Remember, the social Democrats sided with the Nazis over the socialists. They’ve done it every time they’ve been given the opportunity, and will continue to do so as many times as people fall for their shtick.
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
-Audre Lorde
Stop spreading false narratives, the social democrats did NOT side with the Nazis, they were one of the final frontiers against them, and many of them died for their efforts of trying to keep the german republic alive.
The SPD used the Proto-fascists to murder their enemies. This is undebatable. It happened.
What about all the non-USA countries? They are all mostly capitalist but are more regulated (like Canada in NA and most of the European Union) while also having true healthy démocraties?
Oh, I didn’t realize it was the will of the people to fail to meet their climate commitments. I was pretty sure the majority of people thought that governments should be doing more. Was it also the will of the people to raise the pension age in France? And the people of Canada support the slow privatization of their public health system? That’s kosher to them?
The general public is incredibly stupid on average. They absolutely vote for climate commitments and against change. You should have heard the whining coal mine workers on television when Germany decided to close them in a decade. The French pension system is out of balance due to longer, healthier lifes and needs a rebalance - but is not allowed to change because “it has worked so far”. There was never a winning change in policy. Trying to save money on public services by privatization is a philosophy shared by many “free market” enthousiasts and sadly always takes preference over evaluation of money streams in public funding.
So what? You think the people are the good ones and the political class are the bad ones? Who did you think voted them into office and who’s responsible for the rise of right wing power? That just materialized itself? Get a grip of yourself and stop trying to divide the world just so you can have an easy time understanding. The world is complicated and not black and white. Stop dividing.
You know what this means? The people don’t care. If the majority of people really cared, they would have voted for parties that put this issue front and center. But that didn’t happen because we live in democracies and the people chose another party that had a different mission
You should look at polling more deeply. If you chuck an easy question like ‘Are humans responsible for climate change?’’ you’ll barely get 50%. But if you then actually pose a piece of actionable policy like ‘Would you support banning the sale of ICE cars in 2035?’ You’ll get 30%. So no. The will of the people is not meeting their climate commitment.
This will probably be the case for your other examples too. Public opinion is never as unified as you’re making it seem.
Yes, it is pretty healthy. Of course there are issues to fix such as under/overrepresentation of certain areas but otherwise it is generally considered (not just by me) to be a pretty healthy democracy
If you heavily regulated companies, nationalize every major public service, place an upper cap to overall wealth for any one individual, eliminate inherited wealth and redirect all available resources to public education, health care, housing and UBI … then democracy could exist in a capitalist system.
But chances are we’ll more likely start WWIII with nuclear weapons than do any of that.
If you picture the political compass, where the y axis is how how democratic the society is(where the top is tyranny and the bottom is anarchy) and the x axis is how socialized it is (where the left is communism and the right is capitalism), OP claimed that ancap (the bottom right quadrant) doesn’t exist, and that those who claim to be ancap tend to be authoritarian right instead. You argued that democracy could exist in a socialist (leftist) society. You are not disagreeing with OP, because what you described is not a capitalist (right leaning) society.
the difference between capitalism and socialism is whether companies are privately or publicly owned, so while it looks similar, it’s really not the same. this would be a social democratic society, and therefore not socialist
What is true democracy anyway? The government always doing the will of the people? I don’t think that can really happen under any circumstances.
The people directly controlling the society collectively, rather than private ownership of said societies social wealth.
True democracy requires democracy at all levels of society. Workplace democracy, state democracy, community democracy, etc. Democratizing the electoral system but maintaining private ownership of production merely results in exactly the situation we are in now, with an illusion of democracy, where we choose from a pool of candidates selected by the elites in control of production in order to maintain control of their production.
There are different elites, and they have differing goals, but one thing they all have in common is they believe in the subjugation of the working class and the hoarding of the products of the labor of the working class. That’s why imperialism is non-partisan in the US. It serves capital.
That’s why there’s no meaningful changes to the status quo for the working class unless on the back of a social movement. They don’t serve us, they keep us placated while they serve the people who pay them.
But what is democracy? Is it just equality? Or having an equal say in what’s being done?
The people controlling the society collectively, rather than private individuals maintaining ownership and control of society. Production is part of society. It is one of the most important and powerful parts of society. It influences every other aspect of society, in a way no other part does. Such an integral part of our society being privately and anti-democratically controlled is how we end up where we are, where the world is literally boiling and we’re still expanding emissions, where the majority of people are living paycheck to paycheck, and not even our “pro-labor” party tries to help them…. Etc…
Does anyone else (like a dictionary) agree with your definition? Personally, I think it’s a bit extreme.
Yeah hundreds of millions of people across the last hundred years have felt the same. We’re called communists. I’m An anarcho-communist myself, but there’s many different flavors. You can look to Professor Richard Wolff for a prominent US voice who often speaks of the inherent anti-democratic nature of private business and capitalism.
Yeah, that’s not true is it? The SPD fought against the Nazis all the way up until the end and were the largest force against them in the Reichstag. It was the communist that refused to ally with them against the Nazis as the Stalin enforced policy was to not collaborate with “social fascists” (i.e. any party not taking orders from Moscow) and directed far more opposition to them than to the Nazis until it was too late.
The SPD voted for WWI, betraying the communists. The government, with the support of the SPD, then dismissed the chief of police and had the GKSD murder dissidents and communists, including Rosa Luxemburg, among other Spartacist members, in cold blood.
The murder had been ordered by Waldemar Pabst, first general staff officer of the GKSD, who claimed responsibility for the killings in a series of notorious 1960s interviews, stating that “times of civil war have their own laws” and that the Germans should thank both him and Gustav Noske, the SPD defence minister, “on their knees for it, build monuments to us and name streets and public squares after us!”
The SPD betrayed the people, sided with the bourgeoisie, and then led Germany straight into the material conditions that produced the Nazis while still playing at reformism in the face of literal fascism.
Sort of like how Social-Democrats like Bernie and AOC are playing at reform in the face of literal fascism today. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.
All I’m getting out of this is that the German communists didn’t oppose the Nazis because of grudges and spite, instead of swallowing their pride to prevent actual fascists from seizing power. Typical accelerationist ends-justify-the-means bullshit. No wonder the United States had to bankroll the Soviet war effort, communists can’t accomplish a damn thing without purity testing everyone who could help, doing their best to cut off the nose because it will at least spite the face.
Have you not heard, first they came for the communists? They were literally the first people taken out, specifically because they violently opposed both the traitorous social democrats who sent thousands of working class men to die in a rich man’s war, and the later developed Nazi party. It was social democrats, which are by definition capitalist and not communists, who murdered their Allies and sided with the nationalists.
So you’d like to damn them for murdering the communists, but also damn modern social democrats for not dealing with fascists in an extra-legal fashion? I understand you’ll never accept the communists weren’t exactly shining paragons, but you must see the irony here.
Lmao. They murdered their political opponents that were fighting for the working class, and collaborated with the ones who were destroying it. Hmm… sounds kinda familiar. Which party put more money into policing than any other in history when they were most recently elected?
Which party released a memo (that thankfully leaked or we wouldn’t know) telling journalists and officials not to call for Israel to stop their genocide?
It’s almost as if they both serve capital and use us as pawns while they make money and kill people both domestically and abroad.
