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Are Politicians Puppets? Who Really Runs the World?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2025
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politics
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You make an excellent point campaign funding absolutely impacts the democratic process, raising questions about the authenticity of our votes. It's a reminder that power structures often go far beyond what we see on the surface. History shows us how systems evolve and shift, and understanding that, along with how economics like globalization shape politics, is key. Curtis’ work on media manipulation and how it influences public perception is a great resource for seeing how we’ve been conditioned, and I agree that understanding economic history and theorists like Milton Friedman helps put today’s political climate into context. The real challenge is figuring out where the line is between genuine democracy and systems that mainly serve a select few.
Your take on genuine democracy is fair, especially if we’re referring to the US (as per my assumption). According to this Wikipedia article on The Economist Democracy Index:
The question we’re facing is, if we make it through Trump’s term(s?) with a functional federal gov’t, how can we begin to return to a full democracy, and is that even possible given the trajectory of our economic system.
The downgrade to a "flawed democracy" highlights the reality of a system that's never truly been for the people it's always been about serving the interests of the capitalist class. A "full democracy" is a myth in a society where the economic system is designed to prioritize a select few. The real solution isn't about restoring a broken democracy but about dismantling the capitalist structures that prop it up. A good dictatorship, one that truly serves the people and removes the influence of the elite, could be the only way to actually return power to the masses.
I, personally, don’t accept any kind of dictatorship can ever be good. That there is a series of humans with self interest in between the resources of a nation and the populace of a nation leads me to doubt that possibility. If it were possible, we would have seen more than a few prosperous Marxist nations.
I’m referencing Marxism specifically because, to my mind, it requires individuals, like union leaders, to represent the interests of their union constituents (all of whom are shareholders of the means of production) and would require those representatives to act in the interest of the laborer-as-shareholder which, as I see it, puts them in a moral overlap between politics and economics. i.e., Marxism would be the most likely form of government to satisfy the conditions if a morally good dictator, and yet historically it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way.
I actually fully believe in a genuine democratic capitalist government being a great means of achieving full democracy, but we have never truly been a democratically capitalist country.
A "good dictatorship" in the Marxist sense isn’t about a singular tyrant, but the working class collectively taking control to dismantle capitalist power.
The primary reason, by a long shot, is that the imperialist states never stop trying to destroy socialist states, or really any state that stands between them and their plundering.
I think this is kind of my point exactly. I misunderstood the dictatorship of Marxism, but I’m not sure I believe there can be a “good” Marxist dictatorship that is broadly cooperative on a national scale because it will require intermediaries who are themselves susceptible of corruption. Occupy Wallstreet seems to be a great example of that working locally, but I’m skeptical it can be easy to coordinate nationally as a market can. On paper, the Marxist ideology is sound, in practice, human self-interest seems to not want it to work, though there is always an opportunity to try again somewhere. That being said, markets come with their own distinct style of corruption, as we’re currently seeing playing out right now.
This is impossible to achieve, because whenever “democracy” becomes too “genuine” for their tastes, the bourgeoisie will unleash fascism.
I am (perhaps naively) hopeful that there can be mechanisms in place to avoid this. Ranked Choice Voting seems like one possible lever, but I think it’s probably true that any certain that has a hierarchy is vulnerable to capture by those with access to the most resources.
Genuinely: What are some political systems capable of avoiding capture by the elite (Bourgeoisie, Royal, etc. classes?