, it’s pretty clear that western systems do a great job silencing opinions that fallout of the Overton window. Entire books have been written on the mechanics of this.

          • BrundleFly2077@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            And we’re the ones clinging to a failed system? You’ll have to dig a little deeper for your credibility if you want to stick to this imperious schtick of yours.

          • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            What definition of proletarian democracy? It’s not well defined and means vastly different things to different people.

            • OurToothbrush@lemmy.mlM
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              3 months ago

              Democracy in which the bourgeoisie are denied political agency as class relations are in the process of being dissolved. The problem isn’t actually democracy, the problem is that in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (democracy where capitalists are in control) capitalist interests override democracy.

              Not that democracy doesn’t have problems inherently, but they’re pretty minor compared to the problems we are facing.

          • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            That’s not a political system at all. It’s a process that could be implemented in many styles of government. It is not incompatible with representative democracy either. It is a bad idea though. It means that a government has a hard time changing course, even when it needs to. Because it silences people from questioning decisions.

        • sandman@lemmy.ca
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          3 months ago

          Ask the people of El Salvador, and they’ll say having a dictator is better because democracy has demonstrably failed them.

          El Salvador under a dictator actually has less gang violence than Mexico under a democracy.

          Westerners will blind themselves to this reality, though. They always do.

          • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            When dictatorships go badly, they go extremely badly. Far more badly than even a broken representative democracy. The odd of having a sold string of reasonably good dictators are vanishingly small. A good dictator is the best form of government. Good luck maintaining that though.

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    As Churchill once famously said, democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

    I guess one of the nicest things about democracy is that it has a built-in mechanism for removing a government. It may not be reliable at getting good leaders in place, but at least when there’s a bad one it has a way of getting them back out again without having to go in shooting.