Ewe dint saye tank ewe mistow zewenski

It isn't secret societies, it is class society. Capitalists rule over production and the government, that is the state, runs the political institutions that keep the masses of people out of power, while keeping the rich calling most of the shots.

Democracy contradicts class society, but it is a stage in a process. Democracy needs to be defended. This version of "democracy," with parliaments and congresses and presidents, has always been the form of democracy that the rich owners have wanted, because it serves their interests. Now maybe less so, but the problem with it isnt its democratic nature, but in fact that it is largely, by design and historic precedence, democracy for the rich.

And in capitalism, the interests of the rich and poor are opposite, by nature. What is good for them is bad for us, because the more we work and the less they pay us, the richer they get. It isnt that democracy is a "sham", but their democracy is designed for the rich freaks, whether or not they are baby eating occultists, or Mormons, or engineers. If you want to have power you have to put people below you, and if you want to keep power you have to continually put people under you at an increasing rate. If not, someone will steal your power, because if they didn't, someone would steal both of your power. Everyone competes, that's how the system gets everyone to cooperate.

But parliamentary democracy was an improvement over monarchies. Within that framework, the rest of us were able to struggle for more rights, people could fight for freedom with solidarity.

The rich, including members of elitist occultist secret groups, want rid of it. They think more cops and more surveillance will make it so they don't have to deal with costly civil infrastructure, they will just use direct force to control everyone, not just the lower classes and heavily exploited people. They want rid of democracy because the profits aren't coming in fast enough, which is why guys like Trump who are really good at legal crime, bleeding and butchering corporate empires for personal and investor gain, are given the reigns of real power. To bleed and butcher the social democracies of EU and planned economies of East Asia, to cash every check and strongarm every loan, that has been written by every president and supreme court ruling for the past 70-100 years.

Climate catastrophe is inevitable, the social contract is expired. The only chance we have is to show solidarity together and organize for the power of workers and everybody who has it rough working for some faceless corporation, depending on dwindling govt welfare or shitty min wage paychecks. Its happened before and it will happen again. We need better forms of democracy that serve our interests not theirs. Organization and leadership from below, not rule from above. The basis for it is solidarity, not elections or parliament. And the rich hate and fear other forms of democracy, especially forms of mass democracy.

The rich want us to reject democracy the way they have. They've been maintaining this system that disenfranchises most people, and now they think they can get a better deal. But as they cut away at the institutions that maintained our bare-minimum "civil society" they cut away the illusions that made people feel safe, or at least hopeful. But that doesn't mean that the illusions won't get replaced with new ones, like that democracy is a sham.

Democracy doesn't exist unless we fight for it. People stopped fighting and so it started slipping away. Rationalizing the loss of our rights as a good thing is not the right kind of defeatism. As long as the rich exist, the poor exist; and the poorer we are the richer they get. The only way to fight and win is to organize on the basis of the best interests of an international working class, and the most potent offense and defense our class has is progressive, mass democracy.

Keep telling that to yourself

Self-medicating with rage bait

That awkward moment when you realize that Lemmy.world is the Chinese misinformation psyop and not any of the tankie instances.

Capitalism

OP! Great recommendations for being concrete

I think if youre reading this and have not read Constructive Criticism, you should read it now. Skip the first section if you wanna get right to the meat, but the first section is historically interesting, but also repetitive and dogmatic.

And, read the manga! Non-Violent Communication by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. Legion's work is based on it as she was Rosenberg's personal assistant.

NVC is a kind of communication that is developed to fix broken relationships, rather than being a set of word tricks, it is a way of explaining our own subjective experience concretely (not confusing it with objective observations, also not confusing different kinds of observations), and luring out the subjective experience of others, like helping them articulate their true feelings, thoughts and observations in a concrete way. The two works are complementary to each other, Rosenberg's framings and exercises imo do a better job at describing the fundamental concepts and practices, while being a little too light on political difference. Legion's continuation includes a long l, imo skippable, introduction to western academic new-left Dialectical Materialism primer, that reads like a "how to get your book published by the CCP during the cultural revolution as a late 60's American ML/Maoist."

But her practical manual is absolutely required reading, and has been making its way into the intro reading lists of national orgs, branches, chapters, all over. NVC is a fundamentally dialectical-materialist method of comms, albeit one with its class analysis carefully manicured. Fortunately, there was, at the closest levels of collaboration, an excellent contribution to both the Marxism and NVC.

Yes but without war, the government might get some of my money /s

Is it because of all the civilization in Euro that its like that? I bet he thinks its because of civilization, Euro are experts at civilizing, and knowing when another country needs to be civilized.

/s

I'm not a bear, I can't use emojis, and though I mess them I'm prob not coming back to your instance, even though I like most bears

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am -- Stuck in the middle with Ian Kuchinski

Big difference, Katie Wilson was not endorsed by Seattle DSA, in fact her supporters (as well as supporters of Kshama Sawant, using a similar tactic) had to be called in for entryism. Seattle DSA is far from perfect but they know what's going down in their own city, and have among their membership numerous dedicated socialists and organizers.

Check out the mayor of Dayton, OH, if you want another example of an actual, not just expressed, democratic socialist. Y'all need to be looking up Shenice Turner-Sloss.